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Grand Tour Mission Report Part III: Kerbin Interlude: https://imgur.com/a/xUgYxBX This part of the mission took place inside the Kerbin system. First I landed on the Mun and Minmus, before parking my Longrange Shuttle in Minmus orbit. Then I launched my support mission, a standard Gemini, with the Eve lander and Moho transfer stage on board. I then rendez-voused the two in LKO before transferring the lander, transfer stage and a new crew to Longrange Shuttle. I completed the supply operation by landing the supply shuttle and its booster on the KSC runway. While in itself not a difficult operation, it turned out rather stressful, as I had 3 very large and relatively clumsy spacecraft in close proximity. Some highlights: Mun landing Minmus landing The space ballet that was the resupply mission. Here you see Longrange Gemini docked to the support shuttle's booster for refueling, with support shuttle in the background. Meanwhile an MMU is moving the Eve diving bell, which did not fit inside a cargo bay and was therefore lifted as external cargo on top of the booster stack towards the Eve lander, still inside support shuttle's cargo bay. Longrange Gemini, fully kitted out for the inner Kerbol system Support Shuttle landing

Those Shuttles look very cool! I understand about the rotating pods though - that seems to be quite complex to get right. If I may make a suggestion: why not fix them in place vertically? Orientation does not matter in a vacuum, and you aren't going to use NERVs inside an atmosphere anyway.

I used a two-stage Tylo lander with mothership / tanker in my initial Jool-5, with the upper stage to be reused as the Vall lander. I considered using two Gemini shuttles for this run, with the second one functioning as mothership and tanker (no cargo capacity at all, dual wolfhounds - would have had VERY impressive dv). That would have made the Tylo landing considerably easier: attaining orbit from Tylo takes only about 2.2 km/s of dv, while going from Tylo to Pol in a single stint takes about 4 km/s. But in the end I got this to work, and I thought it would be more impressive (and less tedious), so that's why I did it this way. It also meant I had a shuttle to spare for a support flight - stay tuned for the inner solar system run! As a bonus, visiting the remaining outer solar system bodies became trivial, as Jool to Eeloo, Eeloo to Dres,Dres to Duna and Duna to Kerbin each take way less than 4 km/s. I also considered a fully nuclear Shuttle. That gave in excess of 7 km/s of delta-v but did not work out because it would need so many NERVs that the craft would have been unable to land horizontally - too much mass at the back to be aerodynamically stable. Of course, you could make a totally new design that is balanced around that, but I wanted to do this in a craft that has the same shape as my Gemini.

Grand Tour Mission Report Part II: Remaining Outer Planets: https://imgur.com/a/l4kJodM This part of the Grand Tour felt a bit anti-climactic. All these landings are very easy, and finding transfer windows and orbits isn't that hard either. It just takes a LOOOOONG time, especially going to and from Eeloo is tedious. Again, just the landings as highlights: Eeloo Dres. I am doing a very aggressive suicide burn, just to stay in practice. Note that I have plenty of dv remaining, so there's no real need for aggressive suicide burns. Duna landing burn. I performed a belly-flop maneuver, just like what SpaceX is planning for its Starship. I shed most of the craft's speed using aerobraking, flipping to retrograde at the end to do a landing burn. A visit to Phobos station, from my previous DUNA Shuttle missions Ike landing burn

Grand Tour mission report, part I: Jool-5: https://imgur.com/a/f6TnF99 Some highlights: Laythe touchdown Bop landing On Tylo. Note the Kerbal on a command chair next to the ISRU unit. This allowed me to plant a flag on Tylo without using any ladders Landing on Pol. I had all kinds of trouble with Pol as it appears its collision model is broken, at least in my KSP setup. Vall landing (My god this is a lot of work ... I am only 1/3th of the way in)

