Is it possible to get to every celestial object one after another with one craft?

[Jaedinator]

Hello fellow Kerbanauts

we're in 0.20 now so i decided to start a new space program and to get rid of mechjeb and installed the info-based kerbal engineer instead, i did all the standard stuff to assure my piloting skills havent been replaced by mechjeb (Mun Land+Return, Ike + Duna flag plant in one step, Orbital space station assembling (which i couldnt do without MJ before )), and it seems that i've become a better pilot than before MJ, i guess because you still have to choose which kind of maneuver you want to set up.

Sorry for this introduction, i tend to fall into endless writing before i get my point.

Now I'm looking for a challenge, and i thought about getting into orbit at every celestial object and send a probe/rover/lander down before flying to the next one. The Main craft would be most likely assembled in kerbin orbit.

My question now is, if something like this is even possible and if yes if you tried it too?

[ShachonianX]

Probably you will have to refuel quite a bit, but it probably is possible.

[wolfedg]

I believe I have seen this thread in the Challenges section before. Not sure if it's possible without refueling.

[Holo]

It's possible without refuelling, just very very difficult. Comparable to a 3-man eve landing and return pre-.18.

[42undead2]

Just some planning would be good. A refuelling station at each planet should be good.

[Richy teh space man]

I'm planning on making something like this for 0.20. One mother ship with a couple of landers and several probes attached.

One of the landers has a Kethane mining set up, so that'll refuel at various planets/moons.

[Westo454]

It's called a "Grand Tour" and some people have done it.

[rodion_herrera]

For inspiration

[ShachonianX]

For inspiration

I love that series. The aerobraking scene was amazing.

[rodion_herrera]

I love that series. The aerobraking scene was amazing.

Yes enjoyed it too. However, I find that the sun slingshot was too far-fetched--they should have fried at that distance, or everyone would have had a lethal rad dose (well one of them dies of rad sickness...oops spoiler....kinda Kerbalistic there). And the comet affair was too hmm, choreographed...I mean, outgassing at THAT precise moment? The entire mission plan for that segment should have been scrapped!

[CalculusWarrior]

I'm thinking of doing that, but I'm having too much fun just planting flags all over the Mun to worry about interplanetary craft!

[Spatzimaus]

Yes, it's possible. With refueling, it's not too difficult, and if you use the Kethane mod and/or rovers to let you refuel on the surface, it's even easier.

I did a Grand Tour with Jeb, aboard the Nimbus. It's a Kethane-refining vessel using a mix of hybrid ion engines and aerospikes, which made it capable of functioning on nearly every planet/moon.

And here are some images taken along the way:

I actually landed on Mun twice; it was the first body I landed on, and then I used it as a refueling point when traveling from Eeloo to Eve. Eve required a special attachment to the lander, which worked fine for the landing but had problems taking off again. It had plenty of delta-V, but for some reason the SAS just flaked out a few thousand meters up. So, I rewound time to just before landing, and had Jeb go down in the Stinky Weasel, a Kethane-burning SSTO spaceplane designed for Eve:

[Jaedinator]

Thanks for the replies, I'm definetely trying this, but i want to to it with stock parts, so i guess i will have to put up some refueling stations at each / at every two stops

[Spatzimaus]

so i guess i will have to put up some refueling stations at each / at every two stops

Not exactly. Quite a few bodies have extremely low gravity, which makes the fuel cost of landing small; that list includes Gilly, Ike, Mun, Minmus, Pol, Vall, and Bop. You'll spend most of the fuel just matching orbits, of course, but the point is that one station can service quite a few destinations. In fact, some of these fuel costs are so low that you might not need refueling at all; I did Mun and Minmus in a single trip, and I didn't bother refilling after Ike before going down to Duna. I also didn't just rely on the onboard Kethane refinery; I had fuel depots around Eve, Duna, and two at Laythe. They're two-part depots, a main tanker and a kethane-refining lander, as seen here:

You specified stock parts, so the refining part is out, but I can still get one of these to Duna or Eve with more than half its fuel intact, and a trip to Jool leaves about a third of the tank. Given the sheer size of these depots, a third of the capacity is still about three orange tanks' worth of fuel, more than enough to repeatedly refuel small vessels as needed even if you had no way of refilling the tanker. The key is the two-part nature; the 400-ton tanker will park itself in a nice convenient orbit, high enough to make docking easy and low enough to be Oberth-efficient. The smaller, more mobile part can come meet your vessels at each moon, then travel back to the big part to refill. This is especially important for high-gravity moons like Tylo or Laythe; you'll burn most of your fuel just getting out of that gravity well, and might not have enough to rendezvous with a tanker that isn't in local orbit, so having the smaller part come meet you to give the fuel needed to get to the next moon saves a LOT of time and effort.

