3 Planet Challenge

[SargeRho]

Does Kethane count as refueling?

[Chrisd857]

Does Kethane count as refueling?

Before anybody asks, I don't care how you do it as long as it's stock* and doesn't exploit any glitches.

*MechJeb is allowed, however, those entries will be contending for a MechJeb leaderboard.

I think this has been sufficiently covered.

[tavert]

I've been thinking of attempting this, just haven't had the time lately to do the serious design and planning required. Also the multiplier for number of Kerbals will probably lead me to a bit of an unconventional design with a bunch of seats...

All that said, i must sadly admit to myself that due to lack of intelligence funding on the reusable lander design, i cannot land it on Laythe and get back up to orbit. So i have to abandon all hopes of doing a complete grand tour, and get back to Kerbin and tally up the score. I will try to salvage what i can landing on few more places i think, but the passion is gone for this mission.

So far i have Mun, Minmus, Eve (!!!), Gilly (which is seriously undervalued on score IMHO), Tylo and Vall. It's not a bad score, but...

Interesting. Could you describe your architecture a little bit? What went wrong? You say reusable lander, did you have the same lander for Tylo and Laythe? Were some stages dropped for Tylo, which led to it being incapable of getting off Laythe?

[Kappa73]

Interesting. Could you describe your architecture a little bit? What went wrong? You say reusable lander, did you have the same lander for Tylo and Laythe? Were some stages dropped for Tylo, which led to it being incapable of getting off Laythe?

Yeah, that's exactly it. I planned my reusable to first go to Laythe and get back up without staging but with the extra fuel on the drop tanks, IIRC it had some 3k dV on drop tanks and same on the last stage. That would naturally be less than 6k dV total, but plenty to get back up from Laythe. Only after Laythe i was supposed to go to Tylo, land there and get back up with regular staging, thus leaving me with only last stage of the lander, but it has 3k dV so it should be more than enough for the remaining planets and moons.

Instead of this great (!!) plan, i entered Jool system as planned, did aerobrake and capture burn on Laythe like i was supposed to, but then both of the brainwaves i have went totally flatline and i undocked my roundabout and lander, assembled the thing and flew straight to Tylo and landed there. so i was left with only last stage of the reusable.

E: I plan on adding descriptions to all of the pictures in my imgur album, but if you wish to look at them already, there is a picture of my roundabout, rcs tug (which is almost totally useless by the way, will be discarded on the version 2 of the thing if i ever build one) and the still intact reusable lander on orbit after my takeoff from Kerbin.

Then there's pictures of the reusable landed on the Mun and Minmus, then after a while a shot of my Eve lander, some ascent photos and the discarded landing piece of the thing left on Eve surface.

Then there's a picture of the roundabout on Gilly, some interplanetary transfer stuff and then there's the (fatal) mistake, landing on Tylo before Laythe and towards the end there's a picture of the last stage of the reusable landed on Vall.

Edited July 4, 2013 by Kappa73
more infoz

[Xenonclave]

So I managed to get into orbit around the Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike and then back to Kerbin. Landing didn't work so well though - I landed on Duna and couldn't take off. I really need to work on my lander.

[stumpfian]

Yesterday I purchased a new laptop so I could start playing KSP, I have not yet landed a Kerbal on the Mun, but I am going to accept this challenge.

[ZingidyZongxxx]

So absolutely no mods? Not even mods like KSPX or Crew Manifest? I don't even really consider those mods because they're just the kind of thing the game should and will probably have.

[Kappa73]

all righty i gave up and flew back home. So my score is Mun + Minmus + Eve + Gilly + Tylo + Vall, 2 kerbals on board, one in space and one operating the lander. Both returned safely on KSC lawn.

http://i.imgur.com/fr0f9te.jpg"]

I dumped a whole lot of extra fuel in orbit before the final descent back home, but it turned out i dumped almost too much, i ran out of fuel a few meters above ground. Luckily i was going really slow already, and the nuclear engine can take some beating so no harm done.

I'm 99% positive i'm going to try this again come .21 and see if i can manage to do a proper grand tour even tho it's not required for the challenge, i kinda set that goal for myself. Dunno how the .21 will change things so i might have to experiment for a while.

