Grand tours!

[kHurtiZ]

How far can you travel with ONE spacecraft?

The route is: KSP -> Minmus -> Mun -> KSP. (or you can swap Min and Mun if you so wish.) How many laps can you do? With a highly optimized rocket and enough fuel you should be able to do this at least once using stock parts, and using mods you should be able to do much more than that.

No cfg edits that affect engine power / fuel efficiency or fuel tank mass / capcity!

Mods allowed. Tell us how many laps (or part of a lap) you managed to do. You must land at each destination! When returning to Kerbin, you must land at KSC!

May the asparagus be with you.

[kHurtiZ]

For your reference, here\'s a spreadsheet listing some fuel tank stats (see attachment)

[[ Attachment updated ]]

[yoyo478]

Can the landing at KSC be just the pod, landed with a parachute?

And is mechjeb allowed?

[Markus Reese]

is that landing at all 3? I assume it is just orbital flyby? Well thinking landing with mod parts wouldn\'t be too bad if done with a single stage setup repeatedly.

[kHurtiZ]

MechJeb is allowed.

You can land just the pod at KSC with a parachute ... but good luck doing the next grand tour if you don\'t have any propulsion! A soft, powered landing at KSC is preferred, for this reason.

Yes, that\'s a landing at all 3. Orbital flyby is far too easy.

[Barie]

at the moment trying it, nerva\'s ftw

[yoyo478]

I\'m pretty sure my craft could do it, but I\'ll get back to you when I do. I\'ll post screenshots of all three locations.

[kHurtiZ]

Wow. Just wow. I managed four complete grand tours, and to put the icing on the cake I had enough fuel left to make orbit one last time. Had _just_ enough fuel to deorbit, but not enough to control where I landed. So I overflew KSC by a long way and my capsule splashed down in the ocean.

Here\'s the beast:

While the craft does lift off from the pad without the SRBs, it\'s very slow so I added them to conserve fuel and get me to orbit a little quicker.

But, it\'s still heavy on gas on the first lift-off; the first pair of asparagus tanks were empty just before I reached orbital velocity.

I managed to do one complete grand tour; on approach to KSC for the first time, the second pair of asparagus tanks were empty, and I jettisoned them before landing. The last pair of asparagus tanks got me to orbit and allowed me to do my second grand tour and land at KSC again. But there wasn\'t much left in them after that, so I dropped them during my 3rd ascent to orbit.

The central, inner stage with 2 long tanks and 8 NERVA engines lasted me for two complete grand tours. I also dropped a pair of the engines, because I didn\'t need so much thrust once the external tanks were gone.

I used NovaPunch \'stock\' parts, but modified the nerva engines to give a little thrust vectoring. Only used 2 of those, though.

The modified NP NERVA engine: CB_1mNERVAengine.zip

My .craft file: Invincible 6LSB