The Grand Tour : land on Minmus, Ike, Dres, Pol, Bop, and Eeloo in a single trip

[ProphetX]

Hello,

My kerbal engineers had a dream : a big, fully autonomous ship able to explore the kerbol system, make scientific analysis, and refuel on site without any external help. That is, with a single launch, land on at least 6 moons and planets and have a look from space on several others.

To do so they designed the "Hermes XSMR-1" (eXplore, Science, Mining, Refining). This is the story of that ship, related in 7 parts (Launch, Minmus, Ike, Dres, Jool, Eeloo, and back to Kerbin).

(At the beginning my kerbals were not too experienced with taking pictures, but thankfully they got better with time)

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All of this was made in carreer mode 1.0 with almost no mod except engineer redux, so this is 100% stock parts.

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Part 1 : Design and Launch.

After a big team work, the kerbal team had its first prototype ready. The Hermes XSMR-1 design was ready and the mission control was eager to send it into orbit.

For a total mass of 88 tons, 32 meters high, the ship features a laboratory and all available scientific experiences, enough space for 5 kerbals, a total a 4 gigantor solar panels, a drill and an ISRU converter. It has also 3 docking ports, 1 of each size, in case a ship needs to spend some time with it.

Here was the prototype in the hangars :

And with the rockets that did put it into orbit :

So after design, the first step was to put it into orbit. Given the fact that such a ship was never tested before, it was launched without any kerbal aboard. KSC had already lost 3 kerbals when launching an untested aircraft, so now they were cautious ... The crew was planned to be sent in a separate ship.

Here's the ship ascending into orbit. KSC noticed later that they had forgotten to retract a landing gear, so all the ascent was made with it deployed ...

The ship is using its own engines for the final push to get into orbit :

After a second small launch, the ship got its crew : 2 pilots, 2 engineers and 1 scientist. KSC would have prefered 2 scientists but there was a shortage on them, so they took who was available ...

After checking that everything was ready, the crew plotted its course to its first objective : Minmus.

Here is the ship pushing itself out of kerbin orbit to meet Minmus.

[ProphetX]

Part 2 : Minmus.

After putting the ship into orbit, it was running low on fuel. So the first step before leaving the kerbin system was to refuel. Also, the ship had not be tested thoroughly and we were really curious to see if it was up to our expectancies. Finally, a few years before designing the ship, we had accepted a contract asking us to set up a land base on Minmus. The Hermes XSMR-1 had all the features allowing it to be considered as a land base, so we could fullfill the contract with it.

The insertion into minmus orbits allowed us to understand the pros and cons of that particular design. It is a big, clumsy ship, with low acceleration. So all the maneuvers have to be planned and executed with precision and patience. But on the other side, it as a lot of delta-V with low ISP, so it is possible to have very long burns to stabilize to descent on the target planets, making landings quite easier than expected.

Here is the ship approaching Minmus :

As stated above, I could appreciate the fact that the ship had a LOT of fuel and was very fuel efficient. That really makes up for the low maneuverability, as we could light up the engines during several minutes for an optimal landing speed. Here the landing was made between 1m/s and 2m/s.

The final landing phase (as you see, I have 28 minutes of burn available to finish putting down the ship on the ground, quite a luxury ...) :

Fortunately we could find a flat place to land with only 4.5° of slopes. We sent a Kerbonaut out, and there we can see how big is that ship !

For history, we planted the flag.

It then took us less than 2 days for a full refuel and think about our next step : Ike in the Duna system.

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Part 3 : Ike.

After refuelling on Minmus, the ship had proven its value and was ready for its first interplanetary travel. As it comes, we had still not fullfilled a contract where we were suppposed to plant a flag on Duna and the customer was becoming impatient. So we decided to make that mission along with this ship and another one made specifically for the task.

The Duna lander made rendez-vous with the Hermes on a high orbit of kerbin close to Minmus orbit. The docking was difficult due to the small docking ports and the size of the ships, but it finally worked. However, the docking ports on the Hermes are sideways, so after docking the ship was completly unbalanced. We saw it when burning out of kerbin orbit : when the ship was at full throttle it was drifting out of course, even with RCS activated.

Hopefully the Duna lander had enough spare fuel to provide for a Duna insertion by itself. Given a good aerobraking, we calculated that it could land and take-off back to the Hermes alone. So for the burn to Duna, we splitted the ensemble and sent the ships separatly.

Here are the 2 ships docked together :

Handling the 2 ships insertion into Duna orbit was quite a mess but we made it. The landing on Duna was made with the second pilot of the Hermes taking control of the Duna lander. It was a great success, planting the flag and gathering scientific data. It was then able to take off a get back to the Hermes. But in the end it was really a lot of trouble for just a flag, was a mess !

A mess, but a successfull one. However, the ship was low on fuel and it was time for us to land on Ike. Due to the stress of the Duna mission, going back and forth between the Hermes and the lander, we were unable to take a lot of pictures ...

Anyway, the landing on Ike was not as smooth as on Minmus. Our first landing spot had a 17.5° slope and we couldn't maintain stability, so we had to go for a few more minutes over the landscape to find a suitable landing place, with a better 8.2° slope. Achieving at least stability was a true relief.

