Eeloo Mission

[Ryan81873]

I've been pretty utterly obsessed with Kerbal, and had an idea while in class for this ship design, where the tanks detach as they empty, improving efficiency. You could go crazy with it with smaller capacity tanks but I thought this size was much more practical. Anyway this is its debut run to Eeloo.

Some assembly required...

After it was finally completed I realized I forgot engines on my lander.... so a new one was shot up with another tug (the whole ship was short about 200 fuel from full capacity anyway, some of it had to be used to get the initial ship into orbit.)

And detaching the tug to bring that Kerbal safely back to earth.

And we're off!

Detached tank 1 as it emptied

On target... I know my trajectory is a little sloppy but hey it works.

Tank 2

And Eeloo is in sight!

Established orbit...

And now time for some EVA. Transferring 2 Kerbals to the lander, leaving one to hold down the ship in orbit.

And undocking the lander...

Found a nice spot of dirt to land in!

And touchdown!

Geared up to head back to orbit.

Don't plan on taking the lander home with me, so eh, this is close enough to EVA over!

And tank 3 is jettisoned, now its just the capsule and these 3 rockets really haul.

Bye, Eeloo!

On track to hit Kerbin

There it is in the distance

Doing a fly-by of the moon

And home sweet home. Not the cleanest flight patterns overall but still a left over 1800 delta-V after a round trip to Eeloo, not bad!

Jettison the remainder of the ship in prep for landing

Wishing I had a Seperatron mounted or jettisoned the rockets while they were thrusting at this point... nervous that debri will collide with the capsule!

But it didn't, it didn't slow down nearly as fast, just kept flying away. Perfect sunset to mark the end of a successful mission!

Anyway, let me know what you think! What do you use to travel to the deeper planets and how have you managed to being more massive payloads than my little lander to them? Thanks for checking this out!

[Tw1]

Nicely done!

The way to bring larger payloads would be simple: Moar tanks! If burn times get too long, you can break up the burn into several passes:

I like the look of your space ship, how you've got the lv-ns and tanks radially attached to the capsule.

[Ryan81873]

Thanks! Never thought about breaking it up into passes. That's something you'd primarily need to worry about when leaving Kerbin's SOI, right? I imagine you pretty much have all the time in the world to burn when orbiting the sun. Either way, sometimes I wish there was a time compression faster than 100000x out there!

[Tw1]

Thanks! Never thought about breaking it up into passes. That's something you'd primarily need to worry about when leaving Kerbin's SOI, right?

Yep! Also useful for plane changes around large planetary bodies. The trick is to get the timing right.