OJT

This did help. dV values now match both in VAB and in flight. Unfortunately it also means that I need to do many more refuel runs, but that's more of a personal problem lmao. Appreciate the help

HAHA FUNNY NUMBER MEME!!!1!1! This mothership refueling operation is gonna make me crazy. Next part might take a while

So Imma get straight to the point. I am doing a Jool 5 Mission. I am currently on a refueling session near Pol. I also have another ship of the same configuration sitting in VAB, where I can play with fuel levels and see what dV I get. However, dV shown in VAB and dV shown in flight differ, sometimes quite substantially. I even had in flight dV to be double of the VAB dV once. Obviously this causes issues because I can't be sure how much do I need to refuel my ship. Before you ask, I do have vacuum setting on in VAB, and KER isn't of much help because it outright doesn't show the dV I have. I tried to play around in VAB with the ship. I switched up the engines on my landers with ballast weights incase those mess up the dV numbers, I checked that crossfeed on docking ports is off, and still numbers are different. Any fixes for this? Or do I just have to deal with it and take more conservative dV value of the two (the VAB value in this case). Because at this point I don't even know which dV number is the correct one Screenshots:

That will make things easier, thanks for the tip

@JacobJHC Am I allowed to ditch my landers in Joolian system and return to Kerbin with the main ship only? Or must I return with the whole stack? There's still quite a lot to do for me before returning, but ditching landers can save me decent amount of dV that might come in handy

I am not that much into specific names for ships because it makes them harder to search for in VAB/SPH. Most of my ships have practical names like "Duna Lander" or "SENTINEL Telescope Drone". With that being said, mothership does have a name: I named it King Joolian. But I still appreciate the suggestion :thumbsup: Speaking of King Joolian... Part 5: Vall As you've seen in my previous post, we parked in very eccentric Vall orbit. First we done the experiments high above Vall at apoapsis, then we burned to lower the periapsis into low space region and did the low space experiments. A small blunder came up however: I completely forgot that Mystery Goo containers can only be reset by scientists and all of my astronauts are pilots. Whoops! Thankfully I didn't conduct the Materials study and left it for future Tylo landing After circularizing in low orbit, I transferred my first pilot into the lander and sent her off. Megsel Kerman will have the honor of doing the first landing of Jool 5 mission I was landing in the spot with one of the richest ore concentrations due to low efficiency of my drills and the area seemed rather mountainous from high up, but thankfully as I got closer the spot turned out to be somewhat flat, so landing was not hard First landing of this mission! Only downside (well, for Megsel at least) is that she had to spend over 100 days on the surface before the ship refueled. I hope she grabbed some books to read. Or a Nintendo Switch With ship refueled, she sets off back to orbit Small correction burn later she encounters the Joolian and docks to it Vall is off the list! Only 4 moons left. Next up is Pol: I've set up the maneuver (THANK GOD for the Transfer Planner from latest patch or I'd spent ages trying to figure out how to get there) and did the ejection burn Why I chose to go to Pol next? First, I wanted to cross off the Outer Moons as soon as possible, since if I do the remaining Inner Moons at the end I will be close to Jool and subsequent Kerbin transfer burn will be more efficient due to Oberth effect. Second, two of my five pilots only have 2 star ratings which limits their SAS ability a bit and due to lower gravity and lower dV requirements of Bop and Pol, orbit rendezvous will have wider margin of error. Third, at this point King Joolian was starting to run low on fuel and very low gravity of Pol provided perfect opportunity for refueling. Small plane adjustment And we arrive at Pol, the smallest and furthest moon of Jool Nothing to do with Pol, just a cool snap I took during flyby After that we circularized at Pol and conducted all orbit experiments at the same time And this concludes Part 5! We landed on Vall and reached Pol. In next part, we will be landing on Pol... multiple times to refuel the Joolian. See you guys later

