The Frugal Tourist: Least Cost Per Passenger

[numerobis]

Passenger contracts are a reliable money-maker, but there's always room to squeeze some extra profit.

I'm interested in seeing the cheapest possible trip on a per-passenger basis to various destinations.

The cost of a trip is the launch cost minus the recovery cost. Documentation for that is the cost in the VAB, and the cost recovery when you land back on Kerbin. If you recover multiple stages, you need to show each one being recovered. If you use launch clamps, just account for them explicitly (or remove them from the VAB picture).

The number of passengers you can account for is the number of empty seats, or seats with tourists in them. Jeb is not a tourist.

The cost per passenger is the cost, divided by the number of passengers. Make sure you have at least one passenger.

A destination is something like "sub-orbit Kerbin" or "orbit Minmus" or "land on Duna" ... and back! Whatever destination you have in mind, get there and back and report the cost per passenger. If you want to do Jool-5 and back with tourists, report that per-seat cost.

I recommend you include mention of interesting facts such as: your ascent plan, exciting things that happened in flight, what technology level you need, what VAB/SPH/launch pad level, number of parts, mass on the pad.

Disclose all mods. I rather recommend Claw's bug fix mod.

Just to be consistent: tech tier starts at 0 in my count.

Leaderboard:

• LKO
  1. EvermoreAlpaca at $73.8 per passenger, 227 passengers. Note: went on to a Minmus landing.
  2. Nefrums at $194 per passenger, 12 passengers. Note: also did a Minmus landing and Mun orbit.
  3. ForScience6686 at $251 per passenger, 5 passengers.
  4. ForScience6686 at $414 per passenger, 3 passengers. Tier 5.
• Mun Orbit
  1. Nefrums at $194 per passenger, 12 passengers. Note: also did a Minmus landing.
  2. numerobis at $1,291 per passenger. 8 passengers. VAB 0, launch pad 1, tech tier 4.
• Minmus Landing
  1. EvermoreAlpaca at $73.8 per passenger, 227 passengers.
  2. Nefrums at $194 per passenger, 12 passengers. Note: also did a Mun orbit.
  3. Jetski at $2,475 per passenger. 196 passengers.

Edited April 7, 2016 by numerobis

[numerobis]

Here's my first submission:

Eight passengers to Mun. The bottom stage is three big SRBs at 65% thrust. The top stage is a Terrier with 8t of fuel, four passenger cans, and a pod for Jeb. Plus a battery, a nose cone, extra gyros, and three fins. 28 parts total. I'm using the original VAB, upgraded launch pad once, and I've got the tier-4 technologies (the ones that cost 90 bulbs or fewer).

Launch cost: 17,968 taking into account the clamps.

Recovery: 7,639.

That means the flight cost a total of 10,329 for eight passengers, or 1,291 per passenger to Mun orbit.

@Claw's mod was critical to fly this: standard SAS twitches too much and makes the top tear off the bottom.

The flight plan: I point the rocket at 85 degrees using the launch clamps so I don't need to turn it. I fire on all cylinders with SAS on 'stabilize'. Around 50 m/s I gingerly make sure that I'm within 5 degrees of prograde and I engage 'prograde' mode. After that there's nothing to do. I pass 10km pointing about 30 degrees, 20km 20 degrees. The SRBs run out about there, and my nose cone blows up. Stage to the Terrier at full throttle (a blistering 4.5 m/s²) and keep pushing until Ap is around 75km.

Nothing special about the flight to Mun and back. I made sure Pe at Mun was about 10 km, and managed that from my TMI burn so it was nearly free. The lower the better, until you hit the ground.

The return took several aerobraking orbits. I was at 53km Pe, and each orbit I was holding a normal (or anti normal) heading so I'd have my broadside into the wind. The solar panels got hot but nothing worse than that.

