camacju

https://imgur.com/a/ux0zUFu Well, here's my submission to start. 9.2 tons double SSTO, landed with 84 liquid fuel remaining. I used two intakes because: Diverterless supersonic intake + mini ram intake is less mass than a half fueled normal tank and a normal ram intake Diverterless intake dies at about 1400m/s, mini ram intake takes me to over 1700m/s Precooler doesn't have enough fuel in it, I'd have to add another tank Possible improvements: Use a precooler to cut out the extra intake, and have some small liquid fuel tanks stuffed in the service bay (not sure if that would even save any mass) Replace the nuclear engine and one of the fuel tanks with xenon, batteries, and ions - but ion TWR is very low and speed on rapier is limited. I couldn't get this one to work sadly

Okay, that's fine. I didn't realize. I assumed that since comparatively little fuel is used for a jet to accelerate back up to ~100 m/s, it wouldn't matter much. @swjr-swis Is this better?

The challenge here is to build a craft that can get to orbit twice without refueling, staging, or docking. Score is based on mass - the lighter the craft, the better. Bonus cookie points if you make an all rocket craft. More rules: You must come to a stop at KSC or the ground nearby between orbits. (Screenshot at 0 m/s on the ground). Scoreboard: camacju - 9.2 tons

I landed on the other side of the mountain range from KSC I believe. I messed up my deorbit burn and undershot

Yea that's pretty much the standard 3 part mission. Can you get to Laythe with it though

@The Doodling Astronaut@EveMaster Here's a good video explaining KSP buoyancy Also the leaderboard for round 4 seems to not be updated - my score is listed as 1400 still

I know I'm a bit late to this challenge, but here's my submission. 7 orbits https://imgur.com/a/wAWNXAS I had a plane that could do 4 orbits so I strapped two more planes with slightly more fuel to the wings. I could definitely get 8 or 9 orbits if I added two more side boosters but this is a good proof of concept. Also: If I were to build a craft that can get the triple plane to orbit N times, then would I be able to have a score of N+7 since the triple plane can orbit 7 times? This will make it way less grindy to add on additional orbits. @ralanboyle

I'm not going to officially enter this challenge. But the craft I described above has enough delta-v to do a direct Minmus transfer without a Mun assist, if you launch with about 300 units of ore in the tank and convert it mid-flight. From there it's trivial to get over to Laythe. And since it has enough delta-v and TWR to go to Minmus from Kerbin, it has enough to go to Pol from Laythe, and then it's trivial to get over to Kerbin. I don't know if it's possible to do this mission with any fewer than seven parts.

I don't have DLC unfortunately so I just go off the default game. But still 7 parts seems to be the lowest possible with mining. Additionally: with that 6 part rocket would you be able to get to Minmus also?

I think a near optimal mission would consist of the following: The craft: 7 or 8 parts Twin-boar Big fuel tank Crew capsule Ore tank Drill RTG Ore converter Radiator (Optional) Flight path would be Kerbin->Mun->Minmus, refuel at Minmus Minmus->Eve would only be ~500 m/s for a Kerbin->Eve->Kerbin->Kerbin->Jool route Then you can do a Tylo->Laythe assist and aerobrake at Laythe, so you basically get from Eve to Laythe for free Return path would be Laythe->Tylo which kicks you retrograde to Kerbin and then you aerobrake there - you'll have more than enough delta-v to land.

https://imgur.com/a/4BmesIM @The Doodling Astronaut Sandbox mode doesn't send a recovery report so here are some videos of clicking through all the science. I probably missed several I could have gotten but oh well

https://imgur.com/a/ldq0NPw By skipping some science-poor and high delta-v landings (Tylo, Vall, Duna), I was able to fit in many more landings on the other bodies. I also flew past every destination and collected science from high and low orbit. I feel this submission is more in the spirit of this challenge as I biome hopped a lot more. Since I collected science from every destination I think I would have the same points for destinations as the last mission. This is what I think my score would be: Destination - 290 pts Spacecraft - 2470 pts (If it's really necessary I can provide a list of every experiment I did in this mission to prove that I didn't cheat by collecting Kerbin/Sun/Laythe science) Aesthetics - 20 pts Difficulty - 40 pts Total - 2820 pts Even with this new mission I had a good amount of margin. If I had taken a more efficient route from Moho to Kerbin I'd have over 1000 m/s left in the nuclear tug. I probably could have then added more liquid fuel capacity to the lander and tanker, and gotten one or two more Moho landings.

