Derton vs the System - A Grand Tour - Update 8! Grand Tour Complete!

[Xurkitree]

I blame all this on Jool-5

This is a simple mission report for the Ultimate Challenge Thread (because my last attempt ran out of fuel), and this marks the 2nd time I do a full Grand Tour in succession, and my 3rd Jool-5 because I can't seem to stay away. All of this started because I saw the Jool-5 thread, and skipped my actual Jool-5 run on my Career Save, and started a new mission. It was accepted for the Jool-5 thread, but not the other one.

This run seeks to fix that.

And just to up the scales, since my last one use ISRU and yet ran out of fuel around Moho, this one doesn't require any refuelling at all.

Let's begin, shall we?

Mods: MechJeb, BetterTimeWarp, TAC Fuel Balancer, Precise Node, Kerbal Engineer Redux, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Transfer Window Planner, EVE, Spectra Visual Compilation, Planetshine

Part 1: 'A journey of a thousand stars begins with a single launch'

One day, the KSP administration decides to send Derton Kerman on a Kerbol Grand Tour because ... reasons! So they work quickly and finish all their testing and building in 90 minutes (yay)

Here are the ships being used in the mission.

Albatross Mk2 - The second iteration of the Albatross design, it is an Ion tug designed to haul my other lander just about anywhere. It has limited battery charge for it generally uses the other lander's charge, but its okay.

The chute you see the Laythe Module, a small part with a Chute and Docking port only to land on Atmo planets.

Hummingbird Mk3 - The 3rd version of the Hummingbird lander, its an all purpose Ion Lander, designed to land just about anywhere from Vall and smaller. This results in a pretty heavy ion lander, but it can land on Vall and Moho, so I ain't complaining.

The LEVE-Mk5 - This took me a while to make and while this isn't perfect, this should LEave eVE no problem. It's atleast lighter than my average Eve lander...

Staraptor Mk6 - This was the hardest to make and test, and it suffered a major design change at Mk4, in order to optimize the weight of the craft. Its only designed to land and take off from 3 bodies - Duna, Tylo and Laythe. It combines with the Laythe module to land on Laythe. A major problem with the craft is that it suffers from serious yaw instability, especially at low fuel levels and high speeds - I was unable to fix this, but it is still able to land and take off, so no harm no foul?

The Regulus Alpha Mk5 - A Mothership, which took 5 tries to optimized so that it carried less fuel but  nicely packs in every ship I need to. It has  large Xenon reserves, as well as a calculated amount of LF, which should be enough to finish the Grand Tour, but not necessarily get back...

Here's a launcher I strapped together. Its quite smaller than I expected it to be.

Final mass: 776 tons

Derton, you have been selected as the lucky pilot of this mission! Yay!

The ship on the Launchpad.

And off we go!

Edited February 12, 2019 by Xurkitree
Modlist

[SuperMiiBrother]

Here we go, Then...Don't explode.

If you do, It's not my fault. It's yours.

Oh, And if you want I can give you a floor chip.

[Alpha 360]

Wow. This looks like a really well researched Grand Tour! I wish you all the success possible!

And if you have any explosions, I hope that they are happy ones!

[SuperMiiBrother]

Oh, Hi alpha! I remember your old career from before I made an account (you know, the 2 careers with roni kerman? Also, For the not so new one, I know im a bit late, But..RIP Roni.)

[Xurkitree]

Oh hey, Replies!

Spoiler

@SuperMiiBrother - Thanks!

@Alpha360 - Explosions are bad for the safety of a Kerbal lol

Update 2: Eve is a pain

I'm using MechJeb to launch to orbit because I'm not trusting myself to fly such a large vessel.

First stage seperation - I'm using Asparagus.

Fairing deployment!

Circularization burn 

2nd stage separation. Maybe I should have made a better launcher...

In orbit! 

Here is the Regulus Alpha, brand-new.

Shame its gonna stay in space for decades now...

 

I quickly warp to the nearest Eve transfer window and start my escape burn in 2 periapsis kicks - one to the Mun, and the other to Eve.

Executing 1st burn.

I do end up overshooting my burn ...

But its okay, since I get my encounter anyways.

