I forgot to mention that one other oddity in KSP is that aerodynamic drag is not quite realistic. There is drag, but if you add a nose cone you fly lower (or use more fuel), because the game recognizes the mass of the nose cone, but does not reduce the drag. At some point they will probably fix that. Anyway, that explains why many of the rockets and ships look so blunt and draggy.... it does not matter.
One of the biggest challenges I originally failed at, was to land a Kerbal on Eve, and get him back into orbit. Eve is the hardest planet to get to orbit from, if you do not count Jool (Jupiter) which does not even have a solid surface to safely land on. Compared to Kerbin, Eve's atmosphere is 5 times thicker, almost 50% higher (98 km vs 70), and the gravity is something like 80% greater.
One of the tricks some used was to find a higher altitude location to land on and fly back from, than from close to sea level.
I finally used an "out of the box" solution, though it still took a lot of trial and error to be able to make orbit. The solution worked so well, that I ended up flying two Kerbals into orbit, not just one. A 1-kerbal pod (capsule) weighed 0.8 ton. My No-Pod solution weighed about 0.16 ton.
Here the second Kerbal is climbing up a ladder about to take off.
Shortly after liftoff. The 6 outer tank/engines sets are dropped in pairs, using the parallel "asparaus staging" that is unique to KSP.
After dropping two pairs of engine/tanks, about to get high enough thru the thick (but thinning) atmosphere to begin the gravity turn. At this point all of the engines that are firing in the central core, are getting their fuel from the two remaining side tanks (This is how Asparagus staging works so efficiently).
Outer tanks/engines gone, only the core remains. The side-mount upper stage engines are getting all their fuel from the lower stage tanks, until the lower stage is jettisoned.
The final stage, with the two Kerbals still clinging onto the ladders.
After they made orbit at about 100 km (2 km or less above the atmosphere), my "Synchronicity-II" lander rendezvoused so the two Kerbals could EVA over to it and get inside. From there, they went on to land on Gilly (Eve's moon), explore, then back to Kerbin.
In a far different vein, a prototype of a "ship" used for a different mission. When I did this, the game did not have the open-air seats they have now for rovers, so hanging onto ladder rungs was the only lightweight option (which has some issues, as the Kerbals can slide off).
You often get to see (and take screenshots of) some really nice space scenes......
BTW - this is what my Synchronicity-II lander looks like after it has "asparagus staged" all its other outer tanks and engines. The two remaining engines are very highly efficient (but heavy and low thrust) nuclear engines that make the interplanetary return flights more practical
- George Gassaway
