What's Your Greatest Achievement

[pauix]

I once "landed" on the KSP 0.13 Mün. The ship tumbled down a crater and lost some pieces, but the command pod stood firm.

Also, I managed to land on Minmus using only an EVA pack. Now I need to get a rescue ship near Bob...

[Nedal]

Successfully completing a rescue mission from the surface of eve. Jeb and bill secure!

what a headache though..

didnt anticipate the landing leg suspension contracting so much on my lander ascent vehicle. Some of the rockets were touching the ground. But i tested taking off and could make orbit, so quicksaved. then made sure the guys could walk under the rockets, one of them got stuck a bit, but after some jumping and wiggling got him into the ascent vehicle. Turns out though i knocked one of my rockets off the tank with a kerbins head... So had to deactivate that rockets counterparts. However that wasnt enough. the off balance weight was too much for my active controls since i was using aerospikes.. Finally figured out that if i initiated a fast roll, the uneven weight would sort of even itself out, and was still able to make orbit just barely. So done with eve..

[MGCJerry]

My greatest achievement was leaving the launch pad in one piece and not raining rocket bits onto KSC. Actually, my only achievement was landing on Mun and returning (and having juuuuuuust enough fuel for my return trip to Kerbin). I want to get to Minmus, and back on Mun with a rover. After that, I want to explore other planets.

[How2FoldSoup]

My greatest achievement is whatever I'm working on at the moment because every challenge overcome is a wonderful sense of achievement. I've been working on my newest crew shuttle ssto for the last week for use on Kerbin and Laythe to bring up to 4 kerbals to and from orbit. It's also a VTOL and fits into b9's S2 wide cargo bay. I'll get some pictures up soon...I'm writing a paper currently so I need to get off these damn forums

It's my pet project right now: I give you The Turtle

Javascript is disabled. View full album

I only built that larger plane to test if it's fit and I have never flown it more than twice just to get it into orbit for testing purposes.

Edited March 10, 2014 by How2FoldSoup

[cantab]

I once "landed" on the KSP 0.13 Mün. The ship tumbled down a crater and lost some pieces, but the command pod stood firm.

Also, I managed to land on Minmus using only an EVA pack. Now I need to get a rescue ship near Bob...

How much fuel do you have left? If it's more than 2 units, you should be able to make orbit, though you won't have much for the rendezvous. Keep swapping between map view and EVA view (with M) to help align orbits and get an intersect.

[Kerboman]

Probably doing a grand tour of the Joolian moons and return with a 3 man spacecraft.

[TerLoki]

Sending a multipart ship on a manned flyby of Eve would have been mine, but I think the rescue mission after that ship failed to get a good return trajectory qualifies more.

[problemecium]

I feel so unambitious, not having made a Laythe base or built the 2000-part ship of doom...

I think my greatest achievement so far may in fact have been the Kerbatar :[ Don't get me wrong, I like it, but it's kinda... mediocre.

WAIT NO!

Nobody said it had to be a thing I accomplished in the stock game! My greatest KSP achievement is clearly the creation of the Jump Drive. Yes. I haven't unlocked it in my Career save though xD

[Lambert2191]

Setting foot on Duna is my current crowning glory. Getting the 137t lander to touchdown softly was the hardest part. Getting there and back was easy enough though.

[KerikBalm]

Why oh why were you useing a 137 ton Duna lander?

My greatest acheivements...

Manned moho mission prior to unlocking mainsails and large orange tanks (skipers, radials, and the rockomax 32's)

My 41 ton payload SSTO (stock, no part clipping), which I used in two launches to prepare my Duna mission:

1st launch: Nuclear +ion powered tug+small rover+SSTO Duna lander

2nd launch: Science lab+ extra fuel to refuel the lander/become a fuel depot in Duna orbit.

Working on a 72 ton (ideally 80) SSTO, but its difficult. Either I place engine clusters at the back, and when it gets into orbit nearly empty (only 71 km...), its unstable on the return, if I place the engines on wings extending from near the center of gravity, they tend to tear themselves off either during takeoff, or at high altitude when I level off at around 22km and start accelerating to 1,000 m/s (when their thrust increases)

I sill don't know how I'm going to get a surface sample from eve without losing a kerbal... I think that will be it...