Performing the escape burn.

Once the burn is finished, I set up a manuever node to finetune my encounter with Eve.

Only when he's leaving Kerbin does Derton realise that paradise was in his backyard all along...

Correction burns. The first of many...

And we arrive at the first planet of our tour - Eve!

Capturing into orbit.

This made me realize how far away Gilly is from Eve really.

THEN I REALIZED I CAPTURED INTO A RETROGADE ORBIT GAH

Here's Derton climbing aboard the Hummingbird for the first time and firing those ion engine yeah.

The reason I'm not circularising is because moving in and out of Eve's gravity well is very expensive in terms of DV - and hence I'm staying in an elliptical orbit so that I can eject easily. As for the landers well, I can aerobrake down, and Ion engines laugh at the face of long distances.

Matching inclinations with Gilly.

First but not last of the aerobrakes!

After a few aerobrakes, this happened. What are the odds??

Welcome to Gilly - Space Potato

I'm in a high orbit just because.

Moving right to landing...

Here's a flag and out 1st landing! Its pretty easy, who needs a screenshot of that?

Went to orbit by going left.

I execute the escape burn, but as you can probably guess ...

It doesn't give a good orbit to reencounter the mothership.

So first we match inclinations...

Then burn at Periapsis to pull the orbit down to a smaller one...

Then burn at the new periapsis to encounter the Regulus Alpha!

Wheee!

Derton quickly climbs aboard to get another flag...

And boards the LEVE-Mk5

After a small burn at Apoapsis, I start aerobraking into a circular orbit so I can choose my landing site.

As you can see, my target is the highest point on Eve - Mt.ReadThisRun

After a last deorbit burn, I ditch the transfer stage, and open up the second heatshield in the shroud. This was not easy to calculate or execute - for one, the Twitch engine don't move a 30 ton payload real well. Also, since this is ballistic, Its hard to control my descent. It took a bunch of tries to get it right.

Entering Eve's atmosphere...

And we're right above our target! Good job guys!

I ditch the heatshields, so the craft takes quite a tumble...

Yeah, like that.

The chutes kick in fine, which slows my descent...

Oh, now I can see something. What's all the blackness then?

[Completely unrelated shot me hitting PhysX or something.

But its okay, since we touchdown!

Oh, so they were clouds of somesort? 

And yes, I did get ladders.

Here's a flag. I should have made a better flag...

I ditch all extra weight - Ladders and chutes. The landing legs stay until the last moment when I need to launch.

And lift off! I quickly ascend through the thicc haze of Eve's atmosphere...

And I realize that apparently Crossfeed isn't working properly, and the droptanks aren't being drained from. On  top of that, TAC Fuel balancer decides to stop working now, so I have to quickly call up all these fuel transfer windows and manually drain all the Oscar tanks. 

Initiating pitch-over maneuver.

Here's a cool shot of me ascending through the atmosphere.

And 1st stage is depleted. Next!

The second stage takes over after some coasting and starts picking up the bulk of our orbital speed.

I should get there, I should get there...

We're in space, but not in safety...

Circularization burn.

But we run out fuel for the final few meters. I suspect that the Oscar tanks drained far before I realized and this led to loss of DV on the initial ascent. Goddamit. Crossfeed should have worked - it did during testing. Alas.

Thankfully, its only a small amount of speed, and we have the EVA pack! Derton jetpacks into orbit, and awaits rescue.

The Albatross's probe core wakes up...

Next Time: Derton gets a ship

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2018 by Xurkitree
Editor bugged, had to add more pics.

[SuperMiiBrother]

I still have a floor chip, If you still want that.

[Alpha 360]

Congrats on the lightweight Eve lander! The best attempt I have made with a lander was probably around the range of several hundred tons. And it didn't even work. 

I'm glad that there were few explosions!

[RealKerbal3x]

@Xurkitree Nice so far! I wonder how Derton will respond to having only a command seat and Mk1 lander can as accommodation for half a century  

[IncongruousGoat]

17 hours ago, Xurkitree said:

This was not easy to calculate or execute - for one, the Twitch engine don't move a 30 ton payload real well. Also, since this is ballistic, Its hard to control my descent. It took a bunch of tries to get it right.

