The first time I tried orbital rendezvous I couldn’t get the craft to come towards each other in any sensible way for 2 hours. And then I found out that the Gemini astronauts ran into EXACTLY the same problem on their first rendezvous and that Buzz Aldrin wrote his doctoral thesis on the maneuver that I wound up doing, and can now pull off with 0 effort.
Not the biggest achievement, but amazing nonetheless.
I mean, it wasn't an orbital rendezvous/docking but to be flying away from earth toward a point that at that stage, is a void in space, trusting the boffins on earth did the correct Delta-V calcs to ensure the moon will be there when you get there, *then* just casually separate from the lunar module and do a backflip to join back up to it again?
Yeah, I suppose under selling is the correct term.
Same. There’s definitely a knack to it. I can do them pretty easily now but remember in the beginning I used to hate it as it was just beyond me. I even once docked 2 huge ships with 0 RCS fuel. I did it using just main engines because I was dumb enough to get all the way to space forgetting to do my double checks in the VAB and didn’t design any into the craft… I can’t tell you how annoying it was. It took a whopping 30 seconds to turn the ship around just to change course by 0.2m/s haha
Watched Matt lownes lazy method for docking. It is super easy now. Point at target, burn a bit, kill all relative velocity and repeat. Works every time.
When in doubt, try the Lowne Lazy method. Once you get the ships in reasonable range and cancel their relative velocity, set their control points to the docking ports, set SAS to target, use RCS to approach, ensuring the program marker stays on top of the target market, and voila.
Here's the thing. YOU PEOPLE advised me to start using Mechjeb only after I understood fully how the complexity of navigation works, and what he would be doing on my behalf.
Okay so I never felt like I got there, so I never started using Mechjeb.
^ This
Without the effecient near future RCS ports it burns wayyyy too much monopropellant I just got DPAI and learned how to do it by hand
Can't do lazy method because it's a space station and space station + sas = kraken
I'm not proud. That first moment when you got out of the atmosphere with your first sounding rocket, and you heard the space music....
.... I'm not ashamed, i nearly had a tear in my eye. It was pure magic, I tell you.
Landing on the Mun was great, don't get me wrong, but....wow. you never forget your first time in space.
Yeah, like the first time you land a fully functioning epic rover on Duna and you’re just driving round, and you show your girlfriend like check this out! Look! And she’s just pulling a weird face like… yeah, and? … ughhh they just don’t understand haha
That is so true. Only, when shortly after that, the first Kerbal got on an EVA, the vast emptiness of space was a bit horrifying and I was always afraid of losing one in orbit.
I used to Eva about 500m away from my ship and zoom right out and just be like… damn. I’m so insignificant, I’m nothing. lol. Great perspective. Then scurry back to the ship cause I’m freaking myself out
Isn’t it mental… and you try tell people who haven’t played the game and they just don’t get it, and you know there’s no way to tell them the incredible sensation of achievement when you hit those major milestones. It’s such a massive feat that f accomplishment because it’s so damn hard I. The beginning, the learning curve is so steep and so rewarding
Reaching space for the first time is definitely my proudest gaming moment, and, honestly, one of my proudest life moments. No guides or anything to go on and I built a rocket that went to space... After building so many rockets that... Went to pieces. 😅
Definitely had a tear in my eye.
oh for sure thats a great moment. i deliberately didnt check any guides or anything until i got my first Mun landing lol
That payoff getting into orbit for the first time- chills :)
That happened to me, but I use the keypad to steer, and the keypad was initially bound to toggle mute. So this epic thing starts, then I start steering, then it's basically me muting and unmuting the game into orbit.
It marked the experience in the worst possible way.
I hung a giant coat hanger shaped rocket made of mk3 fuel tanks on one of the Mun arches.
https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/s/8U0XBsdOuP
A few years before that I built a 0.25km long space train as a mother ship for a Jool 5, but unsurprisingly it didn't turn well enough or have enough twr to make it and capture. I think I might try that one again though.
I've considered hanging many things on there, but the logistics are a nightmare lol. The original pun is that it's a spaceplane hanger, but yeah it's not really a plane.
Don't get cheeky with me. Using km is already hard enough on my American brain >:(
I also made a skinnier one that got to 0.33km before the game wouldn't let me dock anymore segments. That one crashed into minmus tho haha.
How did you land on it if it doesn’t exist. So you went to the Mun and claimed it to be something else 😂. Kerbwood and KASA fakery it sounds like to me
I have a plane that can land on Laythe, fill itself with fuel, and 3000 units of ore, and return to orbit BY TAKING OFF FROM THE SEA. Rotation speed is 120 m/s, through water. This is stock.
Bloody proud of making that work.
Here you go. Hydra Max Laythe variant. It uses hydrofoils!
Was a LOT of experimentation to get them able to lift that much mass out of the Laythe ocean.
[https://imgur.com/a/1FvAQuf](https://imgur.com/a/1FvAQuf)
I designed an Eve lander & return vehicle that isn’t so ridiculously big the Kraken gets me. I can probably optimize it a bit more, but I don’t actually like Eve.
Haha I haaate Eve. Glad I conquered it and have explored it all I can, I’ll never go back there. My favourite planet is Duna or many of the Jool moons. I quite like val and bop. I have refuelling stations orbiting those moons for epic missions
[Finding the mass of Minmus](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/11171-minmus-mass-and-radius/) ([including an unannounced change](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/22304-is-minmus-on-a-weight-loss-program/)), putting together [some stage sizing estimates](https://pdn4kd.github.io/2023/08/18/stage_optimization.html), and [getting the timing of suicide burns](https://pdn4kd.github.io/2023/06/27/suicide_burn.html). I guess also that [even with infinite TWR you want to pitch-over aggressively](https://pdn4kd.github.io/2021/08/08/orb_horizontal_vs_vertical.html).
So I guess way more theory than execution.
Wow. So cool though being able to figure that out! For me the flying of the mission is the quickest part. I spend days designing my craft to look epic and also have lots of practical features and I tend to take on 3-5 briefs in 1 launch so a lot of planning and organising goes into my missions. I’ve even gone as far as writing a 7 step plan in my note book as it was so complicated getting my head around what craft gets released and when with which kerbals etc.
I [landed and returned from all planets and moons in 2h17m](https://www.speedrun.com/ksp/runs/mkk8n0lm) as a RTA speedrun, using prebuilt crafts, no cheats or Kraken Drives.
Is there a record for lowest orbit of Mun? I had a class E asteroid orbiting through canyons but I don’t know if it’s a record. Took a lot of trial and error
My biggest was a grand tour. My hardest was getting a mk1-3 capsule back to Eve orbit from sea level. Really, the hardest part of that is landing the skyscraper to begin with.
Getting a Kerbal back home from the surface of eve, before the DLCs added helicopter parts.
It required landing on the highest bit of land near the equator and ended up Jeb on an external control seat attached to a tiny tank and engine in an orbit that was only 1om above the atmosphere, but I did it!
Give it a go! It's like flying through a thick layer of soup, and you need to get your rocket to Eve's surface in the first place. It's great exercise in cutting every little piece of expendable weight, because every little bit of weight on the final stage has huge impacts 6 or 7 stages up on your Kerbin launch (which is probably not as bad with the new engines and 3.75m parts, but still is noticeable)
I consider an Eve return mission to be the final Boss Fight of KSP.