It is done! The inner Kerbol system turned out to be much harder than I anticipated, but I've finally managed it! At the end of a 61 year mission Longrange Gemini has safely landed on the KSC runway after visiting every planet and every moon in the stock game that you can land on. This mission was also a real stress test for the game engine. I encountered numerous bugs, two of which required workarounds outside the game itself: At some point the docking ports got stuck. I managed to get them unstuck by carefully selecting "make primary docking port" before undocking The fuel transfer system broke down, in that sometimes fuel refused to transfer, and in other cases fuel got transferred where it should not because I had blocked fuel flow Apparently the collision model for Pol is broken. Every time night fell, my ISRU drill suddenly stopped making contact with the surface. The landing gear sunk into the terrain numerous times as well, toppling my shuttle. I eventually landed horizontally instead of vertically, which prevented the toppling over. And I patiently restarted the drill every time it ceased operation. The collision model for Moho is weird as well. Despite lifting off and reaching orbit, the situation was reported as "Landed". It moved in orbit as if over bumps, proving that the game engine really believed that the craft, with pe > 20 km and moving at orbital speed, was moving across the surface. I had to use Hyperedit to fix this. The MMU that was brought by the support shuttle to unload it and transfer parts of the Eve lander to the Longrange shuttle got irretrievably stuck to the Eve diving bell with its Klaw Jr.. Rather than risking an unstable Eve entry and a malfunctioning diving bell, I resorted to using the object thrower from the cheat menu to destroy the Klaw. Report later, I'm going to celebrate first. I have hours and hours of game footage, so it will be a major task to put a report in order.

Thanks! Planting a flag on the sea floor works like this (actual mission footage! I landed on Eve just this morning): It seems like it works as long as some object is keeping the Kerbal down. I also thought it impossible but when I searched this forum I came across this thread: Thanks to @dnbattley and @vyznev for the inspiration. I basically copied vyznev's design for a diving bell.

Since I can no longer contain my excitement over my latest Shuttle adventure, I present to you this unique sight: My newly-developed Longrange Gemini STS variant, during rendez-vous with its support ship (an ordinary Germini Shuttle, still attached to its booster) after exploring the outer Kerbol system. While nominally doing the JOOL STS-1 mission it has since landed on all the moons of Jool, as well as all other outer Kerbol system bodies, including Eeloo and Dres. Back in LKO it will be equipped with an Eve lander and a nuclear Moho transfer stage (both lifted by the Support Shuttle, allowed under the rules of the JOOL STS-1 mission) before going on its way to explore the entire inner Kerbol system. The plan is for the lander to land in Eve's ocean and plant a flag on the ocean floor before going on to Moho, where I will land the Shuttle. If all goes well this will be a complete Grand Tour of the stock Kerbol system (my first!) in a Space Shuttle. During resupply I will also replace the crew of the Longrange Shuttle, which makes this mission a valid entry for STS-4 / 4R as well. My landing on Duna means that this is also a valid DUNA STS-2 at the pilot level, and my Eve lander brings the required scientific instruments for the EVE STS-1 mission, although I plan to do a crewed landing instead of the mandated atmospheric probe. I'll keep you posted. As you can imagine, completing and documenting this flight will take a while.

@JorgeCS Very nice! And very considerate towards Kerbonauts with claustrophobia, a Command Module that is the size of the Universe! I also liked how you re-used part of the lander as your subsatellite. Although I am not the challenge organizer, I don't see any problems with your submission, as there does not appear to be a rule about not using command chairs.

In my quest to obtain a complete set of unmodded badges I did a re-run of my STS-4/4R rescue mission, this time with a fully stock shuttle. Since this mission does not involve cargo I developed a new Shuttle design, Sunchaser. Sunchaser is a business spacecraft with room for two pilots and 8 passengers. The mission follows two Kerbal space tourists on a very special mission: they are on their way to become the first couple to have their wedding in space. Famous Kerbonaut Jebediah Kerman, as captain of the Sunchaser-1 mission, will do the honours. Apart from the wedding couple, the spacecraft houses 4 more space tourists as wedding guests, some champagne, an elaborate wedding cake and a copious number of exquisite snacks. After the wedding, an emergency is declared because the spacecraft propellant tanks have sprung a leak (rumours that the wedding guests drank the propellants after finishing the champagne are completely unfounded)! Now no longer able to deorbit, the newly-weds, their guests and the crew of Sunchaser-1 need to be rescued ASAP! A second Sunchaser mission is launched with just a 2 Kerbal crew, which leaves enough room in the passenger cabin for the Sunchaser-1 crew and passengers. However, since the wedding guests don't have EVA suits with them, Sunchaser-2 will have to dock with Sunchaser-1 to transfer them. In short, I launched Sunchaser-1 into a 390 x 390 km circular, 25.6 degrees inclined orbit and then dumped all its remaining propellants. I then launched the Sunchaser-2 rescue mission into the same orbital plane, rendez-voused and docked with Sunchaser-1. I then transfered all Sunchaser-1 crew and passengers to Sunchaser-2. Finally I deorbited Sunchaser-2 before landing on the KSC runway. Full mission report here: https://imgur.com/a/USpqfz3 Some highlights: Sunchaser-1 ascent. Sunchaser is an inline shuttle design with a single stage booster. While the current booster design is single-use, it should be possible to develop it into a re-usable flyback booster. Sunchaser-2 (left) docking with the out-of-fuel Sunchaser-1 (right). Sunchaser-2 landing on the KSC runway, with crew and passengers of Sunchaser-1 onboard.

