Is it possible: A grand tour no mining?

[Guest]

I always wondered if a grand tour with no mining was ever so possible. Anyone have a calculatable answer of how much D/V.

 

YES you can stage the landers

 

@Vanamonde you are welcome to move this to challenges if it fits there better.

[Superfluous J]

Sure it's possible.

You could send refuellers.

[Vanamonde]

People used to do it before mining was implemented. 

[Xurkitree]

Fairly easy. I did it myself. 

It just takes a little extra effort in the planning and designing stage.

[Zhetaan]

12 hours ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

I always wondered if a grand tour with no mining was ever so possible. Anyone have a calculatable answer of how much D/V.

The calculation depends on your route and on what you take to each destination.  As such, the answers vary wildly.  For example, I've seen grand tour vessels that went to Eve first just to get rid of the heaviest lander, but also took a Moho lander to Moho and back to Eve without taking the mothership.  I've also seen grand tour vessels that went to Jool first because that eliminated both the Tylo heavy lander and the Laythe jet.

However, if you want ideas, then aside from searching for more recent missions that specify no mining, I suggest that you look through Mission Reports and Challenges for anything that both references a grand tour and is older than April 2015.

Also, there was a jetpack-only grand tour a few years ago that dropped the amassed jaws of the developers and everyone else who knew about it--naturally, a lot of destinations were flyby-only, but it can be done.

[cantab]

Of course.

All non-mining grand tours I've seen use rendezvous and docking, so the mothership can stay in orbit and only one lander needs to descend.

It's common to reuse craft, you don't need a lander per body. A typical approach would be a light vacuum lander, a heavy vacuum lander, and an extra descent stage for Tylo, and that covers all the vacuum worlds and maybe Duna too. Eve is the most challenging destination and nearly always gets a dedicated multistage lander, and Laythe often gets a spaceplane.

Now something I haven't seen is a Grand Tour with no mining and no orbital rendezvous. That would be seriously challenging since it means landing on every body with all your future hardware and fuel; you can drop empty stages but you can't park something in orbit and go back to it. I expect it's doable but it'll take a monster ship.

[Kryxal]

This sounds like a job for ... WHACKJOB!

[linuxgurugamer]

45 minutes ago, Kryxal said:

This sounds like a job for ... WHACKJOB!

@Whackjob hasn't been around for years, sadly enough