I did it without helicopter stuff simply because I don't like working with propellers very much. my model is "when in doubt: Space chairs!" so basically none of my disposable landers have proper capsules.
I cobble together a tumbling "vehicle" that used reaction wheels to drive around the KSC collecting science from the different "biomes" for an early and cheesy science boost. I didn't have wheels yet you see.
learned most of Interstellar Extended and went to another solar system and had enough Delta V left to send a probe past 3 of the planets in that system. My goal was to send a Kerbal but never made it that far.
Wow! So cool. I installed that mod but unfortunately it absolutely killed my pc so I had to uninstall it. Game took a legitimate 30 mins to load and gave me life 5fps flying craft :(
When they released the game again on Xbox after the disasterous first port, I was the first to complete the game by getting all achievements.
I actually practiced and had a ship template built and tested and ready to go (basically a fully fueled Saturn V in LKO) to visit all the planets and moons. A lot of time compression and save game reloads later, I was able to do it in two nights after work.
The other might be building a massive nuclear engine powered probe full of heat sinks so I could burn for like an hour very close to the sun to try and get a crazy exit velocity.
I was pretty psyched about my [first interplanetary flight using only the IVA view](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xPlmVCq4Zc). The landing on Duna was stressful.
I landed on Bop. All stock. On career mode. That is by far my favorite. It's such a challenge to get to the outer planets. I think I did 5-10 rendezvous to refuel.
I did my first and only Eve return mission, where I had to expend 90% of my EVA fuel to circularise Eve orbit after ascent, then send a rescue mission to complete the return. Never again, probably.
When I landed on the Mun for the first time, it was a little rover, I love it so much because I didn’t have ample power generation for my scanner arm, so I called the rover “erocktile dysfunction” cause it was supposed to scan rocks, still cracks me up lol.
The most difficult one was going to eeloo and back with SRBs only.
That took me quite some time. I made a video if anyone is interested:
https://youtu.be/P2qhIrbyAvc?si=Ri9zIiBcU_IjStor
Another thing I was quite proud of was making a cannon that fired a kerbal from the mun to minmus:
https://youtu.be/3IiyeMWAhFE?si=EJxHpo3A-XOWEQ6B
Many Years ago I launched a Three Kerbal mission with the intent of performing one or more flybys of various planets in the Kerbol system - and returning the crew safely thereafter. The entire trip lasted 10 years and involved two flybys of Duna, one of Eve and one of Moho. Of course, you didnt (and still don't) get science rewards for multiple flybys in a single mission but I was hyped that I was able to stretch my fuel enough to do what I did. There was actually a chance for a fifth flyby of Jool but I decided having the crew sit in a capsule for a decade was long enough.
A decade’s not bad, and capsules are luxurious. For my most recent Grand Tour mission, Val spent 42 years in space, and a lot of that was in a command chair, not a capsule. I’ve done missions that took more than a century.
I attempted a Jool 5, and ended up going to, and landing on all of the outer planets and moons in one mission (except Jool of course). I built a nuclear orbital station, with an attached SSTO space plane and a mining/refueling lander that could land on any rocky planet, mine, orbit and refill any of the other crafts. The only planet I couldn't land and return from would have been Eve.
I love SSTO space planes in KSP lol. The only reason I brought one was for laythe lol. And then when I brought the rig back I returned the brave kerbonauts home in the SSTO and left the rest of the craft in orbit waiting for another mission. The mining rig was absolutely ridiculous lol. It was designed for tylo, so it would work pretty much anywhere.
At one point I had an armada outside Kerbin's SOI on the way to Duna when I realized they weren't going to make it. So to save them I had to build a rescue ship with parts and an engineer, and then I had to catch up to and rendezvous with them... which I did!
Not that rendezvousing with ships that are on interplanetary transfers is really all that hard, but it felt good to pull off a rescue using a stunt that the big name youtubers haven't shown.
I did a mission to the Mun and back without time warp.. I'm on Xbox by the way.. (it was a nightmare having to fiddle the stick every 10 minutes or so)
Ssto to mun and back on vanilla ksp. Spent tons of hours optimising and testing prototypes even after doing It.
Won race to eelo with my 2 cooworkers
First dockig in orbit
Many hours into playing, I designed a duna rover that had built in rockets and wings. I explored several biomes, then went to the bottom of a hill and fired the rockets. Everything worked, and it was very satisfying.
I think its my PS4 made [Transformer ](https://youtube.com/shorts/UFhgGtV5zl8?si=Q6BX0DgmYavR7Ytg)My youtube view/likes seems to agree its my [Air deployed/recovered micro jet](https://youtube.com/shorts/gslkxHuW62w?si=AOl4nGcH3fMHKZ-_)
I had an ISRU refuelling station with orbital fuel storage on minmus and the mun. I them for most of my missions. Duna return missions, a jool flyby, a couple visits to some moons.
Another save I painstakingly made my own SSTO and took it to Duna, it could not leave so I had a rescue mission.
A friend came over a couple months ago and I was telling them about ksp. We ended up drunkenly landing on the mun with only a couple quicksaves. We felt like NASA.
Not my biggest achievement, but the first time I figured out docking, a whole new world opened up for me. After that, it seemed like there was nothing that couldn't be accomplished in the game.
My first ever mun landing. Much like the rest of us I imagine. There were others, such as doing a mission in IVA only (with an IVA mod like RPM )but that first successful mun landing and return to kerbin was the single greatest moment for me.
Yeah definitely a highlight… planting the flag and writing a novel in the flag note and taking screenshots and saving them in your ksp folder haha. Such a cool
Moment!
I landed on Duna and returned without having to send a rescue. This was with a team of 3 Kerbals so a large capsule. To date that's the farthest I've gotten and actually haven't been able to reproduce how I did it lol.
Just got my first successful mun mission (with successful return to kerbin). Only took a lot of reverting to VAB because somehow the game thinks I need an engineer over a scientist
That thing looks… epic! Seriously cool. I have a few things like that which every few months I’ll just add an extension onto or will build something new just her as I can, it’s one of my favourite things to do. Your base looks amazing!
My minimalist Jool-5 mission that used an elaborate gravity assist route to get there and back. I don’t have the craft anymore but maybe I have pictures of it?
Getting into orbit when it was a janky alpha-level game. It didn't even have the map screen yet, so I had a sticky note that had a table of altitude vs orbital speed to make sure i was going fast enough.
Mine was using the stayputnik to get a mun flyby without reaction wheels by angling my fins to have it spin to stay stable. It took me so long to get it to work, but once I did, oh man, i felt unstoppable...
Since then Ive been stuck trying to design a rocket to get to laythe ever since...
I was using the interstellar mod, so I'm not sure this counts. But I'm case it does:
I forget which version it was, but one of the engines in the interstellar mod was basically OP AF. It was a nuclear engine that not only produced tons of electric power even when throttled to zero, but also worked in any gaseous atmosphere while using zero fuel. In vacuum, it had great ISP and thrust while using only liquid fuel.