I see you've been discovering the joys of landing on Mt. Whatsitsname, bane of budget Eve missions everywhere.

I like the Eve lander. Eyeballing the mass, I'm going to guess that you're somewhere in the ~20 ton range, which is a very respectable number for an Eve lander. It's possible to go lower if you're wicked good and/or use stock electric propellers, but I personally haven't gotten anything below ~25 tons.

[Xurkitree]

The Albatross and Hummingbird undock together.

And then dock together!

I execute a series of burns to match inclinations with Derton Kerman and lower then lower my Periapsis to start the chain of Aerobrakes.

'I'll try spinning, that's a good trick' - Albatross Probe Core

And we now have to catchup to our lonely Kerbal.

Derton Kerman, delighted, climbs aboard the Hummingbird Lander! Its time to go to Moho!

I use MechJeb's advanced transfer tool to get a good escape burn and encounter. This may seem high, but the circularisation burn is lesser this way, so more DV for meee...

I use multiple periapsis kicks to eject from Eve, using burns of 4 minutes each time to ensure a good balance between time and efficiency.

Its on now folks!

Derton is happy to leave this purple hell...

And reach his next destination, Moho!

Sigh... The good news is that because I'm so close to the sun, the Ion Engines are directly powered by the Solar Panels, meaning I can do this burn in 1 shot!

trying to fix my periapsis before i crash into moho

Wheee!!

After some more retroburning, we capture around Moho!

Circularised into a low orbit.

The Hummingbird lander and its happy pilot detach from the Albatross and start landing.

Since this lander has low TWR and has to kill a bunch of velocity efficiently, I'm going for a constant altitude descent here.

I slowly kill all my horizontal velocity...

And then settle in for the the final touchdown.

And Derton had landed on Moho! 

IN YA FRICKING FACE MOHO! HA!

Obligatory flag.

Lift off time!

The ascent is quite easier than the descent. 

Circularising our orbit... and bam! We're in orbit!

The Hummingbird rendezvouses and docks with the Albatross waiting in orbit.

Its ejecting time!

 
In 2 burns at periapsis, Derton lines up his escape vector for the final burn.

Now, for the final escape burn.

Derton looks so small against Moho...

Correction burns to finalize my Eve encounter.

Derton arrives at Eve and starts capturing in to an highly elliptical orbit, but even that takes a while.

Crazy paths huh?

And we get ourselves captured around Eve.

Now, to get back to the Regulus Alpha, on the opposite side of Eve...

Same old maneuvers ... Match planes, lower orbit, raise orbit.

But eventually, we get back, with 1000 m/s of DV to spare.

A quick Redock later...

Derton climbs aboard his Lander Can in preparation of the next leg of this trip - Getting to Kerbin.

Next Time: Hitting a bunch of moons.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Xurkitree
STOP POSTING WHEN I DON"T WANT TO AND PLEASE DONT DELET MY UDPATES

[roboslacker]

I don't think I've ever seen an orbit that low.

[SuperMiiBrother]

I have a question: Why did you do the moho and eve first, And then kerbin moons? If you did the moons before eve, You could probably have simplified the whole process!

...Unless the eve lander was really heavy. In that case, I can understand your choice.

[Xurkitree]

Update:4 Munar Madness

Here's the ship, ready to leave from its lazy bum Eve!

I get a good Kerbin window for my highly elliptical orbit.

And it only takes 200 m/s!

Goodbye Eve! The Auroras look damn good wish EVE and Spectra worked on my 1.5.1 OPM game.

Correction burn.

And the capture burn is pretty tiny as well.

Capturing and Circularizing takes little time.

Derton quickly hops aboard the Hummingbird to go to fulfill his craving for Ice Cream on Minmus! 

Because I can't get back to Kerbin anyways...

Ohh, he's going to be so disappointed when he finds out that Minmus isn't made of Ice cream...

Mmmmmm...minty blue.

And we have a touchdown on Minmus!

Obligatory Flag. I should have done this when we were waiting for the Eve launch window... Hindsight 20/20.

Minmus is easy to launch from

I over shot 10 km, but who cares?

Here's me in orbit.

