immelman

It should be enough, we'll see if I'm right!

Two ion engines do not give enough TWR for Mun and Eeloo, so they have an additional ion drive docked underneath, here you can see it coming into dock with the Eeloo lander: The completed Eeloo craft/lander. It is heading there via a Eve/Kerbin/Kerbin/Jool slingshot: And the Duna lander docking with the ion taxi which will transport it to Duna, return, refuel and head off with another lander for Moho:

First task is to get the ION craft undocked and safely away from the mothership. Here you can see the bigger 2 drive craft below the mothership with one of the single drive refuel vessels above. The two nuke engines will push the Eve lander and Jool stack. Next off is the parachute for my Kerbin return, which will stay in LKO and the lander can still attached to the Moho lander:

And we are off! Nine turbojets are enough to lift off, one of which I will keep as the Laythe lander. It's a very complex craft with 751 parts and needs a lot of rearranging in LKO to assemble the various components. With all the intake spamming it was not that hard to get it to a 99K AP. A useful trick is to place your last turbojet in the centre of the craft, that way it will flame out first without creating a death spin, warning you when to reduce thrust. I starting turning the craft at 10000m, aiming to be horizontal at 32000m where I accelerated to orbital speed and pushed my AP above 100Km: The turbojets were ditched at 59km: The circularising burn was only 51 m/s: With another 47m/s to correct my inclination:

After real life intervened I had a good look at the updated engines, especially the IONs. Which led to me throwing away my landers for Mun, Minmus, Eeloo, Bop, Dres and Ike! I'm going to use ION's to land on them now. Anyway here is the final craft, 75 Tonnes: The mission plan is to use to two bigger ion powered tugs to move landers and Jeb around the system and two smaller refuel pods, one for Dres and one that stays in orbit around the Mun. Jeb will land in order: Eeloo Laythe Val Tylo Bop Pol Dres Duna Ike Minmus Mun Moho Eve Gilly Kerbin I hope it works out, the fuel budget is pretty tight in places...

I've been playing around a lot with the KSP Trajectory Optimization Tool: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/36476-WIN-KSP-Trajectory-Optimization-Tool-v0-11-2-Mission-Architect-Pre-release-1 Mainly because I need to minimize my Moho, Dres and Eeloo Delta V. With Moho of course it's always the insertion Delta V, even using this tool some of the results you got demanded a 3000m/s deltaV insertion burn, ouch, we can't have that. Using the tool I've worked out a slingshot via Eve which puts the craft into a Moho passing orbit on it's inclination and on the periapsis and ascending node, which means the craft gets into a 0 inclination 200Km orbit for less than 3000m/s total: I'm pretty pleased about this! So here is the ion powered shuttle that will transport the Moho lander as well as the 1400 m/s in extra fuel to transfer to Eve, using ions makes the ship half what it would be otherwise. I'm looking forward to the greater thrust for ion drives in the next update!

Now I've got Eve out of the way for sure (I think!) It's time to look at the Jool section. Laythe: Tylo (where I'm going to use the transfer stage to help land) Vall: All these have been tested. Bop I plan to use ION drives and Pol, well I'm going to wait and see about the latest update to the game. Time to put the Jool stack together methinks.

I've done more shaving, as long as I land on Eve's highest point and with an EVA this will get to orbit at 20.1 T:

Hmmm, Just been reading that the lv-1 and ion engine my be increased in the coming update. That will change things.

As a sanity test and to keep track of the mission mass so far I'm stacking the units together. This mass includes circularising the stack in Kerbin orbit, transfer and landing of the Eve stage, transfer and landing on Gilly, Mun and Minmus and Back to Kerbin. 37 Tonnes so far:

After playing around with a couple of configs I think I have this settled, one third of the grand tour planning done! I had a look at using the LV-N on the Eve transfer vehicle as the main engine for this and not refuelling, but the mass of the lander is so small that I ended up with less overall Delta V. Plus landing on the engine bell was hard, only managed it once out of three tries on the Mun! Here is a very handy series of charts for working out this done by Tavert: http://imgur.com/a/iNqmQ#0 So here is the lander with attached lander can, it has about 200 more Delta V then I needed to transfer to Gilly, land and then transfer to Kerbin, that will be my reserve: I'll aero-brake into a Mun passing orbit and refuel there with this, there is about .2 of a tonne more than I need here, but I'm worried about part counts as well, so leave it as this for now: And back to Kerbin, don’t need a parachute, we will just land as is:

Thank you! I have to admit, it's building the stack I'm most concerned about. The part count is going to make my PC lie down on the floor and cry...

I think that is the Eve lander finalised, though a pinpoint landing on top of Eve's tallest mountain is called for. Two things I've checked out: 1. Using a very small light drone to act as a pathfinder for the landing. 2. How important is the gravity turn? I've launched the lander with a turn at 23,25,27,29 and 31 km. It looks like that 29km is the best height, but the difference is only 53m/s! What is more important is how flat is the bit you land on, if like me you land on a pretty steep slope, it takes quite a bit of fuel to straighten you up... There is a Western shoulder to Eve's tallest mountain that's pretty flat, should aim for that. Since I plan to lift from Eve last, next is the lander of Gilly, Mun, Minmus and back to Kerbin. The fuel I need will tell me how much I need for the Eve transfer vehicle.

After seeing your reddit posts, this is a submission I'm looking forward to seeing...

Looks like I can, without the septratons the decoupled parachutes would stay on the lander and tip it over during flight. So put the parachutes on the side! Also with removing some unneeded engines and shifting fuel around we are down to 24 tonnes: I've had Jeb give it a dry run and it will get into orbit with 31 units of fuel left. It looks like an EVA to circularize will be necessary on the big day:

Ah Eve, this is where it can go all wrong. We need to shrink down the Eve lander as much a possible. My first Eve lander was an almost 60 tonne monstrosity: I know the higher you go the lower the delta V requirements, so I've looked at fitting wheels to the lander and driving up the highest mountain in the game, or gliding to it (which works surprisingly well): But in the end if NASA can land a probe on Mars in a 1km x 1km box, then why can't I! So flying pancakes it is (so they don't flip over when landing on mountain sides). I've gone from this, which at 45 tonnes is still too big: To 36 tonnes: To what I hope is the final design at 28 tonnes: Now I just have to land it above 6500m...

I've been looking at this on and off for a couple of months now and thought it would be good to post my planning as it progresses. First three artificial limitations: 1. No Command chairs, Jeb must travel too and land on all Kerbol's (where it is possible, so no Jool!) bodies in at least a lander can. This significantly increases the total mass of the mission. 2. Try and do this with the least mass on the landing pad possible, under 100 tonnes If I can. 3. No funny business with cubic struts, or weightless aircraft landing gear, so none of this for example: Which is a shame! It would make it a lot easier. But if I need to attach a part cubic struts are fair game. Mechjeb or not Mechjeb, that is the question: while I frankly don't understand some of the attitude against this tool, it's going to be fun seeing how I get on without it. With one exception, to keep the weight down we will be using this to taxi Jeb around the Kerbol system and looking at the 40 minute to 90 minute burns this is one place mechjeb stays!

Hi Cantab, Does Kerbol escape count as far?

That Kerbin return slingshot is amazing and the potential Eeloo intercept very interesting. Great mission.

There are a number of examples in boolybooly's spaceplanes thread, including mine I Second the point about finding a good place to land. I found using a parachute as a drouge helped a lot....

Perhaps you should first build your lander aiming to land above 5000 m? This will knock down the deltaV needs by a lot. The region of Eve with the tallest mountain has a number of areas above this that are quite flat. You can drive up it or use MJs landing predictor for a pin point landing. To make lifting your lander off Kerbin and transfer to Eve easier look at ditching aero spikes completely and using all 48-7s attached by cubic struts to 400 or 800 tanks asparagus style. A ratio of 1 landing leg per 4 tones works. I have lifted off a lander can on a 44T lander using this setup.

This is an entry in Ziv's minimal Jool 5 challenge. It also the mission I'm most proud of in KSP so far. I wanted to see what was the minimal mass that could take Jeb in a pod, land on all five moons and return him to the KSC. To do this I had to use a three body gravity slingshot off Eve, Kerbin and Kerbin to get my orbit up to Jool's to minimize the fuel needed, which really was a first for me . Here is an album with a lot of pics, I hope it comes in useful for anyone planning a trip to Jool (or beyond!)

After seeing Mesklin's and sdj64's entries I had to have another go in this myself. 37.242 Tonnes on the launchpad This gave me a chance to try out a big gravity assist I've worked out for a grand tour I want to try, so this minimal challenge has been great practice! So Jeb visited the SOI's of: Kerbin, Eve, Kerbin, Kerbin, Jool, Tylo, Bop, Pol, Laythe, Val, Kerbin.... This is as far as you can go using a lander can as your main vehicle, though someone prove me wrong! Using command chairs I'm pretty sure this can be knocked down at least another six or seven tonnes just using a command chair as a lander. Then with one less jet and less fuel for the ascent and transfer another couple of tonnes less again? So under thirty tonnes... Anyway awesome fun, am I a masochist for thinking about a minimal Jeb level entry after this? Here are some pics:

Your videos Cupcake are just so entertaining, such fun to watch!