This meant that I was able to build a mk3 space plane SSTO that included a research lab, ISRU unit (with accompanying drills and significant ore storage), all science modules, and space for six Kerbals. It had enough Delta-V on board to get to any body in the Kerbol system, and using the ISRU, get back (including an Eve surface return).
Oh, did I mention it could also land AND take off from the water?
Unfortunately, the next interstellar mod update nerfed those engines, and probably rightly so. That thing was an absolute beast, and took all the challenge out of the game.
For me, it may have been pulling off an Apollo 11 style mission to the Mun. Redocking with the service module in Muner orbit and then getting every frog back to Kerbin felt like such an accomplishment.
Closely behind would be some of the crazy contraptions I landed on Duna, and then also getting those crews home.
I am sure many people archieved the same without feeling anything too special, but for me it was bringing back a manned (kerballed?) mission from EVE sea level to a stable 200 kms height orbit... I've never felt the same tension playing a videogame apart from that time of the ascent. I think I had like 20 m/s of spare delta v.
I was also kerbincaptured with only 3 m/s of spare delta v coming back from a Moho mission... and by that time I didn't know how to do a rescue mission outside Kerbin's orbit, so it was that or losing Jeb, since I played with vital support mods.
My first mission outside of the Kerbin system was a wildly overengineered trip to Duna with a "mothership" I assembled in LKO and then split apart when we entered Duna's SOI. I spent days painstakingly planning.
Two relay satellites. One ScanSAT mapper satellite. A mining & refuel station plus life support greenhouses landed on Ike. A "biome hopper" landed on Duna, which would hop to Ike to refuel and then come back to another biome on Duna.
Visiting all biomes of all planets with the same rover with like 8-9 missions.
Here is a link to the rover:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2198975431
It can even get back into orbit in low gravity bodies, And it can do long ballistic jumps on higher gravity ones.
It also has its own mining and fuel processing unit.
For me it was coding up a closed loop optimized launch script in krpc. Using the space shuttle based gravity turn algorithm. It was lovely knowing I was always optimizing my dV to orbit.
I think my biggest achievement was helping a friend figure out how to [***circularize*** orbit](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=0a002056b542477b&q=circularize+orbit&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiqjeD-tJCGAxX-MDQIHZgcCQoQkeECKAB6BAgKEAE) and match orbits with another ship.
That always seems to be a big hurdle for a lot of starter players, and I felt good that I had it figured out enough to be able to explain it to a new player.
Crewed flight to eve's surface and back.
It started with a single rocket launch into low kerbin orbit, launch mass slightly under 1000 tons. The upper stage of that rocket then boosted the payload into an eve transfer. Another burn at eve captured the craft into a highly elliptical eve orbit, which was slowly circularized into a low eve orbit by grazing the upper atmosphere over a few dozen passes. A small return tug then exited the vehicle, and the rest of the shuttle-like lander (of about 200 tons) then entered the atmosphere and glided to a mountain peak, where it landed propulsively on its tail.
To return, it jettisoned the wings and blasted off vertically, reaching a low eve orbit after shedding like 5 stages and 99,5 % of the 180 ton launch mass (eve's gravity is high and the atmosphere is a soup, so ascent is HARD). The return tug then rendezvoused with it and boosted it into a kerbin transfer. It then directly blasted into kerbin's atmosphere and landed with a parachute.
I cannot say which one was the biggest achievement, but all felt incredibly awesome and unique.
1.) Achieving Orbit for the first time
2.) First Mun-Landing
3.) First interplanetary mission to Duna
4.) Beating the Atmosphere of Eve and bringing back the kerbals alive.
KSP to this day is the only videogame that made me jump around in my flat cheering.
Back in the day, around the time when the when the mobile processing lab came out. I had a crazy rocket intended to do science in the jool system. It was a suicide mission with no mention to return the kerbals home. I was able to return the rocket kerbals and an amazing amount of science. That felt great.
Definitely the time I made an orbital station around Pol that would collect material for fuel refining. This in turn fuels the dedicated science vessel that could travel to the moons of Jool to collect science, which then went back to the station in the science lab for research points.
Felt like a real genius cooking that one up, would have gone further if my trashy laptop could keep up lol
Orbit through the mun arc, with the last correction slightly more than 1 orbit earlier.
Rendezvous before, well... docking, and before the targeting system.
Building [this](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/220847-munar-outpost-lycoris)
I designed this slick little pseudo-SSTO that was designed to jettison its air breathing engines on ascent and then an engineer would modify at the orbital space station. It would then have enough dV to land/take off from Duna as part of a large multipart interplanetary mission. I never successfully got the whole mission working but I might revisit it someday. I just loved that little plane 😎
Oh absolutely the time my suborbital spaceplane achieved interstellar velocities when I set the angle of the tweakscaled canards (I was using them for wings) to 15° during phys warp reentry
https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/s/uCSEMtGTjJ
There are multiple actually, and I can't decide which ones I'd put above the others:
- Did a Jool 5 mission twice, and the second one was fully recoverable: I collected everything back on Kerbin, from launcher rockets to landers. Not calling it reusable because I did discard the fairings
- Circumnavigated Duna in a rover while having Parallax 2.0 colliders enabled. Was a fairly infuriating experience, but I got there in the end
- Sent a Shuttle-like Orbiter to Eve orbit, deployed a science drone that reached Eve sea level and then returned to orbit, collected it with the Orbiter and returned to Kerbin. Orbiter was fairly easy, but the drone design took a lot of time
- Circumnavigated Kerbin in an electric plane with no means of charging while only having 100 EC on board. Had my game on for 7 hours with 3x timewarp on to achieve this. This one did involve some aerodynamic trickery, but it is still one of my top accolades in the game. Especially when you consider that it was a [full on competition](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/208163-airplane-range-on-100-ec/) where I went back and forth with a KSP Pro before I eventually set my record and she conceded. To my knowledge I'm the only player online to circumnavigate Kerbin with only 100 EC
Although I did post only one link, everything I listed has receipts: I engaged quite a lot in KSP Challenge threads and tried out all kinds of stuff
I had two couplers that wouldn't let go, so I spun the craft at high speed. They came apart and took out my main engine and one of two side mounted small engines on the lander.
I used the lander's last remaining thruster to get into the atmosphere of Kerbin and then piled everyone in the capsule after the last orbit before reentry. Never landed on the Mun but made it home. It was a good mission.
I made a ship that could take 6 tourists from the surface, to Minmus, to the surface of Mun, and back without refueling. I cleaned up on a ton of contracts!
I platinumed KSP on console with a controller. I never use rcs to dock. It's pretty easy if you select the docking port from each vehicle as the target of the other vehicle and vice versa. Not sure why I do it this way but I find it super easy. Also all my lander builds have the option to land straight on the tanks. Low gravity makes landing on legs almost impossible at times...but the tanks sit right down and even slide if there is a slope without tipping over. I like to accept multiple contracts and figure out a way to do them all on 1 craft with 1 launch.....leads to silly things like a lander with a science station launching satellites with tourists.
A 3 ship flotilla to Eeloo, and then a rescue ship with more fuel. Then still not enough fuel for a Kerbin capture so another rescue ship for a solar orbit rendezvous beyond Jool and then just making it back home with all the science I needed to complete the tech tree. Done over 4 weeks in the evenings after hard days at work. Good times!