A beautiful shot of an Escape burn.

A bunch of aerobrakes later...

I rendezvous with the mothership and refuel the Xenon and our Flag supplies, since we can't carry more than 1 flag sadly.

And we're off to the Mun!

Damn, I shouldn't take such wallpaper worthy shots

Starting our Landing burn...

And here's our Flag on the Mun!

This doesn't look like we're 150 meters above the ground...

Getting orbit!

And here's a slick transition imo.

But now I don't have any fuel to dock with the Regulus Alpha...

But the Regulus Alpha has probe cores, and they get the ship to him!

Sending a refuelling tanker to refill the Xenon tanks - and I realise while writing this that I could have done this instead of using the Regulus Alpha...

But everything is back together, as it should be.

Ofcourse, Derton is restless to complete his journey, and after waiting a while, he gets aboard his trusty ion lander and tug and departs for his new destination -

The Duna System!

Derton executes the 1st part of the Escape burn, all the way to the moon.

And off to Deep Space!

After a correction burn and days of coasting...

Derton has arrived!

Derton was noticably annoyed at being toasted by plasma in an interplanetary aerobrake.

But I captured for free, so that's great.

After a small burn to enter stable orbit, I plot a course to our Destination - Ike.

Derton will have to come back one day to land on Duna, but that's another thing.

Just some Xenon atoms being ionized, thrown out and neutralised here. Nothing to watch, move along...

Patched conics being wonky.

But Derton arrives anyways.

And we enter a stable low orbit around Ike.

And Derton undocks to land on Ike.

And a flawless Touchdown on Ike, which I like!

Next Time: I'll be back.

Edited December 28, 2018 by Xurkitree

[Xurkitree]

Update 5:Doing the same thing ... again.

Here's another flag! Yay!

Orbit is easy, and I quickly set up a rendezvous.

Maybe I should cut some of these out...

I escape Ike and enter a low duna orbit, waiting for the return window.

Well, ,that was easy.

After executing the escape burn, I make correction burn to ensure I don't come in from the poles.

I'm going to do some mild aerobraking here.

But its mostly a capture burn.

Well, mostly.

I swear, I'll run out of stuff to say this way. Maybe I should start talking about random stuff for this sorta stuff.

And we're back.

But now... We have to do something rather tricky.

I have to assemble the Staraptor with the Albatross and attach the parachute to it - which has no means of control, at all.

This is going to take some while.

AI tries to poke a docking port till it docks - problem being that I have to do it in reverse because I need to dock it on the docking port on the Ion Engine, so that docking the Staraptor is easier.

Finally!!

Derton climbs aboard the Staraptor with a flag and waits till the next Launch Window.

Good thing getting to Duna is easy.

I split it up into 2 burns however. Efficiency for efficiency sake..

Gah - with or without visual enhancements, KSP looks wallpaper worthy all the time...

Duna Aerobrake - the Staraptor makes a good shield.

Did you know I have exams now? Good thing I have a bunch of breaks in the middle of them.

Now I need to attach the parachute, which has no control, to the Staraptor, which has no reaction wheels. 

First, we back it up. Really back it up.

Then I accelerate towards the target, slow enough to give me time to undock the chute, but fast enough that the undocking doesn't kill or reverse the relative velocity.

Then I undock and quickly thrust in any direction other than the Staraptor.

The parachute slowly drifts towards the docking port, the magnet kicks in, and voila! Parachute ready!

Deorbit burn. Its hard to line up okay, i'm only running on engine gimbal.

Well, this is kinda fast and low, don't you think?

Chute kicks in time.

And touchdown! Woop!

Here's a flag! And as usual, its facing the wrong way. Sigh...

Its launch time!

It was relatively easy, atleast I didn't flip over at supersonic speeds...

Now the Albatross will have to pick this guy up...

Some orbital assembly with one ion engine later...

Escape burn.

I should seriously have something to talk about this.

Once again, I dock things by chucking things from a spaceship.

Everything's back together now.

And off we go again!

This time, to Dres!

Second part of the escape burn.

Deep Space Maneuver puts me on a heading to Dres.

Ah, Dres.