Please go ahead with finalizing. While I still love KSP I am currently doing other things.

Thanks for the invite, but I am going to have to decline. My interest in KSP comes and goes (like everything else in my life) and at the moment I am more interested in doing other things.

A very good challenge from this forum: You can choose your own level of difficulty, or do what I did and complete all levels in a single flight. If you want even more of a challenge, do a mission from Kerbin's seafloor to Eve's seafloor and back.

Since my original STS-3 (space telescope) was awarded a modded badge, I decided to do the mission again, this time with a fully stock build. The original telescope only had 2 non-stock parts: I used DockRotate to rotate the mirror segments into proper alignment, and Infernal Robotics to operate the telescope shutter. I therefore had to find stock solutions for the shutter as well as the mirror segment alignment. I built the new telescope shutter out of a pair of stock elevons; to maintain proper mirror segment alignment I used pairs of docking ports: I recently discovered that this gives a more precise alignment than using a single docking port. I also switched to gold-foil panels from the Making History DLC for the mirror segments, to make it look more like the real-life James Webb telescope. I launched my shuttle into a 25 degree inclined 600x600 km orbit before assembling and releasing the telescope. Afterwards I landed both my shuttle and the booster on the KSC runway, with both doing a direct re-entry from inclined orbit. Full mission report here: https://imgur.com/a/WVrq8eJ

I've gone to, landed on and returned from every body in the stock game. I concur with the others: Moho is the hardest to get to. Tylo is probably the hardest to land on, while Eve is the hardest to return from after landing.

Another suggestion for the nosecone: build it out of a 1.25m fairing and clip the fairing base into the Mk3 cockpit. You can make the fairing virtually the same size as the standard nosecone (that for some reason has a much lower temperature tolerance than the Mk3 cockpit or a fairing) and if you have Making History, you can color it black. Well, technically it will be orange but the visible part will be black. Edit: in addition, the nosecone will heat up less if you re-enter with a higher angle of attack. I often re-enter with a 90 degrees AoA to generate as much drag as high in the atmosphere as possible. Latest iteration of my Gemini shuttle design with nosecones made from fairings.

Thanks for the reply! No problems, I was just wondering about a few edge cases. I had an idea to make a self-moving probe core with reaction wheel attached that is able to roll around on its own, good to know that that is not allowed as part of this challenge. I may give 2 a try.

Rules questions: Are you allowed to move on (or below, looking at you, Laythe) the surface from one biome to the next, e.g., by landing a rover or ship? Are you allowed to drop off science packages from the lander? I am thinking of making an elongated lander and landing it on the border between two biomes, then drop science packages from either end, one in each biome. Would that count as a lander that visits two biomes?

I got back from the MUN! And with all science that a Caveman can gather from Munar orbit! Well... I forgot a crew report high above the Mun, but I can do that one during the next Mun mission. It took a few attempts to get my Mun rocket design from the previous post into orbit. Sending it to the Mun turned out to be easy: start burning prograde once you see the Mun above the horizon in LKO and you will get a retrograde encounter with the Mun. I then had to wait until I entered Munar SOI before I was able to do a course correction to get onto a polar Munar trajectory, and after that I entered low Munar orbit. There I gathered all orbital science; this took a while because I wanted to gather EVA reports for all of the Mun's biomes. It turned out I did not have enough fuel to get back to Kerbin: whatever I tried I could not get the Kerbin periapse below 160 km. I therefore launched a rescue mission, which gently pushed my craft until its periapse was inside Kerbin's atmosphere. I then proceeded to land both craft. Full report: https://imgur.com/a/1hHxkGr. Some highlights: Liftoff! My victim passenger has the worst best seat in the house! Bob riding his rocket inside the Mun's SOI Munar escape trajectory. I did not have quite enough delta-v to get my periapse inside Kerbin's atmosphere. I even used my craft's decoupler to give an extra push, but it was not enough. Jeb giving Bob a gentle push to get his periapse inside Kerbin's atmosphere. My science haul. I completed all "in space" science around the Mun, except the crew report high above the Mun.

