Project Wayfarer-a Grand Tour attempt (completed)

[IncongruousGoat]

Hello all, and welcome to Project Wayfarer! This is a ongoing thread for my (completed) attempt at the Ultimate Challenge (also known as a Grand Tour). The aim here is to document the entire mission, from planning to execution, as various bits occur. No guarantees on how quickly things will get updated, what with unforeseen difficulties and real life. Things will get posted to this thread as they happen, with updates to the OP as progress gets made. All comments, suggestions, criticism, etc. are welcome. Oh, and there's going to be no ISRU.

Mission album is here: http://imgur.com/a/SFUuC

Mods I'm using: KER, KAC, Transfer Window Planner, Scatterer, Distant Object Enhancement, Planetshine

Progress so far:

Things designed: Vessel designed

General lander: Done

Eve lander: Done

Laythe lander: Done

Tylo lander: Done

Duna/Vall lander: Done

Transfer stages: Done

Concrete mission profile: Done

Bodies visited:

Moho: Yes

Eve: Yes

Gilly: Yes

Mun: Yes

Minmus: Yes

Duna: Yes

Ike: Yes

Dres: Yes

Laythe: Yes

Vall: Yes

Tylo: Yes

Bop: Yes

Pol:Yes

Eeloo: Yes

The Eve lander:

This was the first thing I designed, since it's been the biggest stopping point to my attempts in the past. It masses in at 24.418 t. I realize that this is about twice as much as is strictly necessary for a lander using just rockets, and four times as much as is necessary if using a stock electric propeller. However! Building propellers is something I don't really know how to do-I tried a few but they didn't turn out functional. Furthermore, a lighter Eve lander would require that A: I built my vehicle as a plane (i.e. a thing I'm awful at building) and B: that the ascent be down to the wire, even potentially using the EVA pack. I like neither of these things, so I overbuilt the Eve lander-I like efficiency as much as the next guy, but the darn thing has to be fun for me to fly.

The flight profile is as follows: Starting initial descent behind the (emptied of ablator) heatshield, stabilized by airbrakes. Once velocity has reached ~400 m/s detach airbrakes and heatshield and glide until above landing site. Then decouple wings and deploy chutes, landing gear, and ladders. Once landed, detach chutes and ladders (once flag is planted). Launch then proceeds as normal. Or however normal launching from Eve can be. Target is the highest point on Eve.

Edited January 6, 2017 by IncongruousGoat

[IncongruousGoat]

The Tylo lander is complete! Massing in at 2.575 t, it's the lightest such lander I've built by a fair margin-and as such has a much tighter fuel margin and a more complicated descent than my prior 5 or 10 ton landers. Descent starts from a 14x14 km orbit

Work on the Laythe lander has ground to a halt, due to problems with Laythe's souposphere *ahem* atmosphere. To be honest, I prefer Tylo over Laythe. Laythe's thick atmosphere and lack of significant land mass make it hard to land on and hard to take off from without building a spaceplane-which I'm not going to do because A) it would be too heavy and B) I can't build spaceplanes.

[IncongruousGoat]

Laythe's efforts to foil my plans have been defeated-a lander has been designed. Massing in at 3.475 t, it weighs nearly 1 ton more than my Tylo lander-more points in favor of my pro-Tylo stance. The weight disparity is also going to make the already large problem of balancing the end vehicle even worse.

The remaining landers should be much easier to build, and as such progress should be expedited. Maybe.

[IncongruousGoat]

So this is what expedited progress looks like. Both the general (ion) lander and the Vall-Duna lander are done. The former masses in at .971 t, and the latter at .895 t. Erm... yeah. Nothing more to say, really.

Looking back, starting this mission report during vehicle development wasn't perhaps the best choice. Ah well; the actual mission should be coming along soon, since all that remains is to build transfer vehicles and hash out the profile.

Edited January 4, 2017 by IncongruousGoat

[IncongruousGoat]

Right. Enough designing and testing. I've overbuilt things and expanded fuel margins (in one case by an estimated 6 km/s) to my satisfaction-let's fly this thing.

The plan here is an extreme divide-and-conquer approach-The Duna, Tylo, Laythe, and Vall landers each have their own individual transfer stages, which they will use to deliver themselves to their respective planets and moons. The Eve lander also has its own transfer stage, as well as what remains of the launch vehicle (which, of course, I completely overbuilt), plus the general lander (for Moho) and a lander can (for Jeb). I'm avoiding doing any interplanetary transfers in command chairs, since I'm trying to conform to the rules for Jool 5 grand tours, as well as the rules for the Ultimate Challenge. Two birds with one ICBM and all that.

Edited January 4, 2017 by IncongruousGoat

[IncongruousGoat]

Phew. 5 interplanetary burns, 5 course corrections, and 1 capture burn later, we've officially launched Jeb & massive ship towards Eve. Oh, and put 4 landers on course for their assigned planets and moons (and in the case of Duna made it all the way to capture before the first Eve window). Also, RealPlume was uninstalled. Turns out there's a bug that causes engine FX to not render if the engine in question is the root part.

Album has been updated.

[IncongruousGoat]

Eve and Gilly are done! OP and album have been updated.

[IncongruousGoat]

Moho, Mun, and Minmus are done, and all specialized landers (except Eve, of course) have been delivered to their respective targets.

Album and OP have been updated.

[IncongruousGoat]

Duna, Ike, and Dres are done. Now we "just" have to do the moons of Jool and Eeloo.

Album and OP have been updated.

[IncongruousGoat]

Laythe, Vall, and Tylo are done. Three bodies remain. The end is in sight!

Album and OP have been updated.

[IncongruousGoat]

It's done. The mission is done. 266 screenshots, 160 named quicksaves, 61 in-game years, 4 IRL days, 15 planets and moons, and only a little bit of panic later, the grand tour is complete.

Album and OP have been updated.

[JacobJHC]

That was cool. All I have to say is summed up in this video:

 

Congratulations!

[IncongruousGoat]

5 minutes ago, JacobJHC said:

Congratulations!

Thank you!