What is your greatest personal achievement in KSP? With an anecdote from the GKC.

[Excalibur]

I remember it vividly.

He'd already made a perfect(ish) touchdown on the newly discovered Mun; Kerbol was low on the horizon casting long, eerie drawn-out shadows which made everyone but Jeb on edge. As Kerbol rose further the shadows seemed to slither and creep along the Munar surface - as if they were stealthily stalking the freshly deposited landing module. Bill and Bob were desperate to leave; Jeb however did not share their sense of trepidation and foreboding. Before they could leave there was one more thing that must be done.

Reminding his shipmates of the perilous nature of their chosen profession Jeb raised the following question; 'Though we may have enough fuel to get home now - what if we didn't?'

Thus he radioed the Great Keyboard Controller in the sky to send another mission to the Mun - a full dress-rehearsal of a rescue mission. Energised by this new goal the GKC flashed into action, sending another craft into Munar orbit within hours of the call. Now only one challenge remained - a precision manual landing, something the GKC had never attempted before.

Since the GKC's grasp of mathematics left something to be desired, he made his best guess and made a full retro burn a couple of hundred clicks uprange of the target at an altitude of around sixty clicks. Withdrawing to the map room, he could see the orbital trajectory decay until it graced the great grey body and fell right through it. Slowly but surely the turquoise arc crept towards the target, the GKC's anticipation building. Once the ballistic arc was a couple of clicks downrange of the target the burn was halted and the 'rescue' craft allowed to fall under the infinite grasp of gravity. He decided to let the universe move along at it's usual pace and go prepare himself a steaming cup of Yorkshire Tea in preparation for his anticipated celebrations.

Upon return and switching back to reality the GKC once again took manual control of the ship and could see quite clearly that his initial estimations were somewhat off - he'd left it too long! Still going hell for leather at only ten clicks up! Burn burn BURN - full throttle!

The velocity began to sharply drop off, 500m/s.....400....300; the altimeter was also reeling at speed that seemed utterly ridiculous.... The target was in sight! Only a couple of hundred metres downrange and a couple of clicks below; a rush of adrenaline and renewed optimism gripped the GKC. Pitch, roll, yaw - easy does it - keep your cool GKC! Realisation struck; this can be done! Sure enough - the craft had a high enough thrust-to-weight ratio to halt it's suicidal descent, levelling off a mere one hundred metres above the target and only a dozen metres to the side. Reining in the throttle gently, the GKC balanced the controls just so and the 'rescue' craft made a perfect soft-landing thirty metres or so from the intrepid trio in their Artemis lander.

Bill, Bob and of course Jeb rejoiced in this shining example of manual piloting before the realisation set in that their capsule's design did not yet include a hatch. If this had been a real rescue scenario the rescue ship may as well have been still sat on the pad at KSC, eleven thousand kilometres away. The only regret the GKC had was that his tea was now cold.

'Better not mess up the next landing eh guys?'

For me this is probably my greatest personal achievement in KSP - the realisation that I could manually fly over such a distance, perform the complex maneuvers necessary using just the Mk1 Eyeball and thus land within a hundred feet of my target was intoxicating. Shame that it took me three attempts - but the story wouldn't be the same if I'd included that!

I've since repeated the same feat with every body in the Kerbol system - but I've never quite replicated the satisfaction of that first 'Munar Surface Rendezvous'.

Please share what you feel to be your greatest personal achievement - and leave a little anecdote describing it if you feel so inclined.

Edit: Post removed in error by moderation team - reposted and fixed formatting.

Edited January 10, 2014 by Excalibur

[Javster]

My first rendezvous and docking in career, without MechJeb. I had read a few tutorials, so I knew roughly what to do. Optimistically, I had made a station, without knowing whether or not I could rendezvous at all. It paid off, because I did a second rendezvous easily. I did get confused about whether to use the retrograde indicator, or the retrograde target indicator.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

My first trip to the Joolian system.

^.^

[Excalibur]

Very cool when you first pull off a complete rendezvous and docking isn't it! I actually found it fairly straight-forward, mainly because I'd been playing KSP for quite some time before docking was implemented and thus already had the requisite knowledge of orbital mechanics. To be honest with you I find manual landings much more difficult (efficient landings that is), more often than not I start my final descent burn too early and end up wasting fuel.

With docking at least everything happens nice and slowly and there are a lot of visual cues to help you.

[toric5]

landing on jool in .18 (was possible, but really touchy to prevent explosions.)