Thank you for a very very educational and fun challenge!

the score:

((kerbals on mission) * 2^(extra celestial bodies)) * (base score calculated above)

(2 * 2^3) * (2 + 1 + 4 + 15 + 1 + 7 + 7 + 3) == 640

http://i.imgur.com/Lx2SrRr.jpg"]

Edited July 4, 2013 by Kappa73
ahHA! forgot to calculate my score =)

[mr_yogurt]

Scores updated! Now, I don't think I will be posting every time we get an update, but now that we have our first score, thanks to Kappa73, I think that warrants an update post.

Finally, I have a submission! Pure stock, Launch mass of 442.38 ton and part count of 153.

Ship at Launch

Jebediah boldly went alone, to the following. He tried to EVA on Gilly, but was null-spaced, but that is why we quicksave.

+5 for Duna system

+2 for Ike Landing

+4 for Eve system

+1 for Gilly Landing

+0 for Kerbin system

+1 for Minmus Landing

+0 for Kerbin Landing

----------------------

Base score: 13

((kerbals on mission) * 2^(extra celestial bodies)) * (base score calculated above) =

((1) * 2^(1)) * (13) = 26

Imgur Album (Unfortunately, in wrong order and without captioning because Imgur is being annoying)

Note: Do I understand the "extra celestial bodies" correctly in thinking that I went to an extra one?

Sorry, you have to actually land on the extra celestial body. You've gone to 3 (Gilly, Ike, Minmus) and Kerbin doesn't count. It's just a required part of the mission.

I've added you to highscore

Edited July 6, 2013 by mr_yogurt

[Chrisd857]

Finally, I have a submission! Pure stock, Launch mass of 442.38 ton and part count of 153.

Ship at Launch

Jebediah boldly went alone, to the following. He tried to EVA on Gilly, but was null-spaced, but that is why we quicksave.

+5 for Duna system

+2 for Ike Landing

+4 for Eve system

+1 for Gilly Landing

+0 for Kerbin system

+1 for Minmus Landing

+0 for Kerbin Landing

----------------------

Base score: 13

((kerbals on mission) * 2^(extra celestial bodies)) * (base score calculated above) =

((1) * 2^(1)) * (13) = 26

Imgur Album (Unfortunately, in wrong order and without captioning because Imgur is being annoying)

Note: Do I understand the "extra celestial bodies" correctly in thinking that I went to an extra one?

Edited July 6, 2013 by Chrisd857
add null-space incident

[raygundan]

Does every kerbal need to go on every landing for them to count? Or can the mission have, say, a three-man crew with a one-man lander they take turns in?

[raygundan]

Does every kerbal need to go on every landing for them to count? Or can the mission have, say, a three-man crew with a one-man lander they take turns in?

For that matter... do kerbals all have to be along for the whole interplanetary ride, or can crewed landers "stay behind" on the ground or in orbit for later pickup? Or even fly themselves back to kerbin?

[metaphor]

I guess I can put this here.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Landing on all planets and moons in one launch (except Jool), back to Kerbin, no refueling, stock parts (no Mechjeb).

So that would be +76.5 points base score, and 11 extra bodies? not sure what extra bodies really means.

That would be (1 * 2^11) * 76.5 = 156,672 total score (?)

[Ekku Zakku]

Wow.... and a few months ago I was hoping to be the first to do an all stock, no refueling grand tour that had 17 orange fuel tanks and 4 nuclear engines per tank, it was MASSIVE.

Then here you are, doing a grand tour IN ONE LAUNCH. I'm jelly.

[raygundan]

I guess I can put this here.

Landing on all planets and moons in one launch (except Jool), back to Kerbin, no refueling, stock parts (no Mechjeb).

So that would be +76.5 points base score, and 11 extra bodies? not sure what extra bodies really means.

That would be (1 * 2^11) * 76.5 = 156,672 total score (?)

Well. And here I was just gonna skip Eve. Looks like it's back to the drawing board! I hadn't realized how much smaller an Eve return lander could be if you took off from altitude. My only previous Eve-return lander must be two orders of magnitude larger.

Edited August 23, 2013 by raygundan
quoted a huge image.

[Entelin]

It's the new rockomax engine, it makes making ultra small landers like that possible .1 weight, 20 thrust and 350 isp in vac. It's vastly superior to the lv909 or the radial rockomax.