Also, one word of advice: even if you hate mods, I'll recommend a few specific ones for practical reasons. KW Rocketry includes a variety of engines, with the same efficiencies as stock engines (i.e., not overpowered), but most importantly it includes 3.75m fuel tanks and engines. This allows you to build your fuel depots with much lower part counts, which makes docking much more user-friendly without making anything "easy mode".

The other mod with a similar appeal is the Ion Engine mod; it includes larger versions of all the stock solar panel, xenon tank, and battery components, which'll make things a lot nicer if you decide to put any ions on your design. The ridiculously high ISP of ions makes interplanetary transfers MUCH more practical, although they'll take a long, long burn unless you stick a lot of them on board. (Just turn on ASAS and go watch TV for half an hour.) This'll help you to get to and from Moho, Eeloo, etc. without needing a fuel station on-site; even with LV-Ns, a trip to Moho will use up a lot of fuel, and getting a tanker there to refill you might not be feasible.

[Jaedinator]

Thanks Spatzimaus, you had some very good tips that I'm implementing in my planning right now. I got some design for my refueling stations, but having a small fuel carrier that can go between Jool and its moons is a great idea, i think i will work on that tomorrow

[ShachonianX]

Yes enjoyed it too. However, I find that the sun slingshot was too far-fetched--they should have fried at that distance, or everyone would have had a lethal rad dose (well one of them dies of rad sickness...oops spoiler....kinda Kerbalistic there). And the comet affair was too hmm, choreographed...I mean, outgassing at THAT precise moment? The entire mission plan for that segment should have been scrapped!

Hey, at least it was cool. But the part (SPOLIERS) where she had to remove the rock from the Russian guy's body was just, well, I couldn't watch it. Just to gross.

[rodion_herrera]

Hey, at least it was cool. But the part (SPOLIERS) where she had to remove the rock from the Russian guy's body was just, well, I couldn't watch it. Just to gross.

I can't remember if they did the surgery in zero-g or in one of Pegasus' gravity habs--I mean, that would have complicated things, if they did it in micrograv. But then you can't answer that question, because you didn't watch it I just might have to rewatch the whole thing again. And damn, their Venus ascent vehicle, sure must've had a powerful engine to do that ascent--I think the Venera 9 landed in a pretty low alt place.

[Spatzimaus]

I should also mention that a big part of a grand tour ship is what, exactly, you intend to do with it once you're there. A very small, efficient design that's intended to just go to each place and land can do this sort of trip easily, if only because of how many times you can refill from a single tanker. As you start throwing on nonessential bits, the added weight makes things a lot harder; your delta-V will go down, which makes Moho/Eeloo trips more difficult, and you'll have a harder time staying stable on planets with atmospheres. For instance, my Nimbus design above had a bunch of things that weren't really necessary for this trip, like the robot arm, the various small docking ports, and so on. Dropping the Kethane tank, drill, sensor, etc. would chop a good three tons off the design. The base of the ship is a CBM 2.5m port, which I used a few times for fueling vessels but whose main use was the Eve descent (it's where I attached the temporary lower half of my design), and the "neck" are two of the concealed 1.25m docking ports (so that I can hang this design from my big mothership). The parachutes were only useful for Duna, Laythe, and Kerbin (and Eve, but that required a second stage anyway which added more chutes), and I could have designed this to use a disposable descent assist module for those places. The design had more batteries than it really needed thanks to the hybrid engines, and it had large solar panels.

Removing all of these nonessential bits to build it as a conventional LFO rocket would chop a good 10% of my total weight, with a corresponding increase in TWR and delta-V, but this design was intended to be my one-size-fits-all "space truck" ship so I left these all on when I did my grand tour. A purpose-built mothership with landers customized to each world could do this much better. But then again, half the fun of this game is doing things the "fun" way, like building SSTO spaceplanes instead of simple rocket stacks. It's even tougher if you want your design to be able to do more stuff on each surface, like detach a rover. My next-generation all-purpose craft is going to use Damned Robotics to have vectorable descent engines (VTOL landings on any world), and powered rover wheels, so I might have real problems with efficiency. But I'll have an awesome vehicle that can drive all over the surfaces to see the sights...

[Stealth2668]

I don't think any computer can handle the size of rocket necessary without refueling

[rodion_herrera]

A purpose-built mothership with landers customized to each world could do this much better. ...

That's exactly how the "Pegasus" was set up in that movie I posted (Voyage to the Planets)! It had specific manned landers for Venus, Mars, Io, Pluto (or maybe they reused one of the landers for this) and the comet. For other bodies, they released unmanned probes (Europa, Titan)