totm january 2020 Community Caveman Jool 5 mission

[ManEatingApe]

3 hours ago, EveMaster said:

For the Tylo lander without Commnet on I have an idea how to save weight. You could use an octo probe core and a Kerbal on a ladder. The probe core can only hold position and you can only use full trottle because of partial control. To rotate the lander and adjust the radial component you can switch to the Kerbal and climb up or down the ladder.

Welcome to the discussion @EveMaster, I think you have just volunteered for the Tylo section of the reboot

I really like your idea - it's ridiculous, ingenious, audacious and very Kerbal all at the same time!

3 hours ago, EveMaster said:

 I tested this concept and managed to crash-land a Kerbal on Tylo on the first try. The Kerbal survived but the craft was destroyed. I think with some practice this concept could work unless you decide to disable partial control when there is no connection to the KSC in the options.

If you can get it to work then not only have do we a great solution for Tylo, this could also be used for Laythe.
My idea with this reboot is to use the unchanged default "Normal" difficulty settings so partial control will be available.

Edited June 13, 2020 by ManEatingApe

[EveMaster]

17 minutes ago, ManEatingApe said:

If you can get it to work then not only have do we a great solution for Tylo, this could also be used for Laythe.

I'm not sure about Laythe. In the original mission the Laythe plane and the Kerbal descended seperately. Was that to avoid overheating of the Kerbal? Maybe @dvader who flew the Laythe lander can tell. An option might be to land the Laythe lander with a parachute and the Kerbal with its own parachute. The Laythe lander must definitely be aerodynamically stable in the roll and raw axis for this to work.

I'll try if I can get the Tylo lander to work.

 

[dvader]

@EveMaster The main concern was  falling off the ladder during descent. Heat is a concern as well of course but the Kerbal is a bit shielded behind the craft and could perhaps be well protected if you design for it (or use propulsive braking). Not falling off was harder though. If he falls off, it gets really difficult to manage the plane and the Kerbal (and the Kraken) simultaneously. Landing separately just seemed like a simpler solution.

5 hours ago, EveMaster said:

For the Tylo lander without Commnet on I have an idea how to save weight. You could use an octo probe core and a Kerbal on a ladder. The probe core can only hold position and you can only use full trottle because of partial control. To rotate the lander and adjust the radial component you can switch to the Kerbal and climb up or down the ladder.

That would certainly take the Caveman challenge to a new and utterly ridiculous level It would be awesome! Please do it.

[EveMaster]

39 minutes ago, dvader said:

That would certainly take the Caveman challenge to a new and utterly ridiculous level It would be awesome! Please do it.

It gets even more ridiculos: To get another axis of control I shortly disable a fuel tank to get an asymetrical fuel distribution. Then I disable SAS to rotate and reenable SAS when the craft has rotated in the desired position. Without that I found that the velocity in normal direction is too high prior to landing due to small inaccuracies. I haven't managed to land intact yet. Getting back to orbit is easy though.

[ManEatingApe]

1 hour ago, EveMaster said:

It gets even more ridiculos: To get another axis of control I shortly disable a fuel tank to get an asymetrical fuel distribution.

You could always add another Kerbal...

[EveMaster]

I finally managed to land. It really helped to reconfigure the button for vessel switch to a mouse button. The lander weights 1.615t without Kerbal. On the ascent I had to use 0.5 EVA propellant. I'm not sure if it is possible without. With a 94kg dummy payload KER lists 4200m/s of delta-v. Maybe it would be a good idea to add more fuel to save the EVA propellant for other parts of the mission. If a command pod is part of the mission it would not matter though.

[Jacke]

2 hours ago, EveMaster said:

I finally managed to land. It really helped to reconfigure the button for vessel switch to a mouse button. The lander weights 1.615t without Kerbal. On the ascent I had to use 0.5 EVA propellant. I'm not sure if it is possible without. With a 94kg dummy payload KER lists 4200m/s of delta-v. Maybe it would be a good idea to add more fuel to save the EVA propellant for other parts of the mission. If a command pod is part of the mission it would not matter though.

I believe it does matter and EVA propellant should be strictly conserved.  Because with Caveman facilities (all 1st level only), a Kerbal can only EVA on Kerbin on the ground.  A Kerbal can at any time return to a pod with an empty seat, but then won't be able to EVA after.  So it's only one lot of EVA propellant.