The big problem with Dres is the big and expensive capture burn I end up doing, so I try to deplete all me electric charge close to the planet.

Now, I lower the thrust so that the batteries can recharge.

Once that's done, hours later, a quick burn gets up captured!

Except this is my captured orbit.

I seriously haven't seen such low orbital speeds.

But we get circularised anyways.

Its time to land!

I could probably post the same images I did for Ike and no one would notice.

Here's Derton, happy to have landed on something that may not exist. If it didn't, he would have fallen down an infinite abyss.

And here's the obligatory flag. I wish Kerbals could carry more flags. Maybe tell administration that they're extra vehicular walking sticks?

Next Time: Jool-5 time

 

Edited January 8, 2019 by Xurkitree
STOP POSTING WHEN I DON"T WANT TO

[roboslacker]

How many years has the mission been going on for at this point?

[Xurkitree]

21-22 years apparently.

[Xurkitree]

Update 6: Jool-5 - Tylo

  

We have liftoff!

 

Getting to orbit.

Docked for the return journey.

 

Dammit Dres. Y U so far away?

I started burning -

 

And kept on burning.

 

An course correction puts on a course for Kerbin.

  

Saving time and DV by Aerobraking while retroburning.

 
Even more aerobraking…

 

Some orbital maneuvering and assembly later, we’re all set to leave for Jool!

 

Derton’s happy he doesn’t have to sit on a space chair anymore.

 

Obviously to save DV, I’m going for K-E-K-K-J path to Jool.

 

After the main escape burn and some wrangling with maneuver nodes, we get a good encounter with Eve which slingshots use to beyond Duna such that we come as close to Kerbin as possible in a few orbits.

 

Bye Eve!

 

While trying to get my Kerbin encounter right, I found out that the Kerbin encounter would sling me up to all the way to Jool’s orbit, and I would encounter it within a few orbits after that, so rather than doing another gravity assist of Kerbin, I decided to warp my way to the encounter.

51 years? Who cares, it’s a Grand Tour!

 

Correction burn for the Kerbin assist.

 

ReciproWarp!

 

Second Correction burn.

 

Derton wonders when he’ll come back here.

Now to warp for 39 years.

 

Here’s a shot of the craft from Apoapsis.

 

I’m obviously using a Tylo assist to capture and reduce my inclination relative to Jool’s equator? Is that the right word?

 

Hello Jool.

 

Tylo is so nice from orbit.

 

Whatever this is. IDK anymore. I’m going for reducing relative velocity on capture though.

Honestly Tylo should just be enjoyed from Orbit.

 

A small burn puts us into a highly elliptical Tylo Orbit.

 

Parking and disassembly time!

 

I assemble the Staraptor lander together with the Albatross.

 

The Albatross will be hauling the entire craft to a low Tylo orbit with repeated burns at periapsis in order to gain maximum efficiency with its low TWR.Also the batteries are very modestly sized, due to the fact that the Albatross would generally run off the Hummingbird’s battery banks, so I can only execute burns of upto a 100 m/s or so.

 

It takes far too long. I have to warp a few times between burns to recharge the batteries off solar power. I think it took about 11-13 burns.

 

But we get there in the end.

 

The lander’s free now, so now begins one the hardest and singularly frustrating landing in the entire mission.

 

For maximum efficiency with the low mass, TWR and DV of the lander, I’m going for a constant altitude descent AND OH BOY DID IT TAKE FOREVER. Firstly, the lander itself is unstable, so there are massive yaw problems, especially when its low on fuel. And then the entire craft is controlled by engine gimbal, so there is a constant torque on the craft to keep it aligned where I  want it, but it still drifts off the its original heading. To solve this, I used BetterTimeWarp to slow down time by creating Matrix Time with 0.5x,0.25x and 0.1x warp to better control the ship, since now I can control it almost instantaneously - I can correct small deviances very quickly with very little thrust before they completely destabilize the craft. Correcting course from large shifts eats up into my DV budget which is razor-thin as it is, with my level of piloting (i ain’t no Stratenblitz) - 3 m/s could mean the difference between reaching orbit and crashing into the ground after a long fall.

