Himynameisjake

The Jool 5 challenge has already been done, with much more clarity in the thread mentioned. You can't fly through Jool's core without destroying your ship btw. Also, please read the challenge sub-forum rules before creating a challenge.

Here's the almost finished rover, which can deorbit/orbit from any planet except tylo, laythe, and eve unaided. I'm making some tough decisions between aesthetics and functionality at the moment and have some structural weak points that I'd like to bang out. Right now, the big struggles are adding RCS tanks for stability while roving and docking, adding a docking port, and some tweaks here and there. However this means ditching the Cupola in favor of a lighter and smaller command module, something I'm not entirely ready to do from an aesthetics standpoint.

Ah didn't realize that was an estimate and was real time not game time. I'm still tweaking the final design will upload shortly, but it's a modified version of my lab rover that I posted some time back

How do you define this? I'm currently estimating the tylo leg of the trip around 6 days of driving from deorbit to ascent, with similar time frames expected for Eve, Mun, and Duna. It's not pretty, but it's about as efficient as I could muster for a grand tour tier ship. Also have not decided on a final optimal design for the Laythe poles biome, waiting for Squad to figure out Crescent Bay as well. - - - Updated - - - OMG, this is basically an insane version of my design, i'm in love. fantastic. How on earth did you average 43m/s with that rover on tylo?!?!?

Dang, I shouldn't have come back to read this, recently took an indefinite leave of absence from the community and game, but I really did want to finish this mission and my 600t lander was a huge sticking point....you might get me back yet.

I'd hate to see how much some of the Jebediah's level missions cost (especially my own lol)

I'd really like to hear from someone on this

I think those areas (several in the oceans of Laythe) are shallow areas of the sagen sea, but that's me being pessimistic.

Does not seem to exist. Sat in polar orbit for hours, deorbited at all the major visible even vaguely crescent shaped things, still haven't found anything. Also not visible on the in game biome map.

I feel as though you are providing advice without having attempted it yourself. It was not the least bit helpful

Sure did, even though that is not strictly speaking the geographical definition of a bay. I even broke down and tried alt f12 and it was useless. - - - Updated - - - It does not help in the slightest.

You could also try using Kerbal Engineer Redux's biome readout and just orbiting in a polar orbit until you pass over it. Tried there, I'm convinced they botched the code on this. Guess I'll try the ker...

I have been unable to find it for the life of me. If someone could point me in the right direction, I would be very greatful, please feel free to just message me, let's not post spoilers for those who want to find it themselves.

Well done, another worthy competitor

Finally got around to a bit of updating, and came to find out that BoatParts isn't supported for .25 yet, so, I'm locked out of my Anemoi project for a while Oh well, time to be a productive student!

battery acid drinks...strong stuff

I'll be doing this challenge at some point, completely stock (with mechjeb for stats, etc). Intend to launch either from water (prefered) or beach if necessary. Currently shaving mass, most effective design so far is a 230T lander with a few drop tanks to refuel on surface for Jeb level.

just put Jeb on a chair and you're golden.

That is implying that you can impart that d-v at apoapsis. You have to design your craft to burn for (at least at my TWR) 3/4ths of the total ballistic flight. And you have to account for drift, and about a thousand other things. But, that's just my experience.

This is, again, a simple matter of timing your launch, it doesn't really require super intelligent design, just moar rockets. Kind of annoyed to be bumped on the point system by that but it's your challenge. The obvious winner (as the other options are too difficult for any but the self loathing to attempt), will be a Laythe return mission. I got frustrated with testing the ship, so someone else can figure it out, but it can be done mathematically speaking. You just need to land flat and then have about a thousand quicksave tries to perfectly nail the timing of your orbital adjustment.

Slowly doing the math, but I'm almost positive this is mathematically impossible, not even mentioning the complexity of the mission in it's own right (hitting bop and pol would be nigh impossible from a landing on anything but a perfectly flat surface). I'm not going to bother dissecting the flight path of Tylo to Bop to Pol to Vall to Kerbin, we're going to assume it's possible, landing at perfect places at perfect times and allowing a couple extra keystrokes for transfer and landing (to close solar panels to stop overshoot and to land, because you've got to start and stop the ion engine). So, we start with a probe core chair with 7 xenon tanks (6 of which can be ejected), with strut legs, and a parachute (poor Jeb is going to land on his head). Add some struts to give the decouplers something to bind to) and before you know it, we're at 1.6T that we have to get from Tylo to an intercept with Pol (remember, we're going to have to overshoot by a wide margin because it's going to take a long time to slow down to hit these moons with low enough speed to be considered a soft landing). To get that overshoot, we're going to need somewhere around 5000 total dV aimed precisely. Your launch vehicle weighs 18.25T once you ditch the landing gear and SAS you needed to control and absorb the landing. Now to land that you need a 110T lander. You can't get this off of Laythe. I've yet to figure out a way to do this, even with the added keystrokes.

A little over 24 hrs of game time, just left it running in the background

did it over a couple days, thank goodness for quicksave with engines running lol

I think this one's in the books, some minor aesthetic issues with the post (two launches pasted together because I forgot to shoot the good launch take off, and righted the lander because it was annoying to come in sideways), but I think it's clear lateral thrust is the winner. 68,749,321.5 points.

I'm over 5m for my periapis now, still burning away.