Gilly Lite: Gilly using only .625 m parts

[IncongruousGoat]

Greetings, forums!

Here is a mission to Gilly done, as the title would suggest, using only .625 m (and radial, but I think that goes without saying) parts. Not a particularly difficult mission, but an interesting one all the same. I originally put this together for a challenge and then... didn't fly it, until today.

The octagonal struts are my poor man's service bay, which I can't use since it's 1.25 meters in diameter. They're placed to protect the pilot during re-entry. Strangely, they don't interfere with getting in or out of the seat.

I chose to do a jetpack landing because A: I didn't want to risk damaging the solar panels, either on landing or by klutzing into them while on EVA, B: landing on a low TWR engine is never fun, even on Gilly, and C: Although this one is clearer in hindsight, I didn't have enough fuel to do it.

I elected to not use Juno engines (which might, at first glance, seem a logical engine to use) because, in my experience, they don't have a sufficient TWR to even lift off the ground under their own power. So why not get some wings, you ask? Because I'm awful at planes, but more importantly I felt building a spaceplane wasn't really in the spirit of what I was trying to do.

The mission album can be found at: http://imgur.com/a/oBQvy

Oh, and anyone noticing fuel or dV discrepancies between the screenshots of the launch and those of LKO, or the 4.99 EVA fuel in the screenshot of LKO, this is because I decided I wanted to post this to the forums halfway through, and so had to go back to earlier parts of the mission (thank goodness for obsessive named quicksaving), including doing the launch over to get screenshots. The 4.99 EVA fuel is because Jeb had to get out of his chair and back in after the save loaded with him canted slightly, which doesn't look good.

If anyone has questions, feel free to ask.

Edited August 10, 2016 by IncongruousGoat
Correcting typos

[qzgy]

Cool! I like the use of the octagonal struts as a "command pod"

[Geschosskopf]

Nicely done

 

[IncongruousGoat]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

Nicely done

 

Thanks!

[Crocket]

Awesome! I wish more people would use only 0.625m parts to do things.