The Ultimate Jool 5 Challenge Continued

[camacju]

18 hours ago, Robin Patenall said:

The big problem is that there is no easy way to re-root your vessel while in EVA construction, the closest thing is to dock / grapple it with another vessel that has a higher priority

You can also change the vessel type to Debris or DroppedPart and pick it up that way

[DennisB]

13 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

In flight, right click a command module part and click "configure vessel naming". It sets the dominant ship after docking, including ship name and map icon. (useful for stations)

I will test this later.

As I opened the game tonight, the decoupler, which I couldn't remove yesterday, wasn't there anymore. Very mysterious.

I thought about the docking port, and probably I could edit it, because I undocked and redocked a vessel before, so probably it wasn't the root part anymore, and maybe that would work at the decoupler too, if it would be still there.

[Kimera Industries]

@JacobJHC, my Jool 5 mission report is all put together! Care to look at it?

Edited January 28 by Kimera Industries

[DennisB]

After some troubleshooting in the first half of the test mission, now I'm facing the first major issue. Till now, I could solve all the problems with simply adding or replacing a part, and beaming the revised vessel to its position to continue the test. But now, my Jool plane failed. I knew from the beginning, that it has a critical part in its design. I developed solutions for Laythe and for Jool. I was really happy, that the solution at Laythe worked, and was confident, that the one for Jool will do it too, because its more precise. But it looks like, it's not precise enough, and the plane gets out of control in the lower atmosphere. (I shouldn't wonder, because it has 6 times the mass, 3 times the wing area and the speed as on Laythe at the same atmospheric pressure). These are the things, why I do the test mission, because some problems don't occur, when I beam the vessel to its position directly from the VAB, they come only, when I do the mission step by step.

Now there are two possibilities (probably more of course, but I don't want to consider them). There are two possible adjustments, which I could do in-flight, but I'm not really confident, that they will solve the problem, and I still would have to test them. But I could invest that time to replace the critical part by a new one and test that, which sounds more promising. However, this will delay the launch. I had the hope, that I'll be able to launch the mission next week, but now....

And why is this necessary? Because I want to keep my plane design, my rocket design and the whole mission plan, which are, in my opinion, really cool.

Edited January 29 by DennisB

[Kimera Industries]

6 hours ago, DennisB said:

These are the things, why I do the test mission, because some problems don't occur, when I beam the vessel to its position directly from the VAB, they come only, when I do the mission step by step.

When you beam the vessel into position, is the message "physics easing in progress" still at the top of your screen? Whenever you teleport a ship into an in-flight position, (not in orbit but not landed) this message will not go away and gravity will not fully load in. This lighter gravity means that your planes can appear to fly exceptionally well in small tests, only to easily crash or lose stability in the full mission. I had this same problem with my Laytheplane, and it took me many tries to land it successfully in the full mission.

[DennisB]

4 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:

Whenever you teleport a ship into an in-flight position, (not in orbit but not landed) this message will not go away and gravity will not fully load in.

To avoid it, set the gliding coefficient to 1 (I don't know, how it's called in English, but it is an adjustable bar in the middle of the window). I know that, and in the development phase I tested the plane from orbit to orbit of course. My problem has a different reason. Because I do some docking and EVA construction during the mission, my plane is simply not the same, when I arrive at Jool, as when it would come fresh from the factory.

[problemecium]

I FINALLY DID IT

It is done! I am free!

Please advise me if any additional documentation is needed and also feel free to leave any other feedback ^^;

P.S. I made this "Jebediah's Level" version of the badge for anyone who has completed Jebediah's Level to use:

Edited January 31 by problemecium
new image links

[DennisB]

On 1/29/2024 at 7:45 PM, DennisB said:

Now there are two possibilities (probably more of course, but I don't want to consider them). There are two possible adjustments, which I could do in-flight, but I'm not really confident, that they will solve the problem, and I still would have to test them. But I could invest that time to replace the critical part by a new one and test that, which sounds more promising.

