SunJumper

A retrograde low orbit would probably create the highest collision risk.

If you bind your science experiments to an action group, you can still get science despite being in IVA.

My post is not about getting on the leaderboard, its merely to serve as a demonstration of how small a craft can achieve the second mission. If you didn't notice, the first mission is Allmhuran's, so it would not be a valid entry even without MJ. Weird bug: After reloading the flight in an eccentric Vall orbit, the Kraken broke the craft. However, I was able to get about 3000 science from: High sun High Jool High Kerbin High Laythe High Vall Low Vall Low Kerbin Kerbin Upper Atmosphere Launchpad It seems 7000 science may indeed be possible just by pinging around the Jool System, about 7800 is possible without landings.

Okay, flight test pics inbound: First half of the tree Second Half Payload Orbital Insertion Stage Lifter Stage Twelve engines firing simultaneously Nearly in orbit! In orbit, enough dv in the booster stage to escape Kerbin in one go, no perikee kicks!

I have a craft that may be able to finish Allmhuran's Tech Tree, and it masses less than 20 tons... I mainly researched the small probe core, Ion engines, the Grav sensor, and the "massless" trusses. Also, the 48-7S, being the engine of the first three stages. Maybe if I do this under ant power I can massively shrink power (and thus mass) requirements. My aim is to bring at least 900m/s of chemical delta-v into LKO, then send the 9.8km/s delta-v ion probe to Jool (and maybe Eeloo). I think about 1000 Science may be milkable from each moon, so estimates are at the moment, nearly 7k Science. It may be possible to get a second-mission mass of less than 10t, we'll see how this goes. For chemical engines to be more practical, I think this would require the upper stage (excluding booster) to be less than 1.5t, considering I probably put too much xenon on this thing (the fact that I may have to run the ions at 66% to 33% complicates things further) The main benefit of a liquid powered payload is that I can soft-land on small bodies, and maybe hover in Jool to get data.

Honestly, I like the idea of procedural asteroids...

Although you want to return to sandbox, the lack of science text like "You have found a mysterious green substance" may take away from the atmosphere. If you want to combat this, just edit your save file to get a large amount of science (I believe the minimum for Yargnit's tree is about 30k) to unlock all the parts. Basically, sandbox with science text. Only downside is if you want to add new parts, you must research them individually (but at no science cost).

Large cargo means mass. More mass means bigger launcher means more parts. More parts just means more lag.

No, I think it's a probe proper...

Stanley walked into a room that contained two doors. He entered the door on the right.

If 55km on Venus corresponds to 0.5atm, that is less air drag than on Earth, probably less gravity drag, and less tangential velocity to achieve. Still, this corresponds to about 1km/s less than Earth. Better engineer a nuclear salt water rocket for this...

Nothing you can use? If possible, you could use repeated slingshots off Pol to get to Tylo. It would take a long time, sure. It might be impossible, sure. But I have noticed that when traveling to Pol, the slingshot that would occur were I to not burn was not negligible. Also note that you can get as close as 6km without hitting mountains. The thing I want to try with the career mode challenge, is to see how small a craft I can get that maxes out the tech tree after a 3676 science mission. To do that, I'll probably have to hack a save file to give 3676 science and strategically unlock nodes from there. The parts that I will need to unlock will be the grav sensor, ion engines, small rotating solar panels (it is less mass to have an array of the small panels than to have two large panels)), the 48-7S, fuel lines, small probe core etc. I'll edit the materials bay and the goo canister for aesthetics to be smaller, without changing mass/drag. I'll probably start by pinging around the Jool system to see how much science can be "mined" from all the moons. If that is insufficient, I'll probably go for an additional Gilly landing. Science will be collected by: The materials bay The goo canister The grav sensor The thermometer The barometer (I intend to impact Jool at the end) The accelerometer (only if I do a Gilly landing) The atmo sensor won't be used as it is too heavy for the science it gets. Do you have an image of an unpowered grav assist from Eve reaching Jool? Best Eve assist I've heard of got part-way to Duna...

I don't normally have a naming system for things, except for launcher subassemblies. They are: [Gauge][Payload to Orbit] So far, I have 1g2t, 1g3t, and 1g5t. If there were 0.5m tanks, I'd probably have some 0.5g1t things...

To decrease ship part count at the cost of slightly extended game loading times, try the mods "Stretchy Tanks" and "Procedural Wings". Also, part count limits commonly affect player's play styles. I find that launchers massing over about 150t tend to be quite laggy, and the propensity for stratospheric cartwheeling after a few minutes of lag is not something I like dealing with. Hence, I either launch probes or pods (Like an ion-powered mission to Gilly and the Sun). From experience, it seems that a non-landing probe to most locations would be about 20 to 30 parts, and the launcher about 20 to 40 parts again. Landing capability increases that by up to 25 parts, return capability 25 parts still, manned capability much more.