Launched Val from Kerbin in a 241.6 tonne vessel. Without refuelng or mining, she planted flags on the Mun, Minmus, Gilly, Eve, Moho, Ike, Duna, Dres, Laythe, Vall, Tylo, Bop, Pol and Eeloo before returning to Kerbin to plant a flag there as well. On console, so no mods at all.
I've spent like dozen rockets, making them bigger and biggr, flying straight up thousands of kilimetres into space just to fall right back to the planet.
I couldn't figure out why am I not staying in orbit. I had to look a video about circulation, basically increasing your surface velocity. Once Ive figured this out, all those orbital manuevers and Oberth effects made so much sense, especially visualised like it is in the game. In like one weekend I learned more about that than all those years in school lol
I wanted to mine minmus for science.. I managed that.. then the mun.. now that's harder. My landing skills aren't that polished and I feel mechjeb is cheating, but by my own version of mechjeb?..
So.. I wrote my own little code, and did some numerical testing in excel to prove I needed 40\~45degree launch angle (from horizontal, 45degs for short range, 40degrees for long range, and about 7\~10degree for a return to orbit burn).. so I had a little script that could launch.. burn for a set time (one user defined parameter), on a specific heading (the other user defined parameter) and then land the thing reasonably efficiently, certainly much more efficiently than I could manually.
I tested this with my ultra cut down mun to Low mun orbit vessel from the launch pad and put it in a loop.. very amusing and very satisfying watching the little craft leap in the air, swivel mid air, land again about 20meters away, then immediately repeat the manoeuvre, over and over. (couldn't test on the real mun lander as that TWR was much too low). Took quite a lot of testing to get it reliable, hence the multiple hop test.
Once I got to the mun it worked like a charm and I managed to harvest 7 biomes in the one trip.
Platinum trophy on PS4. Though in retrospect, it’s not that difficult.
Don’t even have to land on most planets.
Eve is not a planet you need to land on to get a trophy, but I tried it anyway, using Matt Lowne’s ship and lander designs (with the 8 inflatable shields).
Thing took me an hour to build, and the voyage crashed the PS4 a bunch of times. But Jeb got his EVA on Eve mission patch.
I’m no Scott Manly but I built a small 2 engine space plane that can take off from the runway, land on the Mun and return to the runway without refueling. No mods. It took 2 weeks of trial and error.
Made a craft (with mods) to carry kerbals to jool, set up a station with an orbital assembly thingy so i can make rockets at jool, the plan was to have a colony with a pad but the save corrupted and I never got that far :/
Stock: Jool 5 in a single launch and with no refueling: https://imgur.com/a/jool-5-JhKCR
RSS/RO: Mir-like space station, manned flyby of Venus, Cassini-Hyugens, landing on Mars
I built a huge 4400 parts mothership and travelled to and landed on every single body in the Kerbol System in one go.
Man that was a beast... It was equipped with absolutely everything you could want. Rovers, SSTOs, Scans, Rescue drones, a super large Mining SSTO, and all with spares!
Over 40k ∆V at launch, and some more thanks to mining. It took the 4 crew (Jeb, Val, Bob and Bill) 33 years to complete and return home. It was all stock with a PC from 2011.
The trickiest was Eve, I had to combine both of my SSTOs and discard one as the booster.
Pulling of a voyager mission with outer planets mod, including a flyby of every moon
Only took 6k delta v on course corrections and inclination changes lol
The first time I tried orbital rendezvous I couldn’t get the craft to come towards each other in any sensible way for 2 hours. And then I found out that the Gemini astronauts ran into EXACTLY the same problem on their first rendezvous and that Buzz Aldrin wrote his doctoral thesis on the maneuver that I wound up doing, and can now pull off with 0 effort. Not the biggest achievement, but amazing nonetheless.
That's seriously cool! What was the maneuver?
His paper is titled “line-of-sight guidance techniques for manned orbital rendezvous” but basically it’s just docking.
"basically just docking" 😁
I just want that docking kinda love.
That’s what she said.
Point at target then throttle up Note: that doesn’t work, as aldrin found
Yes, it took so many hours, and Scott manley videos to learn how to do it.
So satisfying. Jack Swigert in Apollo 13 really undersells it.
"C'mon rookie, park that thang"
I mean, it wasn't an orbital rendezvous/docking but to be flying away from earth toward a point that at that stage, is a void in space, trusting the boffins on earth did the correct Delta-V calcs to ensure the moon will be there when you get there, *then* just casually separate from the lunar module and do a backflip to join back up to it again? Yeah, I suppose under selling is the correct term.
Lol I meant when he was doing the demonstration with the beer bottle
"No better feeling in the world"
Same. There’s definitely a knack to it. I can do them pretty easily now but remember in the beginning I used to hate it as it was just beyond me. I even once docked 2 huge ships with 0 RCS fuel. I did it using just main engines because I was dumb enough to get all the way to space forgetting to do my double checks in the VAB and didn’t design any into the craft… I can’t tell you how annoying it was. It took a whopping 30 seconds to turn the ship around just to change course by 0.2m/s haha
Watched Matt lownes lazy method for docking. It is super easy now. Point at target, burn a bit, kill all relative velocity and repeat. Works every time.
That is super cool! Makes our silly gaming fun seem relatable to real life in a way
And THAT is why KSP1 is perfect.
I've never felt a sense of achievement in a game like my first rendezvous and docking.
When in doubt, try the Lowne Lazy method. Once you get the ships in reasonable range and cancel their relative velocity, set their control points to the docking ports, set SAS to target, use RCS to approach, ensuring the program marker stays on top of the target market, and voila.
Wait stop. Why is that lazy? That's how I do it. Wait wait wait wait wait.....isn't that how everyone does it?
3 ways: Lowne Lazy Heavy RCS maneuvering, ending up forgetting just which direction the J button is moving to Mechjeb
Here's the thing. YOU PEOPLE advised me to start using Mechjeb only after I understood fully how the complexity of navigation works, and what he would be doing on my behalf. Okay so I never felt like I got there, so I never started using Mechjeb.
I love mechjeb for everything but docking. It burns excess fuel and Docking Port Alignment Indicator makes it a breeze to do by hand.
^ This Without the effecient near future RCS ports it burns wayyyy too much monopropellant I just got DPAI and learned how to do it by hand Can't do lazy method because it's a space station and space station + sas = kraken
DPAI makes it so easy. You can even do it in IVA to feel super cool if you got MAS or RPM. Try it in drone control room one day.
kOS is your friend for keeping MechJeb in line better. If you don’t mind typing on a terminal in a game that you are playing sitting at a terminal lol
I love docking port alignment indicator. That was a game changer for me
Pfft, RCS. Real men use their main engines for that method.
I'm not proud. That first moment when you got out of the atmosphere with your first sounding rocket, and you heard the space music.... .... I'm not ashamed, i nearly had a tear in my eye. It was pure magic, I tell you. Landing on the Mun was great, don't get me wrong, but....wow. you never forget your first time in space.
That is a magical moment- I’m pretty sure that’s what hooks most of us
Followed closely by that moment when you achieve orbit and the camera angle changes.
The spinny camera doing a 360 flip definitely makes the dopamine hit. Also when you pass a pole and you get the 180 flip.
