[Stock] Fly me to Minmus... for cheap!

[zarakon]

I already drained the monoprop to save weight, as I always do on anything that doesn't need it - the stock engineer report even mentions it now. I suppose you could shave off a couple bucks by draining some fuel too. I did end up with about 300 m/s remaining after establishing my return route. I just burned it all to make sure I hit ocean, but with better planning that would have been unnecessary.

I played around with the idea of using a command chair by detaching the command pod after taking the kerbal out, which looks like what cryogen was trying too. The idea was to make up the extra cost of the chair and probe by having a much smaller rocket, but I couldn't get anything small enough to really make up the difference and actually had a hard time even getting any of those attempts to orbit.

Aside from the obvious exploits like ladder drives and kraken drives (could you even make those accurate enough while on a budget?) there is one way I know to get a much lower cost, but I consider it cheating and very tedious, so I won't try it.

[waterlubber]

Would that be getting out and pushing? I was doing that until I realized how little deltav is actually required for this mission--only ~1500 in orbit. 1000 for transfer, 500 for return. The rest can be EVA. Anyway, I think yours and mine is probably the two cheapest designs. The rest is just miniscule parts. Do you want to try a get-out-and-push thing?

[ticalc2014]

Great job guys, I was happy with my attempt, just getting under 6k for the first time, but under 4k, I can't even compete with that! Of course, I never thought to EVA to the surface, so that certainly saves a few hundred delta-V. It just goes to show just how much more there is to learn, if I'm trying to get somewhere on a tight budget. It was a fun challenge though.

[Superfluous J]

Just had to do it again... 3762 (3009.6) this time after cutting out a sepratron and downgrading the 2nd stage engine

http://imgur.com/a/WPtuk

http://imgur.com/a/WPtuk

That is darn impressive. I wonder if you could bring less fuel by swapping the command pod with a lander can, and if it would lower the total cost. Probably not.

[zarakon]

Would that be getting out and pushing? I was doing that until I realized how little deltav is actually required for this mission--only ~1500 in orbit. 1000 for transfer, 500 for return. The rest can be EVA. Anyway, I think yours and mine is probably the two cheapest designs. The rest is just miniscule parts. Do you want to try a get-out-and-push thing?

I think it's about 950 for the transfer, if you launch at the right inclination, then exactly 160 for low orbit insertion, and 160 again to escape and return to kerbin.

And yeah, get-out-and-push is what I was talking about. If you do that, you only need enough to get into orbit, and you can build a simple SSTO rocket for only 3300, maybe even less. From there it would just be really boring and annoying to shove it to Minmus and back.

Great job guys, I was happy with my attempt, just getting under 6k for the first time, but under 4k, I can't even compete with that! Of course, I never thought to EVA to the surface, so that certainly saves a few hundred delta-V. It just goes to show just how much more there is to learn, if I'm trying to get somewhere on a tight budget. It was a fun challenge though.

Until trying this I had no idea you could get prices this low to Minmus or the Mun and back. The rockets I used just to get into Kerbin orbit early in my career mode probably cost more than this!

Also I had done EVAs down to Minmus and up to orbiting ships before, but I didn't know until now that they could actually do BOTH on one pack.

That is darn impressive. I wonder if you could bring less fuel by swapping the command pod with a lander can, and if it would lower the total cost. Probably not.

Doubtful. The lander can costs 900 more than the mk1 pod, so it would have to save you more than a full 800-unit fuel tank