I wouldn't use nuclear bombs to assist mining on Venus, as we might want to terraform it later, a task that would have added difficulty if the landscape is radioactive.

You would probably have to chain a ridiculous amount of gravity assists. If you can luck out and get a Tylo AND a Laythe encounter to escape, this might give enough of a boost to get mostly back to Kerbin. If lucky, this MIGHT take about 500m/s. If you could at all EVA down to Bop and back to orbit, you would of course have massive delta-v savings. Also, you would probably start from Pol orbit. Doing an EVA landing on Pol probably saves enough delta-v to skip the surface crew report. Finally, it might be worthwhile, if necessary, to get out and push. The engine nozzle appears to keep kerbals stable.

Also, according to my calculations, the maximum delta-v possible from a non-staging ship powered only by LV-T30s is just under 8km/s. Possibly useless trivia. Additionally, it might just be possible to "stage" by hitting the bottom-most tanks a little too hard and causing them to blow up. However, they'd have to explode symmetrically. Also, it might require more precision than a perfect landing.

Hmm, how would this fare if it were like a giant ferris wheel?

That's 47 science more than Vector. We may be coming upon a limit here. I'd like to see what Whackjob can do.

AFAIK, it takes more dv to go straight to the sun via an oberth burn than to boost the solar apoapsis via an oberth burn and descend from the higher altitude. Boosting the apoapsis to about Jool's height results in a delta-v of about 4km/s. Clearly, this is more if you want to return to Kerbin (but not much more if you aerocapture and are patient)

In terms of money, samples from celestial bodies would bring a chunk of income, either from laboratories (possibly unlocking parts), or by selling them to rich kerbals. As to budgets and the prevention of grinding, I'd say that it would be up to the player to engineer their crafts to their budgets, and the increments in achievements will reduce possible grinding between missions. Still, if a craft was 200 currency away from being affordable, it would be up to the player to re-engineer their craft to fit within their budget. I'm sure that would be more rewarding than sending twenty probe cores into orbit. Link is SFW!

To solve the issues with "infinite" procedurally generated worlds, I think we should define the effective size of a game world, as being the average area encountered by a competent player (so not including players that play the game for half an hour, realise they suck, and move onto another game, but including players like Brotoro, who circumnavigated Duna by wheel, and Kurtjmac, who has currently walked 1000km toward the Far Lands), then the area encountered in KSP is only a few square kilometers (we only count time on the surface, or flying in an atmosphere here. Looking at a planet from orbit doesn't count), comparable to the effective size of Minecraft, or the effective size of GTA V.

Because transmitting is highly limited in tech 0 (what with no batteries), and science can only be gained by Crew Reports, EVA Reports, and the not easy to get Surface Samples (at tech 0, it is impractical to get more than three samples - Pol, Gilly, and of course, Kerbin), you are limited to about 40 crew reports, about 40 EVA Reports, and about 2 or 3 surface samples. And of course, the recovery. Of course, this is if you are able to visit the SOI of every body, and land on two more (possibly with the EVA pack) on top of that. I don't think it is possible to get the full 10k science, with the above requirements. However, it is still possible to get a lot of science on the first flight, regardless. Vector missed the following places: Low Sun High Minmus Low Minmus Minmus Landing (possible by EVA) High Mun Near Mun (X14 for the biomes) Kerbin's biomes Of course, it is prohibitively expensive to land on every biome at tech 0. Even more so (time wise), to walk to every biome. Thus, the ultimate career mode challenge would go thus: "First, get the maximum amount of science possible at tech 0. Using this science, strategically unlock the best nodes possible. Second, use the unlocked parts to max out the tech tree in one launch that has the least amount of mass" The maximum I can see for the two challenges is about 4k for the first (I think Vector is close to the upper limit here), and maybe 100t for the second. The second would probably be a probe (the probe's mass is so much less than a pod's, and the fact that the manned science is now diminished makes the probe core even better), it would be powered by ion engines, and it would probably orbit all of Jool's moons, as well as fly by Eeloo, Eve, Moho, Duna, Dres, and land on Gilly (maybe). From each body, the probe would milk science from the sensors. It may prove to be worthwile to just use the lightweight sensors, and save mass from the goo and science bays, to visit more bodies. Actually, a kerbal in a seat would probably be able to generate more science per unit mass than the goo and bays, although I don't know if EVAing kerbals can transmit data from seats (or store experiments in probe cores). Also, the second challenge is minimising mass, as that seems to be more of an engineering/flight challenge than minimising parts (being more mathematical and eyeballing).

It can take many hours for even the smallest of ion powered crafts to execute each burn. This idea would be to have a dialogue (clickable from the ion engine), that would allow the player to specify a burn time, and when that time is over, the engine will be shut off automatically. Thus, the ion-engines would be easier to use, and more practical.

If this body were to be added quite far from the sun, the landing/return delta-v costs might be about that of Tylo. Difficult, but not impossible.