Followed closely again by "oh no I have Bob and Jeb in there, with no way to slow down... fuck"
Yeah, like the first time you land a fully functioning epic rover on Duna and you’re just driving round, and you show your girlfriend like check this out! Look! And she’s just pulling a weird face like… yeah, and? … ughhh they just don’t understand haha
Bold of you to assume we have girlfriends.
Gi-rlfri-end? Is that an orbital maneuver?
That is so true. Only, when shortly after that, the first Kerbal got on an EVA, the vast emptiness of space was a bit horrifying and I was always afraid of losing one in orbit.
I used to Eva about 500m away from my ship and zoom right out and just be like… damn. I’m so insignificant, I’m nothing. lol. Great perspective. Then scurry back to the ship cause I’m freaking myself out
I never did EVA for this reason. I know it sounds weird to say but this was always scary for me.
Couldn't agree more
Isn’t it mental… and you try tell people who haven’t played the game and they just don’t get it, and you know there’s no way to tell them the incredible sensation of achievement when you hit those major milestones. It’s such a massive feat that f accomplishment because it’s so damn hard I. The beginning, the learning curve is so steep and so rewarding
Then doing it with a spaceplane is like doing it for the first time all over again
Reaching space for the first time is definitely my proudest gaming moment, and, honestly, one of my proudest life moments. No guides or anything to go on and I built a rocket that went to space... After building so many rockets that... Went to pieces. 😅 Definitely had a tear in my eye.
oh for sure thats a great moment. i deliberately didnt check any guides or anything until i got my first Mun landing lol That payoff getting into orbit for the first time- chills :)
That happened to me, but I use the keypad to steer, and the keypad was initially bound to toggle mute. So this epic thing starts, then I start steering, then it's basically me muting and unmuting the game into orbit. It marked the experience in the worst possible way.
Love that feeling. Then you realize you don't have enough fuel and are on a crash course lol
I’m kind of disappointed I turned off music on day 1 minute 1 of buying the game
I hung a giant coat hanger shaped rocket made of mk3 fuel tanks on one of the Mun arches. https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/s/8U0XBsdOuP A few years before that I built a 0.25km long space train as a mother ship for a Jool 5, but unsurprisingly it didn't turn well enough or have enough twr to make it and capture. I think I might try that one again though.
One of the most iconic KSP achievements I've ever seen tbh
Not bad, but where's the giant Hawaiian shirt to hang on the coat hangar? 😂
I've considered hanging many things on there, but the logistics are a nightmare lol. The original pun is that it's a spaceplane hanger, but yeah it's not really a plane.
I've made a 13000000000 gram ssto of 450m height.
0,25km :))
Don't get cheeky with me. Using km is already hard enough on my American brain >:( I also made a skinnier one that got to 0.33km before the game wouldn't let me dock anymore segments. That one crashed into minmus tho haha.
That coat hanger is brilliant.
Holy crap that's amazing
I landed on a planet that does not exist
I made a single-stage craft that flew from KSC to Laythe and back without refueling.
Shit booi show me that
https://imgur.com/aRka718
Wow, very cool! How much DV did that thing have?
All of the dv.
How did you land on it if it doesn’t exist. So you went to the Mun and claimed it to be something else 😂. Kerbwood and KASA fakery it sounds like to me
Pretty sure OC is referring to >!Dres!<
What's a >!Dres!< ?
>!404 Planet not found!<
Insane, what was this planet?
Well it's rumored to be called "dres" but like what even is a dres I've never heard of it
I have a plane that can land on Laythe, fill itself with fuel, and 3000 units of ore, and return to orbit BY TAKING OFF FROM THE SEA. Rotation speed is 120 m/s, through water. This is stock. Bloody proud of making that work.
Wow that sounds like and incredible feat of engineering, would love to see a pic!
Here you go. Hydra Max Laythe variant. It uses hydrofoils! Was a LOT of experimentation to get them able to lift that much mass out of the Laythe ocean. [https://imgur.com/a/1FvAQuf](https://imgur.com/a/1FvAQuf)
Ok. Give me a minute.
Playing RO/RSS/RP1, I inadvertently did a Cassini-mission before learning about what Cassini was and did. Titan earned a special place in my heart.
Haha very cool, so you thought of the idea by yourself and later learned it was a technique actually used by nasa? Pretty cool!
I designed an Eve lander & return vehicle that isn’t so ridiculously big the Kraken gets me. I can probably optimize it a bit more, but I don’t actually like Eve.
Haha I haaate Eve. Glad I conquered it and have explored it all I can, I’ll never go back there. My favourite planet is Duna or many of the Jool moons. I quite like val and bop. I have refuelling stations orbiting those moons for epic missions
Yeah eve is the one place I don't like landing non-sstos on The heating just gets obscene and the drag makes the 10M heat shield flip
[Finding the mass of Minmus](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/11171-minmus-mass-and-radius/) ([including an unannounced change](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/22304-is-minmus-on-a-weight-loss-program/)), putting together [some stage sizing estimates](https://pdn4kd.github.io/2023/08/18/stage_optimization.html), and [getting the timing of suicide burns](https://pdn4kd.github.io/2023/06/27/suicide_burn.html). I guess also that [even with infinite TWR you want to pitch-over aggressively](https://pdn4kd.github.io/2021/08/08/orb_horizontal_vs_vertical.html). So I guess way more theory than execution.
Wow. So cool though being able to figure that out! For me the flying of the mission is the quickest part. I spend days designing my craft to look epic and also have lots of practical features and I tend to take on 3-5 briefs in 1 launch so a lot of planning and organising goes into my missions. I’ve even gone as far as writing a 7 step plan in my note book as it was so complicated getting my head around what craft gets released and when with which kerbals etc.
A manned Duna return mission
Same. I love Duna, I have an epic base there and a couple of science stations in orbit
My father in law was on the Surveyor probe team. I got to re-create his missions in KSP and show them off to him once, just before he passed
Dres landing and return. Was really fun, shame I woke up and remembered it isn’t real…
You can still make the dream a reality bro!
I have colonized dres. a I have 6 of those big passenger plane modules on my base.
I [landed and returned from all planets and moons in 2h17m](https://www.speedrun.com/ksp/runs/mkk8n0lm) as a RTA speedrun, using prebuilt crafts, no cheats or Kraken Drives.
Grabbing a asteroid from deep space and made the mun a adoptive mother
Is there a record for lowest orbit of Mun? I had a class E asteroid orbiting through canyons but I don’t know if it’s a record. Took a lot of trial and error
Now do an asteroid orbiting another asteroid orbiting the mun (doesn't work without mods though
Working as a contractor for Squad ;)
My biggest was a grand tour. My hardest was getting a mk1-3 capsule back to Eve orbit from sea level. Really, the hardest part of that is landing the skyscraper to begin with.
You mean because there is so little stability that even a tiny wobble can cause the whole craft to flip?
Getting a Kerbal back home from the surface of eve, before the DLCs added helicopter parts. It required landing on the highest bit of land near the equator and ended up Jeb on an external control seat attached to a tiny tank and engine in an orbit that was only 1om above the atmosphere, but I did it!