The Day has come! Part 4: Launch, Departure & Arrival Joolian system is connected to KSC, ships are ready, astronauts are back, it's about time we do this thing! First off is the Mothership. Vasya is controlling the ship, Valentina and Nelzon in the passenger seats Mothership in orbit. Next up is the Non-Atmospheric Lander. Megsel Kerman is onboard of this flight, but ascension to orbit and encounter with Mothership will be done by an autonomous module. Megsel will be doing the docking procedure After encountering the Mothership, Megsel docked the lander Lander and Mothership are docked. Now it's the Laythe Plane's turn. Jebediah is flying it as the most skillful pilot of the mission. First part of the ascent with RAPIERs, second part with NERVA Encountered the Mothership. Docked to it. The whole stack assembled Now is the time for the reason this thread was made in the first place . I did two long burns at periapsis and then did two correction burns midway to set up a Tylo encounter And finally, after over 3 years of travel, Jool 5 Mission finally commences Tylo fly-by to put me closer to Jool. We will be returning here later Jool is geniunely stunning. And that's while being roughly the same size as real-life Earth! It's hard to mentally comprehend how massive Jupiter would look like at this distance I did a circularization burn at Jool periapsis, did one orbit around and then did a burn for Vall encounter After reaching Vall, I did one more burn and set the Mothership on the elliptical orbit around it And this is where this part ends. The journey to Jool took me quite a lot of time, but now that we are set here, the next parts of this thread will be much more interesting in content. See you guys in the next post!

Well, I did promise next part will come soon right? Here it is Part 3: Astronauts For my Level 3 Jool 5 Mission I need 5 astronauts. To make matters for myself easier, all 5 astronauts will be pilots. So, all I need is to put my 5 best pilots into the ship and send them away... Except that literally all of my pilots are scattered all around the Kerbol System: couple of pilots are on long-duration Eve mission, some are on Duna, others on Ike and two more on Minmus. So I needed to scoop up my pilots Returning Eve pilots is out of the question because (1) Eve returns are a lot of hassle (2) I kinda need them on Eve in the first place. So my plan is to scoop up the rest. I decided to start with Duna pilots This ship acted as a surface base, has ISRU equipment and can easily reach Duna orbit with plenty of dV left. It also has parachutes and therefore can land on Kerbin with right reentry trajectory (even without any heatshields). So, all I needed to do is to fly this to Ike, grab the pilots there and fly home I reached Ike without any issues and landed near the Ike research rover. Rover then drove a bit and parked next to the ship I then swapped around the occupants (2 scientists from Duna ship to 2 pilots from Ike rover) and departed home Couple of aerobrakes later I safely landed in the desert With Duna pilots returned, I only needed to pick up Minmus pilots. I quickly threw around a simple autonomous lander and sent it to Minmus. And there an interesting predicament came up. The Minmus base the pilots were sitting in was a RV van heavily inspired by "The Breaking Bad" that I built and sent to Minmus as a joke (I posted it on the forum couple of months ago) The issue was, one of the pilots was sitting inside the Lab, and even though there was seemingly enough space between the side of the van and the hatch, the pilot couldn't exit due to hatch being obstructed. Thankfully, there also was an Engineer onboard this mission, so all I needed to do was to disassemble half of the van to open up the hatch (you can also see the lander in the background All said and done, the Minmus pilots were back on Kerbin and I can finally present to you the Jool 5 crew From left to right: Vasya Kerman, Megsel Kerman, Jebediah Kerman, Valentina Kerman and Nelzon Kerman. Being the most skilled and the only pilot with 5 star rating, Jeb was chosen as the captain of this mission This concludes Part 3! In Part 4 we will be flying to Jool (about damn time we do lmao). Stay tuned!

Hello there Long time no see, right? My exam phase was long and took a lot of time, to the point that I barely had free time to do chores, let alone play KSP (I probably launched the game once or twice in the last month). But now I am done with exams and have plenty of time, which means... a new part of Jool 5 prep comes up! Part 2: Main Ship Requirements for the main ship are quite straightforward: must have space for 5 kerbonauts, must have lots of deltaV, must have docking ports for landers. All of this can be covered relatively easy: Hitchhiker Container and a Command Pod will have more than enough seats (HH Container also has storage space for goodies). DeltaV requirements will be achieved with NERVA stack and Mk3 Liquid Fuel tanks. Docking ports will be to the sides of the mothership. There's one issue though: main ship will be massive. So, to launch it will require enormous launch vehicle. The whole stack is so huge that I can't zoom out enough in VAB to take a picture of it. So the pictures will be on the launch pad Launch vehicle has 3 stages. First two stages are Mammoth engines. Third stage is powered with Rhinos. Final circularization is done by mothership itself. Coming up with this setup took a lot of trial and error: unscheduled disassemblies during staging, Kraken attacks etc. I tried various boosters, from liquid fuel powered to SRBs. What I ended up with is quite reliable and reaches orbit without issues as long as the launch profile is steep. Let's take a closer look at the main ship itself. It is very long, easily the longest rocket I've built in this game. It has 8 largest reaction wheels, 4 at each end, and even with those it turns quite slowly (but not nearly as slow as without them... don't even ask). Two RTGs supply electricity to two largest batteries. No RCS because I deemed it unnecessary. Docking ports on the sides for each lander. 8 NERVA engines and over 10 thousand m/s of deltaV. Only downside is low TWR (around 0.2) so the burns will be quite long, but I am a patient man lol Aside from the mothership build, I also slightly adjusted my landers: both of them got RCS thrusters for simpler docking, and the Laythe Plane got extra fuel tanks on the wings, making the plane a bit longer. It still flies alright and is so good that it actually doubles as Kerbin SSTO: plane's picture is made in Kerbin orbit after the ascent This concludes the preparation phase for Jool 5 mission: all ships are ready and tried and tested in Sandbox. In next part we will be doing the actual mission in my actual Career save. I only need to wait for transfer window and scoop up my best pilots from Duna (will be done off-screen). See you's all in Part 3! (and it will come sooner than usual, trust me )

