[jr2]

FYI, one of the .17.1 updates was removing the parachute unspawning when deployed high speeds (!).  I was wondering what was going on. 

[General Battuta]

Using docking and fuel transfer I just launched a successful twelve-ship mission to Duna. feels good man

[crizza]

I think this is my greatest KSP achievement to date

Awesome man, what about a mission to get him back?

[Herra Tohtori]

A Mass Relay network would be absolutely hilarious to find. I expect it to eventually happen as a mod.

[Nuke]

i launched a 6 ship duna mission (5 now as one of the fuel post has gone empty), it hasnt gotten there yet. fast forwarding would get in the way of my munar stripmining activities.

[newman]

Landed pretty much everywhere with stock parts and kind of got bored of them so I went to check out what new mod parts are available these days. This made it possible to make a, shall we say, different approach to landing on other planets / moons I made some kind of truck / helicopter hybrid (basically just slammed two VTOL rotors on the thing) to see if this would even fly. Surprisingly enough, when thrust and mass centers coincide this thing actually flies like a proper helicopter, so after testing it on Kerbin, I decided to test it a bit further away: on Laythe (one of Jool's moons; Jool is a gas giant and currently the outermost planet in the Kerbol system - call it a Jupiter analog for lack of a better one. Laythe is an ocean moon that seems to be all about sandy beaches on it's bunch of small islands; perfect vacation spot for Jeb and the gang).




So, I slapped this truck with rotors on a massive rocket. What could go wrong?




Trucks in spaaaaceee!




Here's something you don't see from a truck's cabin every day. Chew on that, History Channel.




Picked a landing spot in relative vicinity of one of my previous landed missions. What's the point of awesome maneuvers if nobody's around to see your showing off, after all?









Amazingly enough, after ditching the interplanetary stage, the helicopter / rover stage didn't decide to have any nasty stability issues and instead flew like you'd expect a real helicopter to. That's definitely one of the cooler ways to land a spaceship

Lots of fuel left in the truck's main tank, these VTOL rotors are pretty efficient. Doesn't exactly fly too fast (managed to get it flying close to 100 m/s while maintaining a 500m altitude) and it's ceiling is just below 10k, but it's certainly a better way to explore Laythe than just having a regular rover - this thing can drive just fine, but it can also air hop between islands.

[Sushi]

Nice, Newman.

I just discovered the hard way that jet engines don't work on Eve. So much for that round-trip... (I'd been counting on the jet engines to get me most of the way out of the atmosphere with good fuel efficiency).

[newman]

Yea, Eve is difficult to get back from. Once you get down there it sticks to you like glue I wonder if the helicopter rotors might function well to handle a part of the ascent though - get you through the thickest part of that soup it's got for atmo, than ditch them and burn Nervas. Due to the thick atmo I suspect the VTOL rotors would remain effective on much higher altitudes than on Laythe.

Doing a round trip stock only.. I tried several times. Only combos I came up with are either having enough fuel but not having enough power to take off again, or having enough power but not nearly enough fuel to get back into orbit. Fairly sure it's possible but it stopped being fun after lots of attempts so I went to have some fun with different stuff. Like my "Dune Jumper" rover/chopper hybrid

BTW, have you landed on Moho? I was finally able to put a one man capsule down there; used what was left of the interplanetary stage to get close to the surface in a vertical descent, then when the engines started seriously overheating and I wasn't able to maintain enough throttle to slow myself down, I detached the last stage (one man pod + RCS tank + thrusters) and managed to land on RCS only. Reaching orbit again is a no-go using this approach, though.

[Pred the Penguin]

For a moment there I thought you were talking about a very different Eve, but then I realized I clicked on the KSP thread...

[Sushi]

BTW, have you landed on Moho? I was finally able to put a one man capsule down there; used what was left of the interplanetary stage to get close to the surface in a vertical descent, then when the engines started seriously overheating and I wasn't able to maintain enough throttle to slow myself down, I detached the last stage (one man pod + RCS tank + thrusters) and managed to land on RCS only. Reaching orbit again is a no-go using this approach, though.

I got one rover down on Moho, haven't tried to do a round-trip yet.

A lot of round-trip things are going to be much easier in .18, when we get docking and multiple CMs (so we can do ultralight Apollo-style landers that don't need to carry all the fuel to get home as well).

Still working on the landing/return vehicle for my next Eve attempt. I think it's got a chance, although I need to tweak the rocket to make sure I've got enough fuel to get it there. I just need another 6-800 delta-V...

[newman]

Well, I've found that a 3x3x5 large tank ascent stage with 8 mainsails gets any interplanetary stage I want into orbit, or very close to one

[StarSlayer]

Is it at the point where you can dock/reconnect with other ships? 

[General Battuta]

Is it at the point where you can dock/reconnect with other ships?

You can do that right now with mods, or next release on stock.

[Colonol Dekker]

I miss this soooooooooooo much...

Any Orions/Sobeks floating around yet?

[Nuke]

i know theres at least one other person in the freespace community making mods for ksp. mine are kinda crappy and im not sure i want to continue makeing them. but that said it doesnt seem like it would be hard to import freespace models into the game. youd probibly have to sub-divide ships into parts though (however the way they do parts modules might make it possible just to have single part ships, ive seen some mods that do that already). like what if the ancients were kerbals?

[Pred the Penguin]

Explains how they died off.

[Herra Tohtori]

i know theres at least one other person in the freespace community making mods for ksp. mine are kinda crappy and im not sure i want to continue makeing them. but that said it doesnt seem like it would be hard to import freespace models into the game. youd probibly have to sub-divide ships into parts though (however the way they do parts modules might make it possible just to have single part ships, ive seen some mods that do that already). like what if the ancients were kerbals?

Well, if you go and split the ships we love so much into sort of modules... we could then create all sorts of absolute monstrosities in KSP...

Just remember to make them realistically sized. I mean, how hard could it be to have a real sized Orion in KSP?

[watsisname]

We're gonna need a bigger VAB.

[Dragon]

Get the VAB obliterator plugin. It should do the trick.

[Nuke]

Explains how they died off.

they let jeb build and fly the subspace assault ship.