[Endersmens]

My greatest achievement.....in terms of diffculty, maybe my jool tour. Dropped two atmosphere probes into the atmosphere, landed on bop and pol, accidentally screwed up the persistence file and deleted the craft...good thing it was a probe.

in terms of patience, landing a 2.5m mun lander with two decently sized rovers attached to the side (had a truss setup coming from the top of the lander can forming a T with docking ports facing down) and using the rovers to rove 3 different biomes getting as much science as possible before returning to the lander and tranfering all the science to it and then returning the lander. the roving took an hour and 20 minutes(game time, more like an hour and 40 minutes). roller over many many times. after returning the lander i ended up with 1098 science.

in terms of awesomeness, my space station. Its a LKO space station, with solar arrays, labs, tons of fuel, and many ports for expansion.

i have a mission in progress which will probably top those three when finished. It's a duna base. It has 5 modular parts already assembled in orbit. main lander, science lab, double hitch-hiker hab module, an ike lander, and the transfer stage (a 2.5m tank with 8 nervas) my plan is to aerobrake, drop off the ike lander, land the main base after dropping the transfer stage. then have the ike lander take back off and land near the base on duna. hopefully to transfer the science to one capsule. then im gonna send a return craft after them to take one lucky kerbal back with all that precious science.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Endersmens

[Drethon]

Mine so far would be the duna round trip with only small parts (and nuke rockets). My recent Moho round trip makes me pretty happy but I dont think I really needed five orange tanks(or even three) in Kerbin orbit but I'm not that good at efficient flight yet.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Drethon
oops

[sciguyCO]

I've currently set myself the goal to map (using the SCANsat mod) every body in the system.

I currently have full maps of Kerbin/Mun/Minmus, Duna/Ike, Eve/Gilly, and Dres. A 5-sat cluster is en route to Jool now for its moons. My Moho mapper went screwy (I didn't realize the delta-V differences in trying a capture at Moho's periapsis vs. apoapsis) and is in redesign. And the Eelo mapper is in the design phase for a transfer window in a game-month or two.

It's the Eve/Gilly mapper that really made me impress myself. I figured I'd use the same tactic I did for Duna / Ike: map the parent planet, then push the orbit (still in polar inclination) out to the moon for a capture.

Um, yeah. Vastly different situation. Ike has an SOI radius of about 1000 km and is in a flat, fairly circular, fairly low orbit around Duna. Gilly's SOI is ~120km, and its orbit is inclined, much farther out and really eccentric.

To make matters worse more challenging: Remote Tech 2's signal delay (about 4 minutes) and I used these mappers as prototypes to try out ion propulsion. My acceleration was about .3 m/s²; a 120 m/s maneuver required burning for six minutes.

My first try went horrible. I forgot the lesson from Moho, and just tried extending the satellite's apoapsis to the ascending node. Which was close to Gilly's periapsis. Capture burn would've been ~650 m/s (over 30 minutes of burn with a 5 minute encounter window). I tried expanding the satellite's orbit in stages to keep each burn reasonable while also allowing for a rendezvous in a couple orbits. Then I ran out of fuel.

One quickload later, I aimed for a rendezvous at the descending node out towards Gilly's apoapsis. I also adjusted inclination a little to try to come in more "along" Gilly's path than across it. Got a crossing, then tweaked the semi-major axis to get in phase with Gilly. Got close, then a small radial + normal maneuver a quarter orbit away got an encounter! Still only about a 10 minute window from entering to leaving SOI... Set up a maneuver node on the encounter's Gilly periapsis, then plugged the heading and burn numbers into the flight computer to start before entering Gilly's SOI.

It was close. I think the recalculation on the SOI switch shifted the satellite's periapsis a bit, so after the burn it was on a collision course. The maneuver was supposed to leave apoapsis near the SOI boundary. But a quick prograde burn straightened that out, followed by an inclination tweak and I was in mapping orbit! The craft has about 100 m/s of delta-V remaining, but it's not moving ever again.

