I'm so happy!

[whiterafter]

Recently I launched a probe and lander combination to Eve, so I would send the probe into Eve and land my Kerb on Gilly. For the first time ever, the interplanetary phase angles worked for me, but I still spent 60 minutes turning the craft manually for maneuvers because my node system had a glitch. Eventually I got into Eve SOI. I realized the lander and probe couldn't aerobrake at the same time, so I came up with an idea to burn a little bit for my lander and then go back in and aerobrake. It was ingenious, and I made it into Eve orbit. My little probe landed on an awesome island.

For some holy reason, Gilly was in the perfect position to land on on my 1st orbit, despite the insane dimensions and eccentricity of my orbit. I touched down and planted a little flag 244 days after lifting off. When I came back, I messed around with the maneuver nodes a bit and found an easy way to jump into Eve SOI with minimal fuel use, which I was gracious for.

I was desperately messing around with a Hohmann transfer back to Kerbin with like 78 units of fuel left on board. All of my olex.biz angles weren't working or were just giving me 40 second burns, and I just said "screw it" and moved my ejection angle to 90 prograde rather than the recommended 158. Magically I had a perfect 20 second burn to Kerbin encounter. By this point I had 17 units of fuel left because I was using two LV-909s which happened to be a very good choice.

The way there I performed a couple 3/4 m/s burns to lower my Kerbin orbit, and I had 3.20 fuel left. However as soon as I got to Kerbin SoI, I lost my low periapsis, but I managed to do a miracle burn down into the atmosphere.

I splashed down off "Kerbal New Zealand" (some of you will get that) with 1.78 fuel left and my entire 512 science and life stage intact! I just can't believe I managed to do this. I had previously made it to Duna but had to hack in some more fuel, but this time I had made it all on my own. If any of the ideas or burns I had didn't work, I wouldn't have succeeded.

I'm just really happy!

Thank you especially that guy who made the launch window calculator! Life saver!!!!

[Xacktar]

Awesome story and good work! sounds like you got a 5-Star pilot there.

EDIT: Nice flag as well!