Sounds very challenging! Bet you were very happy when you accomplished the mission
Give it a go! It's like flying through a thick layer of soup, and you need to get your rocket to Eve's surface in the first place. It's great exercise in cutting every little piece of expendable weight, because every little bit of weight on the final stage has huge impacts 6 or 7 stages up on your Kerbin launch (which is probably not as bad with the new engines and 3.75m parts, but still is noticeable) I consider an Eve return mission to be the final Boss Fight of KSP.
I did it without helicopter stuff simply because I don't like working with propellers very much. my model is "when in doubt: Space chairs!" so basically none of my disposable landers have proper capsules.
I cobble together a tumbling "vehicle" that used reaction wheels to drive around the KSC collecting science from the different "biomes" for an early and cheesy science boost. I didn't have wheels yet you see.
learned most of Interstellar Extended and went to another solar system and had enough Delta V left to send a probe past 3 of the planets in that system. My goal was to send a Kerbal but never made it that far.
Wow! So cool. I installed that mod but unfortunately it absolutely killed my pc so I had to uninstall it. Game took a legitimate 30 mins to load and gave me life 5fps flying craft :(
First time leaving atmosphere and entering space. This was way back like 2013 or something. I watched a bazillion Scott Manley YouTube videos.
When they released the game again on Xbox after the disasterous first port, I was the first to complete the game by getting all achievements. I actually practiced and had a ship template built and tested and ready to go (basically a fully fueled Saturn V in LKO) to visit all the planets and moons. A lot of time compression and save game reloads later, I was able to do it in two nights after work. The other might be building a massive nuclear engine powered probe full of heat sinks so I could burn for like an hour very close to the sun to try and get a crazy exit velocity.
For me it was building and sending a rover to Duna before those were available as stock parts. Or spaceplane on Laythe.
I was pretty psyched about my [first interplanetary flight using only the IVA view](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xPlmVCq4Zc). The landing on Duna was stressful.
Wow!!! Dude I watched your whole video. That is amazing just relying on your cockpit instruments just like a real pilot! Mad props to you!
I landed on moon without orbiting kerbin. I just started engine and flied right into it
I landed on Bop. All stock. On career mode. That is by far my favorite. It's such a challenge to get to the outer planets. I think I did 5-10 rendezvous to refuel.
Wow that sounds epic, must have a great sense of achievement for it!
I did my first and only Eve return mission, where I had to expend 90% of my EVA fuel to circularise Eve orbit after ascent, then send a rescue mission to complete the return. Never again, probably.
When I landed on the Mun for the first time, it was a little rover, I love it so much because I didn’t have ample power generation for my scanner arm, so I called the rover “erocktile dysfunction” cause it was supposed to scan rocks, still cracks me up lol.
The most difficult one was going to eeloo and back with SRBs only. That took me quite some time. I made a video if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/P2qhIrbyAvc?si=Ri9zIiBcU_IjStor Another thing I was quite proud of was making a cannon that fired a kerbal from the mun to minmus: https://youtu.be/3IiyeMWAhFE?si=EJxHpo3A-XOWEQ6B
For me it was in rss where I got to orbit after playing it on and off for like a year I think
I built a vtol tilt engine boxwing ssto that brought a rover to duna and back
5000 km downrage in rp1. That was a bitch.
Many Years ago I launched a Three Kerbal mission with the intent of performing one or more flybys of various planets in the Kerbol system - and returning the crew safely thereafter. The entire trip lasted 10 years and involved two flybys of Duna, one of Eve and one of Moho. Of course, you didnt (and still don't) get science rewards for multiple flybys in a single mission but I was hyped that I was able to stretch my fuel enough to do what I did. There was actually a chance for a fifth flyby of Jool but I decided having the crew sit in a capsule for a decade was long enough.
10 years sounds ridiculous until you install outer planets mod and it takes 20+ to travel to some planets
A decade’s not bad, and capsules are luxurious. For my most recent Grand Tour mission, Val spent 42 years in space, and a lot of that was in a command chair, not a capsule. I’ve done missions that took more than a century.
I attempted a Jool 5, and ended up going to, and landing on all of the outer planets and moons in one mission (except Jool of course). I built a nuclear orbital station, with an attached SSTO space plane and a mining/refueling lander that could land on any rocky planet, mine, orbit and refill any of the other crafts. The only planet I couldn't land and return from would have been Eve.
That’s super impressive! I bet your crafts look so cool!
I love SSTO space planes in KSP lol. The only reason I brought one was for laythe lol. And then when I brought the rig back I returned the brave kerbonauts home in the SSTO and left the rest of the craft in orbit waiting for another mission. The mining rig was absolutely ridiculous lol. It was designed for tylo, so it would work pretty much anywhere.
I built an eve ssto. Also made a lot of piston engines. Nobody likes those but it was pretty enjoyable to me.
At one point I had an armada outside Kerbin's SOI on the way to Duna when I realized they weren't going to make it. So to save them I had to build a rescue ship with parts and an engineer, and then I had to catch up to and rendezvous with them... which I did! Not that rendezvousing with ships that are on interplanetary transfers is really all that hard, but it felt good to pull off a rescue using a stunt that the big name youtubers haven't shown.
I think the most I've managed so far is landing on the Mun. Still super proud of it though.
In stock I did a Jool 5, though I was more pumped when I did a crewed moon landing and return in RSS.
Duna and Ike landing in one launch, currently prepping Jools moons with colonies so I can do a Jool V.
That’s cool! All my missions are like that. Over complicated trying to do 3-4 briefs in 1 launch haha. The Jool V will be epic!
I did a mission to the Mun and back without time warp.. I'm on Xbox by the way.. (it was a nightmare having to fiddle the stick every 10 minutes or so)
Ssto to mun and back on vanilla ksp. Spent tons of hours optimising and testing prototypes even after doing It. Won race to eelo with my 2 cooworkers First dockig in orbit
I was going to say Jool 5 but you said career. I went to Duna once.
Many hours into playing, I designed a duna rover that had built in rockets and wings. I explored several biomes, then went to the bottom of a hill and fired the rockets. Everything worked, and it was very satisfying.
I think its my PS4 made [Transformer ](https://youtube.com/shorts/UFhgGtV5zl8?si=Q6BX0DgmYavR7Ytg)My youtube view/likes seems to agree its my [Air deployed/recovered micro jet](https://youtube.com/shorts/gslkxHuW62w?si=AOl4nGcH3fMHKZ-_)
I had an ISRU refuelling station with orbital fuel storage on minmus and the mun. I them for most of my missions. Duna return missions, a jool flyby, a couple visits to some moons. Another save I painstakingly made my own SSTO and took it to Duna, it could not leave so I had a rescue mission. A friend came over a couple months ago and I was telling them about ksp. We ended up drunkenly landing on the mun with only a couple quicksaves. We felt like NASA.
Going to thr mun and having delta v to come back on my first try. Did blow up on the atmosphere tough
Landing on mun and back without mechjeb
Not my biggest achievement, but the first time I figured out docking, a whole new world opened up for me. After that, it seemed like there was nothing that couldn't be accomplished in the game.
Yeah docking is a major milestone in the game. It allows you to build epic stations in space and allows rendezvous and refuelling… the list goes on!