I'm taking another crack at this challenge since it's really unsatisfying to only be 70 points behind, especially since that is well within the margins of my previous mission. @The Doodling Astronaut The mission has a similar flight profile to my second attempt at this challenge, but I'm focusing much more on biome hopping and much less on many landings. Is that acceptable?

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oh they used DLC ): Now I'm going to have to try to beat this run - I'm thinking I skip the Tylo landing and settle for a flyby, and instead spam science out of Dres/Ike/Eeloo. Will update in a few days

this isn't a submission but i did a 4000 fund ike return mission i could definitely go cheaper but whatever, this is a good low cost proof of concept ig

Now I'm wondering whether I can skip the Moho landing (just doing a flyby) and do an Eve landing instead...

hmm, so on the lander I had four instruments, three of which work in flight (the seismometer doesn't), and then a magnetometer on the orbiter, so that's four experiments for every situation, for a total of 27 situations Dres high, Dres low, Dres landed Duna flying, landed Ike landed x2 Jool high, low Tylo high, low, landed Vall high, low, landed Eeloo high, low, landed x5 Moho high, low, landed x2 Hmm that's only 26 situations, I must have gotten something else I suppose you could mark down 104 instead of 108 experiments, lemme launch up KSP and find which extra experiments I had Edit: I found that I had done experiments in solar orbit - so those wouldn't count

Experiment storage container can only hold one experiment per biome. So the 108 I returned are guaranteed to be unique

Eve sample return mission would be cool but it would have to return 100+ experiments to beat this I think

@The Doodling Astronaut I got imgur working, this is probably gonna be my last submission - unless someone ends up beating it (: https://imgur.com/a/AuFP99S Ship name: m Landings: Dres, Duna, Ike, Tylo, Vall, Eeloo x5, Moho x2, Kerbin - Total 13 Flybys: Jool, Sun, Eve, Laythe Experiments returned: 108 (I spammed orbit and surface science this time lol) I had even more margin this time than last time, even though I doubled the number of landings. -I definitely had enough spare fuel for another Ike expedition or two if I were smart enough to send out the lander without full fuel -Kerbin->Jool should really take about 1000 m/s but it took me 1400 m/s because I'm impatient -After the Tylo landing every landing had 150-200 m/s extra, so I could have tightened down the fuel loads -Eeloo to Eve transfer was unnecessary - I could have done a Eeloo to Kerbin or even Eeloo to Jool transfer and that would have been the same result, but again I'm impatient -Similarly I could have saved another 500 m/s by doing a Moho to Eve to Kerbin route instead of Moho to Kerbin directly Even after all this inefficiency I ended with almost 1.4 km/s of delta-v, so more landings are definitely possible. I can definitely fit two more Ike landings and another Eeloo landing, but any more and I'd probably have to redesign the craft or change the flight path.

imgur isn't working for me right now but here's the end screenshot for my third attempt at this challenge

https://imgur.com/a/VI1o7ET @The Doodling Astronaut This is the best I have - Screenshot from when I was testing aerobrake height right before the actual Kerbin reentry. I didn't use this run because I had heating problem this time but I do have proof of the 28 experiments and 4 instruments

I'm sorry but I didn't take a screenshot of the collected science. I wouldn't gain anything if I had faked it though, there are four instruments on the lander and they can be transported to the sample container after each docking, so it's pretty trivial to collect the data. In the first album you can see the four experiments I used.

@The Doodling Astronaut Am I scoring this correctly or am I missing something?