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The Moho lander sets up another Eve encounter at the descending node between Eve and Moho for a plane change and to lower the orbit until it's just below Moho's orbit at this point The two crafts swing around Eve in opposite directions Eve assist - plane change and lowering orbit Jool encounter after a couple of Kerbin assists Capturing around Jool, plan is to use the moons of Jool to get into a good loitering orbit to wait for the Eeloo transfer window Moho assists 2 and 3 plotted Next: Waiting for Eeloo transfer and more Moho assists

So I'm trying to practice abuse of gravity assists and to do that I want to send a Kerbal to Eeloo and Moho for under 10000 funds. The general plan: -Have a solid fueled booster stage and a Terrier powered upper stage to send the spacecraft to orbit -Have a Moho fuel tank, an Eeloo tank, and an Ant powered lander -Use the booster to do most of a Mun transfer and use the Eeloo tanker's Spark engine to finish it (higher Isp than the Ant engine on the lander) From here until Eve it's a pretty standard low energy Mun assist route. -Mun assist to raise orbit into a resonance -Second Mun assist to eject into a 6:5 resonance -Six years later, encounter Kerbin and Mun again to get a 7:11 resonance, dropping orbit to Eve -Seven years later, encounter Kerbin and Mun a third time, getting a plane change and fine tuning Eve encounter -Eeloo tanker separates from the craft here -Eeloo tank passes behind Eve, throwing it onto a Kerbin intercept -Moho lander passes in front of Eve, lowering periapsis to Moho -Moho lander gets Moho and Eve assists until its orbit is lower than Eve's orbit. At this point it performs a series of MESSENGER-style Moho assists to reduce its capture burn -Eeloo tank gets Kerbin assists to Jool and captures around Jool using Tylo, waiting for a transfer window -Eeloo tank transfers to Eeloo with a Tylo assist -Moho lander lands on Moho and returns. It then performs another series of MESSENGER style assists for an Eve transfer -Moho lander grabs assists from Eve and Kerbin to get to Jool, where it follows the same path to Eeloo -Jeb lands on Eeloo and performs a Jool transfer -After Kerbin, Eve, and Mun assists, Jeb splashes down at KSC Part 1: Launch until Eeloo tank separation Rocket is 9995 funds I slightly stagger the solid rocket motors. If I fire them all at the same time, I reach too much speed in the lower atmosphere and things start burning. If I wait to fire the sustainer until the boosters are empty, I lose energy to gravity and drag. I end up firing the sustainer when the boosters are half empty, for a good balance between these two. Gravity turn I coast to the upper layers of the atmosphere to reduce drag and heat. Circularization Mun assists plotted I already have the Kerbin-Mun assist plotted before my second Mun assist This will bend my trajectory around retrograde while also giving a boost from Mun Finally, I get a plane change off Kerbin and Mun, and plot my Eve encounter Eeloo probe plots Kerbin encounters Separation Next: Eeloo probe goes to Jool, Moho lander tries to imitate MESSENGER

Why don't you just use sandbox mode Edit: Also if you really want to do career or science mode it's definitely possible to unlock the liquid fuel tanks without ever using SRB or LF+Ox engines. You just have to be clever about it

What about using the decorative flags as lifting surfaces? Would that count also? The heat shield trick only is a glitch because the heat shield produces lift even when its nodes are occluded, which shouldn't happen. Using flags as lifting surfaces doesn't require that - the flags produce a good lift:drag ratio without any such adjustments. Basically when you have a part, it has a drag cube and produces drag proportional to the area of that cube (more like a cuboid but still called a cube). When you attach another part to one of its attachment nodes, it reduces the size of the drag cube and thus generates less drag. This is the point of nose cones, which reduce the front facing drag cube area. However, nose cones have a drag cube themselves, so they generate drag. And if a nose cone is offset away from a part but still "attached," it has the same drag benefit. So the node occlusion trick would basically be offsetting the nose cones inside a cargo bay, where they won't generate any drag but still provide the same drag benefit. The main rationale behind these questions is that since my craft is so light and has a good TWR during atmospheric ascent, the main loss of efficiency is drag losses. So I'm trying to reduce drag as much as possible. That's also the reason for using the prop engines to get some initial altitude.

I'd rather use the thrust from the Nervs instead of wasting it, if it even comes to that

@ManEatingApe Will the following techniques be allowed? I have an idea for an even cheaper mission using one or more of these. -Node occlusion: reducing drag cubes of parts with nosecones and then putting them in a fairing or service bay (and not necessarily clipping them - they'd all be next to each other but not clipped) -Magic wings: using flags or heat shields to produce lifting surfaces with less drag than normal wings. Can be combined with node occlusion but is not necessary, does not require clipping either -Gaining altitude (and energy) using Breaking Ground propellers to reduce fuel cost -Magic propellers: propellers that generate their thrust through magic wings, producing less drag than normal propellers for the same amount of thrust. Again does not require clipping

I've got somewhat of an idea. The Eve lander will have a stage of props and then a few nuclear stages using a lot of the Big-S wings. Ideally it would be able to reach 20km or more. The battery for the props would launch empty and get charged up during ascent and the Eve transfer. The Eve lander would reach a high suborbital trajectory, at which point an orbital tug will burn to an intercept and a collision course with Eve before burning back to a stable orbit. Then it would rendezvous with a return vehicle. The tug and return vehicle won't need to be large, only one nuclear engine and one or two of the mk1 fuel tanks. The Eve lander should have about 4km/s of delta-v at 20km since Eve's atmosphere is so thick. The tug should have something like 5km/s so it can intercept more easily. I'm including what I think is a pretty big margin because I'm not really sure exactly how much is needed.

