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a garish tree, a porcupine, and absolutely not an albatross: a Jool 5 science challenge


king of nowhere

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So there I was, looking for a challenge, when I found this under the Jool 5 challenge

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JEBEDIAH'S LEVEL: collect as much Science as possible!  Your score is the number of science points from the Jool system only, returned to Kerbin (not transmitted).  Only stock experiments count for this!  To score, take pictures of the science screen(s) when you recover the data.  Otherwise, the rules are the same as 3rd Level.

Well, looks like this will involve a lot of roving around the surface to get to all the biomes, and I like rovers, so I decided to give it a try.

Objective: gather every single science point possible from the Jool system

Part 1: mission design

1A: rover

I will need something to get to Jool's inner atmosphere, and some kind of rover for the various planets, and probably some kind of orbiter. But the main thing I need for this mission is a cool rover.

Yes, a cool rover. I have the perspective of driving all the way around Tylo, Vall and Laythe. thousands of kilometers. dozens of hours, maybe hundreds. The main enemy is boredom. My rover must be fun to drive and fun to generally use.

Let's try to break this up into specifications:

- sustainable land speed of at least 30 m/s

- safe to drive at that speed; fun is inversely proportional to how often I explode and have to reload.

- can move on water on Laythe

- can take off and land on every moon of Jool

- fun to drive for hours

The good news is, I already have a rover that fits most of those criteria

https://kerbalx.com/king_of_nowhere/dancing-porcupine-the-indestructible-rocket-car

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with rockets and isru it can indeed take off and land on its own power, and it has 3500 m/s of deltaV. It can go pretty fast, and it survives accidents with its armor of landing struts. with a large cupola it can be driven in first person perspective, and I find the whole experience soothing. Also, being able to take risks and try cool jumps or going down ravines at full speed definitely adds to the "fun" factor (though I must point out that the rover is not resistant enough to go down a ravine at full speed and survive; I still needed to reload a number of times). However, with only 4 terriers for 50 tons of mass, it cannot land on Tylo, much less on Laythe. So, I need to modify it

Simple solution: swap out the terriers with darts. Darts have 3 times the thrust, and they work in atmospheres. They'd add 2 tons of dry mass, but I still have enough to take off from Laythe. As for moving on water, a simple propeller will do. So I put the darts on my rover...

and exploded.

Ok, it turns out, Dancing Porcupine is not symmetrical. besides the main body and armor, everything else is stuck hapazardly around it wherever I could find space. The thrust is slightly off-center, and the center of mass itself changes as fuel is depleted. The terriers, having gimbaling capability, can compensate for this. Not the darts.

But ok, I can make some experiments to really align the rockets perfectly to the center of mass. So I tried again

and exploded.

Yep. Those rockets are attached to hinges, so they can be retracted for safety. The armor is useless if the rockets crash and leave me stranded on wherever moon I'm on. And those hinges are strong enough to hold in place against the 60 kN thrust of the terriers, but the darts push for 180 kN and twist them all around.

But ok. I could try with the bigger hinges. Or I could put the rockets on the back of the rover, then I'd just need an upward slope to take off....

Ultimately, though, all this is hopeless. Dancing porcupine will never go on Laythe. the problem is aerodinamics. I mean, look at it. Does it have the shape of something meant to move through an atmosphere at high speeds??? Heck, even when taking off from Duna it has aerodinamic problems! I can't make a gravity turn on Duna because, at 200 m/s, drag is too strong and I can't accelerate further. I have to go straight up until 15 km before I can start turning. If it can't take Duna's atmosphere, there's no chance it will work for Laythe. I was a fool to even try.

So, If I don't have to move in an atmosphere, I can keep the terriers. To land on Tylo I added 4 more, now I have enough TWR to land, and after refueling I can take off. I lost some 300 m/s of deltaV for the extra weight, but I still have more than enough for my purposes. The rover is a little less sturdy, those rockets are more exposed than I would like and one of the most common parts that break, but it's still up to specifications.

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1B) plane

So, I have my cool rover for four moons. I still need something for Laythe and for inner Jool. So what I need now... is a cool plane!

I could use two different vehicles for those tasks, but I like to reuse things. Nowadays, I can't even conceive a space vehicle that goes to only one place, or that can perform only one task. So my plane will take a dip inside Jool, then go on Laythe.

Specifications:

- heat-resistant, to survive getting into Jool

- A decent range on its own power

- electrical propulsion, nuclear-powered, with decent cruise speed in Laythe's atmosphere

- can land on water

- (optional, but highly desirable) can take off from water, on Laythe

Excepting the Jool part, I eventually devised a nice plane

https://kerbalx.com/king_of_nowhere/Not-Albatross-space-seaplane

vO6bUgy.jpg

It took a while to figure out how to land on water, but once I learned, I could do it reliably, and it also taught me to land on solid ground. Always in the past, I tried to go as slowly as I could before touching land. Of course, in those conditions I won't have enough lift, so I will crash on the ground. I learned that it's ok to land faster, as long as my speed is horizontal and not vertical.

