How would you define a Grand Tour?

[Richy teh space man]

The grand tour is in my opinion a tour of all the planets/moons, landing a Kerbal on each and planting a flag.

For refueling Kethane is fine.

[Geschosskopf]

I'd avoid mapping / scanning or anything that requires a polar orbit as that just makes your transfer burns way harder.

That's why I have a reusable mapping probe. The main ships stay in the ecliptic. When they arrive in a new system, the probe undock, goes up to polar orbit, maps, then comes back down. This requires the probe to have a fair amount of delta-V but given that it doesn't carry much weight, it remains a manageable size. And when it comes down, it get refueled by the rest of the flotilla to be ready to do it again at the next destination.

[czokletmuss]

Visiting every planet and moon with the same lander and mothership. Refueling is just fine.

This. If you are interested, I'm writing AAR (mission report) about the Grand Tour - you can find there some interesting info. And here are my old calculations:

Edited September 4, 2013 by czokletmuss

[Geschosskopf]

I see it as the space equivalent of backpacking tourism; I'd much rather send better equipped specialist missions to exploit systems. If I ever did a tour I might take a rover along and I'd definitely want to make whatever I took self sufficient ( I use Kethane anyway, so that's not that big a deal ). I suspect any tour I did would be a trip to all the anomalies.

Yup, the "grand tour" part necessarily finds and, if possible within delta-V constraints, visits all the anomalies, as part of its mapping job. It's basically laying the groundwork for later stuff, especially because in some cases the make-up of the exploitation phase depends entirely on how easy it is to get to sufficient Kethane.

So, for instance, the Jool system. As far as finding fuel to shuttle stuff around within it and to top up tanks to transfer out, Pol will suffice regardless of the latitude of the deposits. But of course the main purpose of going to Jool is to set up shop on Laythe, where the paucity of land area holds the real possibility that all Kethane there will be in the oceans. And even if there is Kethane on land, it will necessarily be at fairly high latitude because Laythe has few islands near the equator, and it will certainly be the small minority of what's there, insufficient to make a Laythe colony self-sufficient for the long-term. Solving this issue is a problem for another day, but it's definitely something that will need at least half a bottle of whiskey .

[Guest]

I've already picked out a few personal challenges from all these posts.

1. The Micro Tour would use a tiny probe body as the main stage which would flip between landers and transfer vehicles as needed via Jr. docking port.

2. The Micro Drop Tour would deposit a probe on each landable target in the Kerbol system, thus acting as a "flag-planting" expedition. I think this might be possible without tankers if it used an ion-engined main stage (with possible nuclear capability for braking maneuvers, or just slingshot and drop a self-braking probe).

3a. The Single Ship and Lander Kethane Tour, delta-V be damned because in-situ fuel production is the name of the game.

3b. The All-In-One Kethane Tour, where the entire ship lands, sucks up fuel, returns to orbit, and then moves on. Would definitely need the blimp mod for Eve and Laythe, Tylo might cause some issues but you'd land there first so as to get your delta-V for exiting the Jool subsystem elsewhere (Pol, for instance).

4. The Science! Tour, as outlined by Geschosskopf, might be a lot of fun once 0.22 and the science modules come out, add Kethane and Mapsat to taste.

For now I'll be continuing my tankers + special landers tour with a single truck and generic lander since I've already started on that. I should probably get a mission report going...

[The Destroyer]

40 km/s of Delta-v for a grand tour eh....

Lemme go build it.

[Aqua667]

I haven't posted in forever YAY! (School D:) Back on topic: Grand tour = Visiting every body in the Kerbal system(except the Sun and the Magic Boulder), including landing on some of the more interesting ones (Laythe, Duna, maybe Eve?). Visiting is defined as being in a orbit, or maybe a hyperbolic trajectory for more "insignificant" bodies, like Gilly. This should be done with a kerbal'd craft, so theres' actually a "tourist". Remember to return him home afterwards!

[Pixel of Life]

A "Grand Tour" isn't something you can simply define. It's what you, the player, want it to be. The term "grand" is very relative - for experienced players a grand tour may be something very ambitious, like landing on every planet and mun, while for the less experienced it might be something as simple as getting to the Mun and back. I myself believe a grand tour is all about pushing yourself to the limit, about doing something you never imagined you could do. But most of all, it's about having fun.

[Guest]

A "Grand Tour" isn't something you can simply define. It's what you, the player, want it to be. The term "grand" is very relative - for experienced players a grand tour may be something very ambitious, like landing on every planet and mun, while for the less experienced it might be something as simple as getting to the Mun and back. I myself believe a grand tour is all about pushing yourself to the limit, about doing something you never imagined you could do. But most of all, it's about having fun.

So you don't have an opinion about what a Grand Tour is, one way or the other? No idea of how you would do it in your game aside from it being something you never imagined you could do and having fun?

That's, uhm, great, I guess, thanks for adding your opinion.

[Respawn]

I just tried building a transfer stage for a grand tour without refueling.

I ended up taking a second look at the "no refueling" part of my plan.

Breaking the mission into 2 parts.

Inner planets and then outer planets.

Sending a second transfer stage to Jool for a meetup there,

and leaving the old transfer stage as a laythe station core.

Still leaves me with a Core ship and some fancy lightweight landers to transport all around the system.