 

Under 1000 m/s! I had to use a bunch of quicksaves while both testing and flying the craft - and since I’m playing on Matrix Time Warp, each time I try its going to take 10 minutes to land. Then I keep crashing or land with too little DV to get off successfully. So i have to do the landing over and over and over again…

 

I’m using MechJeb for the final touchdown because it is more efficient than me. Did you know just changing the touchdown speed from 0.1 m/s to 3 m/s makes a huge difference here? The bounce is survivable and shouldn’t tip my craft over at all.

 

Almost there…

 

Touchdown! 

 

You get a flag, YOU get a flag, EVERYONE GETS A FLAG!

 

I’m down to my last quarter of fuel - turning sideways immediately to counter gravity losses.

 

My strategy for this ascent is to play at 1/10 real time and control the craft finely, keeping the craft at such an angle from prograde that it slowly but surely increases the vertical speed, while keeping it as close to horizontal as possible, and slowly tilt the craft over to horizontal to ensure the slowest rise possible.

Also, 1000 m/s!

 

BTW, the reason you’re not seeing a plume is because of the physics warp. You know that a high speed physics warp, the plume sometimes disappears? Yeah, same thing, but as it gets slower, the plume gets so slow that it very rarely renders.

 

Now to coast to Apoapsis.

 

Using MechJeb to set up the circularization burn and it says that I can complete it! WOOP!

I used MechJeb’s timer to start the burn accordingly at 0.1x warp.

 

And we have achieved orbit! Yes!

This took a lot of tries. I think this landing alone must have taken like 20 tries or so.

 

Now the Albatross wakes up to pickup our brave kerbal.

 

 

Multiple burns are required due to our low orbit.

 

But its done now. Tylo is over.

 

Matching inclination with the Regulus Alpha…

 

I can now make bigger burns due to my vastly lowered mass.

 

It still takes a looong time though.

 

But we get back to the mothership safely.

 

Throwing the craft till it docks.

 

And the ship is ready for its next destination - Laythe.
 

[roboslacker]

That's some crazy piloting there on Tylo.

[IncongruousGoat]

7 hours ago, Xurkitree said:

Jool’s equator? Is that the right word?

The term you're looking for is ecliptic plane.

[Xurkitree]

Update 7: The inner parts of Jool.

 

After some more orbital assembly I get the parachute module affixed to the Albatross-Staraptor craft.

 

This took a bunch of fiddling but i now have a direct path to Laythe.

 

The biggest advantage of being parked in a elliptical orbit - low escape burns.This allows me to escape even with the low battery capacity of the Albatross.

 

Vall assist.

 

Hello Laythe! 

 

Since Laythe’s upper atmosphere is very dense compared to any other atmosphere, I start slowing down before hand.

 

Aerobraking in high altitude. As you can see, I’m getting overheat bars at 47000m.

 

But even after the aerobrake and retroburn, I’m still on an escape trajectory.

 

I’ll be going for the next encounter, which should be at an low enough speed.

 

See?

 

Here we go again.

   

And we’re in orbit! 

          

A few aerobrakes and plane change burns later…

 

We reach a nice low circular equatorial orbit.

 

Some orbital IKEA business…

 

And we’re ready to land!

 

I’m targeting a specific spot on the equator - a large island with high peaks.

 

Whoosh.

 

Deploying chute!

 

And touchdown!

 

Obligatory flag.Sadly this is 1.4.5 rather than 1.6.1, or else I would remove the helmet.

 

The Staraptor has a low TWR on take off, but it shouldn’t affect much.

 

Glamour shot!

 

I’m letting MJ do the gravity turn at a high altitude. Any lower would result in the craft flipping over or going out of control.

     

And we’re in orbit! Good job Derton!

 

The lone tug comes in to pick us up.

 

Everything is assembled back together now.

     

A few periapse kicks puts us on an easy Tylo encounter.

 

Capture burn.

 

And now we have 2 craft at perpendicular orbits.

 

Circularising…

 

Increasing velocity…

    

And we’re back at the mothership!

 

And Derton has to now aboard the Hummingbird.

 

Stupid surface velocity bug.

 

Hi Vall!

   

I get captured and lower my orbit to 10km, so that i can land more efficiently.

