Ziv

I liked how you built up your main ship, with the separated Tylo lander at the back, but sending up in two pieces. And the main ship looks nice with the lights as it goes into deep space. Splitting up the ship before Jool aerobrake was a good idea, I guess you saved some deltaV there. Your Tylo tug+lander is nice and minimalistic, elegant solution. I have some question about your main ship's fuel, because I can't track it by the pictures. Let's say it was full after aerobraking to Laythe, and as the Laythe lander arrived back we see this picture. Your fuel is about 80%, let's say the big tank is 100% (720 fuel) and the missing part is the empty lander. It says it has about 3700 m/s. What you did from here: 1. main ship goes to Vall orbit (230x230 km), that's about 1200-2200 dV (just a quick estimate) and X1 fuel 2. mini lander refueled after landing, D1 dV and about 160 fuel 3. main ship goes to high Jool orbit (about Bop orbit but circular), that's about 400-800 dV and X2 fuel 4. lander goes to Bop and then refueled, that's hard to estimate how much fuel was needed to refuel, but let's say about 50% so that's 90 fuel and so is lost D2 dV 5. here the main ship fuel was low here - then the Tylo tug goes back and let's say it gives back +360 fuel (+D3 dV) - going home from here is clear So, there were fuel consumption like this from Laythe orbit: Starting with about 3700 dV and 720 fuel 1. -1200-2200 m/s (-X1 fuel) 2. -D1 m/s (-160 fuel) 3. -400-800 m/s (-X2 fuel) 4. -D2 m/s (-90 fuel) then the fuel was around 20%, so about 140. This means all of the above maneuvers was made from 500 fuel. I know it's not linear (bigger fuel consumption at the beginning) but you spent about half of your dV (which is more than half of the fuel) and then 250 fuel from the 720. So this is not impossible at all but really close. So can you please show me some pictures during these steps with the main ship fuel level on?

Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Jebediah's Level with a GRAND TOUR!!! WOW! Awesome. I really liked how you introduced your ships and main parts with Kronal Vessel Viewer. This helped a lot to understand everything. I think you have maxed out not the sicence only but the using of ion engines too! And all the mission is well-thought, especially when you send a Kerbal with a rover forward to collect science and then an other Kerbal arrives and they leave the planet together, with all the science in their pockets! Nice save at Tylo with RCS. I also like that you built easy-to-understand basic stock ships, this will help a lot for the new players who are still looking for basic stock solutions. Thank you for participating, you are welcome in the Hall of Fame between those few who did a GRAND TOUR!

Be careful how you decide on this and on the non-stock extra strong struts because in my opinion one of the hardest aspect of this challenge is to keep the lander in one piece during launch and touchdown. Allowing them will make it easier.

1. If you don't do science then it's okay in sandbox, yes. 2. Sure, this is just an appearance mod, no cheaty parts or physics changed. 3. I'm not sure yet because I don't know that mod and I don't have time to install and check it now. Please wait some days for that or skip that mod for now. - - - Updated - - - Hey sullivap, no, because that would make doing science too easy.

I will be happy to link it under Kethane but it won't be an official Kethane enrty as it doesn't use Kethane, of curse. I would like to start a Karbonite challenge too but the JOOL-5/Kethane already takes too much time and I have a lot of work these days. So if anybody wants to host a Karbonite JOOL-5 challenge then feel free to do it and I will be happy to help, contribute, or share it here. Or making a similar badge like the JOOL-5 one.

Hey, 1. ALCOR lander pod - I really LOVE this mod, I already flew and landed on the Mun and Minmus within one mission ONLY IVA. That was awesome, a whole different experience. BUT it is 1.68 tons and houses three Kerbals, which makes it cheaty against the stock parts. If you attach a 2 tons non-functional something (or TAC parts) to it as they were one part then I allow it. I was already planning a full-IVA Jool-5 too, but didn't have the time for it yet (and also working on an Eve Expedition right now). I'm happy about your idea and very curious!!! 2. Sure, if you want to make the whole challenge on IVA then that will be something very new! 3. I don't know this one, please take a screenshot of the parts in IVA so I can check the details. 4. please send a screenshot of this one too. Your mission sounds very ambitious, looking forward to seeing it!!!

Hey, wow, awesome!!! That's a lot of pictures! Sorry for the delay, I'm working a lot these days but I will review it as soon as I can!

I don't think it would be so difficult to return the Kerbals, even 11 Kerbals. Attaching parachutes and detaching the living quarter (and the Lab on Jeb's level) is not so difficult. In rare and well expressed cases I accept if they are brought back with an other craft but there have to be a strong reason for that. Difficulty is not a reason! This is a very difficult Challenge, one of the hardest.

Don't worry, there's a rule for the mods: - Any other part mods are prohibited, except if you asked me before your mission and I permitted it. So the UXS Enterprise is prohibited too. - - - Updated - - - WOW, looking forward to seeing it!

Yeah, I'm sorry but that's absolutely not enough for accepting. You had a video until arriving to Jool, then *static*, then they arrived back to Kerbin. Only the substance what is missing! Unlucky! Lesson learned: always make screenshots at every action even if you want to make a movie.

The top white box is a scientific instrument from DMagic's Orbital Science pack. It can be activated and then a nice little radar will scan the enviroment. If you have KAS installed then a Kerbal can bring it around and attach to an other ship too, this is how I would like to collect them and bring home at the end. Under it there's an upside-down stock little parachute (0.1 tons), heavily clipped. Then the big body part is a Ground Pylon from KAS. There's a stock solar panel and a MechJeb module attached onto it. The circle-shaped bottom is a general stock probe core (0.1 tons). The legs are also stock. That's all.

