After previously sending an unmanned Rover to the Mun, I now felt confident enough to see if I could send a manned one (and have the Kerbal come back to tell the tale). After designing the rover (bigger than the previous unmanned one) it was time to design a vehicle to bring it over and bring back the Kerbal.

This proved to be more difficult than I expected.

There were some failures:



Finally a big set of rockets with some SRBs was created, and the payload housed in an inline fairing.


On our way!


SRBs gone


2 more stages off


Target in sight (and another mid boost stage gone)


There goes the fairing


Payload exposed in the middle


Slowing down over the Mun


About to touch down! Pretty big construction to land!


Made it!


Now the manned (return) part disconnecting and hopping off the main Rover lander




Down side by side


Time to get out and go to the rover


He seems impressed enough


Jetpacking to the command seat


Now here's a little break in events. I had a rough plan how to get the rover out with a couple of different suboptions, I chose one (prolly the wrong one), didnt execute it correctly, but the rover survived so I decided to press on. Tonight I'm gonna fly it again (but to Minmus) and try a different approach on the rover disconnect and see how it goes

But I made it! Rover time!




The Empress has her flag placed and can be proud once again


Let's go back home!


Overshot the base a little bit, but not bad


Did I mention the rover has RCS, SAS and four liquid fuel engines? It flies around in the low gravity environment like a harrier and is very nicely controllable, I want one in real life lol



Hope you like it! If you like tinkering with stuff, and like space things, and dont have this yet, get it! I'm glad I did. (if you need more convincing, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RkDOOsGg-9I

Didn't know you could go to the planets! I thought it was just making it into space. That looks great lol, can you control your Kerbal too?

Yeah you can control the Kerbal. In space and on planet.

Oh,and nice screenies Tomcat

Oh yeah you can. The "earth" like planet has two moons, and then there's a bunch of different planets and some of them also have several distinct moons. So plenty of places to go. Getting back is the hard part lol

You can control the little kerbals yeah. They can space walk or walk around on moons/planets if you can get them there. They have a little jetpack to zip around with but be careful, it does have limited fuel. And your kerbal can plant a (custom) flag, in my case it's a picture of their Empress (our dog lol). And you can also name the flag site and add some accompanying text which you can view again as a plaque:



And he can leave his lander and get into and drive a rover as you can see

All in all, good fun

Cool

I'm trying the demo and have a feeling that it's gimped for the demo to stop you getting to high as I don't seem to be able to get very high lol

Mace,the demo doesn't have the features of the full game but you can still get into orbit with it.Even I managed to eventually

if you get stuck, I highly recommend watching some Scott Manley videos, I started with this one and it helped me a lot. I put it on my laptop next to my computer running KSP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgPr4q5tj-Q

The demo is a gimped version in that it does not have all the extraterrestrial bodies but not in that it limits your orbits or anything like that. There just isnt anywhere else to really go in the demo other than an orbit or to the sun.

In the full game though you can go to all kinds of planets / gas giants or moons of other planets / gas giants. You just need the skill and motivation to get there

...but only at night I hope? Otherwise it will be too warm.

I'm fairly sure that the Demo lets you go to the Mun.

That's the only sensible way surely? I think a night sun mission is in order!