In all, I spent a few hours of real time tweaking maneuvers, executing burns (making extensive use of physical time warp), calculating phasing the orbits, and finally circularizing around Gilly's poles.

A smart man would've started with mapping the moon first, then de-orbited to the parent planet. Much easier, since you don't have to deal with rendezvous (well, ok, the first rendezvous, but that can be done with matching inclinations); just burn when the polar orbit in in-line with Gilly's orbit and prograde is pointed towards Gilly's retrograde. I'll keep that in mind next time.

[Javster]

Duna lander probe, or single-module permanent Mun base.

[Lambert2191]

Why oh why were you useing a 137 ton Duna lander?

I don't tend to calculate exactly what I'll need for a mission, so I just over engineer everything. It had 4 science Jrs, 8 mystery goos, and all the other sciency bits n bobs that Id need. it did it's job rather nicely.

[DovaJeb]

Successfully completing a rescue mission from the surface of eve. Jeb and bill secure!

what a headache though..

didnt anticipate the landing leg suspension contracting so much on my lander ascent vehicle. Some of the rockets were touching the ground. But i tested taking off and could make orbit, so quicksaved. then made sure the guys could walk under the rockets, one of them got stuck a bit, but after some jumping and wiggling got him into the ascent vehicle. Turns out though i knocked one of my rockets off the tank with a kerbins head... So had to deactivate that rockets counterparts. However that wasnt enough. the off balance weight was too much for my active controls since i was using aerospikes.. Finally figured out that if i initiated a fast roll, the uneven weight would sort of even itself out, and was still able to make orbit just barely. So done with eve..

.... Wow. Just... Just... Wow. That. Is. Some Manley level piloting there. Good GOD! You not only landed and made orbit godforsaken dung pit that is Eve, but did so with two engines out of commission while spinning wildly to compensate for the weight difference! That is freakin' AMAZING!

[OTehNoes]

A floating Laythe Base.

*snip*

Also, a floating Laythe base with a VTOL landing platform.

*many snips*

Did you once post that on a KSP thread on 4chan? I think I recall seeing you post it there, if not somebody had something very similar.

[KerikBalm]

I don't tend to calculate exactly what I'll need for a mission, so I just over engineer everything. It had 4 science Jrs, 8 mystery goos, and all the other sciency bits n bobs that Id need. it did it's job rather nicely.

I often do as well... but.... my over engineering would be something like: slap a bunch of parachutes on it, and land 1/4 (0.25) of an orange tank's worth of fuel, asparagus staged.

137 tons.... that weights more than 3.5 orange tanks, plus a mainsail and a mk1-2 capsule

You and I over engineer to different degrees, that is for sure

I've since gotten more efficient, though I still "wing it".

I do things for efficiency, but I still overengineer. My efficiency results in the mission using less fuel, and returning with a lot - or I realize how much fuel I still have left when its time for the return trip, and I dump half of of it orbit in case I ever need it.

For example

#1: the science juniors, you can take the data and detach them (mount the goo on the science juniors so the goo detaches too) - no need to lift them back up, and the parachutes will help you set them down - almost no dV penalty to your lander that way

#2: Your lander should be only that, a lander. Ie, go from a stable orbit to one with a perapsis in the atmosphere, and then get back up to a stable orbit.

I do orbital rendevous now (except for the mun and minmus, not worth the effort and dV to dock when its so easy to get back to kerbin). No sense in landing the interplanetary stage only to lift it up again - leave that sucker in orbit.