The landing spot was a good one with a soil rich of 6% ore. Refueling took only a day and we were then ready for new adventures.

Here's the ship landed on Ike :

After a while, we took off to prepare for our next trip. Here's the ship in Ike orbit :

At that time, Ike and Duna were the furthest planets ever visited by our kerbals, so for the next step, Dres, we were going into the unknown !

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Part 4 : Dres.

The current Duna position did not look that bad for a Dres injection. Quite impatient, KSC and the crew decided to go without further delay. But what looked a good idea became almost a nightmare when we arrived in the vicinity of Dres ...

Indeed, after almost 2 years of space travel the Hermes reaches Dres with a very bad surprise : the relative velocity between Dres and the Hermes was of about 2000 m/s ! Looking at the remaining fuel, about 2800 m/s of Delta-V, it looked like landing on Dres would be a tough one !

Anyway, we planned a maneuver very close to Dres, at 30 km high, to reduce the needed Delta-V for orbit.

The ship on Dres approach before starting the orbiting maneuver :

Finally, the maneuver proved successful but with not that much Delta-V remaining for killing orbital speed and landing (around 1000 m/s left).

The ship in orbit aroud Dres :

The landing maneuver was made in a bit of a panic, on the nightside of the planet, really not a good idea ... also due to the very limited fuel remaining, the plan was to start the engines at the ultimate moment, as well as using RCS all along to save every single drop of fuel.

The descent went well as we made two emergency burns to kill vertical velocity before doing the final approach, at 150 m above the ground. At that time the fuel was so low that we wondered how we had ended up in that situation ! But luck was with us as the slope angle on the landing site was only 8°. Because of the gravity of the planet and the profile of our ship, a higher slope could have been fatal to the mission.

In the end the pilot was on the verge of making a cardiac arrest, but that was it, a successful landing, but a very, very close one !!! (had to reload twice ...)

The landed ship with the fuel indicators to see how desperate was the situation :

We then deployed the Drill, activated the ISRU and prayed for god that everything would work. Two days later, the fuel tanks were fully replenished and we sent a message to KSC to tell them that the mission could continue ! At ease now after the fear of dying on that small rock far from everything, the pilot herself volunteered to plant the flag.

Anyway, given that experience on Dres, everyone in KSC and the ship wondered if Eeloo was doable, so a lot of work was made to tune the trans-planetary maneuvers and landing protocols.

The flag and the ship on Dres :

Meanwhile, a contractor asked us to visit Jool and Bop, the next steps on our trip. That would provide some good money to prepare the design of the Hermes XSMR-2. Anyway there was no hurry for that and the crew was readying itself for the trip. They were eager to explore the green planet and its moons !

Next stops : Bop and Pol !

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Part 5 : The Jool System.

The ship had reached the Dres system more than 4 years after sending it into orbit of Kerbin. The crew was eager to keep on the exploration mission as fast as possible, but after getting so close to a disaster on Dres, KSC decided that it was necessary to wait as long as necessary for an optimal injection path to Jool.

As a result, we checked all the un-necessary weight on the ship and came to observe that when the ore container was full, we were losing almost 200 m/s of delta-V ! So before leaving, we dumped the ore mined on Dres and the ship was ready to leave the planet surface with its full 4737 m/s of delta-V. If we had seen that before leaving Ike, the Dres landing would have been much more comfortable !

The burn into a 30 km orbit took us 540 m/s of delta-V. That again gave us concern about getting to Eeloo ... but well, there was plenty of time to think about it.

Whatever, the time we had to wait for an optimal Jool injection was sooooo long that KSC wondered about the sanity of the crew ... Almost 5 years of boring orbit around Dres before being able to launch to Jool in good conditions !

At mission time T+9y,264d, we finally had a go from KSC : full sails to Jool ! This was an injection for something like 1000 m/s of delta-V, leaving more than enough to orbit Jool and refuel on Bop or Pol.

And that was it, after 4 more years of space travel, we made it to Jool orbit, at mission time T+13y,250d. At this distance from the sun, the solar panels had a very low efficiency, so we finally shut down the laboratory. The scientist was also half mad and bored, so that was for the better ...

The ship in full burn to achieve Jool orbit :

Bop approach was quite easy, with a lot of spare fuel, and we could land with a very beautiful view with Jool, Tylo, Laythe and Vall in the background. Bop proved very rich in Ore and the landing site showed a exceptionnal 9.39% of ore composition. Two days of drilling and refining and we were ready to take-off.

The beautiful descent on Bop :

Bop Flag :

After that success on Bop, we went straight to Pol. Easy maneuvers, lot of spare fuel, a fast and efficient part of the mission.

Into Pol orbit :

Pol flag :

So finally, after having refueled on Pol, we were ready for our next step : Eeloo. The fear of that planet was finally overcome with the ease showed during the Bop/Pol maneuvers. With a careful approach, an economic fuel usage, there was no reason to be scared.

Next step : Eeloo !

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Part 6 : Eeloo.