I finally finished a rocket capable of taking Bob to low Munar orbit. It hasn't been easy to build a rocket within the 18 ton limit that Can take all tier 1 science equipment to the Mun (note that this must include a crew capsule, in order to be able to do crew reports) Can do this with Bob not inside a capsule. Bob on the outside generates a lot of drag, even when he would in real life be shielded by stuff above him. Avoids vapourizing Bob on the way up. I've found that I have to fly a much more lofted - and hence less efficient - trajectory than I normally would to avoid overheating poor Bob Avoids accidental ladder drives. I had a really strange one where, with Bob on a ladder, its PE and AP would continuously vary. I eventually found that this was due to Bob clipping into a Goo canister underneath the ladder. I did not have enough clearance between the ladder and the Goo canister, apparently. I would not dream of cheating by way of ladder drive, but avoiding accidental ones was a new one for me. And when I had a design that worked, I forgot to include an antenna, which means that without crew onboard it was not controllable at Munar distances. I am not used at all to tier 1 facilities: in my mind the Mun is close enough to Kerbin to not need extra antennas. That said, here's the design. Note that I no longer use the structural tube to house Bob: I found that a decoupler at a strategic point pervents Bob from flying out of his cubbyhole during launch. This saved a component, and more crucially, made the rocket a bit less tall, so that it (just!) clears the 20 meter limit without needing 2.5 meter parts. I found a single Reliant engine on the 1st stage combined with 2 sparks on the second stage, in pods so that they can fire in conjunction with the Reliant, to be an excellent combination that gives ample thrust at lift-off (TWR = 1.35), is relatively light and has good TWR on the second stage without adding undue mass or drag.

On that point we agree. Cessnas and airliners *can* do high bank turns (don't discount the maneuverability of an empty airliner with just enough fuel onboard to complete a demo display) but it should not be necessary in normal operation. In my space shuttle I'll do high bank turns mostly to shed excess speed. I have been doing 90 degree banked turns and even split-S, but that is because my energy management is something that I need to work on. As you say, if everything goes right you don't need that kind of maneuvers.

I am going to disagree with you on that one. Whenever you roll the plane, regardless of the amount, the vertical component of the lift vector will be less than when flying straight. This is even true for real-life gliders. It is not very pronounced, and certainly not in KSP with its simplified flight model, but I've also experienced it in KSP. In KSP I use pitch trim to keep the nose up.

Your point cannot be stressed enough. Airplanes DO NOT TURN by giving yaw input (well, technically they can do a flat turn but it will look really awkward). Airplanes turn by banking them, which means the lift vector points to the side a bit. This sideways force pulls the plane into a turn. It also means that the lift vector isn't pointing upwards as far, so if you don't correct for it the nose will drop in a turn. The correct way to execute a turn is to bank, then pitch up slightly. If it is a sustained turn, then use pitch trim to keep the plane in that orientation. The fact that KSP by default enables all control axes for all control surfaces does not help either. You really should disable roll on the vertical stabilizer or else your plane will do a combined roll / yaw every time you want to do a roll. I hardly ever give yaw input in KSP, unless I want to do a side slip. Edited to add a little story that I find quite amusing: I have had a few real-world glider flying lessons, and my instructor was surprised and a bit annoyed that I knew all this going in. My nerdy attitude at the time would not have helped with his annoyance either: He asked me when telling about the plane on the ground what happens when you pull back on the stick. I answered "the elevator will turn upward". "And what happens next?" "Nothing. This plane is stationary on the ground at the moment." In hindsight he probably was looking for the answer "the nose will pull up". Same will roll input: "What happens when you apply roll input?" "The plane will yaw in the opposite direction." Which is true, especially gliders suffer quite badly from adverse yaw due to their aerodynamics. But not what he wanted to hear ("The plane rolls in the direction that you move the stick"). Should not be surprising that I quit after just a few lessons.

Good advice. Almost no-one will be accustomed to m/s. Mach 1 is "only" 340 m/s or thereabouts, so speed can be deceiving.

@Fraktal I made a new thread here: