SRV Ron

This was a concept design to see if it could be done without building an overly complex launcher. It has a Sr docking collar and thruster set for docking the five full fuel cans. The thruster fuel, if not used excessively during docking, can deorbit the empty five fuel cans. There is room to add the controller to the booster below for deorbiting back to Kerbal as was done in this single can rocket.

Do the equatorial orbit as normal. Do the Munar intercept burn as normal. Do a midcourse to change the intercept to come in a polar Munar orbit. Soon as you get into Mun's gravitational field, you can do a fine tune burn to get the orbit completely polar. That will be the most efficient.

One SAS ring, One mono prop tank, Five full orange fuel cans. 1452 ton launcher with onion staging and 21 Mainsail Engines. Five full fuel cans in orbit with core engine and fuel enough to push to higher orbit.

After looking at attempts to place five full fuel cans at once in orbit, I designed this all stock launcher at 1,452 tons. Note, it only uses one SAS ring and one mono prop tank. The rocket has minor spin but is quite flyable. Five full fuel cans and core stage totaled 216 tons in orbit. As you can tell, there is plenty of fuel in reserve to go to a much higher orbit.

Placing a orange fuel can in orbit is not that difficult, if you design efficiently. This asparagus design, using Skippers with a pair of Mainsails on the third pair, does so efficiently. And, in orbit. The core booster is designed for recovery along with the fuel can after it is docked and drained.

If the object being moved doesn't contain thrusters, attempting to translate the tug and load becomes very RCS fuel inefficient as the SAS attempts to balance the effort.

Since so little is gained by transmitting experiments back to Kerbal, all missions, except those to Eve and Jool, should be recovered. Sending and recovering probes prior to sending Kerbals, is a good way to test designs and gain science points.

This made orbit comfortably on the seven Rocomax engines and three FL-T800 fuel cans. The two big solar collectors fully power the Ion Engine. Now, it is time for the orbital burns to reach escape and Voyager mission with four full Xeon fuel cans.

By disabling fuel use in the core tanks, you can make use of drop tanks.

Way too much rocket with no struts for the mission intended. Try probes to get the tech needed for struts and fuel lines before doing the manned landing. This early career mode ship, no braces, flies stable enough to do a manned Mun and Minmus flyby.

An extremely difficult challenge requiring precise flying skills, preferring with the use of slingshot maneuvers to reach the final goal of a Voyager Mission. A two stage rocket with the upper stage of an LV-N and single FL T-800 fuel can launched just short of orbit, will send a one ton payload to Kerbal escape. Launching the entire rocket to Kerbal escape is far more difficult. It should be noted that the real Voyager mission required several slingshots maneuver from planets, that were in the required alignment during launch, to achieve that goal.

You should know that the Voyager probe you have used as an example is not a single stage to escape. It is from a multistage launch from one of my earlier versions of KSP. The Krackin has since ate the probe.

So much easier to launch up one at a time with capability to return the booster and fuel can for reuse. And, if you don't wish to return them, one can even be sent to Mun as in this older design using some mods.

Not so much Gumby but Spaceman Spiff. Both images were rendered on the computer pictured using the software and hardware in the logo.

The flaky stock demo SRB can be safely flown to Kerban Escape with the right design.

The Rocomax fuel can is designed for recovery of both the booster and empty can. With a little extra push, it can make Mun high orbit. BTY, the 100+ton payload was launched with a 850 ton launcher.

On the ten part challenge, a five part rocket with two stage, easily achieves a Voyager mission. Doing so SSTV is going to be a lot harder. So far, just to Duna intercept.

The payload being launch would determine the lifter. Still, in all cases, stock or mod, Asparagus with booster ring seems to be the most efficient and reliable. Stock fuel can. NovaPunch Jool launcher. Over 100 tons in orbit

Place them on the probe as shown and you won't have to worry about orientation when you have landed.

The bracket key should select them until they get more then 2.5K away. Then, you have to find them in map mode or from the Control Center.

You can see the size difference. Anyhow, the performance is much better with all Mainsails throttled back 10% as you can see from post #10.

Rebuilt the booster to the specs but with Mainsails. Moved the upper parts and replace one docking clamp with decoupler. Needed to brace the 4 LV-N. Note, fuel will not flow to those LV-N from the orange tank. Disable gymboling on the asparagus ring. Launch successful but hard to keep on course. Some fine tuning of bracing will fix.

Go for braces, launch clamps, fuel lines, and oxstat solar panels as soon as possible. Don't even think of using probes until you have the Oxstat panels. Plan on recovering all flights for max science return. From there, the rest will come easy.

This is weird. There is all Skippers under the boosters with a Mainsail for the core. It barely lifts off the pad. Yet, if I place a pair of Mainsail under the third pair of boosters, there is insufficient power to launch period. Some kind of bug is at work here since the weight being launched would require all Mainsails. I don't think the asparagus is set up properly, parts there should select in pairs. They are selecting in single mode. I may try playing with rebuilding this later. Anyhow, besides the wobble of the short tanks and the bracing issues in the asparagus, the weak link is the docking clamp on the payload stage. Makes for great explosions.

I noticed a big boost in performance using Mainsail in the last asparagus pair on one of my fuel can to orbit designs.