Jumping on the Grand Tour bandwagon

[1of6Billion]

The last week, I decided to have a go at a Grand Tour on my own. I decided to have Jeb (or any other brave enough Kerbal) visit *every* planet in the Kerbol System. Landing on Laythe instead of Jool for obvious reasons. To make things interesting, I wanted to use only one (1) lander.

I think I have cracked that 1 lander part. Now it's time to plan an extensive mission. Including infrastructure, I came up with the following:

1. Launch Kethane and Ore Scanner Lander Robo Rover Probe to Minmus

a. Scan for Kethane and Ore from polar orbit

b. Land on Suitable location

c. Pinpoint flat area with rover

2. Launch Kethane Mining and processing facility to Minmus

a. Mine Kethane, process to fuel

3. Launch Ore Mining and processing facility to Minmus

a. Mine Ore, process to Rocketparts

4. Launch Orbital Construction Station (OCS) to LKO, KSO or Minmus Orbit (To be decided) just outside Minmus SOI, 40,000km

5. Launch RocketParts Shuttle to Minmus

a. Bring RocketParts to OCS.

6. Add Fuel station to OCS

7. Build FuelShuttle at OCS

a. Bring Fuel from Minmus plant to OCS

8. Build Grand Tour I: 1 Mothership, 6 Robo Rover Probes. 1 for each planet and Laythe.

b. Launch in elliptical orbit around Sun, ranging from Moho to Eeloo.

c. Release probes at approriate orbital height

d. Enter SOI, orbit, land. Scout for flat landing area.

i. Scan Dres or Eeloo (TBD) for Kethane

e. Land Mothership on Dres or Eeloo (TBD).

i. Mine and process Kethane to fuel.

ii. Launch Refueling station to orbit

9. Build Grand Tour II: Mothership with 1 modular lander, capable of landing on and lifting back up from *EVERY* planet in the system.

Yes, I do love mods

What do you think?

Edited August 27, 2013 by 1of6Billion

[SunJumper]

Hmm, if I were to do a Grand tour,I'd use a modified one man lander can that is essentially a glorified EVA suit that can be glued to stuff, and some high tech nuclear engines (*cough* Liquid - core NTR *cough*)

[magnemoe]

Hmm, if I were to do a Grand tour,I'd use a modified one man lander can that is essentially a glorified EVA suit that can be glued to stuff, and some high tech nuclear engines (*cough* Liquid - core NTR *cough*)

An nuclear lander would not be very suitable, to low twr for Tylo and Laythe and you has to drag around with the heavy nuclear engine all the time.

This is my grand tour ship with kethane mining. It has an Eve balloon lander in front, an small lander at the side, capable of Mun and lighter gravity.

Mothership and the kethane miner at bottom.

Miner includes an one ton rover and is able to reach 80 km orbit from kerbin so its a bit overkill. This was done in 0.18.

While the miner is to large the mothership holds to lite fuel, still with the fuel in the miner I had 6000 m/s dV, was able to reach Moho after filling the tanks at Gilly, after filling the tanks at Moho I was able to go directly to Duna.

You want an lander with around 3500 m/s dV. This let you land and take off from all bodies except Kerbin and Eve, Tylo require that you land on an kethane deposit.

If you can do Laythe you can also do Tylo with mining, you might want to visit Pol anyway as its easy to mine.

I used Orbital construction on motherthip to spawn satellites.

[Geschosskopf]

What do you think?

Sounds quite ambitious. I've never bothered to check the timetables for getting from 1 planet to the next to plan an efficient route for a grand tour. Did you do that? For instance, I've currently got some stuff at Duna. When it gets done there, I'll send it somewhere else, but that will depend entirely on whatever launch window entails the least wait at that time .

[1of6Billion]

Sounds quite ambitious. I've never bothered to check the timetables for getting from 1 planet to the next to plan an efficient route for a grand tour. Did you do that? For instance, I've currently got some stuff at Duna. When it gets done there, I'll send it somewhere else, but that will depend entirely on whatever launch window entails the least wait at that time .

No, I didn't. I don't really care if the whole operation is going to take more than 100 years or so.

[1of6Billion]

OK, here we go.

Launch Kethane and Ore Scanner Lander Robo Rover Probe to Minmus:

Resource Mission on the launchpad. 1 lifter, 1 probe, 2 landers, 2 rovers.

En route to Minmus

Scanning in progress. This may take a while.

The Kerbal Space Committee has given green light to commence with the building of a Kethane Mining and Processing Facility.

Edited August 21, 2013 by 1of6Billion

[magnemoe]

No, I didn't. I don't really care if the whole operation is going to take more than 100 years or so.

You do, currently waited 13 years for an Eeloo intercept from close to Jool orbit. Now just waiting two years for plane change. over an hour real life at max warp.

[Geschosskopf]

No, I didn't. I don't really care if the whole operation is going to take more than 100 years or so.

That's my kind of space program . Kerbals are just there to fix flats, repack chutes, and pump gas with KAS. Offer them a career in space and then give it to them . Pay them minimum wage for such menial labor, pay the robots that to the real work nothing at all, and go ye forth and conquer the universe

[1of6Billion]

Scanning complete! (Left PC on overnight:rolleyes:)

Meanwhile back on Kerbin:

[magnemoe]

Note that for faster kethane mapping you can use multiple small sensors on higher warp. 2 for 100x, 6-8 for 1000x depending on orbital speed.

