What was your most ambitious mission?

[Superfluous J]

Way back before 1.0 (I think it was 0.23.5) I wanted to outdo the Jool-5 (Yes, Jool-5 is that old) so i got it in my head to do a Jool-6+. Here were the requirements:

Do a Jool-5 (of course)
Also get atmosphere science at Jool itself (harder back then because your entire orbit had to be within the atmosphere or you were still in space)
Also, when done, get "returned a craft that had..." bonuses from landed at each moon AND orbiting each moon, flying at Jool, and orbiting Jool.

Sadly the whole thing failed. Not only did I run out of fuel more than once (which means it wasn't a valid Jool-5 entry), but the act of orbiting Tylo ended up wiping out all the other things the ships did, so my Pol lander (for instance) didn't get credit for landing at Pol, but orbiting Tylo.

It was really cool though seeing all 12 craft (orbiters and landers for each world, plus the Jool orbiter and Jool flier) coming in at the end, two-by-two to decouple upon landing.

So what have been your most ambitious missions? Doesn't matter if they failed or not.

[Geonovast]

This, easily.

The actual re-use of a Falcon 9 style rocket.

 

[Superfluous J]

4 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

The actual re-use of a Falcon 9 style rocket.

I remember when you posted that. As amazing now as it was back then. Definitely the kind of thing I was thinking of when I posted this

[Anth]

Over 2 years ago I stranded 3 Kerbals on Eve in a science save....in the water, and then stopped playing that save and started Career https://imgur.com/a/Wz5Xp1V 

All my focus over the last month or so has been figuring out how to bring them home. My attempts in the past have been half hearted + I didnt have the experience I do now in KSP do to make a real attempt.

https://imgur.com/a/wH16Jcq Currently i have a concept rocket design that works in testing that will get off of Eve from a Landing Pad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSS5CgzuvYY&feature=youtu.be&t=20 I have a basic kraken tech paddle boat designed to get to the pod with the 3 kerbals and then get back to the rocket (which can have issues with the motor breaking atm). I am hoping to attach this type of craft to some sort of glider that will get me close to the pod after entering the atmosphere. 

https://imgur.com/a/FOtovtC I have a mining/fuelling base + refueller designed for use on Gilly.

Minmus Mining/fuelling base and refueller is still being worked on.

I still need to finish the transporter to get the 3 Kerbals home as well as any of the kerbals who will be involved in the rescue, and whatever else I perhaps have forgotten.

Its all 'simulation mode' right now, so 'set orbit' has been used a lot so I still need to figure out how to get some of these crafts into space i.e.ow I will need to break up some of the parts for putting together in space etc.

[Pthigrivi]

^That Eve platform is pretty baller

I've got a big convoy of life-supported colony fun on the way to Jool right now.

First is a big pack of survey and communications satellites:


Here's the mothership, Anticipation of a Shmelta-Vee's Arrival, The. The forward section is a Laythe seabase, aft is a VTOL amphibious mining rig, and the mid-section includes the main drive, centrifuge and in-transit life-support. 


This is the Lionfish. It will land on Bop, Pol, SSTO from Tylo, and then become the vacuum refueler from Vall to Laythe.


And here's Fawks, the VTOL SSTO Laythe shuttle:


I parked a refueling boey with nuke engines in its cargo bay and topped it off at Minmus before pushing out,


And now I just have to wait 2 MORE YEARS for it to all get there *sigh*

Edited May 23, 2019 by Pthigrivi

[Geonovast]

@Anth12 I imagine there will be quite a few paddle boats coming around once the Breaking Ground DLC is out.

[Xavven]

I've done a Jool 5, but I feel like my Eve return was more ambitious/difficult. I landed the return vehicle unmanned, and then dropped a Kerbal with a rover as close as I could to it. I ended up several kilometers away and drove the whole distance with a pitstop by a lake to get a water sample and science jr. + goo experiments from it. I just put a couple of albums on and listened to tunes while carefully navigating Eve's slopes at x3 phys warp (x4 would increase my chances of crashing my car).

