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Thanks for the tip, i will try setting it from 20 to 21, just to see how it acts. I don't think it would make heating pointless, i'm still using 99% aeroheatgeneration (lot of people are setting it to 0 or 50%) and more conduction would make heat more realistic imo. About Jool aerobraking at 9000 m/s, i think it 100% logical to have instaexplosion, it would be cheating to be able to + you can aerobrake at laythe at a lower speed with a less dense atmo (aerobrake at laythe is very safe at 40km) using the good gravity assists to slow down before encounter. The fact is old players have the habit to aerobrake at jool, the easy way : just set aeroheatgeneration to zero (or mod jool atmo); or try to improve your navigation skills by using good gravity assist, the hard way...

And Jeb made it : (4000 m/s deltaV remaining, lol overdesign)

Vall is a good place to start a base operating in jool area (eeloo is not far)

Operations around Tylo are going fine : Main ion ship + Lander Jeb is going in the lander, while Valentina is transferred in the Mk1-2 pod Moving the Mk1-2 pod, so the lander can take the additional module (big tank and two small aerospikes) Mk1-2 pod back to the main ship, lander ready

Valentina landed on Laythe, next is Tylo, Jeb will make it.

From the right to the left : Tylo, Jool, Vall (small light blue moon), Laythe (dark blue moon) (note : three moons are in the same plane but not my ship, after Tylo flyby it'll be) In Laythe orbit in 1h30 :

Adjust Pe 40 km, slow down at 50km if you see some parts are too hot, keep some fuel for final slow down if your ship is coming too fast, it'll give some time for the chute to deploy.

If you can correctly set a Tylo and Laythe flyby/gravity assist, you can have a 100% free Jool orbit (Pe 1000km, Ap near Laythe in my example). No aerobraking needed. That's what i get if i don't slow down at Laythe (500 m/s capture burn) on this pic : note : Real heat seems to be an interesting mod, i don't like the way the skin temperature/stock can increase very fast. Skin temperature is not a bad idea but it should transmit heat faster to the body.

Start gravity turn at 400m, turn shape 40% (MJ) or 45° at 19-20km, at liftoff twr 1.5-1.6 (non atmo), 0.7 for the last 40% is ok, 3400 m/s deltaV but it'll depend on drag/lift. (mk2 parts have lift, and mk3 parts have less angular drag than rocket parts)

After a small adjustment of the post SOI entrance node, i have finally found the setting for a good Tylo/Laythe gravity assist : now only 500 m/s to be captured by Laythe, no aerobraking and nearly free capture. (edit) In fact Laythe is orbiting Jool at 3200 m/s, so the ship just need to come tangentially at the right time. (the Tylo assist is very optional in that case, i manage a 700m/s insertion without it) Grand Tour going on !

No need of nuclear farts tech, there are more modern and efficient tech (ion/plasma for ex, 6000 isp good thrust)

I launched the Grand Tour Ship to Jool. Now i'm playing with nodes to adjust two gravity assists (Tylo and Laythe), only 1500 m/s to be captured by Laythe, trying to have better. Without gravity assists insertion burn is 3100 m/s, so i'll save 1600 m/s, no aerobraking, the Ion ship is not designed for it. The mass of the refuel tanks for the lander kills the deltaV of the Ion ship (it does not like heavy payload), so i'm aiming Jool/Laythe/Tylo to drop these tanks quickly. Edit : now only 550 m/s to be captured by Laythe, nice gravity assists + tangential trajectory

Eve is still one of the hardest place to land and reorbit. (with Tylo) From sea level you need 7500-8000 m/s deltaV Ship, using mammoths or aerospikes or mainsails. From 7500m (mountains, limit of the denser atmo) maybe 5500 or 6000 deltaV is enough and twr>1 is easier to reach. And atmo entry/landing can be very short / explosive, a lot of heat generation. When you are back to Kerbin, things are easy. If you plan Eve from ASL + Kscale2 + 100% stock without isru, you will have some real challenge.

'Aero Heating Production' setting is in debug menu/physics/thermal, it should be 1.000 (mine is 0.990 btw).

And about Gravity assist for brake/capture or accelerate :

(ksp 1.0.4) I've sent com relay and survey probes everywhere in polar orbit. Landed with 7 kerbals on Duna and Ike and return to Kerbin two times. (non isru) Landed with 7 kerbals on Eve and Gilly and return to Kerbin two times. (isru but harder than duna) Went to Eeloo, landed and back in 2years and 247days total travel time. All was stock, now i'm preparing a modded (more freedom, more possibilities, more fun) grand tour / jool-5 with an upscaled version of the Eeloo ship, and will try to make good use of gravity assists for capture or speed boost. Then i'll probably jump to RSS or another K.rescale for new challenges.

88 days and 31000 m/s is really fast, but not manned and not to, plant a flag and return. Without the lander the lfo+ion ship is close to 27000 m/s deltaV, maybe it needs a little buff to reach 31000 m/s at Eeloo flyby. In the end i'd say same perf, you should try a complete manned travel. Your lifter looks very big, did you have a nuke stage that add a lot of mass ? BTW it's possible to do faster travel but burn times can become very very long and boring, the total burn duration for this travel were approximately 1h40min, still decent with 4xtime warp and 4-5 different steps (leaving kerbin, arrival at eeloo, landing, leaving eeloo, arrival kerbin), stagings and manoeuvres.