Edited June 14, 2020 by Jacke

[Pds314]

3 hours ago, EveMaster said:

I finally managed to land. It really helped to reconfigure the button for vessel switch to a mouse button. The lander weights 1.615t without Kerbal. On the ascent I had to use 0.5 EVA propellant. I'm not sure if it is possible without. With a 94kg dummy payload KER lists 4200m/s of delta-v. Maybe it would be a good idea to add more fuel to save the EVA propellant for other parts of the mission. If a command pod is part of the mission it would not matter though.

My Tylo landers tend to have a couple more tanks. My guess is add 2 more and you'll have generous fuel margins.

 

As for the command pod, unfortunately it does matter. It is impossible to exit the command pod when not on Kerbin's surface. Even on Laythe you can't exit it. Weirdly, you can perfectly well ENTER a command pod. But can't leave.

Edited June 14, 2020 by Pds314

[EveMaster]

I haven't thought of the fact that you cannot exit a pod and therefore not refill the EVA propellant. Thanks for reminding me. I added two more fuel tanks, rearranged the fuel tanks for the lander to be shorter and added landing legs. Without landing legs I could not land it consistently. I think a shorter lander is good both for the interplanetary transfer and the landing. I also designed a lifter for it. I was able to put it in a 80x80km orbit with 800m/s spare. I was not able to add a maneuvering unit for docking because of the part limit. But I think somehow we should manage to get it docked to the main ship.

[ManEatingApe]

5 hours ago, EveMaster said:

I finally managed to land. It really helped to reconfigure the button for vessel switch to a mouse button. The lander weights 1.615t without Kerbal.

Nice work, that's an impressive achievement!

5 hours ago, EveMaster said:

Maybe it would be a good idea to add more fuel to save the EVA propellant for other parts of the mission.

As @Jacke and @Pds314 have already mentioned, conserving EVA fuel is absolutely critical.

1.65 tons is extremely lightweight for a Tylo lander and we can afford to add some more fuel. Consider that a pod based alternative to this lander design would mass around 6 tons, so even at say 2 tons total, this design is one third the mass. That's a decent savings. 

EDIT: Ninja'd by your previous post. New design looks good.

Edited June 14, 2020 by ManEatingApe

[EveMaster]

9 minutes ago, ManEatingApe said:

1.65 tons is extremely lightweight for a Tylo lander and we can afford to add some more fuel. Consider that a pod based alternative to this lander design would mass around 6 tons, so even at say 2 tons total, this design is one third the mass. That's a descent savings. 

The new version is 2.125 tons not counting the separator, the docking port and the battery that can be decoupled before descent or 40kg more if you count that too.

Edited June 14, 2020 by EveMaster

[ManEatingApe]

42 minutes ago, EveMaster said:

The new version is 2.125 tons not counting the separator, the docking port and the battery that can be decoupled before descent or 40kg more if you count that too.

That's totally fine!

One very minor suggestion: If the solar panels are only for power, the I'd suggest replacing them with a single Z-100 battery (and removing the battery on the bottom)
The 10EC on the OKTO is pretty tight when SAS is needed and the weak solar power at Jool is only really suitable for slow recharging. During transit this battery could be kept locked and only enabled at the last moment.

This would reduce part count and allow you to add a second docking port facing forwards. This extra docking port will enable a tug to grab your lander and position it on the mothership during orbital assembly.

Edited June 14, 2020 by ManEatingApe

[EveMaster]

2 minutes ago, ManEatingApe said:

One very minor suggestion: If the solar panels are only for power, the I'd suggest replacing them with a single Z-100 battery (and removing the battery on the bottom)
The 10EC on the OKTO is pretty tight when SAS is needed and the weak solar power at Jool is only really suitable for slow recharging. During transit this battery could be kept locked and only enabled at the last moment.

This would reduce part count and allow you to add a second docking port facing forwards. This extra docking port willl allows a tug to grab your lander and position it on the mothership during orbital assembly.

Thank you for your comments.

The solar panels are needed to create torque when going up or down the ladder. They are not needed for power generation during the landing. The probe core is on sleep mode so very little energy is consumed and the 10EC is enough. Maybe the probe core does not even need energy for SAS, when the focus is on the Kerbal, I'm not sure about this. And the SAS only has to work when the focus is on the Kerbal.