Hey there lads, coming up with my Level 3 vessel This spacecraft has 2 booster stages and one stage for interplanetary burn to Duna. The rest of the journey will be completed in the lander. Ascent is trivial by this point After reaching Kerbin orbit, I am setting up a maneuver that will bring Jeb to Duna and then execute the burn Flying in interplanetary space for the first time. If you look carefully, you can see Kerbin on 2nd picture (small blue dot right of the Sun) and on 3rd picture you can see Duna (small red dot on the right side) Approaching Duna. I actually got a cheeky Ike fly-by too Landing attempt was risky: I went for single direct reentry low into Duna atmosphere in hopes that the air density will be enough to sufficiently slow down. After reentry I did a suicide burn and landed softly on the surface. To my own surprise, I nailed this whole section (from reentry to landing) first time O_O Jeb is chuffed by this landing too After making his way back to the ship (jetpack has enough thrust to reach the command pod without ladders) Jeb takes off and reaches Duna orbit Then I set up a maneuver for Kerbin return, waited a very long time till the transfer window came around and burned towards home (can be seen on 2nd picture as a blue dot) Approaching home I did a lot of passes through upper atmosphere before I slowed down sufficiently Unfortunately, despite having enough fuel left, my engines didn't have enough TWR for powered landing, so Jeb had to ditch his lander and parachute to the ocean And there he is! Jeb safe and sound back on Kerbin after a nearly 2 year voyage. Level 3++ completed, and first landing on another planet in this thread

First Part 3 submission in this thread. Looks nice! You earned yourself a Level 3 badge It has to be a planet. Innerplanet moons don't really provide that much of a challenge: dV requirements for Ike and Gilly are roughly the same as for Mun, so you can pretty much reuse a Mun-landing capable craft for those. And other planets except Jool don't have any moons in the first place. Only exceptions I will make are Jool's moons since you can't land on Jool (for obvious reasons). I gotta update the top post accordingly

Verified! First Minmus landing in this thread aswell. Level 2++ badge is yours

Looks good to me! You can claim the Level 1 badge, and your submission goes into DLC list. Looking forward to your Minmus mission

I will allow it because the upper stage survived, so Jeb would be fine if he stayed in it. All in all, a successful Level 1+ submission. First submission in DLC category aswell! Kudos This was an issue for me when I was building my Duna craft (which *spoiler alert* turned out to be successful, will post it later cuz I'm busy with IRL stuff atm). I simply assigned custom action groups to each stage and then monitored fuel levels in-flight: when lower stage was about to be empty, I disengaged the lower stage with action key and engaged the next one with another action key. This way you can prevent the "unscheduled" crossfeed from happening

If you use Making History parts it will go into DLC category, because Making History adds a lot of parts that are made by Jeb's Junkyard. Breaking Ground DLC doesn't have any parts made by Jeb's Junkyard as far as I know, so you won't be able to use anything from it anyway. But generally yes, DLC parts are allowed

