Who Needs Command Seats? a minimalist Grand Tour. *IT IS FINISHED*

[immelman]

These pictures do not give this game justice. This escape from Jool was unusual for me in that it was from the top of the system. As I pulled away I could see the coloured specks that were Laythe, Val and Tylo spiral around below. A screenshot could not capture this. If you have not visited Jool, you should. It is a beautiful part of the game.

So bye Jool thanks Tylo!

One last small burn to set up the Dres encounter, followed by a 400 m/s insertion burn and we have arrived.

Several orbital manoeuvres later and Jeb docks with the fuel depot flown here several years ago.

The fuel situation is going great, so we need to transfer fuel TOO the depot.

This way the lander's weight is reduced and so it's TWR is increased. It will save us a bit of fuel also! Afterwards Jeb also docked with the fuel depot's engine, it's going to be used for this landing.

Since it does look like we have spare fuel, lets have some fun! The sun was directly over the big canyon on Dres, so why not?

Gently does it...

Wow it got narrow here!

Cant stay around, don’t want the sun to set, while we are in the canyon.

Even so charge got pretty low during the orbital burn, but since Jeb is a badass landing on the surface to recharge was not an option.

Once back in orbit, the taxi is fully fuelled up, re-docked with the lander can. And Duna, we're coming for you!

Edited May 3, 2014 by immelman

[immelman]

It's a simple direct burn for Duna, followed by a small correction post transfer burn.

Once in Duna's SOI the periapsis is placed pretty close to Duna, I'm using the aerobraking calculator https://alterbaron.github.io/ksp_aerocalc for these. I'm aiming for the first aerobrake to bring out Ap out past Ike for the following inclination change. It works out pretty well, with Duna's thin atmosphere judging this is difficult.

The inclination change also pushes our Pe out past Duna's atmosphere, which is a bonus since Jeb is going to land on Ike first.

A small burn gets our Ike encounter

And we go straight into land!

Thats it, Ike is done! Now back up to orbit and a transfer to Duna, to dock with it's lander

Edited May 4, 2014 by immelman

[immelman]

Jeb docked with the Duna lander in close orbit, looking to land in an area under 1000m. I want the parachute to do most of the work slowing the lander down.

It is a inaccurate rule of thumb put place your periapsis at 15km a few degrees past where you want to land. This certainly works for me:

In addition to the ability to adjust the thrust of engines, without which all this docking would be a lot harder, tweaking the parachutes is very handy on Duna. A couple of hundred meters could make the difference in whether the parachutes rip off on opening or not. Descent was smooth,

With a short burst of the rockets before chute opening and another just before landing and we are down,

I ditched the chutes before my ascent back to orbit, which left me with quite a bit of fuel left, not quite enough to have to try and use it for our transfer burn to Kerbin however.

Edited May 5, 2014 by immelman

[immelman]

Next stop is Moho via the fifth and last Eve slingshot of the mission, I'm glad I had some fuel in reserve.

With rescuing the lander from an eccentric orbit, as well as messing up this transfer that was the reserve spent.

The problem was I did not get my solar Pe close enough to Moho's, which meant insertion would cost 3000 m/s. To recover this I had to do two Moho flyby's to bring down my solar AP, as well as shift my Pe around. The result was about 750 m/s saved.

Moho capture was, interesting, since Moho's Pe was on the night side all but 400 m/s of the insertion burn was after closest approach. Jeb was almost a million meters out by the time I had slowed down enough.

Once in orbit I had to shift around my Pe and inclination to set up in intercept with the lander, which was stranded in an eccentric orbit when it's tug ran out of fuel:

The lander was docked with Jeb's taxi and then towed to a low Moho orbit. Fuel for the lander is tight, every unit counts.

And finally into land, in this case I had to make sure once my horizontal velocity was eliminated that the lander was no more than 500m up. So the closest to a suicide burn of any of my landings

In the end I was able to get back up into orbit, fix my inclination with respect to the taxi and plot a rendezvous with still one unit of fuel left!

Next it's the main event, the Eve landing. Keeping my fingers crossed for that!

[immelman]

Not the most efficient transfer to Eve at 1200 m/s, but it did have the virtue of being a straight prograde burn. These are easier when you can only boost 400 m/s at a time, so farewell Moho you hard to get to little planet you.

As luck would have it Jeb's inclination to the Eve lander on entry into the Eve system was opposite, so the first aero-brake was intended to just capture us in an orbit out as far as Gilly's for an inclination change.

After the inclination burn I used several careful rounds of aero-braking to help set up the lander rendezvous

First off the lander engine was undocked and the taxi took on it's last fuel which will have to last for Gilly, Mun and Minmus.

Then the lander nuke engine redocked and Jeb EVA'd to man the lander, this was a thrill, I've been kind of dreading this moment!