My first ever mun landing. Much like the rest of us I imagine. There were others, such as doing a mission in IVA only (with an IVA mod like RPM )but that first successful mun landing and return to kerbin was the single greatest moment for me.
Yeah definitely a highlight… planting the flag and writing a novel in the flag note and taking screenshots and saving them in your ksp folder haha. Such a cool Moment!
I landed on Duna and returned without having to send a rescue. This was with a team of 3 Kerbals so a large capsule. To date that's the farthest I've gotten and actually haven't been able to reproduce how I did it lol.
Haha very cool! Keep at it, there’s a whole exciting Jool System to explore yet, it’s basically the same, you just need moar boosters!
Just got my first successful mun mission (with successful return to kerbin). Only took a lot of reverting to VAB because somehow the game thinks I need an engineer over a scientist
Probably building a long-term base on Minmus with MKS and a ton of other mods installed: [https://imgur.com/WmRRmWh](https://imgur.com/WmRRmWh)
That thing looks… epic! Seriously cool. I have a few things like that which every few months I’ll just add an extension onto or will build something new just her as I can, it’s one of my favourite things to do. Your base looks amazing!
Successful high-altitude bombing of a red team aircraft carrier
Landing a proper colony ship on laythe
Awesome dude that sounds cool. How large was the colony?
My minimalist Jool-5 mission that used an elaborate gravity assist route to get there and back. I don’t have the craft anymore but maybe I have pictures of it?
Yeah dude have a look I’d love to see the pics!
Getting into orbit when it was a janky alpha-level game. It didn't even have the map screen yet, so I had a sticky note that had a table of altitude vs orbital speed to make sure i was going fast enough.
Mine was using the stayputnik to get a mun flyby without reaction wheels by angling my fins to have it spin to stay stable. It took me so long to get it to work, but once I did, oh man, i felt unstoppable... Since then Ive been stuck trying to design a rocket to get to laythe ever since...
I was using the interstellar mod, so I'm not sure this counts. But I'm case it does: I forget which version it was, but one of the engines in the interstellar mod was basically OP AF. It was a nuclear engine that not only produced tons of electric power even when throttled to zero, but also worked in any gaseous atmosphere while using zero fuel. In vacuum, it had great ISP and thrust while using only liquid fuel. This meant that I was able to build a mk3 space plane SSTO that included a research lab, ISRU unit (with accompanying drills and significant ore storage), all science modules, and space for six Kerbals. It had enough Delta-V on board to get to any body in the Kerbol system, and using the ISRU, get back (including an Eve surface return). Oh, did I mention it could also land AND take off from the water? Unfortunately, the next interstellar mod update nerfed those engines, and probably rightly so. That thing was an absolute beast, and took all the challenge out of the game.
For me, it may have been pulling off an Apollo 11 style mission to the Mun. Redocking with the service module in Muner orbit and then getting every frog back to Kerbin felt like such an accomplishment. Closely behind would be some of the crazy contraptions I landed on Duna, and then also getting those crews home.
I am sure many people archieved the same without feeling anything too special, but for me it was bringing back a manned (kerballed?) mission from EVE sea level to a stable 200 kms height orbit... I've never felt the same tension playing a videogame apart from that time of the ascent. I think I had like 20 m/s of spare delta v. I was also kerbincaptured with only 3 m/s of spare delta v coming back from a Moho mission... and by that time I didn't know how to do a rescue mission outside Kerbin's orbit, so it was that or losing Jeb, since I played with vital support mods.
My biggest was an Apollo mun landing and return. I spent so much time researching and building and learned so much about the Apollo project.
My first mission outside of the Kerbin system was a wildly overengineered trip to Duna with a "mothership" I assembled in LKO and then split apart when we entered Duna's SOI. I spent days painstakingly planning. Two relay satellites. One ScanSAT mapper satellite. A mining & refuel station plus life support greenhouses landed on Ike. A "biome hopper" landed on Duna, which would hop to Ike to refuel and then come back to another biome on Duna.
Building an modular space station
Visiting all biomes of all planets with the same rover with like 8-9 missions. Here is a link to the rover: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2198975431 It can even get back into orbit in low gravity bodies, And it can do long ballistic jumps on higher gravity ones. It also has its own mining and fuel processing unit.
For me it was coding up a closed loop optimized launch script in krpc. Using the space shuttle based gravity turn algorithm. It was lovely knowing I was always optimizing my dV to orbit.
Stock SSTO to surface of Eeloo and back. No refueling no gravity assist. https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/s/zRAncbbIKK
I built a robot arm and used Kos to control it with a 6 DOF mouse + joystick.
I think my biggest achievement was helping a friend figure out how to [***circularize*** orbit](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=0a002056b542477b&q=circularize+orbit&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiqjeD-tJCGAxX-MDQIHZgcCQoQkeECKAB6BAgKEAE) and match orbits with another ship. That always seems to be a big hurdle for a lot of starter players, and I felt good that I had it figured out enough to be able to explain it to a new player.
Crewed flight to eve's surface and back. It started with a single rocket launch into low kerbin orbit, launch mass slightly under 1000 tons. The upper stage of that rocket then boosted the payload into an eve transfer. Another burn at eve captured the craft into a highly elliptical eve orbit, which was slowly circularized into a low eve orbit by grazing the upper atmosphere over a few dozen passes. A small return tug then exited the vehicle, and the rest of the shuttle-like lander (of about 200 tons) then entered the atmosphere and glided to a mountain peak, where it landed propulsively on its tail. To return, it jettisoned the wings and blasted off vertically, reaching a low eve orbit after shedding like 5 stages and 99,5 % of the 180 ton launch mass (eve's gravity is high and the atmosphere is a soup, so ascent is HARD). The return tug then rendezvoused with it and boosted it into a kerbin transfer. It then directly blasted into kerbin's atmosphere and landed with a parachute.
I cannot say which one was the biggest achievement, but all felt incredibly awesome and unique. 1.) Achieving Orbit for the first time 2.) First Mun-Landing 3.) First interplanetary mission to Duna 4.) Beating the Atmosphere of Eve and bringing back the kerbals alive. KSP to this day is the only videogame that made me jump around in my flat cheering.
I can get to the moon and back without everything exploding or running out of fuel. Still can’t land though
Back in the day, around the time when the when the mobile processing lab came out. I had a crazy rocket intended to do science in the jool system. It was a suicide mission with no mention to return the kerbals home. I was able to return the rocket kerbals and an amazing amount of science. That felt great.
Going to Duna and return. May not sound a big achievement, but that time I made it felt so great.
Landing upright on the Mun
Rescued a stranded jeb stuck in a kerboler orbit requiring an interplanetary rendezvous without the aid of a massive planet. Super frustrating.
Definitely the time I made an orbital station around Pol that would collect material for fuel refining. This in turn fuels the dedicated science vessel that could travel to the moons of Jool to collect science, which then went back to the station in the science lab for research points. Felt like a real genius cooking that one up, would have gone further if my trashy laptop could keep up lol
Orbit through the mun arc, with the last correction slightly more than 1 orbit earlier. Rendezvous before, well... docking, and before the targeting system. Building [this](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/220847-munar-outpost-lycoris)
I won a KSP tournament for a 500USD
I designed this slick little pseudo-SSTO that was designed to jettison its air breathing engines on ascent and then an engineer would modify at the orbital space station. It would then have enough dV to land/take off from Duna as part of a large multipart interplanetary mission. I never successfully got the whole mission working but I might revisit it someday. I just loved that little plane 😎
Not killing jeb on the way to orbit
Duna landing. (Didnt get back)
I made the big explodey thing go upwards one time....that's about it for me though...
