Returned from a 7year, 308day mission

[katateochi]

Just shortly after the forums crashed into Mun, I had one of my most long awaited wins in KSP (and then I couldn't tell anyone!)

Jeb, Bill, Bob, Corald and Richley landed safely back at the KSC after a nearly 8 year mission. The Mission was to do a Grand Tour with a lander capable of landing 5 guys on each planet with the exception of Eve (and Jool obv). Initially the crew was just the supreme trio, but they picked up 2 other stranded guys along the way.

The route I took started with landing on Moho (and refuelling), passed by Eve and then landed on Gily (and refuelled). Then onto Duna where the first guy (Corald) was picked up followed by a quick visit to Ike (and a quick refuel). Then onto Dres where another kerbal, Richley had crashed in Dres canyon. After refuelling on Dres I pressed on to Jool and visited each of Jools moons; Laythe, Vall, Pol, Tylo and Bop. In that order as I only refuelled on Pol and Bop and needed a refuel before landing on Tylo.

Then from Bop I had a long flight out to Eeloo before finally making the voyage back to the Kerbin system and doing a quick landing on Minmus then Mun (for completeness sake).

The primary goal was to complete a grand tour with a 5 man lander and see 5 Kerbals set foot (or at least landing gear) on each planet and moon.

The secondary goal was to do it with just one craft that could mine kethane as it went.

The first goal was accomplished, but not the second. I had to send an additional booster section to bolt onto the lander to assist it in the descent/ascent on Tylo and Laythe.

It was the first time for me visiting many of these places. I'd not previously been to Moho or Eeloo and my probe mission to Jool and it's moons had failed so they where new to me too. Next time I will know what to expect!! yeah next time, I will be doing this again at some point after the new resource system is in place (and stable).

The craft I did the mission in was called Shuukou, which means "circle tour by ship" in Japanese. It's a two part craft, the Lander and an Orbital section which has the atomic engines for IP transfers. One of the key features of this craft is the way the lander slides inside the orbital section to dock making the whole craft quite compact (and makes docking very very easy). The lander is also one of the most manoeuvrable craft I've ever built, with the main command pod, lander can and 3 SAS units it is very responsive. It also has a remote-tech module to enable it to remotely control the orbital section when they are separated.

The two sections together,

Lander and Orbital section

and a shot taken from inside the orbital section with the lander coming in to dock.

My other goal for this mission (which is still WIP) is to make vids of the whole trip. So far I've made parts 1 and 2. I now need to spend some time editing almost a TB of footage and make the other parts.

Here's parts 1 and 2;

And here are some pics;

Lander on Moho

This was my first time visiting Moho and it almost ended the tour before it had begun. I just had enough power to capture Moho's orbit, but it was close.

It then took 6 trips of the lander going down to mine fuel and shuttling it up to the orbital section before I was able to push on to Eve.

I just passed by Eve, using it to slow down before going on to land on Gily. On Gily with the low grav I landed the whole craft to speed up re-fuelling

I didn't refuel on Duna, instead I landed by a rover (near the face). The driver had been left there for many years and badly needed a lift home, he was a reck and had been taking to the face as there was no one else around to talk to.

After picking up Corald from Duna I went to Ike to refuel. It was just a short trip, I'd originally planned to do two refuel runs to Ike but as the crew where planning to descend for the 2nd time they received a distress call from a craft on Dres (watch part 2 to see that). Another reason for only doing one refuel was the window to transfer to Dres had come round and if I did another refuel trip I'd have missed it.

That meant I was playing it close again with fuel reserves and only just had enough fuel to capture Dres's orbit and land. The lander had to touch down near the canyon to get some more fuel before actually going on to rescue Richly from the remains of his ship.

Lander departing from Dres Canyon.

Leaving Dres I had a conundrum. I had missed the window to transfer to Jool and it was going to take more than a year for it to come round again. I could either wait, or I could burn 3 times as much fuel and go now. Jeb was getting restless so I did a very costly transfer to Jool but it reduced the mission time by over a year.

Meanwhile I'd sent out an unmanned ship carrying two booster sections that would assist in the ascent from Laythe and both ascent and descent on Tylo. These where now parked in orbit around Laythe and Tylo. On approach to Laythe something when horribly wrong, lag set in and set in badly. After much head scratching I found that is was the ISA map-sat plugin that was causing the problem so took it out and the mission was able to go ahead.

Laythe, with the booster section on top of the lander which was used to reach orbit again.

Then I transferred to Val. I needed to refuel to have enough for the Tylo landing, but realised that it would take several trips from the orbital section to Val's surface to stock up again. So instead I used what fuel I had to transfer to Pol, where with the low gravity I was able to land the whole ship again and refuel faster.

Posing for group photo on Pol amongst the weird rocks found on that moon.

The transfer from Pol to Tylo was one of the most satisfying. I got an intercept with Tylo that required almost no fuel to complete the orbit round it. Then I spiralled in and made the rendezvous with the booster section in one orbit.

Tylo - using the 2nd booster section to help in landing on this monster of a moon.

Bop was the last port of call before leaving the Jool system. Apart from that 'thing' that lurks on it, it is probably the least interesting of bodies in the whole system. At least the point I landed at was very bland!

Finally I had one planet left, Eeloo. Again I had missed the window but was able to take a more costly route to it and not wait for 2 years for the window to come round again. I had issues on Eeloo, if I left the lander and returned to the orbital section, when I came back to the lander it would spontaneously combust and parts of it seemed to be trying to start the journey home prematurely. I had to be very careful as I made 4 refuel trips to it's treacherous surface.

