What was the best mission you've undertaken?

[DunaRocketeer]

I've been seeing a lot of really creative missions on this forum, there seems to be so much variety in the way people play that it'd be nice to hear about this sort of thing. It got me wondering, what was your personal best mission - what are you most proud of, and why?

Have you succeeded in making it to orbit for the first time? Did it involve designing a complex new rocket, or did it involve an ambitious base on a far off planet?

Edited February 17, 2014 by DunaRocketeer

[ZodiaK]

I'm currently working on a probe to a FASA asteroid. pics soon.

[maccollo]

Landing on every planet and moon and returning to Kerbin with less than 1000 tons on the launchpad. I designed the craft over a month in advance of actually flying the mission.

In the end, it was very rewarding, but I'm never doing another mission like that. The complexity and duration sort of put me off XD.

Edited February 17, 2014 by maccollo

[Jouni]

My favorite mission was the one, where I launched a ship to a solar orbit with periapsis less than 1 Gm, and set the orbital period so that I had a very close encounter with Kerbin after five orbits. It was the first time I tried to do anything with such precision so far in advance, and it was succesful on the first try.

[goldenpeach]

My Duna manned mission(and return).

I had to design the most powerfull rocket I ever made and is capable of lifting 115 metric tons in LKO.

All of that without creating any debris at all!

[Streetwind]

My best mission will always be my first Mun landing that didn't crash and burn (took about five attempts). Vehicle was manned and return-capable too. Doesn't matter if I do the same thing half-asleep nowadays, back then I felt like the king of the universe.

Of course, there was also that moment where I was testing the physics behavior of various crafts and on one of the various launches accidentally hit "return to space center" instead of "revert launch". With the result that I now had a craft consisting of nothing but a mk2 lander can, an X32 fuel tank and a skipper engine in a highly inclined orbit. And one of the two Kerbals inside was Bob of the original trio, who I didn't want to lose. I mean, what would I do without Disaster Bob, the only Kerbal who constantly stumbles from one emergency to the next for some reason? Due to TAC life support being installed, electric power was disintegrating at a rapid pace, the only generator was the engine on limited fuel, and if the EC gauge ever hit zero I would not be able to control the ship to restart the engine anymore. No time for a rescue mission that would have required carefully matching the screwed up orbit, no parachutes and not power to keep the two Kerbals alive... I reckoned that the situation had officially passed the Godzilla Threshold, and so I did the only option left to me: deorbit burn and reentry, followed by a powered landing. On Kerbin. With a top-heavy vehicle that I had to land straight up balanced on its engine.

I think I earned myself that "**** yeah!" yell when I pulled it off

[ZodiaK]

http://imgur.com/gallery/XXTqt

[Kerbart]

My first landing on and return from a foreign body -- in my case Minmus.

[DunaRocketeer]

Streetwind, I gotta agree that first successful landing is something that sticks in the memory of every player. I remember my first Mun landing in the demo version of the game, my heart was pounding through my chest!

[InterCity]

Hooligan labs powered floating permanent settlement in Jool's atmosphere. Unfortunately eaten by kraken upon initialization of physics :/

[Majorjim!]

Hi,

Ive been to all planets and moons except Tylo. I always enjoy those long duration mission as the moment you arrive is always magical.

Despite this the most fun I have had was a mission on Kerbin. To design a water craft to take Capt_Sugglers fuel truck to the island runway:

Not an easy proposition.

Heres how I did it:

The engineering challenge and then the 1.5 hour cruise to the island, trying to get it safely ashore.

SO. MUCH. FUN.

MJ

[John FX]

The first time I landed on Mun.

[Majorjim!]

The first time I landed on Mun.

I forgot about that! Yeah the first mun landing was probably the greatest feeling I have had from a game.

MJ

[KerbMav]

My first manned trip to Duna (since really playing, not the "shoot em to Duna and let em rot" mission from .20 when I started playing) that is currently underway may become just that - but as of my little Kethane pit stop on Mun (and that solely because I had to land five times at the same spot close to the other modules and I properly kerb at that still!) is tied with my Apollo-like Mun mission.

