Been thinking about a Grand Tour...

[Pbhead]

I used a Jet engine and ION only craft to get to Gilly. (no oxidizer) which was pretty cool.... It only needed like 5% thrust to hover on Gilly... even with 6 ion engines total i believe, and some jet fuel still in the tank for the return landing...

It didnt return... because Physics happened when my kerbal returned from quick little trip around the moon...

[metaphor]

I did one of these grand tours a few months ago. Just stock parts plus Mechjeb. I didn't have a single launch, but I only had one ship leaving low Kerbin orbit.

A good strategy is to go to Eve first so you can dump the huge lander you need and get rid of that mass. Also, I put my mothership into a highly eccentric orbit around each body to save on delta-v, with the lander needing to have enough fuel to slow down from there.

I didn't quite do it all without refueling, couldn't get to Moho without having to refuel. But if you have a good computer and a lot of patience it's definitely possible to do it.

Here are the pictures (a lot of them):

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

P.S. That's an awesome mod, Arrowstar!

[Brotoro]

I've never seen the appeal of doing a Grand Tour to land on all of the planets. Since it's not something that would make sense to attempt in real life, I assume it's just a challenge to show off your game skills.

Whether you use the kethane mod to refuel along the way or pre-position fuel tanks at each location seems about the same to me. And if you are going to send out fuel ahead of time to each stop, why not send out the customized lander for each place as well? Then your crew just hops from place to place and uses the stuff you sent ahead.

And if you wanted to do it with just one ship leaving Kerbin, I'd just send off a giant ship to escape from Kerbin into orbit around the sun, then immediately split it into parts and send the different parts (containing landers and fuel) off to each target, and the crew just transfers around to each place to do the landings.

But I can't see the point myself.

[PhsycoTimmay]

Did a Grand Tour to all planets with a ship I spent days building that could launch all 16 probes/sats necessary. Did it all over the long course of a night, only to wake up the next day with all my probes gone and no back up saves

Not sure if I'm up for that again

[Moon Goddess]

BBC had a great series about just this sort of thing. It could help provide some ideas.

Key points it shows (as have already been mentioned):

Refueling stations at key points

Multiple landers for different environments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N68U3eYQ_Cg

This was enjoyable. A little overly dramatic... I see no reason to land a manned mission to Io if your going to put a robot on Europa, that's just silly. And I with they'd paid more attention to time delay. Mission control weighing in on a mission to Io? She already dead before you can tell her to shorten the trip.