Tips to become full interplanetary

[GuyWithGlasses]

Hello gang!

In career mode, I launched to Duna one megaship and another simple station to complete around 4-5 contracts, with your help;

 

Im in 1 year, 353th day, and Ive around 220 days until the ships encounter to Duna. I haven't warped time cause I've been preparing my agency to become a full interplanetary agency (for example, now I'm training around 15 kerbals, 5 pilots, 5 scientists and 5 engineers) and Ive done a lot of contracts to get money.  No I want to prepare the agency to have in all the planets In the Kerbol system the infrastructure to support future missions doing grand tours / fly-bys.

In other words, I want to launch simplified missions around the rest of the planets, the mission goals are:

- Manned station around the main planets (eello, eve, moho, dress & Jool).

- Make a common launch system (lifter / station) as much standard as possible (with the obvious differences to meet the specific requirements)

- Each mission must have at least 2 sats around the main body (one with a scan sat) in polar orbit and two sats if I'll plan to do ISRU in a moon (Guilly/Val)

- If its possible, It must have a refueler ship, to help next ships to come refueling in the station.

- If its possible, the ship must have a ship to return the crew.

- If its easy, a lander / minihooper / rover.

I'll explain my maths and other related thing of the missions:

--

Dres // Year 1 - day 424 // Eject dv 2137 // total dv 4349

Components:  The station, 2 sats and a refueler like I have in mimmus (but with at least 16 gigantor panels and removing 4 drills of the six my refueler has, to meet the energy constrain (Ive no RTBG yet ><' )

 

Moho Year 2 day 86 // Ej dv 2841  // total dv 4834

Components:  Equal to dres design I'll have to remove solar panels and add heat sinks.

 

Eve Year 2 day 103 // Ej dv 1230 // total dv 3540

Station, 2 sats for eve, to sats for guilly, a refueler for Guilly and a mini rover/hooper for eve.

(I hope to have RTG by this time or wait to another transfer window).

Jool Year 2 day 226 // Ej dv 2245 // total dv 5348

Station, 2 sats for jool, to sats for val, a refueler for val and a mini rover/hooper for jool.

Eloo Year 2 day 256 // ej dv 2055 // total dv 3557

The station, 2 sats and a refueler

-----

My actual infrastructure is:

 

Lifter + station.

• Focus in the lifter:  https://imgur.com/mNoKeOn
• Focus in the Station: https://imgur.com/MrnJXHS

The idea is to do two launchs for each planet, one the station an another to lift the sats / refueler. Dock all the stuf to the station and do the interplanetary burn (if there is a lot constrains related to the fuel, I can do the interplanetary burn and dock in the planet.

As you can see, the station is made in two modules: Propulsive and return module (1 podle, 6 terrier, 1 highjaker) and the station itself. https://imgur.com/BseErNw  (lab processing, higjackers, converotron and utility staff). The return ship isolated: https://imgur.com/PJ8geZI

I'm conscious that the external fuel tanks in the propulsive module cause too much drag, but I havent be able to do a propulsive module (without NERV and ion engines, to get a decent TWR) with the enoguth delta-v. Any advice?

On the other side, I dont know how to design the mission itself since launch, If i launch the ship, all the tanks of the center mamoth engine are full, but the latreral tanks are almost empty and I dont now what to do:

- Shall I refuel in LKO the ship ?? (around 4000 dv in vacoum) Its an enormous cuantity of fuel to bring from mimmus/kerbin. With this metod, I can do the ejection burn with the lifter, separate the lifter and recover it.

- Shal I stage during the ascent two of the lateral Mammoths? (about 2000-2500m/s with the rest of the lifter) . With this method, Ill need less fuel to refuel, but probably I wont be able to recover the lifter (but I could save a bit of the money removing landing things from the lifter).

 

Any comments /advices??

 

 

 

[Guest]

Sounds like you have things well in hand.

One comment/advice I have is, don't attempt all of it at once. Tackle them one at a time.

You'll learn a lot from each one and be able to apply what you learned to the next planet. If you try to do them all at the same time, you'll create yourself an extremely hectic schedule and likely screw something up simply because you missed a transfer window or went past a maneuver, and as soon as you've got one thing done you'll hate yourself for having to deal with the same problems it has on all the other planets.

Another comment has to do with Jool. Learn about gravity braking. If you swing off Tylo you'll be able to park yourself around Vall or Laythe for a few hundred m/s instead of a couple of thousand. Your total Jool dV budget can be around 3000 rather than your 5300. Also consider Laythe rather than Vall as your refueling station: it has an oxygen atmosphere which means getting down and getting up is a lot cheaper than on Vall if you use planes with airbreathing engines. Finally:

1 hour ago, GuyWithGlasses said:

a mini rover/hooper for jool.

This is probably just a mistake and you were referring to Jool's moons, but, you are aware that Jool is a gas giant and has no surface, which means rovers/biome hoppers won't work there?