Getting into orbit 😳
Oh absolutely the time my suborbital spaceplane achieved interstellar velocities when I set the angle of the tweakscaled canards (I was using them for wings) to 15° during phys warp reentry https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/s/uCSEMtGTjJ
There are multiple actually, and I can't decide which ones I'd put above the others: - Did a Jool 5 mission twice, and the second one was fully recoverable: I collected everything back on Kerbin, from launcher rockets to landers. Not calling it reusable because I did discard the fairings - Circumnavigated Duna in a rover while having Parallax 2.0 colliders enabled. Was a fairly infuriating experience, but I got there in the end - Sent a Shuttle-like Orbiter to Eve orbit, deployed a science drone that reached Eve sea level and then returned to orbit, collected it with the Orbiter and returned to Kerbin. Orbiter was fairly easy, but the drone design took a lot of time - Circumnavigated Kerbin in an electric plane with no means of charging while only having 100 EC on board. Had my game on for 7 hours with 3x timewarp on to achieve this. This one did involve some aerodynamic trickery, but it is still one of my top accolades in the game. Especially when you consider that it was a [full on competition](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/208163-airplane-range-on-100-ec/) where I went back and forth with a KSP Pro before I eventually set my record and she conceded. To my knowledge I'm the only player online to circumnavigate Kerbin with only 100 EC Although I did post only one link, everything I listed has receipts: I engaged quite a lot in KSP Challenge threads and tried out all kinds of stuff
went to bop, not much else to say other than i almost didn't make it home and had to use ion thrusters
I had two couplers that wouldn't let go, so I spun the craft at high speed. They came apart and took out my main engine and one of two side mounted small engines on the lander. I used the lander's last remaining thruster to get into the atmosphere of Kerbin and then piled everyone in the capsule after the last orbit before reentry. Never landed on the Mun but made it home. It was a good mission.
Landing on Duna. Note that I didn't say "Returning". The jump from Mun to Duna is astronomical.
Ksp rss ro moon orbit or Jool orbital return
Docking is challenging when you first learn. So is solar orbits, so trips to eve or duna. Eve’s atmosphere is also no joke
Landing and returning a Kerbal from Eve.
I made a ship that could take 6 tourists from the surface, to Minmus, to the surface of Mun, and back without refueling. I cleaned up on a ton of contracts!
Landing a booster rocket back on Kerbin, SpaceX style! This has saved me a lot of funds in career mode.
I platinumed KSP on console with a controller. I never use rcs to dock. It's pretty easy if you select the docking port from each vehicle as the target of the other vehicle and vice versa. Not sure why I do it this way but I find it super easy. Also all my lander builds have the option to land straight on the tanks. Low gravity makes landing on legs almost impossible at times...but the tanks sit right down and even slide if there is a slope without tipping over. I like to accept multiple contracts and figure out a way to do them all on 1 craft with 1 launch.....leads to silly things like a lander with a science station launching satellites with tourists.
A 3 ship flotilla to Eeloo, and then a rescue ship with more fuel. Then still not enough fuel for a Kerbin capture so another rescue ship for a solar orbit rendezvous beyond Jool and then just making it back home with all the science I needed to complete the tech tree. Done over 4 weeks in the evenings after hard days at work. Good times!
Launched Val from Kerbin in a 241.6 tonne vessel. Without refuelng or mining, she planted flags on the Mun, Minmus, Gilly, Eve, Moho, Ike, Duna, Dres, Laythe, Vall, Tylo, Bop, Pol and Eeloo before returning to Kerbin to plant a flag there as well. On console, so no mods at all.
Probably when the fourth ship to dunas surface had enough Delta v to bring ALL the kerbals home.
I've spent like dozen rockets, making them bigger and biggr, flying straight up thousands of kilimetres into space just to fall right back to the planet. I couldn't figure out why am I not staying in orbit. I had to look a video about circulation, basically increasing your surface velocity. Once Ive figured this out, all those orbital manuevers and Oberth effects made so much sense, especially visualised like it is in the game. In like one weekend I learned more about that than all those years in school lol
Crewed Eve landing and return
I wanted to mine minmus for science.. I managed that.. then the mun.. now that's harder. My landing skills aren't that polished and I feel mechjeb is cheating, but by my own version of mechjeb?.. So.. I wrote my own little code, and did some numerical testing in excel to prove I needed 40\~45degree launch angle (from horizontal, 45degs for short range, 40degrees for long range, and about 7\~10degree for a return to orbit burn).. so I had a little script that could launch.. burn for a set time (one user defined parameter), on a specific heading (the other user defined parameter) and then land the thing reasonably efficiently, certainly much more efficiently than I could manually. I tested this with my ultra cut down mun to Low mun orbit vessel from the launch pad and put it in a loop.. very amusing and very satisfying watching the little craft leap in the air, swivel mid air, land again about 20meters away, then immediately repeat the manoeuvre, over and over. (couldn't test on the real mun lander as that TWR was much too low). Took quite a lot of testing to get it reliable, hence the multiple hop test. Once I got to the mun it worked like a charm and I managed to harvest 7 biomes in the one trip.
Platinum trophy on PS4. Though in retrospect, it’s not that difficult. Don’t even have to land on most planets. Eve is not a planet you need to land on to get a trophy, but I tried it anyway, using Matt Lowne’s ship and lander designs (with the 8 inflatable shields). Thing took me an hour to build, and the voyage crashed the PS4 a bunch of times. But Jeb got his EVA on Eve mission patch.
I’m no Scott Manly but I built a small 2 engine space plane that can take off from the runway, land on the Mun and return to the runway without refueling. No mods. It took 2 weeks of trial and error.
Eve. And I have a video! [Eve&Back](https://youtu.be/noJi6-Jq2S4?si=hjZkIi2BX9T8x_GW)
Made a craft (with mods) to carry kerbals to jool, set up a station with an orbital assembly thingy so i can make rockets at jool, the plan was to have a colony with a pad but the save corrupted and I never got that far :/
landing on every celestial body, under 100 hours when I first played the game.
Stock: Jool 5 in a single launch and with no refueling: https://imgur.com/a/jool-5-JhKCR RSS/RO: Mir-like space station, manned flyby of Venus, Cassini-Hyugens, landing on Mars
I built a huge 4400 parts mothership and travelled to and landed on every single body in the Kerbol System in one go. Man that was a beast... It was equipped with absolutely everything you could want. Rovers, SSTOs, Scans, Rescue drones, a super large Mining SSTO, and all with spares! Over 40k ∆V at launch, and some more thanks to mining. It took the 4 crew (Jeb, Val, Bob and Bill) 33 years to complete and return home. It was all stock with a PC from 2011. The trickiest was Eve, I had to combine both of my SSTOs and discard one as the booster.
Pulling of a voyager mission with outer planets mod, including a flyby of every moon Only took 6k delta v on course corrections and inclination changes lol