EvermoreAlpaca

Stock grand tour of the kerbol system, landing on all bodies. Ion engines were used everywhere except for the ascent to a 75 km-ish LKO, and the landings on Tylo, Laythe, Eve, and Duna, All parts were recovered with the exception of the eve lander. No ISRU or additional launches to refuel. Kerbal's EVA pack was used for orbital module docking. Also submitted for Jool 5, #doublesubmission

Thanks man <3

Video of mission with commentary This began life in the design phase as a fully recoverable jool 5 mission. It quickly turned into a full grand tour when I discovered how viable the modular lander approach was. It uses stock parts, with a single launch of 94 tons. The end result proved to be rather over-engineered, and had 26k+ units of xenon fuel left at the end I landed on all planets and moons, without refueling or ISRU. All parts were recovered with the exception of the Eve lander. No Kerbals were harmed in the making of this video. If I find some more time I'll put together a chart of all the dV. There were a lot of maneuvers.

Or you can slap an extra pair of elevons on in reverse and land backwards!

I honestly did that mission when I was still learning the game. You could do it with much less overall mass, particularly if you ditched the single stage paradigm and used an air breathing stage to LKO. Gravity assists also could vastly reduce the necessary dV. One could easily hit every biome in the game with a single launch, it would merely be a question of patience. For the amount of extra room available, consider that the eve lander I used on that was something like 35 tons empty. The eve lander I use now is 3 tons empty.

Laythe is a fantastically fun destination, and I have done several missions there, it is certainly my favourite vacation spot. Laythe has an interesting atmospheric curve, that allows you to continue running air breathing engines until quite close to space. As a result, it is very easy to pick up a lot of speed in the upper Laythian atmosphere. As long as you are well shielded from heat you can either cruise long distances in atmosphere, or reach space for far less fuel than it takes to do so on kerbin. If you are planning on landing big planes on the surface of laythe, I would recommend you add landing gear near the rear of your craft to prevent tailstrikes while landing on the dunes. In terms of getting to Laythe, the Kerbin->Eve->Kerbin->Kerbin-> Jool route is ludicrously awesome. You can get to Laythe with as little as 1100 m/s dV from LKO.

I did an ISRU grand tour with all the science experiments a while back. It was done in a campaign that wasn't fresh, and I lacked the patience to take the rover to other biomes when planetside. That all said, I still collected 43,382 science. One could without a doubt start a fresh game with no biomes already researched, actually take their landers around the surface, and get a lot higher score. It would be a test of patience more than anything else. https://gyazo.com/d861a08a1285c5a75a3e958d6e90ada7

Pretty sure that refers to having one thousand Rep, which I am not particularly close to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qa9aWBvw0k The biggest Laythe SSTO yet! 564 kerbals, submarines/jets/assorted other toys. A bit on the long side but I think y'all will enjoy it.

Book 9 up!

You could most likely do this mission with just the mk3 cockpit reaction wheel. That being said, there are two clearly visible Advanced Reaction Wheel, Large behind the 1.5m to 2.5m adaptors on the side fuselages. =) Only necessary for the landing on the Mun, and even that could probably be done without them. If I recall correctly, I only had one advanced reaction wheel and no mk3 cockpit in this mission:

Makes sense, your mom's supply of calories is indefatigable after all

You mean the hospital grade double oversized door?

I don't know your mother's address =(

Wow I didn't realize I was featured here! Thank you for all your work. I am currently working on an even more outrageous mission, but won't have any more time to work on it until next weekend most likely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhMVYuaOKzM I tried to include everything you'll need in this one, hope it helps.

Tutorial Video Please feel free to ask any questions here or on the youtube page.

Triple moon fly by into the Joolian system Joolian assist onto almost immediate Eeloo fly by

Bill makes space profitable! Launches with tanks mostly empty, 314 tons at launch Flies to the Mun, refuels with ISRU on the surface. 842 tons at launch from the Mun Lands on Kerbin with 677 tons remaining, cashing a net profit from the fuel returned!

Updates continue, as Bill begins some commercial endeavours. Links added to the original post.

You don't "need" that many rapiers to get from air breathing altitude to orbit. That being said, RAPIERs are better at being air breathing engines than people give them credit for. The whole point of air breathing engines in this paradigm is getting as much velocity as you can before switching to closed cycle rockets. RAPIERs maintain thrust to a higher velocity than even the whiplash ramjets. In some cases you can improve overall performance by switching to whiplash, or running a combination of both. That being said, the pure RAPIER configuration is quite good!

Due to the single stage design, heavy use of gravity assist was necessary to finish without refueling. Interesting challenge you have there, favouring speed over efficiency.

This was not actually designed with awareness of this thread, my goal was to minimize mass and maximize passengers for a single stage minmus trip. 228 total kerbals, landed on the surface of Minmus and returned to kerbin via a fly-by of The Mun, 73.5132 credits per kerbal. I was curious to verify my assumption that the cost of fuel is the only factor with a single stage runway recovery, so I calculated the cost per passenger manually. I launched with 20,070 LF and 5830 OX. I landed with 430 LF and 0 OX. This comes out to 19640 LF and 5830 OX. I checked the costs of fuel, which come out to .8 per LF and .18 per OX. This yields a cost of 16761.4 I checked this against the build and recovery screen, which yielded: 617,886 and 601,125 respectively, for a difference of 16,761. Math checks out! With 228 total kerbals on board (do I count the pilot?) this yields 73.5132 credits per passenger. https://gyazo.com/cdf80851cd4a207f9b09ea1c11b69b90

I condensed that mission into a 6 minute version here: I later did a low mass version here: Obviously, both have a disposable lander that brings the brave pilot down to eve and back up again. Single stage from eve's surface to orbit is technically possible, and I have personally done it using hyperedit to get to the surface of eve, but the challenge of actually landing it there is daunting, if not impossible. In any case, you would have to at the minimum detach the eve plane from a mothership in low eve orbit and reattach when back in orbit. Being as you can just barely get from the surface of eve to orbit without any consideration for the challenges posed by landing, I would be very shocked if anyone manages to achieve a mission to eve and back without losing any parts to the purple beast. Some more relevant advice is this: Don't let anyone tell you how to do your mission. Its fun to look at challenges and take inspiration from what others have done, but personally I have more fun by setting my own objectives and rules, and doing things my way! Case in point, and because I am obsessed with grand tours, I did a single stage grand tour by merely doing a fly-by of each planet and moon, not landing anywhere. Took quite a bit less delta V than I anticipated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghbCTpKJxtY

I ditched the pilot to go even smaller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoqwYB5BrGc&feature=youtu.be 2140 kg at launch. Take off and landing on bicycle landing gear!