The battery at the bottom is mostly for Kerbin ascent and to get room so that the landing legs don't interfer with other parts of the mother ship. I also added it to avoid clipping of the docking port into the fuel tank. But I think I can remove this battery and instead offset the docking port to get the same length. What is the policy about clipping and offsetting? I think I could get rid of the reaction wheel to save one part. At the top I cannot add a docking port unless I offset it to float in midair because there is also the ladder for the Kerbal.

[Muetdhiver]

All I can say is that this is a top notch example of caveman tech.

Kudos  

Edited June 14, 2020 by Muetdhiver

[ManEatingApe]

17 minutes ago, EveMaster said:

The solar panels are needed to create torque when going up or down the ladder.

Ah, interesting. I had assumed you were using the Kerbal's off-center mass to create a torque.

19 minutes ago, EveMaster said:

What is the policy about clipping and offsetting? I think I could get rid of the reaction wheel to save one part. At the top I cannot add a docking port unless I offset it to float in midair because there is also the ladder for the Kerbal.

The previous attempt allowed some...erm...creative clipping, with stuff floating in mid air.
To be honest I'm not a huge fan of it, especially since we don't need any fairings this time around.

Placing the 2nd docking port off-center but still facing forwards e.g. atop one of the Oscar-B tanks will be fine.

Designing a tug with enough RCS and reactions wheels to handle the off-balance load shouldn't be too hard, as long as there's no obstruction when accessing the docking port.

[EveMaster]

4 minutes ago, ManEatingApe said:

The previous attempt allowed some...erm...creative clipping, with stuff floating in mid air.
To be honest I'm not a huge fan of it, especially since we don't need any fairings this time around.

I managed to save two parts so I could add a docking port on a separator on the top for orbital assembly. The first part was the reaction wheel. Without it I have to use a steeper less efficient ascent profile but still have plenty of spare delta-v. The second part is the separator at the bottom of a lander. Instead of this separator I also found a very Kerbal solution: Instead I burn away the docking port with the spark engine.

[EveMaster]

I did some tests for the ascent from the seas of Laythe with reduced probe control. I used the LIMA plane with some minor changes. I rotated the ladder by 90 degrees, added a second solar panel above the Kerbal and added another Oscar fuel tank on the upper spark engine stage.

The are still several available options for control: Moving up and down with the Kerbal for pitch control. Extending and setting the angles of the elevons manually also gives pitch control. Removing the elevons from the symmetry group gives roll control. Shortly disabling SAS also gives some control.

The first problem was, that without probe control the plane would not take off from the water. The torque from the Kerbal and the elevons are not enough. Canards would certainly help, but I came up with another solution. I extend the elevons in reverse and dived into the water. With the help of the Kerbal I did an underwater looping. When the desired angle was reached I reset the elevons and flew into the air from under water.

The second problem was that the off-center Kerbal created a torque when flying the upper stage within the atmosphere that could not be overcome by the torque created by the Kerbal on the ladder. With the Kerbal on the top of the craft, the pitch angle got higher and higher until the craft flipped over. Therefore, I wanted to have the Kerbal below the craft for the upper stage. I tried to roll the craft by 180 degrees, but by doing so I lost too much vertical velocity so that the craft did not continue to ascent. Instead, I lauched westwards and climbed vertically after decoupling at 13km. I had to throttle down to keep the speed at around 200 - 300 m/s to avoid losing the Kerbal and to minimize drag losses. When higher up in the atmosphere the natural turn tendency matches that of the desired one. The turning can be controlled by shortly disabling SAS.

I managed to reach a -11km x 55km suborbital trajectory with the craft. I circularized using the EVA propellant.

The quite unusual ascent profile for Laythe (not to scale):

[ManEatingApe]

7 hours ago, EveMaster said:

With the help of the Kerbal I did an underwater looping. When the desired angle was reached I reset the elevons and flew into the air from under water.

