jinnantonix

Actually, you can see the docking in the video of Drespollo at 5:45. I used exactly the same lander and orbiter for Eelollo. In both cases, the lander redocks with the hitchhiker using it's aft docking port. Anyway, here's a shot of it in the VAB, showing the landers aft docking port.

Eelollo Completed, yielding 4,229 science points. Screenshots below. Mohollo next. Lander Orbiter Rendezvous Eelollo 1 ready to transit to Kerbin

Drespollo Mission complete. Implemented the solution in accordance with Werner von Kerman's vision, and with artificial gravity for the interplanetary journey

Drespollo mission is under way, spoilers below. Draft Kerpollo program: Drespollo to be completed, confirming basic mission design and schedule. Eelollo is expected to use exactly the same craft, adding new science instruments. Mohollo will upgrade the craft to Saturn-V C to include Stage 3 and 4 upgrading to NERVA atomic engines, to provide improved ISP (efficiency) and more delta-V. The multi-world missions will have an ISRU facility. To handle the extra payload, Saturn-V D will incorporate the latest tech Mastadon engines and boosters for Stage 1 and 3.

LOL, didn't that happen in Interstellar (except there was a happy ending).

And here is my Minpollo entry.

Thanks @Death Engineering, and thanks for running this excellent challenge. Thanks @hoioh. I will. And I will watch with interest as other challengers hone in on the target I have set. Good luck all. We need more Kerbals on Duna!

Well you did say "challenge yourself". Further to this, I am including three Kerbals, and using the M.E.M. stock lander on all missions, also I am planning all interplanetary missions to provide artificial gravity (centrifugal force) by rotating the craft so the Kerbals are comfortable, and able to play checkers during the flight. The craft design will be a mix of classic Apollo CSM + LM, and the below concept which I saw in the movie Astronaut: The Last Push. "Crazy?", Werner von Kerman would be insulted. Anyway test flights are very promising. Which is good, because I expect to use this launcher for the next few missions.

Minpollo ready to launch, This time a 3x Kerbal mission, Apollo style.

Well done. Try Duna Outpost Mission Architecture - that will keep you busy for a while. I am just starting now, and will be going 100% stock, no mods, not even visuals. My intention is to try to design each mission in the spirit of NASAs Apollo program, and design the rocketry the way Werner Von Braun would. So executing similar to the DasDunaProjekt Challenge. I am just doing Munpollo now, and even though I have only unlocked a small part of the tech tree, I have an Apollo CSM , LM and Saturn V (-ish) components, and will run the mission Apollo style, and since I don't have docking ports yet, I will just EVA instead, and discard the LM at the Mun. After a couple of false starts, here is Kerpollo and Munpollo completed. Initially I did some minimal runway science to open up some tech, then did a Kerbin polar orbit. The science points from this opened up enough tech to do the Mun mission. Needed to be pretty creative to mimic Apollo, but it worked OK, the craft were very reliable and i had tons of dV. I collected some extra science by using storage containers, and gathering fly-by , orbital and suborbital science, with lots of EVA reports while in polar orbit around Mun. >1000 points!, enough to open the whole next tier. Check it out.

Mission completed At Year 10 Day 1 there are 100 Kerbals on Duna with resources to last until Year 10 Day 420 , and the Transit 5 recovery mission under way. Mission Value: 157380 NPM: 31 tons (21 launches) Efficiency: 157380 / (31*21) = 249.8 Achievements: 29 Mission Plan: https://imgur.com/a/AjdNjto Calculation of score. Current state (at Year 10 Day 1) Mission Observations: The key to a successful DOMA project is to fully plan all aspects of the mission, including calculating all resources required, and build all the payloads before launching anything. I found that as I was building the later part of the mission, I needed to adjust the earlier payloads, and this was critical to the project success. Another key aspect of this solution is that it requires the launching of very little fuel - only enough to get the ISRU enabled NERVA tugs to Minmus. Mining/refining all fuel at Minmus and Ike allowed me to increase the efficiency of the mission, and get more important stuff like seats and resources into orbit. Having a single SLV with one big fairing saved me a lot of time and effort. The SLV performed very well with Mechjeb, each launch was reliable with zero problems (except the occasional operator error). When you are doing 21 launches, it pays to have an easy, automated launch facility. One thing I regret was not researching TAC-LS enough, and building neat greenhouses to reduce the size and complexity of the outposts. Having lots of empty resource containers is fugly. The only achievement I did not fulfil was having basic rovers. No regrets there, it was going to require too much mass, and meant building a much smaller outpost with less Kerbals on the Duna surface.

Transit 4 mission complete. At Year 9 Day 10, there are 100 Kerbals on the surface of Duna. Sorry about the jerky video, if I can figure out why its happening I will fix and resubmit

@5thHorseman, just for clarification on rules: "You may use one lander to land on multiple worlds in the longer missions, and the same orbiter to orbit multiple worlds. However you do not have to." For my multi-world missions I would have two craft A and B. On some worlds A is the lander and B is the orbiter. On other worlds, visa versa, B is the lander and A stays in orbit. OK?