My first Duna mission was over engineered:

I arrived with an orange tank's worth of fuel for the interplanetary stage (using 2 nukes, it also had ion propulsion for fine tuning orbits/intercepts). My lander consised of the 2 person lander can, 2x fl-t400 tanks, an X200-8 tank, 3 aerospikes, landing legs/aparachutes, science instruments, etc. Only 1/4 of an orange tank's worth of fuel. The 2 outer fl-t400s fed into the central 200-8 tank, intended to be aspargus staged... only I forgot the decouplers, so I quickly found myself with only 1 aerospike going, hoisting up dead weight of aerospikes that weren't firing(3 tons), empty fl-t400s (half a ton), landing legs and parachutes that were supposed to have fallen off (didn't bother calculating)... and I found I got to orbit just fine with fuel to spare. I docked it with the IP stage, refueled it left it in duna orbit, and my IP stage still had over 1/2 and orange tank's worth of fuel, and got back to kerbin with lots of fuel remaining.

3 aerospikes when 1 was sufficient, asparagus staged (intended, but I derped), overkill.

I redesigned the mission and repeated it: the central aerospike was deleted, the fuel lines were reversed so the outer 2 aerospikes took from the central x200-8 tank (2 aerospikes was still more TWR than needed), slung a rover under where the central aerospike used to be,

Then I added a docking port connection to the main IP fuel tank, so that I could jettison it as a fuel depot. So I ended up leaving a fully fueld SSTO lander in duna orbit, roughly 1/3 of an orange tank's worth of fuel in orbit as a fuel depot, and still came back with dV to spare.

The old lander design (when properly staged with decouplers) could actually not only get to duna orbit, but all the way back to kerbin.

-But I had a 2 nuke + basically 1 orange tank carrying interplanetary stage devoted to that (it was not initially designed with the idea of refueling the lander for reuse by another mission)

so the IP stage was actually not needed at all, because the lander stage was over engineered. The IP stage was overengineered anyway, but coud have been entirely deleted.

Yet the lander + IP stage still weigh less than your lander

[ThinkOutsideTheHangar]

Tell me about your best moment in KSP, whether that be planting a flag on Eeloo, finishing a 100 Kerbal Space Station, or simply getting into orbit.

Edited March 17, 2014 by ThinkOutsideTheHangar

[95tiger59]

my very first ship into a stable orbit around kerbin

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

1st. Getting into Orbit

2nd. Docking

3rd. Landing on another Planet/Moon

4th. Making it to Moho

5th. Landing and returning from Tylo.

6th. Starting a Livestream

...more to come

[Vohjiin]

After ~25 launches and many many hours I was able to call this complete:

https://imageshack.com/i/f7mwfkp

At this point in the game I had just landed 2 probes on the Mun and 1 on Minmus. But I built a Planetary Space Ship in kerbal orbit that could take me anywhere... Well that was until I did it's first "burn" test. Needless to say there is a reason the Engine Module is no longer attached at the back end of the space ship( Top-Right corner of image opposite of the solar panels). There was a minor issue with one of the Nuclear rockets and some particle effects.... some debris....but I was able to jettison the engine module and stabilize the ship before it's orbit was compromised.

It is now my Low Kerbin Orbital Space station...and by low I mean at the fringe of whats acceptable to stay in orbit... I was just happy I could save it from falling home. The screenshot was at it's construction distance of over 300K+. I had, at any one time, 3-4 launches all making rendezvous with the ship so I needed the distance.

[Woopert]

Returning from Duna back in October. I've been playing since 0.18.2 and it's amazing it took that long to send kerbals out there. Although, I didn't have much time to play KSP from May-August. But that was really nice. I mean, I thought I had the trajectory back to Kerbin set up, but because I didn't know time warping through SOI changes botched the values, it changed the trajectory to not skim through the atmosphere but rather miss by a couple million kilometers. I burned normal (or anti-normal, can't remember ) and got the periapsis to 30 km or so. The speeds were very high and it was enjoyable to watch! I was practically sweating from all the suspense, I take my kerbals' lives very seriously. But in the end they made it back. This was in 0.21, of course.

[cantab]

So far, my first successful EVA landing and return on Minmus. Dang that tested my skills.

[Mork]

My best moment came last night by accident. I was practicing an EVA, when I hit the wrong key, and my left eva thruster stayed on sending me off, way off from my capsule. By the time i figure out the mistake, and got it corrected, i was almost 4km away! So, needless to say i got plenty of EVA practice, LoL. I did make it back, got into the capsule and went home.