The second problem was that the off-center Kerbal created a torque when flying the upper stage within the atmosphere that could not be overcome by the torque created by the Kerbal on the ladder. With the Kerbal on the top of the craft, the pitch angle got higher and higher until the craft flipped over. Therefore, I wanted to have the Kerbal below the craft for the upper stage. I tried to roll the craft by 180 degrees, but by doing so I lost too much vertical velocity so that the craft did not continue to ascent. Instead, I lauched westwards and climbed vertically after decoupling at 13km. I had to throttle down to keep the speed at around 200 - 300 m/s to avoid losing the Kerbal and to minimize drag losses. When higher up in the atmosphere the natural turn tendency matches that of the desired one. The turning can be controlled by shortly disabling SAS.

I'm thoroughly enjoying your ladder related antics! Nice work getting to orbit starting with a loop-de-loop then going backwards, that is some great out of the box thinking.

Edited June 16, 2020 by ManEatingApe

[EveMaster]

I did some more experiments on the Laythe lander. I found a way to add another control axis with a Kerbal on a ladder. I added another ladder that is rotated by 90 on top of the other ladder. I also added two more solar panels. With 'a' and 'd' you can switch between the two ladders. I also added another fuel tank. I managed to get into a low Laythe orbit with no inclination and 100m/s spare delta-v. When I tried to land the craft with partial control, only the intake broke. Edit: I managed to land the craft intact.

It turned out I also accidentally built my first kraken drive. When the Kerbal is facing in the direction of travel the kraken drive is switched off and the orbit is absolutely stable. When the Kerbal is facing in the normal direction the orbit changes. The effect seemed a bit randomly. The best I got was when my apoapsis was constantly rising by about 200m/s and my periapsis was rising by about 50m/s at the same time. I think placing the solar panels slightly further apart will avoid the kraken/ladder-drive.

Does anyone have an idea how to bring this Laythe lander to orbit? Unfortunately the craft has 25 parts so only 5 more parts are allowed. That means that some on the ground docking will be needed. How were the docking ports connected to the orginal LIMA lander? The craft does not have any free attachment node. Maybe with some trickery in the editor the docking port can be attached the other way round, so that it does not have to be hauled down and up of Laythe. Does anyone know?

Where should I upload my Laythe and my Tylo lander? To the github repo? Will there be a new repo for the reboot or will it be the same repo but a new folder? I could also upload the craft to KerbalX. I tried to open the crafts from the github-repo but could not open them with the current version. Can the craft files be converted or does everything have to be rebuilt?

Now that I have build a Laythe and Tylo lander we can think about the mission profile. I think the Tylo lander can also be used for Val. The two way kerbal-powered ladder-SAS could also be used for navigation within the Jool-system. Maybe even for the ejection burn back to Kerbin but a lander can will provide more precision.

Edited June 18, 2020 by EveMaster

[ManEatingApe]

On 6/18/2020 at 9:44 PM, EveMaster said:

I did some more experiments on the Laythe lander. I found a way to add another control axis with a Kerbal on a ladder. I added another ladder that is rotated by 90 on top of the other ladder. I also added two more solar panels. With 'a' and 'd' you can switch between the two ladders. I also added another fuel tank. I managed to get into a low Laythe orbit with no inclination and 100m/s spare delta-v. When I tried to land the craft with partial control, only the intake broke. Edit: I managed to land the craft intact.

Nice work! The extra ladder is a clever touch. 2-axis Kerbal ladder control is now a thing

On 6/18/2020 at 9:44 PM, EveMaster said:

It turned out I also accidentally built my first kraken drive. When the Kerbal is facing in the direction of travel the kraken drive is switched off and the orbit is absolutely stable. When the Kerbal is facing in the normal direction the orbit changes. The effect seemed a bit randomly. The best I got was when my apoapsis was constantly rising by about 200m/s and my periapsis was rising by about 50m/s at the same time. I think placing the solar panels slightly further apart will avoid the kraken/ladder-drive.

I think it's important to eliminate the unintentional Kraken drive, as it would taint the attempt. There would be no way to prove that we didn't use the drive's effect, even accidentally.

On 6/18/2020 at 9:44 PM, EveMaster said:

Where should I upload my Laythe and my Tylo lander? To the github repo? Will there be a new repo for the reboot or will it be the same repo but a new folder? I could also upload the craft to KerbalX.
...<snip>...
Now that I have build a Laythe and Tylo lander we can think about the mission profile. I think the Tylo lander can also be used for Val. The two way kerbal-powered ladder-SAS could also be used for navigation within the Jool-system. Maybe even for the ejection burn back to Kerbin but a lander can will provide more precision.