Taking off from water is something I wasn't really hoping to achieve, but I managed with the first model.

And then after some modifications I could not do it anymore, and I got crazy to figure out why I did it first, and how to do it again. Suffice to say, it has to do with baricenter and control. Those elevons are exaggeratedly big for what this plane would need, and the baricenter is all tilted in the back, but this allows me to tip my nose in the air and take off at a relatively low speed; it will fly a bit worse at high speed, but it's an acceptable trade-off. I can't take off from Laythe with full tanks, but I can after I spent some liquid fuel, and I still have enough to get back to orbit, so it's all right.

And of course I can get to orbit, though with limited rocket fuel and most of the speed coming from a low-thrust nuclear engine, it's a chanchy business of going as high as possible with rockets, then trying desperately to circularize before falling back down. On the plus side, I have enough liquid fuel for a lot of orbital manuevers.

It certainly would have worked better with rapiers, but rapiers would be less effective inside Jool, and I was worried about air intakes when I was planning a high speed atmospheric reentry into a gas giant, so I decided to stick to darts.

The cockpit was chosen for heat resistance primarily, but it also offers a nice IVA view.

The 2 open cargo bays shown in the picture contain 4 propellers, that can push the plane to above 220 m/s. The other cargo bays contain the science equipment and the multiple rtg needed to power up the propellers.

Now I needed a name. In my previous challenge, I was calling everything rover/lander/orbiter and it looked bad. Plus, it was confusing. I already have a name for the rover, I decided everything should have names. So, with a good seaplane that goes on and off water like that, I immediately settled on the name Albatross.

Then realization hit me. Albatross? Really? If we had to make a top 10 of least original names for a seaplane, Albatross would be in the second place. In the first place, as absolutely least original name for a seaplane, is... Albatross! Yes, it's such an unoriginal name that it occupies the first and second place together! And the third place too, and all the rest of the top ten. That's how unoriginal it is.

So I resolved to never call it Albatross. But I really could not consider any other name. So, I eventually settled for Absolutely NOT Albatross!

Now I have this cool plane, but I still must put it inside Jool. There's no way to keep it to orbital speed without burning down, so I will have to slow down and then accelerate back up. And that would require a lot of fuel. More than NOT Albatross has. I needed some extra staging, but where could I attach it without marring the seaplane's profile? And where to put the thermal shield? A big thermal shield in the front will be aerodinamically unstable and will make me capsize.

Eventually I settled for blocking the nerv to add stages. As for the heat shield...

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It went in the back, as a parachute. The plane is very resistant anyway, better than anything not Mark2 (which I eschewed, because everyone in this forum agrees Mk2 parts are evil. Plus, I tried to make a Mk2 version, and while it flies nice and it reenters atmosphere beautifully, it does not take off from water. It doesn't even come close). I can survive in the atmosphere up until 170 km, where I burn because it becomes too dense. So I realize I didn't need specifically a heat shield in front, as long as I had something to slow me down enough before the atmosphere got too dense. You may also appreciate how I'm using the landing gear as airbrakes.

The two extra fuel tanks add some 3000 m/s, with the vector engines having enough power to propel the plane. And when I discard the second stage, NOT albatross has enough deltaV to finish on its own.

1c) orbiter

Next I needed an orbiter, as neither of my vehicles could go far enough on their own after taking off from the biggest planets. This would be much simpler, as it doesn't need anything special. Plus, I can do it as big as it needs to be

Specifications:

- plenty of fuel

- long range, even with 200 tons of landers attached

- ISRU capacity

- can attach to both landers and still fly straight

- can land on Vall (because I don't want to have to go all the way back to Pol or Bop whenever I need to refuel. Anyway, for my previous big challenge I used an orbiter with 0.11 TWR, and I have no intention of doing it again if I can avoid it)

So, not really much. I really have a lot of freedom. So I add, as an extra

- looks good

 Because, why not?

Anyway, it turned out that designing a vehicle that can attach to both NOT albatross and Dancing Porcupine was not trivial. you certainly cannot attach them to the sides, or they will never be balanced. So you stick one in front, and the other? Well, it had to go to the back. And the rockets will need to be a fair distance from the main body, because the landers are big.

Another problem I had to face is that long range meant nuclear engines, but liquid fuel tanks are ugly. They are only in Mk2 or Mk3 size, or 1.25 meters. I wanted a rocket, not a plane! And I didn't want to mar the simmetry. Luckily, I discovered that I could place the fuel tanks inside structural tubes. It increases weight for no reason but aesthetics, but since I this time I CAN afford it, I WILL.

gs5wXUI.pngoutside

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I also put in a science lab, more living space than I'd ever need, and some other extras that are completely unnecessary but make me feel better.