[tavert]

Indeed, as soon as I saw that engine in the 0.21 preview streams I installed KSPX and started doing these: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/41584-Tiny-Eve-ascent-vehicle-6-23-tons-KSPX-MechJeb

I was partially hoping they would just make the 48-7S have the exact same stats as the radial version, but they didn't. Also the new small tank helps with this too since it has a good mass ratio unlike the Oscar-B and Round-8.

I even went and calculated just how much better the 48-7S is than most other engines: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/45155-Mass-optimal-engine-type-vs-delta-V-payload-and-min-TWR

See the vast swaths of light green? A rebalancing might be in order.

[Entelin]

Oh wow those are nice graphs. I would agree with you though that they probably should re-balance that engine. You shouldn't be able to go super light and take off from eve like that imo, I think the whole point of eve is that its forcing you to land something ultra heavy on it if you want to take back off.

Edit: I'm not trying to diminish Metaphor's work here btw, nice job! But really this engine is completely game changing, every lander, for any planet, will just use these and be very small, there's no reason not to. Metaphor's grand tour is a great demonstration of just how broken it is.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Entelin

[metaphor]

That specific engine is better than others, but it's not really that broken. You could make the same kind of lander, maybe adding a couple stages, using the side-mounted 48-77 engines.

The thing that makes an Eve return a lot lighter is the Kerbal on the command seat and not in a pod. Pods are heavy and it makes a huge difference in the mass ratio.

[maccollo]

Gonna attempt to go full score on this, using this craft:

Bonus points for aesthetics =D?

...

I finished the design over a week ago but I haven't had time to actually do the run the mission yet. I'm considering recording it and turning making a video series of it.

Edited August 24, 2013 by maccollo

[rpayne88]

I know the OP said no mods except mechjeb. I'm asking permission to use a few others:

FAR: I like my rockets to behave realistically

KW: I'm only going to use the fairings so the payload complies with FAR

Deadly Reentry: prevents me from designing a ship that "takes a dive" from Eelloo on a Kerbin intercept trajectory. Let's face it, if NASA did something like that from Pluto, the craft would likely be incinerated with in seconds of hitting the atmosphere

Remote tech: Comms are important aren't they? (It actually hinders me by adding additional weight.)

The real reason I'm asking for permission is because all of these mods are already downloaded onto my system. I don't want to download a clean install or delete these mods.

[mr_yogurt]

I know the OP said no mods except mechjeb. I'm asking permission to use a few others:

FAR: I like my rockets to behave realistically

KW: I'm only going to use the fairings so the payload complies with FAR

Deadly Reentry: prevents me from designing a ship that "takes a dive" from Eelloo on a Kerbin intercept trajectory. Let's face it, if NASA did something like that from Pluto, the craft would likely be incinerated with in seconds of hitting the atmosphere

Remote tech: Comms are important aren't they? (It actually hinders me by adding additional weight.)

The real reason I'm asking for permission is because all of these mods are already downloaded onto my system. I don't want to download a clean install or delete these mods.

Just changed the rules a bit, modified the MechJeb leaderboard and made it a mod leaderboard.

Does every kerbal need to go on every landing for them to count? Or can the mission have, say, a three-man crew with a one-man lander they take turns in?

For that matter... do kerbals all have to be along for the whole interplanetary ride, or can crewed landers "stay behind" on the ground or in orbit for later pickup? Or even fly themselves back to kerbin?

I just modified rule #2 to include a clarification for this. They can stay behind for later pickup, or fly themselves home. All that matters is that they all get home. (or risk major point deduction)

Leaderboards have also been updated. Yay!

[magnemoe]

Think I draw full score on this one.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/48461-Grand-tour-4-new-attempt-at-an-below-100-ton-grand-tour

One launch with no refueling in orbit, stock outside of Mechjeb.

Disposable lander for Eve, Laythe and Tylo, Used an disposable two stage ion engine craft for Moho. Reuseable lander for the rest.

I send one part directly from Duna to Laythe, dropped the Laythe lander and some fuel before and continued to Tylo and finaly Bop while the manned upper stage landed everywhere.

Edited September 12, 2013 by magnemoe