Blue

I beleive the technical term is "Swooshable".

When I was testing my lander for Laythe, it was actually made for Tylo with Laythe as an afterthought, simply with the addition of parachutes. (Granted, it was a rocket-assisted parachute landing...) The benchmark of those two landing-takeoff requirements is having enough delta-v to be able to be used as an SSTO from Kerbin. If you can launch your Laythe lander from the Launchpad into LKO without havnig to stage anything, it has enough power to get into Laythe orbit with fuel to spare, or land on Tylo if you 'don't spare the horses'. I know I'd be horribly botching the math for this rough approximation, but in my playing, I do my gravity turns to 5-10° at 10km on Kerbin, 30° at 20km and 60° at 45km. With Kerbin's atmosphere terminating at ~70km, scaling these values down according to Laythe's atmosphere terminating at 55km, you'd begin your gravity turn at 8km to 10°, 16km to 30° and to 60° at 35km. Then again, the counterpoint to all of this would be the fact that I am one of those who actually will trial-and-error savebomb rather than actually planning an ascent and such with math.

Return mission from a Moho landing is a pretty expensive trip.

Only 40000 years until it hits something.

That's actually pretty impressive, and a respectable speed for real-world standards. Beats out a Porsche by a factor of 2.

From what I understand, simply leaving Kerbin's sphere of influence and staying out of any other planets' qualifies as "Kerbolar orbit". But technically you'd actually have to put yourself in a controlled intentional orbit if you really wanted to make it specific. I actually decided to make two satellites have a cross between escape and low orbits by putting them into extremely eccentric, inclined orbits like comets. They'll come back in 65 in-game years. Hopefully by that time I'll have invented a system for intercepting one and returning it to Kerbin.

The rule of thumb is that Moho's ideal launch window recurs every month or so, and a round trip to Eeloo takes in the order of 3 years.

Well many people find it simpler to cross things over by taking their favourite fan-thing and then wiring their knowledge of orbital mechanics and aerospace engineering into it. Such would be the pretext of generating My Little Pony space programs with narry a Kerbal to be found. I would argue that why there aren't many direct KSP Crossovers is because it's an odd thing to play straight (seeing as they speak in reverse Spanish) and weird to bend (ignoring that, you're still trying to get in contact with literally little green men). To some, or many, it just isn't very appealing, perhaps.

Improvised Lithobraking sounds like a euphemism for "crash and burn" that isn't even trying xD

If you're particularly clever, you can use ion probes as low-gravity world landers, such as on Pol, Gilly and Minmus.

Somehow I think that a supermassive terrestrial planet with a behemoth atmosphere would be too intimidating for a little player like me to be interested in. Of course it would have to sit where Tyche theoretically sits. With such a titantic challenge, adding another layer to it wouldn't be all that much harder

Man. These submissions really make me want to ramp up my ambition. All things considered though, I think I fared well for my very first mission out to such a distant target.

Delta-V is a measure of acceleration, i.e. "speed-change". Also if it's useful, ISP or Specific Impulse can be alternately termed "speed-change potential per amount of fuel".

The farings eject with a decent amount of force and the impact is what causes them to damage other engines. If farings are mounted, be aware that another engine must be at least 1.5m away (a little more than the width of a 'regular' diameter-sized part in order to not be destroyed by the ejection force of the farings. That said, the impact may still cause damage. Although damage does not decrease the performance of the engine, it will lower the tolerance the engine has for future incidences before it fails or breaks off.

Who needs to be practical when you can be dramatic? WELCOME TO REALITY

Do we get extra points for doing it Stock?

My first thought upon reading the thread title was "Oh good god"

I know what you mean-- the spacecraft I used for my mission had a phenomenal amount of fuel to spare when I got back to Kerbin. One might think of that as a oversighted luxury of a design, but it's because I was planning on doing a rather sizable return mission to Moho when this contest came up. But the thing that doesn't quite sit well with me is the fact that you had to go and upstage everybody else by a factor of about 1500%. At least we're not in the same category-- it'd be something to see for someone to do a mission like that entirely stock.

