camacju

well there goes that plan

I've proved that the kerbal can exit and reboard pretty much that same lander design in my previous submission. For Laythe all you need to do is get the camera into the service bay. For the other moons and planets the kerbal can jump high enough to board. https://imgur.com/a/Hb0K424 12 launches I believe. One launch put up a tank and the service module, one for the Tylo descent stage, and the rest launched a single tank. 11 tanks were launched total and I dumped one into the SSTO's fuel tanks on the last launch to save mass.

If you're still wondering how to use magic wings, there are actually better options than the "standard" magic wing which uses heat shields. The flat flag, if pointed upward at an angle of 45 degrees, gives enormous lift/drag ratios. I've gotten L/D in the hundreds of thousands with the right angle of attack. If you point the flag just below 45 degrees to prograde, you'll actually point the drag component forward, and create negative drag while still creating positive lift. You can infiniglide all the way to escape velocity using this trick as long as you have enough control to keep it stable.

This should go in Mission Reports I think

I know this probably won't count but I made a dragless craft which can orbit Kerbin infinitely long in the atmosphere.

You're a bit late on that (: Not sure what happened there

@JacobJHC Another liquid fuel only Jool 5 with some extra challenges added. Single "launch" but craft separates on runway. Only uses one jet engine and one nuclear engine for entire mission. Also I snuck in four additional landings with the extra fuel at the end. The Tylo ascent had a really tight margin because the lander was optimized for atmosphere, not vacuum. Jeb almost had to get out and push!

Ok so here's another submission to the realm of liquid fuel. Using only one rapier engine and one nuclear engine, I land on the five moons of Jool, as well as Duna, Ike, Mun, and Minmus. I've got some ideas for an Eve ascent vehicle as well. Could a liquid fuel only grand tour be possible?

3200 or something like that. Even a lazy gravity assist route to Jool only takes 1100 ish so I have more than enough to flyby all of Jool's moons and get atmosphere samples also.

The fuel pod weighs something like 39.96 tons I think. Plus the main shuttle itself is completely full in orbit because I went overboard on the boosters, so it's basically as if I'm delivering 100+ tons to orbit (fully loaded shuttle + fuel pod) STS-3 submission Ascent Booster drop Plane change and circularization Bill grabs the solar panels from the cargo container Telescope has RCS thrusters for station keeping. Bill welds the solar panels onto the rocket The infrared telescope is fully deployed Descent Landed

Single stage Jool-5 is probably not possible without ISRU and definitely not possible with only liquid fuel

I bet I could get under 0.03 funds per science with a very small change to the current mission But I probably won't unless someone else submits some runs to this challenge

Ok here's my new mission. Again I left tons of room for improvement. I didn't need to bring that extra rocket fuel tank at all, and I could have made the SSTO much smaller also. CSC-2 costs 51364 funds in VAB and is recovered for 50852 funds, for a total cost of 512 funds. Using many gravity assists, it performs flybys of Mun, Minmus, Eve, Jool, Tylo, Laythe, Vall, Bop, and Pol, before returning to Kerbin. I left a good amount of science on the table also - gravity scans above Mun biomes, all science near Eve due to a timewarp glitch, and gravity scans above Eve biomes were all missed. It brings in 14007 science, for a final score of 0.036 funds per science. @DRAG0Nmon https://imgur.com/a/PeakGDB

I just wing it lmao, that's what I do for almost all of my gravity assists. The one exception is if I'm timing an interplanetary transfer, and then I like to use Mechjeb's maneuver planner.

Ok so I'm doing another attempt at this challenge, going to try to get under 0.05 funds per science. The first expedition has many gravity assists. Mun assist -> Eve -> Kerbin and Mun -> Kerbin -> Jool From Jool, low Tylo assist -> Laythe -> skim the top of Jool's atmosphere Then, Laythe aerogravity assist to Vall, then back to Laythe, then I'll try for Bop or Pol