Yes you need power for them to so rtg or lots of batteries.

[1of6Billion]

Note that for faster kethane mapping you can use multiple small sensors on higher warp. 2 for 100x, 6-8 for 1000x depending on orbital speed.

Yes you need power for them to so rtg or lots of batteries.

I totally knew that. But forgot to implement it....

[1of6Billion]

Next up: Pinpointing a suitable location and landing a rover there:

Prior to seperation:

Final descent:

Touchdown! And some roving action:

Picked a seemingly flat kethane pocket on the equator. There is a little slope, but it will do.

Next: Pick an Ore pocket, rinse, repeat:

It seems the rover is quite unstable under the low gravity conditons of Minmus.

Yup. It's broken. The hills are more steep here. I'll need to build a bigger rover.

[SunJumper]

I'm currently working on getting Testium from Eve (I'm pretending it is a really effective nuclear fuel in Eve's oceans), that I can use for d/v intensive missions like this (that will involve a low solar orbit, too... maybe...)

[1of6Billion]

While all this roving was going on, the Kethane Processing Plant got launched from Kerbin and was parked in a 40x40km orbit around Minmus:

[Geschosskopf]

Note that for faster kethane mapping you can use multiple small sensors on higher warp. 2 for 100x, 6-8 for 1000x depending on orbital speed.

Yes you need power for them to so rtg or lots of batteries.

It depends on what you mean by "faster". You have a choice of decreasing the amount of your own REAL time, or the amount of GAME time, it takes to scan a world, but you can't decrease both at once. In fact, decreasing one increases the other.

This is because no matter how many scanners you put on a probe, it will still only scan a path 1 hex wide. Thus, the GAME time required to scan a planet is simply and totally a function of the probe's speed over the ground, which determines the rate at which it moves from 1 hex to the next. Thus, to decrease the amount of GAME time required, you want to be in as low an orbit as possible, so you have the highest velocity. But on most worlds, an orbit this low puts you too close to the planet to warp at more than 50x.

Then there's another related problem: All worlds, regardless of size, have the exact same number of hexes to scan. Thus, it takes pretty much the same amount of GAME time to scan Gilly as it does Kerbin. In the lowest possible orbits, this amount of time is about 7 GAME days. And usually you can only do this at 50x warp, which means about 3.5 hours of REAL time. However, you only need 1 scanner with just enough juice to power it, so your probe is light, simple, and cheap.

OTOH, if you're in an orbit far enough away from the world that you can warp 10Kx or 100Kx, you can get the job done in just a few minutes of REAL time. HOWEVER, this far from the planet, your orbital velocity is quite low, so you're increasing the amount of GAME time required. Plus, the fastest you can warp without leaving any gaps in coverage is just 100x, so to use the highest warp settings, you MUST add MANY scanners to your probe so they fill in each other's gaps. If you don't do this, then you VASTLY increase the amount of GAME time required because you then have to make multiple passes over the same ground to fill in the gaps you leave. So now your probe is this huge, heavy, power-hungry, expensive thing.

Both methods are perfectly viable so choose the 1 that best fits your situation. If you're scanning on a deadline based on gametime events (launch windows, interplanetary ships arriving, etc.), then you'll probably have to try to minimize GAME time, which means low warp. OTOH, if you've got nothing else going on in your game and are just interested in saving your own REAL time, then go with the higher warp and accept it might take years (no kidding) of game time to scan a world, plus you'll have to launch this heavy probe and give it enough delta-V to go where you want it.

Bottom line:

Minimizing game time means maximizing real time but can use a light, 1-scanner probe.

Minimizing real time means maximizing game time and requires a heavy, multi-scanner probe.

[1of6Billion]

OK, built a bigger rover. But same result. Summersaulting my way over Minmus. Think I will just build a "wide" ore plant.

The Kethane plant was lost too. Too inbalanced to land properly

[1of6Billion]

Success! The Kethane Facility has landed on Minmus!

At KSC:

It flies like a leaf on the wind

That's where we are going:

Watch out!

Erm, KSC? We have problem.

Shut down the Upper two Aero spikes. RCS full on. Throttle up a little:

Bingo! Ready to mine some Kethane:

[1of6Billion]

Finally, after a lot of trial, error, blood, sweat, tears, dead Kerbals, misbehaving physics and numerous game crashes, the Minmus Ore facility had finally landed.

Liftoff @ KSC:

Transfer to Minmus:

Landing on Minmus:

The strange thing was, that right after this screenshot, the game crashed. (I get that a lot these days). After restarting, the lander was on a "suborbital trajectory" at Minmus. So, I landed it again. No problem there. Besides, the game never considered it landed. So everytime I time warped (to get into daylight) the lander just crashed into the surface, mostly crashing the game as well.

[1of6Billion]

So, infrastructure on Minmus is in place. The building of a Space Dock has started immediately:

[1of6Billion]

I give up. The number of game crashes I experience render the game unplayable. I have to start removing mods.

[StevenLawyer]

Here's my single launch, no refuel, stock grand tour ship that includes a reusable lander for all planets except Eve (Eve is a separate one time use lander) with reusable rover and reusable probes (you're not going to land on a planet without first sending an unmanned probe, are you?). I finished the mission with fuel to spare.