Still I think i'll wait for 0.22 and do it in a fresh save.

Gives me something fun to plan for while waiting. ^^

[Guest]

I just tried building a transfer stage for a grand tour without refueling.

I ended up taking a second look at the "no refueling" part of my plan.

That's why I went with tankers, puts more emphasis on the planning part of the tour anyway.

Breaking the mission into 2 parts.

Inner planets and then outer planets.

Sending a second transfer stage to Jool for a meetup there,

and leaving the old transfer stage as a laythe station core.

Still leaves me with a Core ship and some fancy lightweight landers to transport all around the system.

Still I think i'll wait for 0.22 and do it in a fresh save.

Gives me something fun to plan for while waiting. ^^

Leaving the ship as station core sounds like a cool idea, good luck to you, sir!

[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.

[dryer_lint]

At the simplest level, it's just a mission that visits all bodies (or just planets if you can't take the heat) without recovering vessel at Kerbin. If you WANT to make it harder, then there's no refueling.

[Spatzimaus]

Visiting every planet and moon with the same lander and mothership. Refueling is just fine.

Correct.

Now, there's plenty of room for "style points". Using a single lander for every planet/moon, for instance, although Eve makes this a bit difficult. Carrying Kerbonauts is much better than just a probe core, and multiple Kerbonauts are better than just one. Not even having a "mothership" and just sending an SSTO lander to the bodies, limited or no refueling, etc. can all make it even harder, but none of those are required to be classified as a "Grand Tour".

[Guz]

that way i did my grand tour:

Kerbin, Laythe, Vall, Bob, Pol-Tylo-Pol, Eeloo, Dres, Ike-Duna-Ike, Gilly-Moho-Gilly / Gilly-Eve-Gilly, Minimus, MunarOutpost, Kerbin

the main ship landed on every single planet and moon and returned to Kerbin Spacecenter.

(except for Tylo Moho Duna & Eve where i used shuttles parked on Pol and Ike and Gilly)

Edited January 26, 2015 by Guz

[RocketPilot573]

To me a grand tour i any flight that lands on every planets without refueling.

I don't like refueling because theoretically you could just send tons of fuel of every planet and then suddenly it wont really be a challenge anymore.

[Superfluous J]

I've always wanted to try this. My idea was for the mothership to not actually get into orbit anywhere, and the lander (and in many cases a transfer ship back to the mothership) would undock and thrust forward to get to the destination a day or so ahead of the Mothership. Then the lander would land, relaunch into orbit, wait for the mothership to come flying by, and meet it in much the same way you'd do an asteroid transfer. That way you're doing the really hefty burns with a much smaller ship.

[Duxwing]

A Grand Tour is landing on every solid body in the Kerbolar system, never refueling or ditching. The tour's glory is solving such mundane space-faring problems as delta-V requirements.

-Duxwing

[Francois424]

I've always wanted to try this. My idea was for the mothership to not actually get into orbit anywhere, and the lander (and in many cases a transfer ship back to the mothership) would undock and thrust forward to get to the destination a day or so ahead of the Mothership. Then the lander would land, relaunch into orbit, wait for the mothership to come flying by, and meet it in much the same way you'd do an asteroid transfer. That way you're doing the really hefty burns with a much smaller ship.

Umm? an Idea for your next series in .90 ? I would love to see that.

My definition of a Grand-Tour is Leaving Kerbal with ONE ship, landing on every planets/moons (with a lander or not) barring jool, and even, you could drop an atmospheric probe on there, take basic experiments on the biome, plant a flag, and head to the next place. You can ditch stuff on the way, but not abandon Kerbals, butno refueling.

When I attempt this, my mothership will most likely use Ion engines even with a 3h burn time, one tiny Laythe Lander (Already ready), and my buffed-up regular lander with 4 jettison-able extra fuel tanks for heavy bodies. Never got out of eve tho, so need to figure this part out before setting off.

[Wanderfound]

Hit every planet, refuelled or not.

Bonus cred for doing all the moons as well, masochism points for doing it unrefuelled. Shiny star for doing it in a large and stylish passenger liner and making it an actual "Grand Tour".

Actually, if I ever get a computer good enough to handle recording a stream, I might do just that; could make a good series.

[SkyRender]

In my book, the only absolute requirement for any sort of grand tour is that a single entity (be it a probe body or a Kerbal) visits every single body in the solar system. Circularization and landing is optional but advised everywhere possible. Really, it's silly to limit the idea to one very specific variant of grand tour, as that just locks out a great deal of potential creativity.

[cantab]

The standard for a "Grand Tour" in KSP is a single mission that does a Kerballed landing on all bodies with solid surfaces (apart from Kerbin itself). Anything else requires qualification, for example a "Probe Grand Tour" or "Flyby Grand Tour". Such qualified ones should at least include all planets, though maybe not all moons.

"Plant a flag" shouldn't be a requirement because I don't see anything wrong with the Eve or Laythe landings being in the ocean.

I also feel it should be a tour. The odd stop back in LKO is fair enough, but running a series of there-and-back missions from an LKO station doesn't feel right.

Refuelling seems fine to me.

[zarakon]

I would say the minimum requirement is for one ship to visit every planet, getting close enough to each for some pretty pictures and science, but not necessarily stopping or landing