Mission Planner Facility

[OnetimeYapper57]

I find designing craft hard. A lot of the time, they're overbudget, underpowered, and overweight. There's a good chance it's because of my mildly questionable modlist, but if it's a skill issue, I had an idea for a building at the space centre where you can plan missions.
You input starting location and destination, and the game calculates some mission profiles for you, with DV requirements, time, trajectory and manoeuvres, gravity assists, aerobraking, etc. You can then pick one you like and get a checklist for the required capabilities such as TWR and optimal DV per stage, which you can use to help design craft in the VAB. Below's an example of how I imagine the UI would work.

- Launch: [Earth] [Surface]
- Destination: [Titan] [Surface]
- Return home: no
- Aerobraking allowed: yes
- Crew: 4

Missions for Earth -> Titan:
Sort by [lowest Dv]/fastest

1: Orbital Assembly, Mars Assist
Assembly: Earth Surface -[4,900 m/s]-> Earth Orbit -> Docking
Mission: Earth Orbit Assembly -[2,000 m/s]-> Interplanetary Transfer -[20 m/s]-> Mars Flyby -[1,700 m/s]-> Saturn Capture -[500 m/s, aerobraking]-> Titan Capture -[200 m/s, aerobraking]-> Titan Surface
Total Dv: 3,430 m/s w/ aerobraking on Titan capture and landing
Travel Time: 2y 4m 12d

2: All Up, Mars Assist
Earth Surface -[4,900 m/s]-> Earth Orbit -[2,000 m/s]-> Interplanetary Transfer -[20 m/s]-> Mars Flyby -[1,700 m/s]-> Saturn Capture -[500 m/s, aerobraking]-> Titan Capture -[200 m/s, aerobraking]-> Titan Surface
Total Dv: 8,130 m/s w/ aerobraking on Titan capture and landing
Travel Time: 2y 4m 12d

3: All Up, Direct
Earth Surface -[4,900 m/s]-> Earth Orbit -[3,500 m/s]-> Interplanetary Transfer -[750 m/s]-> Saturn Capture -[780 m/s, aerobraking]-> Titan Capture -[200 m/s, aerobraking]-> Titan Surface
Total Dv: 10,130 m/s
Travel Time: 1y 9m 2d

Craft Design Notes:
Stage 1 must have a TWR over 1.
Life support must support 4 kittens for at least 2y 4m 12d (current duration: indefinite)
Living quality: excellent (gravity, spacious, call home, crew size, cupola)

 

[Kiwi Shark]

Interesting idea. I know people tend to use a handful of mods to get all this information from a few sources but having it all be one integrated planner could be useful. The different profiles could be cool just for inspiration to try a new approach to a mission.

I wonder what kind of "thinking" the planner would have to be capable of to actually come up with those though. Maybe some internally pre-set styles? Or just direct ascent vs orbital assembly. Or even toggles (Can assist around X and Y, but not Z. Can assemble in orbit with # launches of # payload tonnage.) for more tweaking.