Hey lads It's been quite a while since my first post. Real life has been quite busy and I didn't have much free time to play KSP. But I was playing a bit every now and then and making slow progress on my Jool 5 challenge and now I have something that could be posted here. Mind you, it won't be as long as the thread opener, but still Part 1: Landers After establishing satellite network in Joolian System and determining spots rich with ore and suitable for landings, it is now time for actual manned mission preparations Mission structure will be nothing original and it has been done countless amounts of times by fellow players: mothership with landers. The whole shabang goes to Jool. Mothership enters orbit of moon. Lander undocks. Goes down. Lands. Comes back up. Docks with mothership. Mothership escapes moon's SOI. Then repeat this four more times. Then return to Kerbin. Simple (well, not really, but anyway). In Part 1 we are gonna focus on landers Level 3 states that one unique Kerbonaut must land on every moon, which means we need to take at least 5 kerbals with us. However, it doesn't require landing said Kerbonauts in separate landers, which means I can build a mothership that has enough space for at least 5 kerbals, make the landers single-seaters and just switch up pilots while in orbit before every landing. This will save me the weight of the whole ship and save me the hassle of figuring out how to mount 5 separate landers to mothership without screwing up the balance Jool has 5 moons (hence the name of the challenge, duh). Out of those 5 moons, Laythe is the only one that has atmosphere. Not only that, Laythe has a rather thick atmosphere, reaching 0.6 atm at sea level, which makes making the lander a plane feasible. Not only that, Laythe has oxygenated atmosphere, which allows us to use jet engines, which are much more efficient and will significantly increase the range of the plane when flying in low atmosphere. Therefore, Laythe lander will be a plane The other 4 moons are airless bodies. Tylo in particular has a rather high surface gravity, so the lander will need to have good TWR to be able to land comfortably and it will need around 4700 m/s dV to land from low orbit and return back to it. However, if I can design a lander that will be able to land on Tylo and return to mothership, then this lander will easily manage to land on the other moons and return to mothership. Therefore in total I will need only two landers: a plane for Laythe and a conventional lander for the rest The Laythe lander will be based on same principles as my Kerbin SSTO that won me the K-Prize badge It is a deltawing with front canards, 2 RAPIER engines for atmospheric flight, 1 NERVA for orbital maneuvering and a cargo bay to carry goodies. It flies really stable and has decent TWR and dV. It is a design that worked really well for me and proved to be very reliable, so my Laythe lander will be heavily inspired by it This is my first version It has a few differences compared to Kerbin SSTO. First, it is noticeably downsized. Second, it has side-mounted air intakes instead of shock intake, because the nose had to accommodate a docking port. Third, cargo bay is substituted with service bays. And fourth, it is a single seater. But the rest is quite similar. Due to smaller size it also has more TWR while retaining similar dV. It easily survived reentry into Laythe atmosphere and flies quite nicely under its own power during my tests in Sandbox. Tests also revealed big downsides of the plane however. It doesn't glide well at speeds that I would consider safe for landings and landings themselves were very tricky due to the combination of narrow wheelbase and the tricycle landing gear. And since Laythe doesn't have any dedicated flat runways like KSC, I went back to the drawing board and did some readjustments Here is the second version This has bigger wings and 4 landing gears that are spread out wider, and this version handled the landing tests without any serious issues. There is some minor stuff that I will need to work on, but apart from that this pretty much is the plane that will go to the mission Now comes the Airless Moon Lander concept (name might not be final) This bad boy has 3 Aerospike engines and ISRU mining equipment, which means I won't need to carry around fuel for both landing and takeoffs. It also has enough dV (with 400 m/s spare) to land on Tylo from 25km orbit. The mining equipment isn't as efficient as full sized equivalents, so I will need to pick my landing spots carefully (another reason I sent the resource scansats in the prequel), and there is some stuff that I must add to the lander (namely more radiators and some RCS for docking) but, as is the case with Laythe lander, this is pretty much a finished product That is the landers covered. In Part 2 we will make the mothership, so stay tuned for that

Woah, I didn't expect to make it into the Thread of the Month, even if only as an honourable mention. Still, it is a great honour to be mentioned here

Yea, EVA chutes are fair game. Main goal is that Jeb must return alive. Whether you land him with EVA chute or land/splashdown the spacecraft is up to you (landing the craft intact gets you higher level tho)