Here is a report of a recent manned mission to Eeloo, i did this with a LFO and Ion Ship 100% stock 24000 m/s deltaV, lander included. At that time, i had completed two missions landing on Eve (isru, 7 kerbals from Kerbin to Kerbin) and i wanted something different, Eve is near Kerbin and heavy planet, where could i go ? Eeloo with Ion engines !! I quickly designed and tested it based on previous thoughts and views, it mainly consists of : Lifter (3400 m/s) + aspargus LFO (9500 m/s poodle) + Ion stage (10000 m/s) + Small lander (1500 m/s) I ended with : 1 year 34 days from Kerbin to Eeloo + few days for SOI operations and landing + 1 year 207 days from Eeloo to Kerbin = total 2 years 247 days The ion stage is powered by 3 jettisonable fuel cells arrays during Eeloo orbit (capture is 90% done with LFO) and by 3 Gigantors during Kerbin slow down and capture. Batteries are enough for 50-100 m/s changes. Small adjustments and good evaluation of burning durations and timings were very important because of high speed and possible deltaV losses. Installed Mods : Kerbal Engineer Redux MechJeb2 Kerbal Alarm Clock Stage Recovery Antenna Range StockBugFixModules SolarActionGroup PlanetShine EngineLight Kerbal Joint Reinforcement

Ion engine are meant for vacuum operations, ionized gas in atmosphere is nonsense. (except in very high atmo : ionosphere, the limit of atmo/vaccum) Not for me, but good luck !

Another update on the Grand Tour Ion/LFO Ship, now Mk2 31000 m/s deltaV: - The Gigantor XXL panels (220%, 10x mass and power, 120% power needed in LKO) have been replaced laterally : during this mission most of the ejection and capture burns will happen with the sun on the side. It's not like in the Fast travel to Eeloo where the ship was clearly going from or to the sun, a 3x or 6x symmetry was good for that mission but not here. - Added more batteries and 4 jettisonable fuel cells array and toroidal fuel tanks, that will help the panels and batteries when manoeuvring in Eeloo (mostly) or Jool area. - Adjusted the size of 4 LFO big tanks that will refuel the lander, according to the deltaV map. (will land on 13 moons/planets) Departure in a few days, the ship still need some tests. Note : main ship and lander are reusable, no decoupler or separator, only docking ports

You don't need mining Xenon or Argon (or Lithium ?) with a Ion / Plasma Ship that can have from 20000 m/s to 35000 m/s deltaV (depending on upscale, payloads and mods). It's clearly non isru and probably enough for 2 grand tour with same ship, the lander is the only one that needs refueling LFO (kerolox, hydrolox or methanox) because of medium gravity moons. And good luck landing your ultraheavy full of shields and radiators vasimr+nuke ship, both these tech produce huge amount of waste heat (60-70% primary energy) + the med-high thrust mode of vasimr don't seem efficient when compared to a short lfo classic burn. Classic Ion/plasma and Solar+capacitor produce very little waste heat, and i don't want a ion ship to land, except maybe on very low/low gravity moon when the payload is reduced/empty ion ship. You need little of this Xenon even with a medium/large main ship, the ultrahigh ISP (4000 to 30000, 6000 max for most of these tech) allows it. You just have to produce it on Kerbin like in reality. That said an extrakerbin source of Xenon/argon/lithium is realistic even if probably rare, that's a part of space exploration, finding valuable resources.

LFO engines (LH2LOx) have 410-430 ISP (see Delta IV RS-68 or Ariane Vulcain) and these are main stage engines, not vaccum specialized engines like RL10 or Vinci (465 ISP). 400 ISP Penguin is a nerfed version of real ones. Don't use it if you think it overperforms, simple as that. Btw theoretical maximum for LFO is 500 ISP (tri propellant can go over 500) And you can use the 800 ISP stock LVN, very unrealistic and op (i don't use it) when you consider nuclear engines don't exist, except very few prototypes with 800-900 ISP. Why have they not been nerfed in game version ? People are free to use nerfed real engines or scifi unrealistic nonnerfed engines.

Nice ship and your mission is going fine, well done ! I have a similar ship ssto isru with 1 mammoth and 4 aerospikes, 5900 m/s deltaV thanks to the aerospike vac ISP. But you and cubinator have already launched or completed this type of mission, and after my Eeloo fast travel (stock) i want to try an upscaled version, so i'll go with a modded (tweakscale and srmt) Grand Tour featuring a LFO+Ion Mainship + LFO Lander. Waiting for your next report. PS : an engineer in the ship greatly increases the drills (and isru, not sure about this) efficiency, this allows a faster refuel, but most of the time you have to wait for next transfer window so it won't change a lot for a Grand Tour.

Updated the design of my modded Grand Tour LFO Ion/plasma ship (stockalike-realistic-modern-tech) The LFO first stage (vacuum) has been increased to allow good twr/acceleration while the ship is inside mid-high gravity Kerbin or Eve SOI. (first part of the tour) I've found and cancelled a low thrust torque, it was due to a docking port that wasn't perfectly centered for some mysterious reason. (offset tool fixed it)

Maybe it's due to mod interaction ?