Finally I was ready to head homewards, but for completeness sake I had to touch down on Mun and Minmus first. After breaking round Kerbin and getting on course for Minmus the craft separated and the orbital section, now being controlled by the local satellite network, when to orbit Mun, while the lander went on alone to Minmus.

On Minmus the lander set down next to one of the first probes ever to be launched in the space program. It was broken, so Jeb had to go and jump on it.

When leaving Minmus I was able to launch and directly set course for Mun without orbiting Minmus again, I do like the home moons, they seem so friendly compared to Jool's moons! On Mun I landed by FRANK, the most recent and advanced rover in the space program and Jeb was very impressed with the new wheels, which he not yet seen as this mission was launched back in 0.18.

Finally the return to Kerbin, in a ball of fire but as the ship was made most of heat resistant Kitanium it was fine and it touched down back at the KSC

Due to a strange glitch the main command pod became see though for a few moments until I realised that it was being cause by a clone of Richly already existing in a nearby craft. Sending him eva and re-boarding solve that one thou and the crew finally disembarked and where taken away by the spaceport bus.

I have never had so much difficulty in ending a flight. I just couldn't do it, I'd got rather attached to that craft! So instead of being "terminated" Shuukou was loaded onto a moving platform and moved to a final resting point several km from the launch centre.

I've certainly learnt a lot doing this but my god it was tiring!! It took months (in RL) to complete. The mission was fairly successful but there are some things I'd change next time round. I need to make the lander have a greater dV so it can deal with Tylo and Laythe without assistance and next time landing on Eve must be part of the mission. Shuukou has been a fantastic ship thou, and will be used again as an interplanetary shuttle to take crew out to bases and bring others home again.

[Vanamonde]

Folks should check out Katateochi's videos. They are highly entertaining, and the crafts are insane.

[Guest Brody_Peffley]

Wow amazing! 7 years is along time for ingame time. Lets hope next missions are more efficient and will make it through tests!

[NuclearWarfare]

You make the most "Kerbal" and strange (I mean this in a good way. An awesome way.) craft I've ever seen. Frank is a beast of a rover.

[drakesdoom]

Since you have done this I would like some advice on my attempt. My plan is to design a Lander for each body matching Dv requirements and a light and heavy ascent stage, the heavy being used from an eve mountain and Laythe. All of this pushed around by a giant mother ship with no inflight refueling.

[katateochi]

Folks should check out Katateochi's videos. They are highly entertaining, and the crafts are insane.

Thanks for the endorsement Vanamonde! thats very kind of you

Wow amazing! 7 years is along time for ingame time. Lets hope next missions are more efficient and will make it through tests!

yeah next time will be more efficient!! this was kinda the test for next time.

You make the most "Kerbal" and strange (I mean this in a good way. An awesome way.) craft I've ever seen. Frank is a beast of a rover.

Thanks man. I try (being strange that is). Did you see the 2 vids of FRANK?

Since you have done this I would like some advice on my attempt. My plan is to design a Lander for each body matching Dv requirements and a light and heavy ascent stage, the heavy being used from an eve mountain and Laythe. All of this pushed around by a giant mother ship with no inflight refueling.

No inflight re-fuelling, hmmm, that is going to be an absolute monster of a mothership. I don't think that it will be impossible, but your problem is going to be the shear size of the thing, hope you have a powerful computer! How many different landers are you thinking of carrying? More landers means more overhead from non-dV producing parts that you have to shunt around so I'd suggest just having two, maybe three.

My craft (lander and orbiter together) had a dV of just under 6000 when fully gassed up and I pretty much needed to refuel at every stop. So you're going to need the mother ship to have a very high dV and I can't even begin to imagine how much fuel you'll need to start off with. Have you started work on this one yet? If you have I'd love to see some pics of your designs.

I think I'm going to do this again at some point and do it with multiple landers, but I still plan to use re-fuelling (just less frequent) with the new resource system when that comes out. One downside of just using one lander is it gets kinda repetitive, so multiple landers will be more fun!

[drakesdoom]

I have yet to get any sections to my liking for launch as their will be at least 10 launches that have to dock perfectly in 4 linked stacks. My Plan was to use disposable decent stages that stay on planet with a reusable ascent stage and a small orbital taxi. I think in the end this will save fuel as I can start at Eve so the lander for it and the fuel to get back to orbit will not fly very far. The orbital taxi will handle transfers to low orbit so that only just enough fuel will be dropped onto planet to get back and the mother ship can stay in whatever orbit it settles into from planetary transfer saving fuel on that end as well. If my numbers are right the main drives will need less than 20k delta v to make planetary transfers. If everything else is handled by much smaller sub craft and the heaviest of these are used and left early I think my current plan of LV-N Atomic Rocket engine clusters powered by 20 Rockomax Jumbo 64 fuel tanks can provide that much. From orbit ship will be about 60% fuel by weight but much of the remaining weight will not be making the full trip.

[musicpenguin]

Nice! I'd love to do that if i was good.

[Vaisman]

katateochi, you are great! I remember your mun party and other things you made

[b0bby]

nice job my friend!

i'm so glad you found a good solution for your booster system and you were able to finish this tour.

nice pics, awesome vids. you are as awesome as always man.

congrats!

[katateochi]

Thanks guys!!

I'm working on the other vids for it, but slowly. Too much work to do and then I keep getting sidetracked but other fun things to do in KSP!! I've got kinda in to plane building atm, but I will get back to making the rest of the vids for this soon.

@drakesdoom looks like you have a considered plan (which is more than I had when I started out on this one!). Gonna be interested to see how it pans out for ya.