Hello lads. Did some work trying to build a moon-orbit capable craft, but ended up overachieving on my own plans. But let's not get ahead of ourselves There are lots of differences compared to the first one: Cupola instead of Mk1 Lander can, tri-engine second stage instead of one engine and a relatively massive booster with 6 Swivels and 1 Reliant in the center. Why Cupola you may ask, since Mk1 Lander is lighter? Because Cupola has a much stronger reaction wheel, which helps with attitude control, and bigger battery charge, which gives me more leeway in terms of electricity management Ascent is different in comparison to normal rockets: it is very unstable if you start the gravity turn early due to lack of aerodynamic surfaces or strong reaction wheels, so I first fly straight up until I clear the thicker parts of the atmosphere and start the turn at around 8ish km. At that point it flies stable without any issues After I leave the atmosphere, I burn off the booster stage and complete the circularization with the second stage I reach the orbit with around 2500 m/s of deltaV, which should be enough to enter the stable orbit around Mun and return to Kerbin. So I did my transmunar burn and then entered the orbit around Mun. For both burns I used Terriers only due to their better efficiency At this point I had around 1100-1200 m/s dV left. It would be enough to either return to Kerbin or land on the Mun without return to Kerbin. And to be fair, this craft was indeed intended to just do an orbit around the Mun and return. But then I suddenly realized that because Terriers extended further than the Swivel engine due to the bigger tanks I could in theory land just hard enough to destroy both of them, which would save a lot of dry mass and possibly leave me enough fuel to return to Kerbin. So I decided why not and went for it. After deorbit burn I switched the Swivel back on, turned off the Terriers and transferred what fuel was left in the big tanks into the small central one I will not lie to you lads, landing the way I wanted took A LOT of attempts: I either landed too softly and bounced off, too hard and destroyed the whole craft, not hard enough and destroying only one of the tanks and so on so forth, you get the idea. I even managed to land once with destroying one big tank and the small central one with Reliant, but somehow the other big tank survived intact (needless to say that it flew awfully with CoM shifted from the centerline so much lmao). But eventually, after 20 minutes of seemingly non-stop quick loads, I managed it. And the work fully paid off! I had about 1200 m/s of delta V after landing which was plentiful for a return flight Return flight to Kerbin was quite trivial I did several aerobraking passes to shed off the speed and eventually entered the atmosphere Initially I planned to ditch the craft and parachute Jeb to the surface. However, my choice of command pod for the mission paid off in unexpected way: Cupola turned out to be draggy enough to noticeably reduce the fall speed, to the point that I actually had just enough delta V left to attempt a well timed suicide burn... Yeah, you can see where this goes: another long session of attempts and quick loads. The fact that I was landing during the night didn't help, but at least KER readouts made it easier. Kerbin landing actually took less time to get right than Mun landing And there we have it! A Mun orbiter that inadvertedly turned into a Mun lander and returned safely to Kerbin. Which makes it a Level 2+++ craft, with extra + for landing the craft intact on the surface of Kerbin. I will be attempting to build a Level 3 in the meanwhile

Well, since I started this challenge, I might aswell post the first submission as a benchmark of sorts Quite a simple design This makes it Level 1+ achievement. I will be working on Level 2 and 3 crafts aswell Speaking of achievements: I made some badges for the challenge completers! My Photoshop skills aren't particularly good and the badges themselves are rather simple, but I think they have the aesthetic that is representable of this challenge. If anyone wants to make better versions I will be very grateful . Top post will be updated accordingly PART 1 BADGES: Level 1 and 1+ PART 2 BADGES: Levels 2 to 2+++ PART 3 BADGES: Levels 3 to 3+++

For the first point, as 18Watt said, you can explode the booster stage with an engine of your second stage. You can also get creative and decouple through lithobraking (this strat is used in some 3 Part Challenge videos I saw on YouTube). Or figure out some other way, but I personally know these two. As I said, unorthodox techniques For the second point, you can either exit the command pod on descent and parachute to the surface, or pack enough fuel for a powered descent Falcon 9-style. I splashed down my Mun fly-by vehicle that way, so it is , while not easy, but certainly possible