 

[Jetski]

I was curious how this challenge would scale up. This could have been done much better, I had almost 3K dV left when I left minmus.  Thinking about taking the same ship to Duna, but I forgot an engineer to repack the chutes. Standard ascent profile, nothing fancy, just keep TWR under 1.7 to avoid aero messiness.  Still had a main booster, so used that to get to Minmus, dumped it a few seconds before landing with tons of fuel left in it. on the return, instead of aerobraking, I did a 9 minute suicide burn into the atmosphere to get rid of excess fuel.  

Launchpad Cost 954,058 funds

Recovered value with 1100 LF still in tanks 468,864 funds

Total Cost 485194 funds

196 tourists landed on Minmus and safely returned. Also Jeb. 2475 funds cost per passenger for a minmus vacation.  The Lesser Flats are nice this time of year. All stock, except KER, Planetshine, etc.

 

 

 

Edited January 9, 2016 by Jetski

[numerobis]

Wow. A flying saucer. I was not expecting that

[SpaceplaneAddict]

SSTO's SSTO's SSTO's

 

 

Seriously, LKO should be pretty cheap in a reusable spaceplane...

 

 

 

[Gojira1000]

4 hours ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

SSTO's SSTO's SSTO's

 

 

Seriously, LKO should be pretty cheap in a reusable spaceplane...

 

Oh dear, I wonder if I can SSTO-ize the Brutus?

 

Oh for Pete's sake - yes fly your tourists into LKO and land on the runway - in Sandbox so you can't get funds back >.< I r smart

Edited January 11, 2016 by Gojira1000

[numerobis]

SpaceplaneAddict, It should be quite doable to beat the numbers up there now with an SSTO. Go for it!

[Nefrums]

Just to prove that SSTO is cheaper, I've done both mun orbit and minmus landing for 194 funds per tourist, 12 tourists on board.

 

 

[numerobis]

Thanks Nefrums, it's up there. I understand correctly that you did both in one flight, right?

Nice job getting home with about 10 seconds of fuel left!

I tried but failed to get a useful Tier-4 SSTO spaceplane. There isn't that much win from hauling yourself to 10km at 300 m/s on jets, so you're basically stuck building an SSTO rocket with a lot of useless payload.

[Snarfster]

I always find this a difficult subject.

My space program really lives on tourism. Basically I have a class E in high kerbin orbit which I use as a transfer station. Re-usable shuttles transfer the tourists from KSC to and from the E (named Echo Base).

Then there's two liners that fly between Eve-Gilly and Echo Base, one liner (right now) that flies between Dres and Echo Base. They have a 10 kerbal capacity and get refuelled by ISRU at the destination.

Initial investment for the Eve liners was 400.000 Funds, the Dres liner 1.100.000 funds. The first tourist trip more than covers the initial investment.

The re-usable shuttle costs about 3000 fund per tourist, round trip.

After recovering the initial investment, the money is very good, the liners basically fly up and down every launch window. (Very positive effect on my crew training as well, never had so many 4 and 5 star kerbals before).

Next plan is a Vall or Laythe passenger line. (Just have to land there first so the contracts open up).  

[Nefrums]

12 hours ago, numerobis said:

Thanks Nefrums, it's up there. I understand correctly that you did both in one flight, right?

Nice job getting home with about 10 seconds of fuel left!

I tried but failed to get a useful Tier-4 SSTO spaceplane. There isn't that much win from hauling yourself to 10km at 300 m/s on jets, so you're basically stuck building an SSTO rocket with a lot of useless payload.

Yes both in the same flight.

SSTO is feasible from Tier-5 now in 1.0.5.  with the new Panther engine.

 

[Nich]

HA HA Nefrums nice to see you are still at it.  Hopefully I can beat it shortly but you definitely set the bar low

[ForScience6686]

On 1/19/2016 at 4:50 AM, Nefrums said:

Yes both in the same flight.

SSTO is feasible from Tier-5 now in 1.0.5.  with the new Panther engine.

