Day 1 and already conquered Jool [Pic.Hvy]

[WhiteWeasel]

The first day I got Ksp, and I already hit Jool.

So the story is that when looking at the stock rockets in the VAB, I saw the 'Ion powered space probe'. My reaction is was :"Ah sweet! future tech"!

Ok that is a sad-dinky piece of probe. Rather than start from scratch, I 'evolve' my designs by constantly adding on and improving upon them. And well, my probe evolved like the zerg:

Behold the the Deep space tri-on satellite! Going from a mere 10 parts to a hefty 89 (ish). Just for the satellite. Basically capable of going anywhere in the kerbol system. Now before you say anything about efficiency or size, it is my first time, give me some slack and let me explain.

Parts list

Propulsion:

-Tri-mounted ion engines, even with 3 still low power, but are cool and good for long time travel.

-Same number & arrangement of 24-77s'. Ion engines are bad for sudden maneuvers due to low thrust, which is where these come in. Usually saved as an emergency system.

Fuel & Power:

-Parts clipped in 7 Oscar-b's (You have to be in a quite a pickle to need all of that)

-12 regular solar panels (non-folding)

-3 of:

-Xenon gas containers

- OX-4b's

-XL solar arrays

-RTG's, Slow and heavy, but you will never run out of power and die.

-Z-400 batteries (Good for night & long distances away from the sun)

More than enough all the way out to duna. But is meant to be used much farther out like jool with only half the solar energy. At jool, can burn at ~50% throttle indefinitely and 100% for quite awhile.

Misc. Bits

-3 Lights, With all those solar panels the underside is usually pitch dark, and you may need to see what you clicking on.

-Random scientific equipment

-Cubic Octagonal Struts are my best friends

-For whatever reason I put a docking port on it, but it has no fine control of it's own, you have to dock it by going to it.

(Pre)Lift-off!

LVn'n my way to jool:

Me aerobraking in the sun rise:

Tired of being all scrunched up. Time to extend my wings, and by wings I mean solar panels and antenne. (I left the UI on so you see how large it's resource pool is)

Edit: Silly me, forgot to do a side view.

And yes I do feel like a bad A.S.S piloting it.

Edited May 20, 2013 by WhiteWeasel

[Moustachauve]

The image of the back of your ship (Last one) is just amazing

[Agent30632]

Wow.

I played for a month and I haven't even gotten to the Mun without hax.

[WhiteWeasel]

Well, I admit that I watched a lot of scott manly, maecy dean, kurtjamac, and HoC gaming befor even owning the game.

[WhiteWeasel]

The image of the back of your ship (Last one) is just amazing

Well I did keep my Ion getting good pics.

Wow.

I played for a month and I haven't even gotten to the Mun without hax.

I admit that I watched a lot of scott manly, maecy dean, kurtjamac, and HoC gaming before even owning the game.

[Specula]

I'm surprised you got to Jool with that. For my probe I needed this:

Admittantly, I packed tons of extra fuel for non aerobraking procedures and extra fuel for my screw ups (I wing it. I learnt through trial and error rather than mathematics), but that's what I needed to get me into a Jool orbit. Well done on using far less.

[Malaugrym]

To hell with efficiency, that probe looks awesome.

[DMagic]

I like the 3 ion engine design. I came up with a similar one for my Minmus lander the other day.

Which worked out pretty well. And just a single xenon tank was all it took to get from LKO to the surface of Minmus.

I'm surprised you got to Jool with that. For my probe I needed this:

I think you may be overdoing it a bit. I got a probe into Laythe orbit using just this. The fairings add a lot of mass to the top, so without those an even smaller launcher would do.

This is what it took to go from LKO to Jool and Laythe. I think the trick is to find out the smallest thing you to actually need to get into orbit. When you're just sending a small probe it doesn't take much to get just about anywhere in the solar system, except maybe Moho or Eeloo.

[Finnerty]

Congrats on the Jool expedition. I'm another one who loves the look of the back of that probe. I just sent a small sat to Moho and it took alot more to get there than I thought. I ran out of fuel twice. But I'm there. And that completes the inner planets and moons. Now, off to the outer planets starting with Duna. I'm putting sats in orbit around every moon and planet. I'll attempt some landings later.

[Deadpangod3]

Now I wanna experiment with ions real bad now...

[Rage097]

First day of KSP...And you get to Jool...

Well then...

[iBoesen]

There is no way that this is your first day playing KSP. I can tell by the way you design your rockets that you have played well over a few weeks....

[Andellmere]

There is no way that this is your first day playing KSP. I can tell by the way you design your rockets that you have played well over a few weeks....

Given his mentioning of several very good KSP players who like to talk about how to do what they do, I don't believe so. He also mentions that his design evolved as he tested things out, so it's not all that unbelievable. After watching Scott Manley, and a bit of experimentation, I went from barely able to reach LKO to having enough delta-V to reach all but the hardest planets.

[WhiteWeasel]

There is no way that this is your first day playing KSP. I can tell by the way you design your rockets that you have played well over a few weeks....

Well the first day of the full version. I did play a lot of the demo.

Given his mentioning of several very good KSP players who like to talk about how to do what they do, I don't believe so. He also mentions that his design evolved as he tested things out, so it's not all that unbelievable. After watching Scott Manley, and a bit of experimentation, I went from barely able to reach LKO to having enough delta-V to reach all but the hardest planets.

Yeah, I redesigned it about 8 times- Scratch that, I sorta added on to it piece by piece before I got what you see now. And three tests in LKO. And a trip to duna with an 'older' version, that almost failed by going into the atmosphere, but those emergency radial mounts saved me.

And plus I didn't say the several times I crashed going into orbit. But I Quickly learned that ASAS wastes RCS and is only good for initial launch, and struts is the KSP duct tape. And honestly the only reason I got to jool was because was the only encounter I could get at the time.

Edited May 21, 2013 by WhiteWeasel