@ManEatingApe First submission of 1.11.1. I waited until now because of the Kerbal drag glitch with service bays and fairings. The craft is similar to last entry except stripped down even further. Total cost is 142 funds and it could probably be even cheaper. 16311 funds in SPH I pitch up to 30 degrees and then do a standard gravity turn. Centripetal acceleration begins to kick in at this point. Rapier switches to rocket mode I've got just enough delta-v to circularize. Note that I didn't launch with a full oxidizer load because the jet ascent would use too much fuel. In orbit with 29m/s of delta-v left. Carrier plane deorbits Approach Landed 14302 back. Cost so far is 2009 funds. Mun transfer I have way more delta-v than I expected since the dry mass doesn't include the jetpack anymore, so I don't need to do any fancy gravity assists. However it's always fun to do a ballistic capture - or at least as close as I can get with patched conics. 200 m/s circularization burn, instead of 280 or so from a direct transfer Landing burn Flag Ascent Direct return - easier to aim for KSC On course for KSC Chute deployed Landed 1867 funds back - total cost is 142

well there goes that plan

I've proved that the kerbal can exit and reboard pretty much that same lander design in my previous submission. For Laythe all you need to do is get the camera into the service bay. For the other moons and planets the kerbal can jump high enough to board. https://imgur.com/a/Hb0K424 12 launches I believe. One launch put up a tank and the service module, one for the Tylo descent stage, and the rest launched a single tank. 11 tanks were launched total and I dumped one into the SSTO's fuel tanks on the last launch to save mass.

If you're still wondering how to use magic wings, there are actually better options than the "standard" magic wing which uses heat shields. The flat flag, if pointed upward at an angle of 45 degrees, gives enormous lift/drag ratios. I've gotten L/D in the hundreds of thousands with the right angle of attack. If you point the flag just below 45 degrees to prograde, you'll actually point the drag component forward, and create negative drag while still creating positive lift. You can infiniglide all the way to escape velocity using this trick as long as you have enough control to keep it stable.

This should go in Mission Reports I think

I know this probably won't count but I made a dragless craft which can orbit Kerbin infinitely long in the atmosphere.

You're a bit late on that (: Not sure what happened there

@JacobJHC Another liquid fuel only Jool 5 with some extra challenges added. Single "launch" but craft separates on runway. Only uses one jet engine and one nuclear engine for entire mission. Also I snuck in four additional landings with the extra fuel at the end. The Tylo ascent had a really tight margin because the lander was optimized for atmosphere, not vacuum. Jeb almost had to get out and push!

Ok so here's another submission to the realm of liquid fuel. Using only one rapier engine and one nuclear engine, I land on the five moons of Jool, as well as Duna, Ike, Mun, and Minmus. I've got some ideas for an Eve ascent vehicle as well. Could a liquid fuel only grand tour be possible?

3200 or something like that. Even a lazy gravity assist route to Jool only takes 1100 ish so I have more than enough to flyby all of Jool's moons and get atmosphere samples also.

The fuel pod weighs something like 39.96 tons I think. Plus the main shuttle itself is completely full in orbit because I went overboard on the boosters, so it's basically as if I'm delivering 100+ tons to orbit (fully loaded shuttle + fuel pod) STS-3 submission Ascent Booster drop Plane change and circularization Bill grabs the solar panels from the cargo container Telescope has RCS thrusters for station keeping. Bill welds the solar panels onto the rocket The infrared telescope is fully deployed Descent Landed

Single stage Jool-5 is probably not possible without ISRU and definitely not possible with only liquid fuel

I bet I could get under 0.03 funds per science with a very small change to the current mission But I probably won't unless someone else submits some runs to this challenge

Ok here's my new mission. Again I left tons of room for improvement. I didn't need to bring that extra rocket fuel tank at all, and I could have made the SSTO much smaller also. CSC-2 costs 51364 funds in VAB and is recovered for 50852 funds, for a total cost of 512 funds. Using many gravity assists, it performs flybys of Mun, Minmus, Eve, Jool, Tylo, Laythe, Vall, Bop, and Pol, before returning to Kerbin. I left a good amount of science on the table also - gravity scans above Mun biomes, all science near Eve due to a timewarp glitch, and gravity scans above Eve biomes were all missed. It brings in 14007 science, for a final score of 0.036 funds per science. @DRAG0Nmon https://imgur.com/a/PeakGDB

I just wing it lmao, that's what I do for almost all of my gravity assists. The one exception is if I'm timing an interplanetary transfer, and then I like to use Mechjeb's maneuver planner.

Ok so I'm doing another attempt at this challenge, going to try to get under 0.05 funds per science. The first expedition has many gravity assists. Mun assist -> Eve -> Kerbin and Mun -> Kerbin -> Jool From Jool, low Tylo assist -> Laythe -> skim the top of Jool's atmosphere Then, Laythe aerogravity assist to Vall, then back to Laythe, then I'll try for Bop or Pol

Working on another all liquid fuel jool 5 that uses only one nuke and one rapier

Here's my STS-2a mission (I didn't do STS-2b since this shuttle already has a bit of difficulty landing - an extra 40t fuel pod would make it really hard) Launch. I have two smaller boosters. This will probably be the configuration for almost all of the STS missions from here. Nuclear engines are lit right before the boosters are detached. The shuttle continues to orbit. At 48km I reach orbital velocity and continue burning all the way to GTO. Three comsats, each with an orbital maneuvering package, two antennas, and solar panels Shuttle inserts into an orbit with a period of four hours, and will release each satellite at apoapsis First satellite Second satellite Third satellite Shuttle descends Landed and parked at SPH