It's good, that I decided to do further research on that. It turned out, that it wasn't exactly that, what I thought, so a redesign, like mentioned in the second option, wouldn't solved it. The troubleshooting was a really difficult process. I tried to change the fuel flow, because the imbalance could come from increased drag, so moving the center of mass forward could be a good idea, but it didn't work. After several tries, I managed somehow to reach level flight, so I could start the ascent, and at the first staging, the docking port collapsed, which never happened during the development process. I checked the autostrut settings, and I was surprised. One docking port was set to heaviest part and the other one to parent part, but on the old plane the second one doesn't have any autostrut set. According to this, I removed the autostrut on the actual plane. This time, the docking port didn't collapsed, but it was still floppy. Conclusion, the connection of the docking ports are more stable, if they are attached in the VAB/SPH than attached in space. I fixed it with a physical strut, but the plane was still too unstable. It seems, there is still a misalignment, but not on the yaw axis, like I thought before, but on the pitch axis, which I can't solve. The only solution is, to mitigate it. I added two more reaction wheels, two more ruders, and increased the gimbal range of the Vector engines. It still doesn't fly as well, as it should, but I could reach orbit. Good, that it had a dv margin of 500m/s, now I need most of it.

Let's see, what will come at Tylo, because this statement is still true.

On 12/21/2023 at 10:28 PM, DennisB said:

I don't expect problems anymore, I just have to solve all the unexpected problems, which will come.

 

 

[king of nowhere]

On 1/30/2024 at 6:47 AM, DennisB said:

To avoid it, set the gliding coefficient to 1 (I don't know, how it's called in English, but it is an adjustable bar in the middle of the window). I know that, and in the development phase I tested the plane from orbit to orbit of course. My problem has a different reason. Because I do some docking and EVA construction during the mission, my plane is simply not the same, when I arrive at Jool, as when it would come fresh from the factory.

If your plane had docked parts; I once had a bug where I had a rocket with docked parts, and it was subject to insane drag on Laythe - because the game was somehow glitching both large docking ports as fully explosed to the airflow, instead of docked together in a straight shape

[DennisB]

2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

If your plane had docked parts; I once had a bug where I had a rocket with docked parts, and it was subject to insane drag on Laythe - because the game was somehow glitching both large docking ports as fully explosed to the airflow, instead of docked together in a straight shape

That could be possible too. I have more drag for sure. I see it, when I reach level flight on Jool, my speed decreases much faster.

It will be interesting on the real mission, if the problem is somehow random, and the plane will behave different again. Then I will need fast reactions. Luckily I have five engines of four different types, so I can switch some of them on and off to get the best balance.

[JacobJHC]

On 1/28/2024 at 12:29 AM, Kimera Industries said:

@JacobJHC, my Jool 5 mission report is all put together! Care to look at it?

Yes! I will look at it very soon, due to WIFI issues I had quite the difficulties viewing the previous submission to yours. Said issues are improving so the previous submission is nearly complete, and yours will follow swiftly after!

[JacobJHC]

Congratulations  @king of nowhere on a truly emotional, awe-inspiring Jool 5 submission on Level 2! I apologize for likely the biggest delay in Jool 5 history, but my internet simply would not load the images on your thread and it took me forever to actually get them to load, but when I did, wow! Your thread covered emotional outbursts from the crew, discoveries of insanely low cabin pressures, glitchy ships, run-ins with radiation belts, the whole shabang! Congratulations on completing a complete Grand Tour in Kerbalism, despite the game's bugs (and on occasion your crew and reaction wheels!) working against you! I shall add this mission to its rightful place on the leaderboards now!

Edited February 11 by JacobJHC
Mission had 3 crew on each landing so it's a level 2 and not a level 3, my mistake

[king of nowhere]

@JacobJHC after starting my newest jool5, I realized I made a small violation of rule 4: after sending my ship to minmus for refueling, I realized I forgot to include thermal radiators. rather than reloading and losing all progress, I sent a small ship to minmus with the required parts and stuck them with eva construction.