 

Here's my entry in regards to panther ssto.  I used this for the k-prize entry as well.  I calculate it at 413.66/tourist to LKO.  Not as good as these others but it would be quite profitable as my screenshots show _{(That's right, 6 million by day 55!)}  I love this ship, very easy to fly but can be a bit twitchy at high speeds.  Even with the small wing area, the upward wing incidence makes it capable of landings at just under 80m/s.  I actually used this for 5 missions being refilled at the island by a miner, so cost was 0.  As I attempted to taxi for the 6th mission, the wings continued to just fall off.  It was retired, until I saw this thread, hope you enjoy.

 

[Pds314]

I'd do this, but I have so many mods it would feel silly. I mean, FAR, realheat, etc kind of change the balance for spaceplanes, which are nearly necessary to be competitive here.

[numerobis]

Knowing myself, I'd knock the T30 off on every flight on that bird!

Nice fleet chilling at the island there.

@Pds314: I'll only compare stock-physics entries, but I'm more than happy to see you fly something on this challenge. To be competitive there are multiple ways: you can also work at an early-game level, when you can't really build planes.

Edited January 24, 2016 by numerobis

[numerobis]

I just finally succeeded at making a tier-4 SSTO. Pictures to come (I landed in the wrong place, I need to redo that part).

4 passengers, 16t of fuel for the T30 plus 100 more units for the Wheesly. That's 660 bucks per passenger.

[EvermoreAlpaca]

 

This was not actually designed with awareness of this thread, my goal was to minimize mass and maximize passengers for a single stage minmus trip.

228 total kerbals, landed on the surface of Minmus and returned to kerbin via a fly-by of The Mun, 73.5132 credits per kerbal.

I was curious to verify my assumption that the cost of fuel is the only factor with a single stage runway recovery, so I calculated the cost per passenger manually.   I launched with 20,070 LF and 5830 OX.  I landed with 430 LF and 0 OX.  This comes out to 19640 LF and 5830 OX.  I checked the costs of fuel, which come out to .8 per LF and .18 per OX.  This yields a cost of 16761.4

I checked this against the build and recovery screen, which yielded: 617,886 and 601,125 respectively, for a difference of 16,761.  Math checks out!  With 228 total kerbals on board (do I count the pilot?) this yields 73.5132 credits per passenger.

https://gyazo.com/cdf80851cd4a207f9b09ea1c11b69b90

Edited January 28, 2016 by EvermoreAlpaca

[numerobis]

Impressive! I'm counting you at 227 passengers, because the pilot is not a passenger. I suppose with your submission as well as JetSki's you'd need to have some crew on board to serve the cocktails, but whatevs. Not that it makes a big difference: 73.8 instead of 73.5.

Very nice plane. Do you really need all those rapiers? I'd think you could get away with a bit less, or at least trade over to a lower-mass, higher-Isp atmospheric engine, but I'm not yet well-versed with the jets in 1.x

Your landing gear is hilarious. That's what I use for my puddle-jumpers, but you've got an interplanetary 767 on it.

[EvermoreAlpaca]

You don't "need" that many rapiers to get from air breathing altitude to orbit.  That being said, RAPIERs are better at being air breathing engines than people give them credit for.  The whole point of air breathing engines in this paradigm is getting as much velocity as you can before switching to closed cycle rockets.  RAPIERs maintain thrust to a higher velocity than even the whiplash ramjets.  In some cases you can improve overall performance by switching to whiplash, or running a combination of both.  That being said, the pure RAPIER configuration is quite good!

[ForScience6686]

Slight improvement with my new design. This one can hold 5 passengers plus Valentina. The take off is a bit rough fully loaded but some fuel could be removed for quick orbit and return.  I also show that very steep re-entries are easily done, but design plays a big role in keeping the highest AoA for as long as possible.  33,920 starting cost - 32665 recovered funds = 1255 / 5 passengers = 251/passenger

[numerobis]

Oh, very pretty plane. Must be pretty touchy on liftoff to avoid a tail strike with that bird.