The Pol refueling mission left us with a trendemous 4200 m/s delta-V to leave the Jool system and reach Eeloo. Anyway, we were scared that the perfect timing for an Eeloo injection from Jool would be a nightmare, with several years of waiting for the optimal window. But fortunatly we were wrong and it was a lot easier than expected. After a short 1.5 years of waiting we had a great travel course for only 1000 m/s of delta-V.

So the nightmare was not to wait for the window to open ... but the time of the travel itself : an 11 long years journey in deep space to reach Eeloo !

The path to Eeloo :

11 years, about as much time for this last step as was spent for the whole journey since the departure from Kerbin ! The crew could have gone crazy, but they were either too stupid or too courageous for that ... During those long days between Jool and Eeloo, they kept asking to themselves if they really wanted to go back, or not. Some even suggested that may be they should all die on a course out of the kerbol the system, headed to the nearest star ...

But at mission time T+26 years, the ship finally reached Eeloo. 26 years, for god sake ! Most of the crew members had spent close to half of their life in that spaceship ! The main pilot was even older, being a veteran from the first manned missions to Minmus and Ike ... at the venerable age of 65 years old, she was wondering if she could make it back to Kerbin ?

Anyway, the arrival changed the minds of everybody and they started to think about what was to be done. The sight of Eeloo was also delightful, a very beautiful landscape that made them dream many nights ...

In Eeloo Orbit :

With a 150 km Polar orbit we could use the resource scanner. The planet had an average ore concentration, evenly spread. The choice of the landing site was then taken to be close to the equator and in a flat place. Deorbiting and landing was not a subject a concern, with more than 3100 m/s of delta-V remaining while in orbit. So it was made slowly, without stress.

Final landing maneuver on Eeloo :

So, at last, Eeloo ! The whole crew decided that every one of them should plant a flag and take a group picture. With the final step of the mission achieved, they could do a little party !

Flag party on Eeloo :

With that final part of the mission over, the crew had to take a decision : go back to Kerbin or get lost into deep space ? The decision was quickly taken, the beauty of that last planet gave them the envy to share it with others and they all decided to go back.

Next step : Kerbin !!!

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Part 7 : Back to Kerbin.

The return path was not an easy decision to take. Should we go straight to Kerbin or make one or two fuel stops ? Given the Eeloo orbit inclination and how fast the ship would arrive in the Kerbin system from Eeloo, the crew decided to make at least one pit stop on Pol in the Jool system before going for a direct insertion to Kerbin. Indeed, that path was to provide a better inclination for the burn to Kerbin and save fuel for the final orbiting maneuver around Kerbin, a maneuver that was expected to spend a lot of fuel.

Luckily, there was a direct Jool insert path : no need to wait before leaving Eeloo. Anyway, the travel time was still a bit scary, with a 4 years journey ! That meant at least 6 to 8 years more into space given the path back to kerbin would last about 2 years ... so far, so good, the point was to get back in one piece and it didn't really matter if the crew arrived in their late sixties ...

The path to Jool :

With the crew now expert in the usage of the ship, the whole pit stop was done in a fast and efficient way. No lost time, easy landing, easy refuelling, everything went smooth.

Into Pol orbit :

Second Pol landing :

After having refueled, we planned the return course. It was a direct, hard burned injection to Kerbin. First a 1400 m/s delta-V insertion maneuver, and a planned 1700 m/s orbitalization maneuver at 150 km above Kerbin. We wanted to avoid Kerbin atmosphere because the ship would probably not handle it and would most likely disintigrate. Anyway, with 4500 m/s of Delta-V available from Jool, these maneuvers would leave about 1200 m/s for a final trip to refuel on Minmus. At worst, if that final pit-stop was not possible, the ship would have been in orbit of Kerbin, allowing us to fulfill the main goal : recover the crew.

So after 2 more years of space travel, that was it, the ship was back to Kerbin !

The Kerbin orbiting maneuver was an 8 minutes burn. To avoid overshooting, we started burning 6 minutes before reaching peariapsis, and again everything worked perfectly well.

Orbiting burn on Kerbin :

At mission time T+34y,103d, Kerbin orbit was achieved. However, before being retrieved, the crew wanted to park the ship into Minmus orbit after having refueled it. There was enough delta-V for that and things were done easily.

Last Minmus landing :

This being done, KSC launched the rescue craft to bring back the 5 crew members onto Kerbin soil. Thanks to all the science sent back by the crew during that long mission, several new technologies were available and it was a state of the art rocket that was sent to Minmus.

Rescue craft launch from Kerbin :

The automated space-ship made rendez-vous around Minmus and it was an EVA crew transfer. They took with them as much science as possible, rocks from Eeloo, Dres, Bop and various measures from all of these planets ...

Crew transfer around Minmus :

The final approach to Kerbin was fine and the ship landed in Kerbin waters :

At mission time T+34y,143d the whole crew is back !!! A huge party involves all of KSC staff as well as some policians, family members and various reporters. This is a huge achievement, and nothings prevents us now to colonize the whole Kerbol system !!!

The only regret was not taking time to land on Gilly ... but well, the crew was so old that they really had to go home

Science party at KSC :

Kerbonaut party at KSC :

How do veteran 60+ years old Kerbonaut look like :