What is the most absurd doable challenge you can think of?

[AstralWither]

i have many mods, so it dont have to be 100% stock, and if i like your post, i will (try) to make a vid about it.

[EveMaster]

Design a craft without engines and without rcs, take off from a low gravity moon and dock to a station in orbit.

The only allowed means of propulsion is decouplers and flinging back parts.

If you want to make it even harder: don't use any reaction wheels.

[Pds314]

Grand tour without losing parts (grand tour infinity). No ISRU, ions, or nukes. Land the same Kerbal on everything with a solid surface and return all parts to a Kerbin. Once the Kerbal leaves Kerbin's SOI they can only come back at the end of the mission. But you can throw automated stages back home for hypothetical reuse.

 

Also on the same mission you must recover an asteroid from Dres orbit and bring it back to KSC. Not LKO. I mean soft-land it on the green square.

 

Every single part of this mission has been proven possible by the community. But it would be pretty crazy putting it all together.

Edited September 7, 2019 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Wait I thought of a more deadly challenge, with far more horribleness involved.

CAVEMAN Grand Tour Infinity. No patched conics. No EVAs. No maneuver nodes. Each Launch is 18 tonnes and 30 parts max. Ions, nuclear, and ISRU don't even exist. Small solar panels and rocket engines are the only portable electricity sources. Eve SSTOs might be possible, but will certainly need orbital assembly. Alternatively, you could do a single stage to space and catch the vehicle with a precisely-timed reuseable booster slowing down to grab it from a suborbital trajectory and bring it home to Kerbin.

And EVERY PART needs to come back and the Kerbal needs to land on every single object. A truly cancerous mission profile. Likely requiring dozens, or hundreds, of reuseable launches.

Edited September 8, 2019 by Pds314

[EveMaster]

I don't think caveman Eve SSTOs are possible as you also don't have access to the most efficient rocket engines in atmosphere, the Vector and the Mammoth. With the suborbital catching it might be possible with caveman tech albeit very difficult.

[Muetdhiver]

I think puling off a caveman eve mission would already enter the absurd but doable category. Just thinking about the PITA assembly constrains make me shiver...

[EveMaster]

I think even making it out of the atmosphere of Eve would be very challenging with cavemen tech. I tested an rocket with a single skipper engine and a thrust to weight ratio of 1.02 at 8km. I was only able to ascend from a standstill at 8km to around 35km when climbing vertically before running out of fuel.

[Andetch]

Walk a single kerbal around the equatorial circumference of tylo without any interruptions (such as sleep etc.) :D :D

[purpleivan]

Driving a stock boat around the entire coastline of the mainland on Kerbin, using liquid fuel and no ISRU (fly/airdrop fuel to your little explorer). It's do-able, because I've done it, but I do not recommend it, unless you've got serious amounts of time to kill.

[Klapaucius]

I don't think huge time intensive challenges qualify in my book. Absurd just needs to be, well absurd.  A crazy idea that is doable.

 

I actually think one of the best fits for this category is a current challenge:  @ManEatingApe's Catapult Challenge.  Not absurd in a "why would I do it?" but absurdly, wonderfully Kerbal.

 

Edited September 16, 2019 by Klapaucius

[DRAG0Nmon]

Plane in a Plane in a Plane.

[Klapaucius]

18 minutes ago, DRAG0Nmon said:

Plane in a Plane in a Plane.

I like it!