Vector

Maybe someday when money is implemented, there will be even more interest in reusing part or all of a spacecraft, rather than just dropping a half dozen mainsails into the ocean.

I don't think it can be done because of the extremely high delta-V requirement to launch from Eve. The ship's starting mass grows exponentially relative to delta-V, and past a certain point it is just insane, like 500,000 parts, which makes it impossible, even for Whackjob. I haven't calculated what the actual number of parts would be, but it may well be in that range.

Wow, impressive! And I like the commentary

No Rockets, no Ion thrusters or RCS, but the rules don't explicitly specify DECOUPLERS! Here is stock, manned, 2360 m/s using decouplers. Clearly this is against the spirit of the challenge so it's just for fun, not really a serious entry. Excluding the final kick, I got it up to 2260 m/s legit, and the decouplers gave a boost of 100m/s at the end.

From my reading of the rules, there's no Tech 0 constraint. The prohibition is against science parts.

Lithobraking challenge? Interesting... I got 188 m/s, might have been higher but I was too chicken to try faster. And yes, it did bounce.

Not possible.

If you fly by a planet and arrange it such that after the encounter your orbital period is equal to (or an exact multiple) of the planet's orbital period you will intercept again, AND the direction in which you left the SOI will match the direction in which you enter the SOI on the next encounter. This makes it possible to do an Eve fly-by, leave Eve's SOI at an angle parallel to Gilly's orbital plane, then on the next Eve encounter, aerobrake into an orbit that already matches inclination with Gilly, no inclination burn required. Or if you simply want to get an equatorial orbit around Eve, the same technique works. In response to an earlier post, cutting throttle with X is not quite the same as disabling the engines because jet engines take time to throttle down. When using jet engines as an early stage and dropping them, it can be helpful to actually disable them. Or what I do is usually (un-)balance them such that they fly away from the craft when separated and still powered. For fine adjustments for gravity-assists, the keyboard throttle control is too coarse and I could find no sensitivity setting. Using a joystick, I configured one of the axes as incremental throttle control with low sensitivity. This way I can increase the throttle by a very small amount and execute maneuvers much more accurately without having to resort to superfluous tiny engines.

False unless you find this supposed thread. Maybe possible with exploits in a buggy 0.22 pre-release, but not in the current version.

Indeed this is very similar to The Career Mode !SCIENCE! Challenge which sorta morphed into how much science can you get on your first mission. Without the tech-level-0 constraint, one could get more science in a single mission by getting docking ports and assembling a humongous ship for a grand tour with as many landings as possible, but that would make it basically the same challenge only easier. I got substantially less science than allmhuran, though I hit Dres and Eeloo SOI, and landed on Gilly instead of Mun. I guess that would be Bronze x6: SOI of Gilly, Ike, Laythe, Vall, Tylo, Pol, Bop Silver x10: Solar orbit SOI of Moho, Eve, Duna, Dres, Jool, Eeloo Landed on Gilly, Pol, Bop

Been thinking of doing this with my VAB folders and Subassemblies, so I can share crafts across saves without having to manually drag the files around.

Very cool! Clearly a pro with the gravity assists. The way you did the Tylo to Pol transfer, minimizing eccentricity for a reasonable insertion is much harder than it looks. Props for that. The Mun biomes indeed have glitches. I've never looked for them within the game but I've seen a biome map showing glitches and all.

Intercept is not expensive, insertion is expensive. And even then, not all that expensive in an absolute sense, just much more expensive than the intercept, which you can get almost for free with gravity assists.

In the video it drops to 223 at 13:15. I think you are definitely descending, not going back and forth between 224 and 225 as claimed.

It is absolutely possible to get low flybys of everything and sling back to Kerbin. For my "grand tour" I landed on Pol and Bop which cost quite a bit, but if you never capture, you should be able to hit everything for very low delta-v.

From what I've gathered on these forums, it seems 'ballistic transfer' just means there is no mid-course correction. Sometimes people will perform a correction (usually for inclination) half-way along a Hohmann transfer, and I think 'ballistic transfer' means you're not doing that.

I think you are better off landing on Ike. You don't get quite as much science but it should be much cheaper, even with a free Duna landing. According to the wiki there is no "high atmosphere" so you might only get half the atmosphere science you're expecting. I know you think Pol and Bop are crazy expensive, but I think if done optimally should cost less than landing on Duna. Of course it may take a very long time with the gravity assists and/or waiting for an intercept.

Using the orbital-period method (with wings to glide a little bit), I arrived on Laythe and landed on LAND for the first time! Synchronous orbit is impossible for Laythe but it is possible to have an orbital period that is an even ratio of the rotational period, in this case 1/4. For this I used a periapsis of 56 km and an apoapsis of 3060 km.

I like this solution. One problem with adding counterweights is that the command seat also has an unusual drag coefficient, so even if the mass is balanced, it still won't fly straight in an atmosphere. One question that remains is when a Kerbal is sitting in the chair, does the Kerbal have drag coefficient of 0.2, or the same as the chair? If the Kerbal in the chair has a different drag coefficient from the chair, then in an atmosphere the center of drag will never match the center of mass, and you will always have some moment.

100% agree and this is why I don't usually wait for transfer windows. Anyway when chaining multiple gravity assists, waiting for a transfer window only helps with the first leg and for the second and subsequent ones you just have to take the planetary alignment as it comes. Plus, if you're going to avoid spending fuel for the inclination change (for Eve, say) then you need to intercept at the AN/DN, which means if you're waiting for a transfer window you need a phase angle of Kerbin relative to Eve AND relative to the orbital node. You could be waiting a very long time. In this case, by ignoring planetary alignment you usually end up waiting less, and it costs only a tiny amount of additional fuel, by burning at the first pass of the node to adjust the orbital period such that you get an intercept after some number of orbits.

I have tried placing the command seat in the 'perfect' center, but when a Kerbal is sitting in the seat, it is still off balance and wants to tip when thrust is applied. Any tips and tricks for getting it to fly straight when a Kerbal is in the seat?

The geosynchronous orbit method appears to work decently well in getting in the general area, but for high accuracy it's not enough. I really hate to bring a ton of extra fuel just to de-orbit accurately. I think a really good solution is the geosynchronous orbit together with a glider for the last few dozen km in the atmosphere. Below is a screen shot showing the general idea for the geosynchronous orbit method. Periapsis is about 100km and apoapsis is 20,560 km.

Your best bet is going to be Eve fly-by. From Kerbin to Eve you will leave Kerbin retrograde and arrive at Eve traveling prograde relative to Eve (probably with some radial and normal velocity too). An ideal fly-by of Eve will convert all the radial, normal, and prograde velocity into retrograde velocity relative to Eve, which will give you the lowest possible solar periapsis. (Aerobraking will give you less retrograde velocity and a higher solar periapsis.) From there you just have to burn fuel to get closer to low solar orbit. It is possible but rather involved to use gravity assists off multiple planets to lower your solar periapsis further.

Gravity assists take a lot of patience and can rack up game time quickly. I did a "grand tour" to try to max the tech tree in as few launches as possible, and it got me up to 36 years (13,385 days) after one mission.

This is an interesting problem, I had sorta written off before, but now that I think about it, there may be some interesting possibilities. What if one were to enter a highly eccentric geosynchronous (not geostationary) orbit, then on one pass you could scope for landing places just prior to the periapsis and place a maneuver node at apoapsis to re-enter as steep as you can get away with. I will have to experiment with this.