camacju

ah yes the space shuttle famous for being privately developed and also never killing any astronauts ever that's the example you choose? I'm looking forward to the ninth flight of New Armstrong later this month!

yeah, why doesn't another space company do it better and show us how it's really done? oh wait

For some context, the above video was made after the development of a SSTO optimizer tool. Upon running this tool for a hypothetical Tylo mission it showed that everyone had been underestimating the Terrier engine by quite a bit, and also that using the Rapier's closed cycle mode at low velocity was beneficial because the higher TWR was more important than the reduced specific impulse. These made a Tylo SSTO at this scale possible, where it likely would not have been without these optimizations.

The next thing you should make is an effort to read the rules

And then it gets even more fun! The current low mass Eve/Tylo records are super beatable if you've been keeping track of the tech being developed in the ksp optimization community. Probably at least 500kg savings over both the current Eve and Tylo records. One such optimization is to use a completely unguided upper stage. For Eve, the stage can be made aerodynamically stable, and for Tylo, it can be lined up on the ground before lighting the engine and decoupling. None of the current low mass records use this.

I think the various low mass challenges would also be good for this. Each season a different planet/moon?

There's some fuel margin in the solution I gave, which should allow some time for one of the planes to slow down in flight and enable refueling on the ground.

If you can control planes at the same time and refuel the planes on the ground, a possible method would be as follows (I'm assuming this is approximately your intended restrictions). Jeb, Bill, and Bob take off at the same time and fly 1/8 of the way around Kerbin. At this point they're all at 3/4 fuel. Bob transfers 1/4 of a fuel tank to both Jeb and Bill, bringing them both to full fuel, and has 1/4 of a tank remaining for the trip home. Bob turns around and can fly back to KSC, landing on fumes. He refuels his plane and prepares to take off again. Jeb and Bill fly 1/6 of the way around Kerbin. At this point they're both at 2/3 fuel, and approximately 29% of the distance around Kerbin. Bill transfers 1/3 of a fuel tank to Jeb, bringing him to full fuel, and has 1/3 of a tank remaining for the trip home. This isn't enough, but he begins flying back toward KSC. Bob takes off for the second time with a full load of fuel, and meets Bill 1/8 of the way around Kerbin, where he's just run out of fuel. Bob transfers 1/4 of a tank to Bill, and they both have enough fuel to get home (with Bob landing with 1/4 of a tank, so theoretically Bill could have flown further before returning, but I didn't want to calculate the exact optimum). Meanwhile, Jeb is flying still. He can reach 75% of the way around Kerbin with some fuel margin remaining. When Jeb reaches the halfway point, Bill and Bob take off for the second and third time respectively with full fuel tanks, heading the opposite direction. 5/6 of the way around Kerbin (1/6 from the refueler's perspective), Bob refuels Bill and returns to KSC. 3/4 of the way around Kerbin, Jeb's fuel tank is running low, and Bill has 5/6 of a tank remaining. He transfers half of it to Jeb and turns around to head back toward KSC. Bob takes off for the fourth time heading westward with a full load of fuel. 7/8 of the way around Kerbin, Bob refuels Jeb and Bill. All three touch down at KSC. There's actually a bit of wiggle room in both the outbound and return trips because the refueler's return trip doesn't need to keep three planes fueled, only two. So this general scheme would work for a planet slightly larger than Kerbin. Anyone want to calculate the maximum range? Generalizing this problem to more planes, I suspect the maximum range goes to infinity, since I feel like it would grow as the sum of 1/n (so approximately O(log(n))) where n is the number of planes. I actually did something similar to this a couple years ago when I took the Aeris 4A stock craft to Laythe and back! But I was able to use low Kerbin orbit as a staging area, so I didn't need to mess with simultaneous control.

Youtube cinematics?

A fourth reasonable explanation is bad photoshop. Why else would they refuse to provide the actual footage? (Also, where would they even get it in the first place? If there were really a coverup, that footage wouldn't be released anyway.)

Bill pulls out his standard issue laser welder and wonders why they never read the cargo manifest before?

I completely forgot to post this here! A collaboration between myself and @Ultimate Steve, trying to build and fly the lowest mass stock+DLC grand tour possible. While we didn't quite hit that goal, as there is still quite a bit of mass to be saved, we did take a lot of mass off the previous record.

1.447 ton to Moho by JeDoesStuff

You can also change the vessel type to Debris or DroppedPart and pick it up that way