Fastest Way to Jool on about 10,000 dV

[Wcmille]

On a travel budget of 10k dV, what's the fastest way (least amount of flight time once launch begins) to Jool?

Two ways I can think of:

1. Go straight to Jool (possibly with boost from Duna).
2. Go to Eve for a gravity assist to Jool.

[xendelaar]

 I would say the least amount of flight time would be when the planets are in close proximity of each other. So the distance you have to travel is at its minimum.  You’ll need a hell of a lot of dv to get into orbit of Jool though.. But that could be solved by aerobraking with several overpowered large heat shields!

it would be very interesting idea to test! I'm going to try this tonight.

[The Aziz]

Gravity assists ≠ fastest way. Especially when we're talking about planets, and not some moon slingshots. Because you first have to go there, not directly to your target. On my way to Sarnus in OPM I got a gravity assist from Jool (carefully planned of course). I saved a lot of fuel but lost 2 years. With 10k of dV you can go straight to Jool without worry. Look at Transfer Window Planner, set it up, look at the chart, find the fastest way within your budget, do it.

[Foxster]

Depends whether you want to stop once you get to Jool.

If its a flyby then you can burn for a long time almost straight at Jool while at a close approach.

 If you are stopping at Jool then you can reduce the dV you need to save for the capture drastically by using gravity assists around one or more of the inner moons. 

[1101]

Playing around with the transfer planner located at:

http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp

You can get some pretty quick potential courses.  I got one for 9,000m/s dV, which would be a 210 day flight.  If you meant 10 km/s total including getting to LKO, then it indicates a 6,500m/s burn for a 250 day flight too.

Bear in mind that at such speeds slingshots are more or less useless as mentioned above, even if you're using a Tylo capture.  Setting the planner for a capture burn puts it about 7km/s of dV, add in a Jool orbit of around 8 or so km/s you'd have a fun time aerobraking with an entry speed of around 15km/s.

TL,DR:  Totally doable for a flyby.

[OhioBob]

I would say the fastest way to any planet is a one-tangent burn (figure 4.12).  Just use as much of your 10,000 m/s delta-v as you can afford to shorten the trip as much as possible.

Gravity assists are used to save fuel, not time.

[Starman4308]

2 hours ago, OhioBob said:

I would say the fastest way to any planet is a one-tangent burn (figure 4.12).  Just use as much of your 10,000 m/s delta-v as you can afford to shorten the trip as much as possible.

Gravity assists are used to save fuel, not time.

If you're either very lucky in timing or the target is very distant, gravitational assists might save time. In this case, though, I doubt it; Duna and Dres are too small for a good gravitational assist when you're going by at several kilometers per second, and you'd lose too much time swinging by Eve*.

He's ejecting from LKO with an absurd amount of energy, enough to basically say "screw orbital mechanics, I have delta-V!"

*The OP's question is when you have a favorable alignment of Jool, not an arbitrary one where Eve might just be close to the straight line path.