CaptainHaywood

Alright, so here's the quick rundown: This is the first in a series of mostly-identical "bootstrap" stations I'm going to scatter throughout the system. Each one is powered by a NearFuture fission reactor, and uses storage trusses from NearFutureConstruction to hold ore, xenon, and pure LF for my NERV-powered interplanetary ships. Two ISRUs are used to convert ore hauled up from Minmus by the two miners docked in the background, which refuel both on Minmus and from their own dedicated LF/OX tank. In the long run, there will only be one miner, with the second being transferred to my under-construction Ike station. The miners themselves can hold 18,000 units of ore, and run off a smaller fission reactor. The six Poodle engines and accompanying mini-ISRU provide more than enough Delta-V (~3,000 m/s when under full load) for landing, takeoff, and rendezvous, all of which is handled by MechJeb due to my twitchy fingers not playing nice with razor-thin maneuvering margins. The actual mining process is quite speedy, since I took the time to use a scanning satellite and a rover to identify the greatest possible ore concentration.

So, I've got a fairly detailed question before I even start planning this out. My current playstyle heavily involves what I call "bootstrap space." Basically rather than launching my ships straight from Kerbin and off to their destination, with maybe a bit of orbital assembly, I make heavy use of robotic refueling and mining platforms I have scattered across the Kerbol system. For example, to simply ferry a crew to a Duna surface base, I'd first launch them up to my extensive LKO space station in a barebones hopper. From there, they'd take a second, more powerful ship (refueled thanks to ISRU and ore shipments from Kerbin) and transfer out to my Minmus station. They'd then get on a nuclear thermal interplanetary ship, fueled up from Minmus mining hoppers and ISRU, and strike out for Duna. I've got yet another fueling platform around Ike (lower gravity for miners) that the interplanetary ship would rendezvous with. For the final leg of the trip, the crew would take a lander down from Ike orbit to the base. Is it more efficient in terms of D-V and payload capacity than a direct launch and transfer to Duna? Yes, since you aren't burning the vast majority of your interplanetary ship's fuel just to get it into LKO. Is it more efficient in terms of time to keep the system running? No. But that's not the point. I have several platforms in the Joolian system - one around every moon except for Pol, and one non-refueling station in extremely tight orbit of Jool itself. My question is whether or not making use of preexisting infrastructure, as it were, to ease the trip to Jool (by assembling a brand-new mothership in LKO and bootstrapping out to Minmus) and to top off once in the Jool system would be breaking the rules of the challenge. Going by the letter of the rules, I might be in the clear. Rule 4 might be invoked, but that seems to only apply to the ship used for the challenge. I don't think it'd count as a refueling mission, (which are no longer allowed, judging by the strikethrough) since it was sent out as part of a totally unrelated project before the challenge mission rather than after the mission to provide direct assistance to the challenge mission. As far as I can tell, my refueling stations are just usage of ISRU by proxy. I eagerly await the verdict declaring me wrong, because that's the likely outcome here :p Edit: To clarify, all those platforms are 100% stock.

You need that much power for RO? Dang, no wonder it crashed my laptop. I have a 8th gen Core i3, 8 gigs of DDR4, and Intel UHD 620 graphics. KSP plus Near Future and some convenience mods runs pretty well if I turn off antialiasing, crank up the physics Delta time, and disable vsync. It looks like crap, but it's playable.

Mass Relay. Take two high power engines, (Mainsail is good) point them opposite directions, put a fuel tank between them and connect them with a bunch of struts. Set both engines to toggle from the Abort key. Attach to station. Rotate Relay to point at where you want to send your Kerbal. Fly Kerbal in front of engine pointing towards destination. Max throttle, click abort twice in rapid succession. Great for deorbiting Kerbals and small shuttles.

I built a Danny2462-style Mass Relay and fired nuclear reactors into the VAB from orbit. Don't ask me why, help me deal with the cancer-ridden Kerbals beating on my door.

I tried to use RO but my laptop immediately went into "Kentucky Fried Thighs" mode, so I'm stuck with Snax lol.

Somewhere between rational and Scott. I build sensible rockets... AND THEN I SLING THEM AROUND THE SUN AND EELOO JUST TO GET TO DUNA. I'm serious. I built a Near Future, nuclear powered, 300 part mothership and then sent it corona skimming.

Managed to complete an insanely close pass (sun was filling the entire screen) by slingshotting around Duna to Jool and out to Eeloo before falling sunwards. I hit like 100 km/s when I ran the engines at full burn, and it went up to like 125 km/s after the pass. I currently have a ship with a grabbing arm and a whole lotta Dawns heading out to grab it :p

I plotted a gravity assist trajectory meant to get me to Eeloo. It went Eve > Duna > Jool > Sun > Eeloo. Do not try to slingshot around the sun. Jeb tried and was incinerated in the Kerbolar corona. But hey, the nuclear engines survived!