Upload the craft files to KerbalX for now.

=============================================================================

If there are enough folks interested, then I'm happy to reboot the challenge and start over.
Anyone is welcome to volunteer, so it's a nice opportunity for anyone who enjoyed the original attempt but didn't get involved at that time.

We'd go through the same phases as before:

1. Agree mission rules
2. Discuss, design and plan mission profile and craft
3. Assemble mothership in orbit
4. Fly the mission!

My initial suggestions are:

• Use 1.10 update, to take advantage of the shiny new Jool system (although planning and craft testing can begin before it's released on July 1st)
• New Git repo, normal difficulty settings (no changes), enough funds and science added via debug menu.

 

[EveMaster]

2 hours ago, ManEatingApe said:

Nice work! The extra ladder is a clever touch. 2-axis Kerbal ladder control is now a thing

I think it's important to eliminate the unintentional Kraken drive, as it would taint the attempt. There would be no way to prove that we didn't use the drive's effect, even accidentally.

Upload the craft files to KerbalX for now.

I disabled the Kraken drive by placing the solar panels slightly further apart and uploaded the crafts on KerbalX:

https://kerbalx.com/EveMaster/Caveman-Tylo-Lander

https://kerbalx.com/EveMaster/Caveman-Laythe-Lander

2 hours ago, ManEatingApe said:

If there are enough folks interested, then I'm happy to reboot the challenge and start over.
Anyone is welcome to volunteer, so it's a nice opportunity for anyone who enjoyed the original attempt but didn't get involved at that time.

We'd go through the same phases as before:

1. Agree mission rules
2. Discuss, design and plan mission profile and craft
3. Assemble mothership in orbit
4. Fly the mission!

My initial suggestions are:

• Use 1.10 update, to take advantage of the shiny new Jool system (although planning and craft testing can begin before it's released on July 1st)
• New Git repo, normal difficulty settings (no changes), enough funds and science added via debug menu.

I agree with this. I would also wait until 1.10 is released.

[ManEatingApe]

Calling all cave dwellers...
 

@QF9E @LittleBitMore @Space Nerd @JAFO @Mr. Peabody @sevenperforce

Any interest in attempting a reboot of this challenge, with new even more fiendish difficulty?
(CommNet on & limited probe control)

@IncongruousGoat @Jacke @dvader @Muetdhiver @Pds314

Veteran Jool 5 cave dwellers are also encouraged to either participate directly, or provide sage advice, tips & tricks and generally help out.

This is an open invitation, anyone at all is totally welcome to volunteer (even if not mentioned here).
So far the list contains myself and an enthusiastic @EveMaster ...

[LittleBitMore]

I don't know if I can. I'm in one of those phases in which I'm not super interested in KSP (it goes back and forth), and in addition I only just recently discovered there's an easier way to use satellite dishes than to spam the unfoldy dish on all spacecraft. I'd do terribly with the communications.

Edited June 20, 2020 by LittleBitMore
Typo

[Space Nerd]

1 hour ago, ManEatingApe said:

Calling all cave dwellers...
 

@QF9E @LittleBitMore @Space Nerd @JAFO @Mr. Peabody @sevenperforce

Any interest in attempting a reboot of this challenge, with new even more fiendish difficulty?
(CommNet on & limited probe control)

@IncongruousGoat @Jacke @dvader @Muetdhiver @Pds314

Veteran Jool 5 cave dwellers are also encouraged to either participate directly, or provide sage advice, tips & tricks and generally help out.

This is an open invitation, anyone at all is totally welcome to volunteer (even if not mentioned here).
So far the list contains myself and an enthusiastic @EveMaster ...

I'm not that good at KSP, in fact I haven't tried the caveman challenge yet!

[EveMaster]

I have designed a new Laythe lander that has 3 stages. It can be launched in two parts and can be assembled in orbit. I The bottom part also comes with some RCS fuel and thrusters for deorbiting in Laythe orbit. With this Laythe lander getting to orbit is faster and easier than with the previous version. I marked with yellow lines how the staging works. The ascent vehicle for the lower stage can be used to dock the parts together.

The craft files on KerbalX: Laythe-Lander-Part-1 and Laythe-Lander-Part-2.