[Moar Boosters]

My apollo style mission to Tylo was probably my biggest achievement.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55392-Tylo-Apollo-Style-because-asparagus-is-for-wimps%21

[BlazeFallow]

The best mission I ever undertook was directed by the great Death Engineering: Duna Apollo Style

A massive Saturn V style rocket, launching an equally massive payload to Duna and back. I had to take a break from KSP for a bit after that mission. It took a lot out of me

The Payload:

The full album/mission report.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Dispatcher]

Its not what was planned in my case, but how I dealt with unplanned events. It was to be a fairly routine trip to Minmus and back. First, I was able to get a flyby of the Mun on the way. But my stock subassembly launch vehicle and translunar assembly, once attached to my lander/ rover/ return vehicle, mixed some of my staging and I didn't realize it until I'd saved in transit. I had burned some of my lander fuel instead of the orbit to orbit assembly fuel. So I figured out the mixup and reordered it there, then selected the active engines and shut them down before firing the correct ones. Once past the Mun and at Minmus orbit, I transferred fuel from the orbit to orbit stage to the lander.

I had never had to do any of those things in any prior mission, so I learned very quickly how to do those steps. Thankfully, I have a reserve of dV (fuel) in each stage so I was able to do that. I still need to land, rove and return but I think I will have success from this point on.

[DunaRocketeer]

By the standards of some on here, mine's not the most ambitious, but the current mission I'm playing out right now just feels like the most thought out one that I've done so far. It's a mission to Duna and back, with probes going ahead to scout for interesting landing sites, and the development of a Kerbin orbital infrastructure to return my crewman back to the surface of Kerbin.

[DMagic]

In terms of ambition and scale, I think my Moho mission was the best. All of my space stations and the base came out really well. But it took up an absurd amount of time to complete it all, something like 200 hours over more than a month.

But I think my favorite was my Eeloo mission. It was much smaller scale, but everything worked out perfectly and didn't require so much tinkering or have any tedious aspects to it.

[Wooks]

I´m actually circumnavigating Kerbin on a rover... its more fun than it sounds, I promise

Mission profile:

- Mission starts at the Kerbal Space Center flagpole and must end there.

- All the distance must be covered on wheels.

- If the rover crashes, a replacement will be sent to the crash site via VTOL dropship.

- Open cockpit. A pilot must be on the main seat at all times.

I´m having a blast with this mission, is really demanding and I learned a freaking lot about VTOL ships.

[Monkeh]

I have two I like lots, both just examples of brute force, single launch crafts*. One to get some science back from Laythe, involving an epic rescue and some actual 'Getting out and pushing' to finish the job.

I did a mission report , The Harsh Realities Of Engineering in this thread here with a lot of pictures and words, some of them mildly interesting.

The other one was when I found the Spherical and Toroidal Tank pack and decided to limit myself to only round and toroidal fuel tanks, The Harsh Realities of Engineering, (Mk I, yet also Mk II of another series...look, it's complicated ok! My successive blog entries will explain all if you have the slightest bit of interest in what I'm dribbling on about...I really shouldn't post after a beer or two :/ ).

Here's a little taster of the 'Fat Bottomed Girls' craft

Anyway, both loads of pictures, so be warned, but some fun fail to laugh at

*which has nothing to do with the fact I STILL haven't even really tried to bother learning how to dock...nope, nothing to do with that at all....don't know what you're talking about...nope....na.

Edited February 17, 2014 by Monkeh

[Kasuha]

The mission on which I had the most fun was my Jool-5 challenge entry. Epic adventure, I'd say.

My most technically epic mission was my Reddit 'where's my wallet' challenge entry, going to Eve, back to Kerbin, back to Eve again and finally back to Kerbin in single launch.

[Ravenchant]

Best in terms of gathered experience: rescuing a stranded crew in orbit around the Mun, then botching the follow-up mission as well and having to rescue that one too.

Best in terms of the holy-crap-it-worked factor: when the first two missions to Moho succeeded. Only time I didn't care about leaving debris in orbit.

Most fun: everything involving SSTOs and motherships

[Vanamonde]

I've done several missions of this sort. This was just the one I took the time to write-out fully.

[Felsmak]

I guess that would be the time when I sent a probe carrier to Jool and put one probe into orbit around every single one of its moons. That was pretty epic.