 

Derton is free to land on Vall in direct violation of Val’s wishes.

 

Okay, exposition time! The Ion lander is powerful enough to lift from the surface and to land, but the landings are very tight. The margin of electricity given is very low and ends up running out quite often. I couldn’t add more battery capacity to fix this as this would lower TWR unacceptably.

 

I’m again going for a constant altitude descent, trying desparately to stay level to the ground as close to it while trying to minimise gravity losses.Delta V isn’t the issue, its a time factor.

 

Almost there … the charge looks okay, but its highly deceptive.

 

Almost there….

 
And touchdown! Well, atleast nothing exploded…

    

He’s all right.

 

Getting to orbit is very much easy, because of the lack of gravity losses. It’s still there though.

 

Wheeeee!

 

Circularsation burn.

 

And we’re ready to leave.

 

Hmmm… totally possible.

 

Time to leave!

  

Mirror shot!

 

Capture went without a hitch, it is easier to get an encounter this way.

 

And Derton refuels and takes another flag for another journey.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Xurkitree

[Xurkitree]

Update 8: The Final Voyage.

 

Its off to the home of the Kraken for Derton.

 

 

The escape burn is pretty far from periapsis, but that’s okay, because I have oodles of DV.

 

 

Here we are - at Bop.

 

   

Capture burn was a piece of cake.

 

    https://i.imgur.com/YSsV2tW.png

Bop landing is so easy I don’t even bother undocking, saving time.

 

 

Obligatory flag. I love how tilted Jool appears from Bop, especially at high latitudes. It makes Jool look so much more dynamic than any Visual mod.

 

 

That helmet is getting eroded I bet.

 

 

Stable orbit.

 

 

A manueverless Escape Burn. Why?

 

 

Because this way I can easily get a Tylo encounter quickly, at the cost of DV, which I have tons of, so no issues.

 

 

This situation is far better than trying to get a direct encounter from Bop.

 

 

The capture burn here is such that I get as closely aligned with the Regulus Alpha’s orbit as possible, therby saving DV on raising/lowering orbits. This leads to extra dv being used during the capture burn, but less used overall.

 

 

See what I mean?

 

 

Derton just picks up the flag and leaves.There is no point refuelling the ship as there’s enough and more Xenon anyways.

 

 

Close enough.

 

 

And off we go!

 

 

A few minor correction burns later, we’re on our way!

 

 

Look Mission Control, Pol fits within my solar panels!

 

   

Another retrogade burn that puts me a near circular orbit around the celestial body known as Pol, the outer most moon of the solar system.

 

 

Here I am landing on the spiked terrain of Pol.

 

 

Touchdown!

 

 

Did you know these spiked rocks are known as penitentes? They’re an actual thing, and have been detected on actual ice planets like Europa and Pluto. Go look it up!

 

 

Here’s our penultimate flag.

 

   

It’s time to leave however.

 

 

Once again, I just leave Pol before making the intercept burns.

 

 

Okay, this is really far from the surface, but then I get a direct intercept with the craft, so its like zero issue.

 

     

And Derton is finally back to ready himself for the last destination - Eeloo. For which the transfer window pops up in 31 years.

 

Atleast Derton isn’t in space and is in a pressurised can now. I hope he got his copy of Human Space Program…-

 

 

Years of warping later, we have a week left before we need to leave, so now I must set up an escape trajectory.

 

 

Derton boards the Hummingbird lander with 1 final flag.

 

 

As you can see now, I have plotted a path to escape in the correct direction. Firstly I eject from the Tylo with a minimal burn, which puts me onto an encounter with Tylo again, at a high altitude, at which point I perform a burn to escape to alter my escape angle to line up with Jool’s orbital motion, and the gravity assist flings me out of Jool for far less DV than a direct burn.

 

 

I forgot to reset the control point damn.

 

 

The perfect enso - in space!

 

 

Wow, this path has given me an Eeloo encounter before I even leave Tylo!

 

https://i.imgur.com/ziAMfdR.png  

Hello Tylo. I was just about to meet my ship before it left. RIP.

 

 

Activating them Ion Engine provides us with this cool shot of the escape burn.