I searched in the forum incase anyone already submitted this challenge idea, but didn't seem to find anything, so here it goes! Every part in KSP has its own manufacturer. One of these manufacturers is Jebediah Kerman's Junkyard and Spacecraft Parts Co. Seeing as CEOs of humankind are sponsoring their own space programs, famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) kerbonaut Jebediah Kerman decided to one up them and actually fly the rockets that he built himself and reach the ends of Solar System that very few could reach. Challenge Rules: You are only allowed to use parts made by Jebediah Kerman's Junkyard and Spacecraft Parts Co. Jebediah Kerman must be in control of the craft that you build. You are allowed to pick up some other kerbonauts with you in Hitchhiker Storage Container if you like, but the command pods must be occupied by Jeb. Any cheats, part mods, physics mods, or anything that might affect stock gameplay are forbidden. Graphic mods and telemetry mods like KER are allowed. Planet packs (JNSQ, Beyond Home etc.) are allowed as long as you mark which one you have in your post (those will be added into special category) Play on Normal difficulty or harder. Gamemode is up to your choice Light part clipping is allowed, but don't overdo it (no fancy stuff like clipping lots of engines into one spot or something like that) Did the challenge? Post proofs, screenshots, videos. You can also post the link to craft file if you like, but that isn't mandatory At first glance, this might seem like an easy enough task... until you look at the part selection There is a decent selection of engines, from "Ant" to NERVA, and various 1.25 meter tanks. Unfortunately that's where pretty much all of the selection ends. There are only two command pods, both single seaters. No decouplers. Basic fin as the only aerodynamic device in your disposal. No reaction wheels and no batteries or any means of generating electricity except for engine alternators. No heat shields. No parachutes even. Long story short, you don't have much to play with Still, with accurate planning and utilizing some unorthodox techniques like explosive staging you can build a craft that can go quite far and then some. From my first testing I managed to get to orbit and then do a Mun fly-by with a revised design. So the challenge levels will be based according to that. I advise you to do the challenges in a row, but if you feel confident you can jump levels: PART 1: We gonna start off simple: get to orbit! LEVEL 1 : Return Jeb safely back to Kerbin surface LEVEL 1 +: Land or splashdown your craft intact on Kerbin. If your craft is multi-stage design, you must land the stage with command pod PART 2: I assume you can easily get to orbit and return to surface by this point, so how about we go to the Kerbin's moon! LEVEL 2 : Do a fly-by of Mun or Minmus and return to Kerbin LEVEL 2+: Enter a stable orbit around Mun or Minmus, complete at least one orbit and then return to Kerbin LEVEL 2++: Land on Mun or Minmus and then return to Kerbin Extra + if you land or splashdown your craft intact on Kerbin after completing the journey PART 3: You conquered Kerbin's SOI, so it is time to go interplanetary! LEVEL 3: Do a fly-by of another planet and return to Kerbin LEVEL 3+: Enter a stable orbit around another planet, complete at least one orbit and then return to Kerbin LEVEL 3++: Land on another planet and then return to Kerbin NOTE: If you flew to Jool, you must land on one if its moons Extra + if you land or splashdown your craft intact on Kerbin after completing the journey The challenge will have two separate categories, one for Stock and one for DLC because Making History DLC adds a lot of new parts that are manufactured by Jebediah's Junkyard and I want to keep everything fair. If you have any suggestions feel free to write them! If you're not sure how to find parts specifically made by one manufacturer, you can sort them out in VAB/SPH by following these steps COMPLETION BADGES PART 1: Level 1 and 1+ PART 2: Levels 2 to 2+++ PART 3: Levels 3 to 3+++ HALL OF FAME Stock OJT - Level 1+ , Level 2+++ Mun , Level 2++ Minmus , Level 3++ Duna, Level 3+++ Duna DLC Jokpau Gaming - Level 1+ Scarecrow71 - Level 1 , Level 2++ Minmus BlackMesaSurvivor - Level 3 Duna 18Watt - Level 1+ , Level 2+++ Minmus Have fun!

I know that, but I think it's more to do with the weight of the van. The whole thing weighs about 22.5 tons, it wasn't particularly fast on Kerbin to begin with, but Minmus' almost nonexistent gravity only makes it worse

People think that Minmus is made out of mint ice-cream. While it is easy to make such mistake, Minmus isn't made out of mint ice-cream. You can figure out youself what it's actually made of after seeing my rover lol Only downside is that it is painfully slow, but the aesthetic is worth it I think. Fully functional too: has a Lab with science experiments onboard

This is my Eve research plane that I've built somewhat recently. Prop powered, can fly autonomously if needed, lots of electric charge, Mobile Lab + almost every science experiment that the stock game has to offer (almost because I annoyingly forgot to put Atmospheric Spectro-Variometer), space for 26 Kerbals (only 9 went on the mission though), large container unit filled with various goodies and capability to fly infinitely during daytime thanks to solar panels on the wings and RTGs inside the cargo bay. Optimizing the plane design to survive Eve reentry and landing took quite some time, but after rigorous testing in Sandbox I ended up with design that can survive reentries from low Eve orbit fairly consistently and land softly on the surface. It does NOT have any rocket engines on board, which means I will need another lander to eventually retrieve my kerbonauts, but this craft was designed for very long-duration exploration mission anyway so I am not that concerned about its inability to return to orbit In the spoiler you'll find the whole launch process of this plane, from launchpad all the way to Eve surface and flag planting. My first manned landing on Eve too, so that's nice . Flag planter is Bob Kerman (Jeb and Bill are on Duna surface base so they couldn't join in)