Working on another all liquid fuel jool 5 that uses only one nuke and one rapier

Here's my STS-2a mission (I didn't do STS-2b since this shuttle already has a bit of difficulty landing - an extra 40t fuel pod would make it really hard) Launch. I have two smaller boosters. This will probably be the configuration for almost all of the STS missions from here. Nuclear engines are lit right before the boosters are detached. The shuttle continues to orbit. At 48km I reach orbital velocity and continue burning all the way to GTO. Three comsats, each with an orbital maneuvering package, two antennas, and solar panels Shuttle inserts into an orbit with a period of four hours, and will release each satellite at apoapsis First satellite Second satellite Third satellite Shuttle descends Landed and parked at SPH

STS 1a and 1b: This craft is inspired by the Reaction Engines Skylon. It can go SSTO with a sizeable payload by itself but that's not this challenge. So I added two side boosters, each with three Rapier engines and one Vector engine. The flight profile is pretty simple. As soon as the craft gets off the runway, I toggle the rockets just long enough to get to a speed where I can maintain level flight (~220 m/s or so). Then I keep the nose at 5 degrees until I reach about 750 m/s, at which point I pitch up to 15 degrees. (750 m/s is approximately where the Rapier engines reach maximum thrust). At 16 km I turn on the nuclear engines and the Vectors. The Vectors run out when I'm going about 1900 m/s. From here it's just the four nuclear engines pushing the rest of the way to orbit. In orbit! Difference of 42m between Ap and Pe. Note that I actually did this all on a single stage - I underestimated the amount of fuel held in the side boosters. Flight engineer Bill Kerman deploys the fuel pod This craft has quite an excessive amount of fuel remaining in orbit. I need to burn most of it off before I land. In hindsight I should have used drain valves. After some very responsible use of liquid hydrogen, the two kerbals return to Kerbin. Landed

https://imgur.com/a/26nvnxN I ended up using 1168 funds and recovering 11649 science, for 0.10 funds per science. Time to optimize and try again

Part 2 of the mission: Wow, Jool's moons have way more science than I was expecting. The second expedition got gravity assists from Eve and Kerbin before flying by Tylo, Laythe, Vall, and Pol. (I didn't have enough fuel to visit Bop). The second flight of the probe gained 7775 science, for a total so far of 11566.5 science. 1124 liters of liquid fuel have been used so far, and 170 liters of oxidizer. That's a total of 929.8 funds worth of fuel, for a value (so far) of 0.08 funds per science. I think I'll stop here and just return home. And I've realized that I can probably cut the expenditures in half or less, and get a super good ratio, by not bringing as much fuel and sticking just to these two expeditions. For example the probe only needed to be refueled once, which means that the SSTO itself can be made much smaller, etc.

Nah, a lab can be anywhere and process data anywhere, but you get a bonus for being in the same place

I'm trying a lab-less strategy right now which might take a while. I have a small cargo SSTO in low Kerbin orbit and an even smaller space probe that can run around the solar system and collect science. The Kerbin ascent used 984 liters of liquid fuel in order to deliver 1208 liters of liquid fuel, a space probe, and 968 liters of oxidizer into orbit. The space probe has capacity for 72 liters of liquid fuel and 88 liters of oxidizer, meaning that it can fly out 11 times before we need to return to Kerbin. The first expedition of the space probe flew by Mun, Minmus, Duna, and Ike. I have 3791.5 science currently and possibly 10 additional expeditions, and have expended 859.7 funds worth of liquid fuel and oxidizer. That's a current ratio of 0.22 funds per science, and the initial fuel expenditure will be amortized way down once I fly more expeditions.

Honestly I think the best way to do this is with the mobile science lab in LKO, a fuel tank, and a small efficient probe. The probe flies around, could even go interplanetary, collecting science and bringing it back to the lab, where it's multiplied before being transmitted back home

I used solar panels for my liquid fuel Jool 5 mission since I wasn't using electric props. I think that for the spirit of the challenge, any electricity used for propulsion has to be generated with a Nerv, but any electricity not used for propulsion doesn't need to.

https://imgur.com/a/c6dqdzW 170 science gained. Since this was a SSTO mission with no parts lost, the only costs are fuel costs. The mission used 165 liters of liquid fuel which costs 0.8 funds per liter, and 101 liters of oxidizer which costs 0.18 funds per liter. Total mission cost is 150 funds, for 0.88 funds per science. @DRAG0Nmon Am I calculating this correctly?