Looks like some of you have finished the challenge already, and I haven't even started. I'm still busy finishing my Duna Outpost Mission Architecture submission. No matter, I love science missions, and this challenge looks like heaps of fun, so I'm in. Will be back in a week of two with my submission.

@zanie420 I noticed that bug in my recent Eve Science Mission. Landing gear suddenly changes orientation for no reason. I had to back up to previous saves on more than one occasion.

DOMA Transit 3 mission At Year 6 Day 250 there are 64 Kerbals at the Duna Outpost, and backup plan fully in place, with a plan for evacuation of all Kerbals from the surface with two launches of the DEV, refuelling at the DSS. Transit 4 mission is under way.

DOMA Part 2(b) Addendum to Mission 2: Jeb and Bill return to Kerbin

Well done @Death Engineeringon completing the challenge. I am impressed by how much effort you put into the science collection on the Duna surface, there would have been many game hours in that. I will be just hopping around in the Duna Space Bus to the nearest 5 biomes. I have found that having two autonomous NERVA tugs with integrated ISRU capability is working fine, swapping on each transiit window, no requirement for any aerobraking or tossing payloads at Duna. The only challenge is in ensuring that I have enough fuel tanks to move 155 tons of payload with each transit. The key is in transiting fully fuelled from Minmus and refueling again at Ike. After dropping the payload of Kerbals and resources in Duna low orbit, the tugs seem to always have enough fuel remaining to return on the next transit window to Kerbin/Minmus without a need to refuel at Ike, although that option is always available. I got very confused about how to best implement TAC-LS components most efficiently, and just gave up and designed the mission with just lots of containers of food, water and oxygen. No, not even a greenhouse or water filter. This has resulted in a lot of empty containers attached to the outpost habitation modules, which looks very ugly. In retrospect, I wish I had spent more time on a more space/mass efficient life support system. At this stage I do not propose to leave the outpost fully Kerballed, and will have everything in place for nearly fully abandoning the base post year 10, with perhaps just a few Kerbals remaining to process the science in the labs. I am currently prepping the third transit to Duna with 36 Kerbals aboard. The third video will be ready in a few days. I expect mission complete in about 3 weeks from now, depending on how much leisure time I get.

Here is my Christmas Challenge video, starring Jeb Kerman as Santa.

Hats off to you @ManEatingApe that was too good. You are the deserved winner of this challenge.

Here is my Duna Mission 2 video. It doesn't include shots of Jeb and Bill returning to Kerbin, I will put it in the part 3 video as a prologue. 28 Kerbals on Duna! So far the mission is following to my cunning DOMA plan. The only part of Mission 2 where I had a challenge was when I found I had underestimated the amount of fuel needed to get a 155 ton craft from LKO to Minmus orbit. I ended up needing to send my NERVA tug on a few trips from Kerbin to Minmus and back between the DOMA 6 and DOMA 7 launches. For brevity, this was only shown as a single round trip in the video. I may need to adjust the final two missions to take this into account, I am thinking of lifting each payload with the NERVA tug individually to Minmus, and assembling in orbit there. I also think I do not have the dV for the Minmus - Duna Transit 3, - maybe need to add some fuel tanks, and reduce the number of Kerbals?

Happy Holidays, all. Here is my entry: Flight time was 2 hours: 54 minutes : 30 seconds Christmas Rover The rover (aka Thunderbird 2) has 22 seats, 16 for the reindeer and 6 for Santa (aka Jeb Kerman), who has his own Mk3 Cargo Bay CRG-25. The rover, piloted by engineer Bill Kerman, is attached to expendable Mammoth boosters and launches from the KSC, executes a suborbital hop to near where Santa has crashed his sleigh, lands using chutes, and travels over the ice Northern Ice Shelf at up to 100m/s . The LY-10 Landing Gear is is very robust and never breaks on the ice. Santa and his reindeer board the rover (10 minutes) and ore is mined (25 minutes) filling tanks in the cargo bay,. The heavy drill rig is then decoupled. The rover then speeds the ore and occupants at up to 250m/s (faster after dropping drill rig) to the North pole to rendezvous with the delivery craft. After transferring the ore, the rover, Santa and reindeer are recovered (regenerated) to the KSC. Christmas Present Delivery The delivery craft launches from the KSC, piloted by Val Kerman, and travels to the North Pole, close to latitude = 0. The craft includes J-404 Panther Afterburner engines which run dry mode over land at 300m/s and wet mode over sea at 700 -750 m/s At the North Pole, the rover docks using the port at the rear of the craft and transfers the ore. The craft then returns with Val and Bill aboard, to the KSC, Island Airport and finally Dessert Runway delivering the presents (ore). The outer tanks are dropped during the flight to save on fuel. Navigation A flight path was used to stay over the sea as much as possible to maintain high speeds, and remain in daylight. It felt a bit wrong to fly SW from KSC, but necessary to avoid the highlands to the west and north and stay under 1500m altitude. The craft are built from stock parts. Mechjeb, Atmosphere Pilot and Kerbal Alarm Clock were used to assist piloting. Craft files available on request. I have some video footage of the flight which I will process shortly. I am sure it is possible to beat this flight time: loading Santa and reindeer could have been more efficient and LOx engines added to improve thrust/acceleration.