[purpleivan]

I've had a few in my time that were on the ambitious side, most notably the Eve Party Boat (4 kerbal vehicle return from Eve's surface) and Jool 5. However the one that's drawing to a close now is by far the the most time consuming thing I've done.

The Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation is a trip around the entire coastline of Kerbin by boat, with fuel supplied by tanker aircraft and drops from orbital and sub-orbital vehicles as well. I originally planned to use ISRU gear to produce fuel, but it was so slow it felt like cheating on this kind of trip, so I switched to manually bringing the stuff to the boat.

If pottering around the shores of Kerbin doesn't sound ambitious, then trust me, it takes a LOT of time. Currently I'm on leg 60, which is 60 times the boat has had fuel flown out to it, or air dropped from orbit. It also has a rover on the back with a pitiful 300 units of battery life on it, that one of the crew likes to drive up mountains, the most recent being Mt. Keverest, the highest on Kerbin.

The crew have sailed by grasslands, deserts and polar ice caps. They've travelled up rivers, base jumped off the edge of the big crater bay rim and played with micro planes and minisubs (but that was in a dream).

The trip started in the middle of February and the crew has driven a leg, scaled a mountain and/or moved fuel around the globe, almost every night since then. The boat (well boats... I upgraded approaching halfway through) have travelled about 20,000km, at an average of less than 40m/s (thank goodness from physics warp).

FInally some pics of the vehicles for anyone curious.

Spoiler

The original Coastal Cruiser on its transporter to the shore.

The original Coastal Cruiser at sea.

A Juice Goose tanker aircraft enroute to the boat.

A fuel depot. This was launched by rocket and parachuted to locations distance from launch sites.

A MIRF that provided fuel from orbit.

SMIRF... an upgrade version of MIRF.

The rover doing what Bob loves most... climbing mountains.

The upgraded version of the Coastal Cruiser, that's been used for most of the trip.

 

 

Not forgetting Bob's Dream.

Spoiler

 

The bigger badder boat.

Toys for pilots

Sub sea exploring.

But it was all a dream.

 

Edited May 23, 2019 by purpleivan

[Francois424]

umm...  it was in 0.23.5 when I made my 3 ion "Solar Cruiser" or w/e I called it.   At the time I had never gone to Jool, let alone want to do a Jool-5 probe mission (in space near/far, maybe get a few gravioly during a fly-by).
At the time the lab didn't reset experiments, and it was unmanned flight to boot so not an option.  Each experiment could only be used once.

So I did fly-bys of all moons, including Jool (during the aerobreak pass, which you could do back then) of both high and low.  And then returned to Kerbin, ejected the science portion of the ship for reentry and it gently touched down in water.
I think I pulled over 8k science from that, unlocking everything that was left in the tech tree and that was it for that version of the game.

I tried putting together a gran tour last year but kraken bugs and low frame rate killed my drive...
The solar cruiser was awesome tho.  I even sent it to @5thHorseman during his viewer's ship challenge where he used our ships, and seeing how slow the ship was in orbit of Kerbin he just... chuckled and said he couldn't do it (far too slow).

I really should get back into KSP eventually.  That new DLC looks awesome and that 2 man rover cockpit last patch look very tempting.  I guess roving on some moon somewhere could be done without too much issues.
Food for thought =)

 

[ The Solar Cruiser, circa 0.23.5 ]

Edited May 23, 2019 by Francois424

[KerikBalm]

Probably my missions to Duna-Rald-Ike in 3x, establishing modular surface bases, with a motherhsip that has a rotating centrifuge, assembled in orbit.

Spoiler

Assembly of the mothership:

^The part on the left was already made from 2 modules^

 

With the Ike lander. The green science bay is actually a greenhouse for life support.