 

 

4 Years huh? It’s not 31, but still…

 

 

Off to deep space.

 

 

A correction burn adjusts the periapsis to be close to the ground.

 

 

Hello there Eeloo.

 

 

Capture burn was a simple retrograde burn.

 

 

Time to start landing! It should be the same as the Mun.

 

 

Touchdown!

 

 

And we’ve planted a flag on every body in the system! Whoop!

 

    

After recharging the batteries, we ascend to orbit…

 

 

...dock…

 

   

… and leave for Jool.

 

 

Setting up a course correction to get a gravity capture off Laythe.

 

 

Man, Laythe looks so good from up here…

 

 

A small correcting burn later, we get an encounter with Tylo.

 

 

Hello there…

 

 

I’ve set up my capture burn so that I directly get an intercept with the Regulus Alpha.

 

 

This is going to be rather hurried, isn’t it?

 

 

But we’re back at the ship, and that’s all that matters in the end.

 

 

But as you may have realised, the mothership doesn’t have the fuel needed to get back to Kerbin.

 

 

Solution? I take the Hummingbird/Albatross and leave with all the Xenon left.The transfer window is close, so that’s good.

 

 

Escaping from Tylo.

 

 

I’m doing a direct escape burn to Kerbin.

 

 

Jool escape burn.

 

 

...Yikes. I did it with super Physics Warp on whatever charge I could obtain.

 

 

Goodbye Jool…

 

 

We have our Kerbin encounter lads!

 

 

Derton doesn’t mind the waiting, all he knows is that he’s going home.

 

 

Starting the capture burn far before Periapsis, at a low enough throttle that the battery banks don’t deplete.

 

https://i.imgur.com/GjADDiZ.png  

I floor the throttle at Periapsis to maximise the Oberth Effect.

 

https://i.imgur.com/agfoyvT.png  

But now I’m out of EC and must wait till I exit Kerbin’s shadow.

 

https://i.imgur.com/CAMrc7p.png  

Continuing the capture…

 

https://i.imgur.com/OvrvFRu.png  

This is going to take a while…

 

https://i.imgur.com/BGlpDju.png     

Like seriously, I went and encountered the Mun while retroburning, that’s how long it took.

 

https://i.imgur.com/AnBrI1M.png 

But I get captured whoo!

 

https://i.imgur.com/mV4il09.png  

A plane change and a circularsation burn later…

 

 

I’m in LKO.

 

 

I start making a craft to pick him up when I realise I captured in a retrograde orbit. :facepalm:

 

Good thing the Vector is OP enough to do it anyways.

 

    

Derton aboards the craft and settles in for reentry.

 

 

Splashdown!

 

 

Derton has completed a full Grand Tour, without refuelling at all! Heck yes!

 

Time taken - 127 years, 164 days, 3 hours and 42 minutes.

 

Epilogue: Derton became a hero in Kerbal Kind, and was celebrated for his achievement ever since. As for me, I enjoyed the making of the craft and designing the mission around such specific constraints as well as I can. An interesting part of the design phase was me, trying to find the 4th root of e by hand (I know its value upto 15 digits), so that I have a figure for how much fuel I would need to lug everything to Eve. I can finally hopefully claim that Grand Tour badge for myself. I looked up a lot of things and got much better at piloting and was able to use Gravity assists to their fullest potential. Also, a big thing for me is that I actually went to Moho and back without needing to refuel HECK YEAH BOI! I don’t like Moho because I keep running out of fuel there, and doing this without any refuelling required and so easily at that, was a great experience.

 

I won’t be doing such a challenge again (Seriously, this is my 3rd time doing the Jool-5 and, 2nd time completing it, and my 2nd time I attempt a Grand Tour challenge, back-to-back), because I’d rather not do such a large and monolithic mission for a while atleast.

 

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed my mission!

Edited February 12, 2019 by Xurkitree

[GRS]

Of course i enjoy that, i think i'll do things like that before Kerpollo.

[roboslacker]

But the big question is, how much backpay has Derton accumulated?

[GRS]

7 hours ago, roboslacker said:

But the big question is, how much backpay has Derton accumulated?

I guess his name will be forever written with glittering text in the book of Kerbalkind history.