winged

Clever strategy is to divide your journey into two ships. First ship "Cargo" should contain as much as possible: fuel to return, lander and its own fuel and about 50% of life support mass. It will reach target using the most efficient trajectory. Your second ship with crew will go directly to your destination only with habitation, capsule, some life support and little fuel just to get into orbit. Obviously its nothing wrong with building one gigantic ship with everything needed to return. It's just doing things the Kerbal way. Spaceships from 2010: Odyssey Two have a weight of 5000t. Regarding gravity assist: I'm using Flyby Finder for RSS, it should help you doing single gravity assists but it has no abilities to calculate deep space manuevers or double flybys which is essential when you want to reach outer planets the most efficient way. So you still need some basic knowledge. A couple of days ago I've wrote small guide how to reach Jool using Galileo style trajectory. It's mainly about making double flybys, proper mid course corrections and combining it with FF abilities. Here is the link: http://i.imgur.com/RaiffgB.jpg http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/118470-1-0-2-Any-hope-left-for-SSTOs?p=1931674#post1931674 I hope it will help you AFAIK it's also efficient to use Jupiter first if you want reach any other outer planet. It can be easily calculated using FF. Maybe Orion? 63000m/s for a crewed Callisto mission should be quite enough Isp 6000s if I remember correctly. http://i.imgur.com/NBHqRDB.jpg

Hey, i've made quick comparision between Google Earth and 8k Mars resolution in RSS. It's exactly the same place, Tithonium Chasma and it looks the same! Just want to say thanks, Nathan Kell, I truly appreciate your work

@r4pt0r I'm not sure if my english is enough good to explain it, but ok First you should know is that Kerbin orbital period is 106 days 12h 30min (Earth time), so if you set first Kerbin flyby to increase your orbital period to 213days, 1hour (2x 106d, 12h, 30min) you will arrive at Kerbin in the same place, exactly 2 years later. After first flyby you should end up with ~11mln km Pe and ~30mln km Ap. It's very easy to calculate if your orbital period is exactly 2x Kerbin orbital period: Time to Ap less Time to Pe should equal 213d, 1h. You can make 1 hour error. Second flyby will be enough to raise your Ap to Jool orbit. Of course you will need some tweaking between two flybys: first to set your flyby on the proper position of Kerbin (dark side, bright side) to increase your velocity instead of decreasing, second to set proper Kerbin Periapsis: 500-600km should be enough, litle less and you will set your Aphelium too high. Obviosuly the arrival time of your first Kerbin flyby have to be exactly 213 days before the middle of launch window from Kerbin to Jool. So your second arrival will be during the launch window. Its very helpful to go to settings.cfg and set CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT TO 5 (default is 3). It will show you your next encounters, orbit parameters after encounters etc. Ok, now you need to know how to perform first Kerbin flyby. To do this job you will employ Eve. I know a guy who can calculate this on his own (Von Ziegendorf, he has an account on this forum) but I'm using Flyby Finder. It's pretty useful tool to plan single flyby like Kerbin-Eve-Kerbin but unfortunately it has no abilities to calculate double flybys and deep space maneuvers (Cassini, Juno). Also there is no possibility to go efficiently to Jool/Jupiter using single Eve/Venus or Duna/Mars flyby. There is full instruction how to use it: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80978-Flyby-Finder-for-KSP-V0-60 So let's assume that 512 day is good launch window to Jool. 512d - 213d, 1hour = 299d It means that your first Kerbin flyby have to be on 299 day. So go to the Flyby Finder and find Kerbin-Eve-Kerbin trajectory with Kerbin arrival on the 299 day. FF will show you Kerbin departure date, inclination of your parking orbit (yes, you will go into inclined orbit), prograde delta V of your transfer burn, Eve arrival date and closest encounter, then Kerbin arrival (it should be on 299 day) look, here is good example: High Vz mean that you will start from highly inclined orbit (18 degrees in this case) As you can see the second arrival is 299,01 day, you need to perform flyby to get orbital period 213d after it. So your second Kerbin flyby will be 299+213 = 512 day. And the 512 day is launch window to Jool! That's how the full trajectory should look: http://i.imgur.com/C6e34Wu.png http://i.imgur.com/PTq3fj8.png Obviously your first burn will be never 100% accurate, so you need little tweaking to get accurate Eve encounter date and Eve Periapsis. It's best to set up the radial and prograde velocities while 180 degrees from the target and normal velocities while 90 degrees from your destination. See the picture below: I can go to Jool using only 1220m/s with this while the record is 1011m/s (Mun gravity assists and lots of crazy things), so it could be quite useful. BTW how to make thumbnails?

That's pretty impressive! Can you tell us how you made it to orbit? Or is it something special with design? I think that you can easily make Single Stage to Laythe and back + cargo (5-8% of the start mass to Laythe surface) using Galileo style trajectory like Kerbin-Eve-Kerbin-Kerbin-Jool.

My Eve launcher, 115m high, 6740t start mass, 700t to LKO, 420t to Eve surface with nuclear transfer stage. One and half stage to orbit, boosters + core stage. It can also work as SSTO (without boosters, only core stage), 460t to orbit. More pictures: http://imgur.com/a/zU0qx#0

Hydrogen just to get better Isp

Any source? link?

I nominate SWDennis for Best KSP Channel Overall http://www.youtube.com/user/SWDennis KSP Single launch Jupiter moon Grand Tour in RSS for Best Video Overall Kerbal Space Program- Ares: Voyage to Mars - RSS for Best Artistic Video KSP:Stock System Grand Tour for Most Under-Watched Video

8K for Earth and Realistic Visual Enhacements, that's why it looks so beautiful. Yes, I am using full RO and there is one problem. RD-120 and RS-25 are most efficient first stage engines in the world but none of them have restart capabilty. I will need to install another engines + different fuel just for landing. Regarding panels... well I've forgotten to put them so it runs out of electricity very quickly

What about Single Stage to Mars and back? This rocket weights 3150t on the launchapd, it can send 200t to LEO (from Kourou) and ~ 70-100t to Mars using free return trajectory. Payload goes to the Mars surface while rest of the rocket can easily back to Earth using gravity assist. This version uses 24x RD-120 and one NERVA for interplanetary transfer but I will probably switch to 20x RS-25 and 2 NERVA to get better/similar performance and 2x higher TWR. Currently it's not reentry/landing capable but it's just a matter of time when it will be ah.. it seems like it could go to Jupiter and back but without useful fraction of payload (just giant flying fuel tank ) More pictures: http://imgur.com/a/f88Ff btw. how to make thumbnails?