It spins:

Ejection burn:

One of the module tugs for a surface base:

Spoiler

 

The a fuel tanker launching from Mun base, to refuel the mothership:

Spoiler

decoupled from the surface base/mining base:

Taking the duna dropship to orbit, piggyback style:

Spoiler

Touchdown on Duna (but this was a test):

An earlier suicide burning non-winged design proved to be too hard to land safely:

That was the no-nuke version, I had a nuke version too (from before a game update)

Spoiler

An earlier version, using KPBS, arriving at Duna (I've done this mission a couple times, its a lot of work, but the pinacle of my career mode before I get tired, or a new update comes out):

KPBS based suface base on 3x duna:

Its hard to see, but the mothership in orbit, with the surface base module tug, and a dripship docked:

The surface base construction starts on Rald:

 

it goes back up to load another module:

much later:

All done with the pretty brutal dV requirements of a 3x rescale, but stock parts.

 

 

[Xurkitree]

This is probably one of the more ambitious, but not exactly at the top, of the missions I have done. A Jool-5 in a Career Mode, Science rewards at 30%, Life Support mods (although I had Deep Freeze to mitigate some of it), ISRU based, all while taking footage for the video submission.

Another very ambitious mission was this - an unrefuelled, 1 kerbal Grand Tour, done right after a previous grand tour, just because the refuelling attempt I had to make on the first one around Moho (i started the Grand Tour blind you see), so I decided to no u the damn thing and go for a low mass.

My most ambitious mission is done actually, but due to reasons i can't tell you about it right now...

[Anth]

@Pthigrivi Its great....except now I have to figure out how to get it all into space (without cheating) and to Eve, thats why I consider it as a concept design

@Geonovast Yeah I bet. Though with the DLC I could make a propeller plane instead probably (Kind of want to save the kerbals before the DLC comes out however)

[Bubbadevlin]

Hmm.. I tend to focus on the building aspect, as opposed to missions but probably my most ambitious mission was my kerbin eclano mission. I went for an ATV style mission, basically going strait across the equator. The difficulty came from the fact that back then the only reliable boat part was radial air intakes.. Lots of quick saving and loading on that mission. It was also before the ISRU, so I ended up having to air drop resupply rovers for the stupid thing too. 

 

 

 

[Guest]

Sending Jeb to Tylo surface and back in a fully reusable mission, I suppose. With an Eve return mission in a spaceplane (not fully recoverable though) a close second.

I'm prouder of sustained efforts however, like building and operating a base on Laythe. My most emotional KSP moment was bringing back Valentina from Laythe in the by-then-antiquated Pelican SSTO.

Edited May 24, 2019 by Guest

[Xurkitree]

This probably?

[Adenosine Triphospate]

Trying to land on Tylo with an SSTO.

With nuclear engines.

Realised that it was nowhere near possible even with ludicrous dV, (8000m/s, fully fuelled) just because of the TWR needed. Ended up being a SSTA with excessive dV, and a moderate TWR. Here's a newer version, docked around Minmus, a rather 'unconventional' design to say the least (the double fuselage box wing, not the  sane looking fuel silo and smaller SSTO):

Edited May 26, 2019 by Adenosine Triphospate

[N4CDLAW]

Wish I had screenshots (didn't take them at all locations, lost those being a little hasty with a Windows reinstall), but most ambitious (successful) mission was to plant a flag on every body in the game and return the Kerbals safely. 

Currently working on another repeat of that task with USI life support active. If all goes well I may try again in a no save/no revert game. 

Eve itself was the lion's share of that mission. Walked around grinning for the rest of the day after successfully re orbiting Eve. Also needed a Moho rescue mission and Tylo was dicey enough I'm not sure I could take the same ships and repeat the accomplishment. 

[Starhawk]

This was probably my most ambitious single mission.  This was done in 1.4.3.

This Jool 5 ship was constructed in orbit and every single piece was put into orbit by spaceplane.  There are just two landers.  The spaceplane at the front for Laythe  and the main lander which did the other four moons tucked into the middle there.

There's also a little RCS tug at the front which has a claw at the front.  This is how the spaceplane is secured to the rest of the ship.  Powered by five of the original, unnerfed Wolfhounds, this packed an enormous amount of dV.

The engineering, testing, and construction took about ten times longer than flying the actual Jool 5 mission itself.

I never did post this mission on the forum.  I did during my forum absence.

Happy landings!