Okay that just ain't fair

Yeah, using Alexmoon's Launch Window Planner, the ideal launch window for Eeloo departure immidiately after starting a new game is Day 61, and no sooner than Day 45.

I wonder what would be the safest but also deepest part of the atmosphere you could descend to, while still being able to accelerate back up to an orbital velocity and rendezvous (for returning to Kerbin.) Like a surface-sample mission, except it's an atmospheric sample.

"...Space-craft." - - - - - - I was thinking a 'Weekly Challenge' thread would be a hub from which they would be continually provided-- but then that raises the question of how one thread could support all of the replies and questions about any given week's challenge on it. Which is why they made a separate forum for all of the challenges presentable...

Thanks, Man. This has been fun! My first Challenge... By the way, will you be updating the first post scoreboard? ____ Holy.. Cats! Mesklin that was awesome! I'm totally ramping up my ambition based upon that. All the entries here are really inspirational. I like seeing how my design of Beethoven (which is actually a copy-paste of a vessel I named in my main career called Tarsus II, designed for a mission to Moho) worked so spectacularly, with enough fuel to spare to get the capsule back out to Jool if I wanted.

No torque allowed by controller bodies-- RCS only Vessel must be kept in a "Barbecue roll" lest it overheats-- and must be kept so using only the lander RCS

Here's my allegedly 580 point entry: 1. Launch of the Beethoven Interplanetary Spacecraft (Replica of my main-career save Tarsus II, which was designed for a return mission to Moho. 2. Launch of Symphony Tanker 1 3. Rendezvous of ST1 4. Landing of ST1 5. [Allegedly bad] landing of ST2 6. Undocking of ST3 7. Rendezvous of the Science/Landing Payload 8. Launch of Crew and Fuel Tanker 4 9. Assembled and Fueled Beethoven Mission. Minor fuel tanker 5 is shown docked. (Not shown, launch of Logistics Satellite to high orbit farther than Minmus, for time-warping forwards to Year 1 Day 61 for the ideal launch window.) 10. Departure from Kerbin 11. Course Correction at Departure+25 days, arrival time will be T+1y170d 12. Arrival and descent to Eeloo 13. Deployment of the Ode to Joy Station, with 2 Large and 2 Normal Docking ports. 14. Deployment of the Fate Lander 15. Jettisoning the Structural Faring 16. CubeSat A, deployed from Fate 17. CubeSat B, deployed from Fate 18. Fate Lander showing undeployed Scherzo Rover and Permanence Probe w/ Mapper Probe 19. Fate, moments from touchdown 20. Fate, with 3 Kerbals, Rover and Permanence/Mapper 21. Second flag planted 2km away 22. Driving back at night 23. Fate with Rover and Permanence/Mapper. Here the Permanence is shown lying on the ground, with the Mapper Probe ready to be Launched. 24. Fate departing Eeloo-- 640 days to get there, spent only 2 days on the surface. 25. Fate rendezvous with Beethoven 26. Beethoven heads home 27. " 28. Unmanned Fate Lander lands on North Pole 29. " 30. Kerbin-bound transfer 31. Kerbin arrival 32. Reentry 33. Splashdown and back home safe. 34. " Thus I will copy the score I accounted for myself, copied from the previous page. 150 - Party in the House (x3) 50 - Mission Control Did not notice the criteria for 'must have refueling ability'-- station has no spare fuel tanks. Is this award fully discredited? 25 - Seeing the Sites (x1 Rover) 100 - Last Year's Model (100% Stock) 80 - We're Here... Now What? (x4 probes; 2 orbital, 1 stationary, 1 launches from stationary) 225 - Tab 'A' into slot 'B' (Transport Vehicle, 5 Refuelings, 1 Crew Launch, 1 Science/Lander Launch, 1 Kerbin Logistics Satellite) 580 - Total Score, not including Mission Control. 630 if my space station qualifies. 530 if it does not, and the two launches which I explained but do not have pictures of, are discounted.