I also swapped out a lander, but in this case it was purely nonfunctional beautification, since the new lander was a perfect copy of the old one save for the addition of 50odd lightstrips. that also on minmus orbit

Please tell me I'm fine and don't need to reload all the way to LKO

[JacobJHC]

Congratulations @Kimera Industries on completing the Jool 5 on Level 3! Your mission thread was very enjoyable to read, I found the craft construction portion to be most interesting, and I couldn't get enough of the Interstellar references  I think I am most interested by your lander design, and it is not one I've seen often, and its staging is as bold as it is effective. It's range is very impressive as well! Congratulations, again! I have added your submission to the leaderboard.

 

Edited February 18 by JacobJHC

[Kimera Industries]

On 2/17/2024 at 8:07 PM, JacobJHC said:

Congratulations @Kimera Industries on completing the Jool 5 on Level 3!

Awesome!

I had to look back to verify that yes, I did indeed get a level three. I didn't even have that in mind! Lucky that I picked the crews I did.

On 2/17/2024 at 8:07 PM, JacobJHC said:

I am most interested by your lander design, and it is not one I've seen often, and its staging is as bold as it is effective.

Yeah, one of the things I discovered in testing that pleasantly surprised me was that separatrons could lift the empty tanks with a higher TwR than my main engines. There were mild heating problems but those stages were gone so fast it didn't even matter. The stacked stages made the lander much easier to launch into LKO, which I favored because payloads wider than the rocket are tricky.

On 2/17/2024 at 8:07 PM, JacobJHC said:

I have added your submission to the leaderboard.

I seem to have been placed in the "Jeb" category? Did I miss something or is this a mistake?

 

Feels great to know this hard work wasn't for nothing! If I were to do it again, I'd use ISRU and the whole thing would be much smaller. 

[JacobJHC]

On 2/21/2024 at 8:36 PM, Kimera Industries said:

I seem to have been placed in the "Jeb" category? Did I miss something or is this a mistake?

A mistake indeed! When I went to check, I missed the small italicized Jeb's Level  line, leading me to believe this is how the mishap happened to begin with! I put a few blank lines to separate the categories better! Thanks again for your patience, I eagerly await my wifi to get better since recently it's been rather awful. 

[JacobJHC]

@problemecium Congratulations on completing the Jool 5 on Jeb's Level! This mission just kept amping up my excitement as it become clear just how massive of a craft you'd constructed. The story-like career mode setting was also very enjoyable to follow as well, and I liked the logistical breakdown of much of the mission as well. Visually, this is one of my favorite craft I've seen in a submission. I'll add the Aletheia to the leaderboards now.  

[king of nowhere]

On 2/29/2024 at 2:52 AM, JacobJHC said:

 Jeb's Level

I do take this chance to ask a question that has been bugging me since i started this challenge the first time, almost four years ago:

why the science contest is named after jeb? shouldn't it be bob's level?

[Kimera Industries]

3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

I do take this chance to ask a question that has been bugging me since i started this challenge the first time, almost four years ago:

why the science contest is named after jeb? shouldn't it be bob's level?

Excellent point. I also feel it should have a baseline requirement of science points, as it feels like whoever just got a lot of science points was arbitrarily picked.

[JeDoesStuff]

Figured I should throw my hat in the ring, Here's the more impressive of my two Jool-5's with a Sub-30 ton spaceplane 

 

[JacobJHC]

On 3/21/2024 at 1:55 PM, JeDoesStuff said:

Figured I should throw my hat in the ring, Here's the more impressive of my two Jool-5's with a Sub-30 ton spaceplane 

 

@JeDoesStuff Congratulations on completing the Jool 5 Challenge on Level 1! Your video was very well made and was fun to watch, especially with the little quirks like the barrel roll you threw in. I was impressed the most by the Tylo landing. I had to watch it a few times to fully pick up on how you made it work. I haven't seen many SSTOs that double up on the NERVAs on just 1 1.25 meter tank, and that second one really helped you hold altitude while shaving off so much speed. The loss of control at the very end of your Kerbin return had me on the edge of my seat until you were able to prevent a hard splashdown. Overall, I found your SSTO's design very efficient, very refined, and incredibly thoughtful. I found the extra landing gear being deployed to elevate the craft for launch very clever as well. I do have question though, I am assuming that your air intakes are somewhere inside the central core of the craft? I looked for them but have missed them.  I'll add your entry to the leaderboard in the meantime, but until then, well done!