Little update on my Expedition: I was tweaking my EVE Escape rocket for three Kerbals and I came to a conclusion that I can do it under 200 tons. But that needed so much asparagus that the part count became too high. I want to bring a surface base, a big rover and a plane too and I don't want multiple deep-space journeys so I have to watch the part counts. So I simplified the escape rocket and it became twice the weight, 400 tons. This is really fun how you can't easily make it having more dV just with adding huge rockets. I love this challenge!

I don't think spaceplanes are viable on Eve. Jets don't work there and normal rockets will glow out very quickly before reaching any escape height. But I'll give it a test try myself too.

Yeah, pictures are good too, if they are in a convenient handling album with thumbnails. I suggest using imgur (it's free for the first 225 pictures).

Just upload it to any public video sharing site and link it to here.

And it's not just the height of the Atmosphere, but it is five time denser than Kerbin's atmosphere. It is literally like a dense soup. So on Kerbin you are the most fuel efficient when you don't go faster than 200 m/s until 8000 m, on Eve it's the best not to go faster than 80 m/s until 5000 m, then not going faster than 237 m/s until 20000 m, because if you go faster then you are wasting fuel on fighting the atmospheric drag. You should reach 1000 m/s only at 40km, and it's still a long way from there too, so you will need a high Eve-TWR up there too. Oh, and Eve's gravity is 1.7 times stronger than of Kerbin's...

Yes, if you really did it. Bop is very hard on EVA so I will need information about your starting/landing/return positions and EVA fuels. If you made a video that's perfect. If I can click on the timeline of the video and quickly jump to any part of the mission then I don't mind if it's long, I can review it quicker.

. I was unfair to EdFred with my first review so I rewrote it: click here

Maybe that's why you are coughing! Be careful with those!

Vaporo: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Level 3! OMG your launch rocket is crazy!! And I really like how your main ship looks with those millions of struts. I made a quick calculation and only the modular girder section must weight more than 40 tons... The Laythe plane looks elegant. Did you bring 2 kerbals only in the Crew Tank? (By the way I hate those crew tanks, too little and lightweight for the amount of Kerbal it can hold... but I can't say you used that part to save weight! ) By the way it was a big fuel/weight waste that you went to low orbit around Vall with the main ship. If you stay on a highly eccentric orbit and go down with the lander is much more efficient. Or maybe you could let your main ship around Jool between too moons and the lander would still be capable to do the landing and return too. At Tylo and Laythe it makes sense if the landers can hardly return. And I see you used a tug-ship with two little landers for Bop and Pol, that's better optimized. But this is still rare, especially because you could easily refuel your lander from the tug-ship. That's also strange that you brought the used landers with you to the next destinations and then back home but they were dead weight already (the Kerbals would have had enough room in the Hitch-hiker storage) but later I read you wanted the main ship as a station back at Kerbin so it makes sense. I liked your Tylo lander too, as you placed two nukes for the last stage - and again, very wasteful on weight and nukes, but I guess you didn't care about it too much. Staging nukes at landers is not a common solution. I also liked the last stage of it, rare reversed solution! Nice job, thank you for participating!

What was the hardest thing you did? If the video has a time line and I can click on it anywhere then it may be okay. I don't understand what you mean by the badge? If the mission is lightweight and you prefer the low-mass challenge then I can put it there and you can use that badge, yes.

Stock struts were never prohibited but KAS and some mods have some unrealistically too strong struts. When building big things engineers have to face the limits of the materials, it's true for big rockets too, so this is why I like to keep that real for this challenge too. About the uniqueness of the entries: yeah, sure, most of the basic solutions for this challenge was already made by the contenders but many of them have some nice twist or a new idea. And there's a lot of variants on how you do the mission too, like 5 specified lander, one universal lander or modular lander with attached additional stuff for the bigger moons, some of them went to other worlds too, others brought rovers or some probes or brought more Kerbals, etc. So it's usually fun, my only problem is that it became a lot easier with the new huge rockets and with some other parts, and with the big number of sample missions some people just copy some of the good solutions. But this is rare, fortunately. So I would like to ban everything bigger than the orange tank/mainsail and the new ion engine, and especially ban hyperedit testing (I did my first mission without testing). But I will not ban them, of course, they are in the game already.... And one more thing: if the player was never to the Jool system then it's the best, because closing to the Jool System at to the moons the first time gave me awesome thrill and I would be happy if everybody would go there like this...

Yeah, both Snacks and Dang it! sounds good, they are allowed!

I already sent the scout mission before my big Eve Rocks Expedition! CLICK ON THE PICTURE FOR THE ALBUM!

Aesthetics mods are all right. Tell me more about Snacks and Dang it!, I don't know them. Universal Storage is okay if you bring only snacks and some monoprop. KAS struts are prohibited - the problem is that JOOL-5 become too easy already with the new updates: huge launch rockets (at the beginning there was only the orange tank and the mainsails), less wobbly physics, stronger ions, etc... so it's not so elite and hard anymore. At the beginning there was only 1 entry per month and it was a very big deal to do it successfully. Nowadays I spend a lot of time reviewing missions which doesn't really have any unique solutions... And I like mods but many of them make it easier so I try to keep the balance. Mods which makes the mission harder are always appreciated!