[immelman]

I'm not going to lie, getting this landing spot on was hard, the target area is about 2 km, it took me six tries to get it right:

Eve's atmosphere is so thick that it takes you a very short time to lose your orbital velocity once you are under 65km, it also means there is not much point in trying to fine tune your landing area with a nuke engine after that, so I ditched it at 24 km.

Then it was just deploy parachutes and pray!

I found using more drogues helped slow the lander down at such a high altitude

We made it! bit steep though, landed on the sharper side of Eve's tallest mountain, but that is what the flat lander shape was for and the altitude is better than I hoped.

It's hilarious how little Jeb can jump here.

In preparation for take-off I "kneeled" the lander down by raising some of it's legs, so that it's orientation was better. Then dumped the parachutes

My first try got me into orbit, I was so surprised that I almost did not take any screenshots!

Take off

Gravity turn was at 29 km and by 60 km I already knew we were looking good, with 2/3 of the final stages fuel left and about 2 km/s to reach orbital speed.

I was aiming for 105 km Ap, this would allow more time for Jeb to EVA the last 300 m/s or so to achieve stable orbit, could not have done better with mechanical help!

As soon as the fuel was finished Jeb jumped out and flew for his life, he has about a minute and a half to make up the difference.

Finally started seeing the Pe rising, was beginning to get pretty worried at this point, we were about to drop below 97 km.

But we made it! Seeing that Pe marker at 97 km was a great moment, easily one of the most intense playing this game, comparable to my first Mun landing!

Edited May 8, 2014 by immelman

[immelman]

I boosted to Gilly via several rounds of burning at Periapsis, aiming for an intercept right on Gilly's Ap to minimise the insertion burn, Gill does not give you much time.

Capture was 215 m/s

And a nice slow landing, didn’t try a jump for the screen shot, didn’t want to get into orbit just yet.

Then back up to a 30 km orbit

To return to Kerbin I used this approach: eject from Gilly at it's Ap from Eve, circularise and then adjust the inclination. This cost 200 m/s, which then made the 500 m/s transfer back to Kerbin easy.

Farewell Eve.

[immelman]

My insertion back into the Kerbin system was not great, 83 degrees inclination ;(

Well I had three choices:

1. Burn 200 m/s to get a Minmus encounter (lucky but with the 200 m/s insertion DeltaV not that cheap)

2. Fix the inclination far out and then burn to lower my Pe back close to Kerbin's to aero brake to a passing Mun orbit. This would have cost almost 300 m/s.

3. Use the Mun to fix this

Choose 3, it's fun!

Firstly I used several very gentle aerobraking manoeuvres at a 48 km Kerbin altitude to lower my Ap to past the Mun's orbit, then a 6 m/s burn gave me my first Mun encounter with a small inclination change with a Pe back next to Kerbin's, down to 63.7 degrees inclination

Next Mun encounter cost 11 m/s and pretty much fixed my inclination, down to 2.4 degrees. A few more meters/second to bring my Periapsis back close to Kerbin's.

Then 9 m/s to correct the last 2 degrees!

Then I waited for my next Mun encounter, inserted and docked with the extra drive I left in orbit last time I was at Kerbin:

And down to Mun landing.

Then back up and dumping the extra drive. The undocking messed up somehow and I last three panels on Jeb's taxi, should not need them, press onwards!

Edited May 9, 2014 by immelman

[immelman]

Simple Minmus transfer, resulting inclination is about 60 degrees, I'll fix that on landing:

Thats it! a relaxing and pretty looking place to land on the penultimate body on my Grand Tour.

[immelman]

One last slingshot off the Mun, it corrected my inclination with regards to Jebs parachute for re-entry and brought my periapsis down cheaply to Kerbin so I could aerobrake down. Saving fuel has become a habit even though I still have a fair amount left.

Jeb in a can docks with the parachute for Kerbin re-entry, leaving an ion powered taxi behind with a heck of a lot of miles on it, as well as eight landings. It did the job really well. In the end thinking about how to approach orbital and landing manoeuvres while keeping your electrical energy in mind really did add another facet to the game I enjoyed.

Just past the mountains in the distance is the KSC, we have landing back on Kerbin after 25 game years.

It is finished. I have never played anything like this game. For complexity, depth, wonder, dread and a little fear for me doing this Grand Tour is in a league of it's own

I think I will take a little break now, thanks for reading this hugely image rich thread...

Edited May 9, 2014 by immelman

[PLAD]

That was absolutely brilliant, both in the logistics and the astrodynamics. A 25 Year Mission- the crew of the Enterprise should be embarrassed!

[Deathsoul097]

Wow! That's awesome! And the WHOLE mission was under 100T!? Kudos to you, good sir.