This setup also increases part count. Awfully. I would really have liked more fuel, but at over 500 parts, my ship was already lagging heavily. So I decided to stop there. Again, only to make the rocket look good. So it was totally worth it. (plese don't persuade me otherwise or I'll cry)

Finally, since this time I had no part count limitations, I decided I wanted to actually be able to see my ship in the dark. Some floodlights also help docking. And once I had them in place, I started playing with colors... eventually I got this

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This time, the name was easy: Flying Christmas Tree.

Will I manage to grab every single scrap of science from the Jool system? Or will I first die of boredom as I try driving for 6000 km all around Tylo multiple times?

I will post further updates

Edited by king of nowhere
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Part 2: before Jool

2A: launch and assembly

First on the ramp was christmas tree with its launcher. Perhaps influenced by the ship's gaudy appearence, I made an equally gaudy-looking launcher.

i4IE1zp.png

The thing is, I was really worried on what those four lateral modules could do to aerodinamics, so I wanted some really big wings on the end to stabilize the thing; I used the biggest available. Turned out it wasn't relly needed, this thing flew straight and true, but I could afford the extra mass and wanted to make a safe and comfortable launch for once. I also used a cluster of 16 boosters to improve twr at start. It would certainly be more efficient to use a lesser number of bigger boosters, but for some reason I can't quite remember I didn't want to do it. 

Anyway, it looks good.

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Jeb looks out on the space center

I was facing a grave conundrum when building the flying christmas tree. I could use the command module in the rover variant, which would have some more windows on the sides. It would made the IVA view even better. But then, the cubic module would have looked worse on top of the circular rocket. I struggled a bit with this decision, ultimately I decided to not break the perfect cylindrical shilouette of the rocket. Especially after what I'd already done to preserve it from the dreaded Mk3 fuel tanks

I loaded a crew of 6: the 4 main kerbonauts, plus an extra scientist and engineer, for the plan entailed separating the various subunits and sending Not Albatross on Laythe while Dancing Porcupine explored Vall.

I had Jeb piloting the ship, with Bill at his side to assist isru later. Bob and Mandocia (scientist) were in the research lab, though I was not using it. Val and Leiga (engineer) were in the crew pod, as I had no need for them at the moment. I used a crew pod with 4 places when one with 2 would have sufficed to give my kerbonauts more space, as they would be spending a long time traveling.

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booster separation

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As soon as I got high enough to get a decent efficiency, I started the nervs. This thing has low twr (at least, it will have after the first stage detaches), it needs to maximize the push when it can.

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Flying Christmas Tree is powered by 24 nerv engines disposed radially around the lateral modules. I was worried about their stability, but the structural girdles are doing a really good job. They are heavy, but worth their mass.

The launcher is using a mammoth and 4 vectors. All together, they put on quite the light show.

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First stage separation.

I'm glad I put all those lights on the vessel, it makes for a much better launch scene.

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Atmosphere cleared, ejecting the nose cones. I once had to repeat the launch because I was hit back by them as I accelerated; then I realized, no matter how much I seem in a time crunch to circularize, I must angle the ship away from prograde before ejecting debris from the front.

Now it's Not Albatross turn. I had experimented, the whole thing with the Jool ascent stage could be launched as ssto from Kerbin all right.

H5LevgV.png

take a bit of speed with propellers, it's all fuel saved

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After the propellers can't make it anymore, use the rockets

Sadly, I did not think to take more screenshots of this thing launching. Probably I was too busy trying to keep it pointing the right direction, because burning fuel was shifting the center of mass.

That was all accounted for; I have the vectors with their crazy gimbaling for control, and I don't plan to use it for long enough to have issues.

All my kerbonauts were already safe on the Christmas Tree, this launch was controlled remotely.

And finally Dancing Porcupine, in a really big aerodinamic envelope.

tWKz8ds.png

This is quite an... irregular launch vehicle.

The fuel tank is small, because I'll be using the rover's supply - I won't need all its 3200 m/s, so I may as well send it half empty. And instead of sending a big tank to send up an emtpy tank, I may as well use the tank I already have. I only must be careful to not exhaust all the fuel (hint: the full stage is too heavy to get to orbit with its fuel. If I forget to detach the launcher at some point, I end up suborbital)

I did choose a rhino for main engine mostly because it had the right thrust and it fit well on the fairing. It also has gimbaling, which is necessary when dealing with an asymmetric payload. But the rhino has a low sea level isp. To compensate that, I added some boosters to lift it up to the point where its isp - and thrust - was good again. So, after I went to the trouble to get an engine with gimbaling, I started on a first stage without it. Why? No reason. Mostly I grew fond of the design at this point. I used a cluster of small boosters because they burned fast, and I wanted them to do just that.

The first time I tried to launch this thing, it capsized and exploded. The second and third, too. But eventually, by trial and error, I was able to find a boosters to set at precisely 90.5% thrust (and 90% fuel, so it would run out with the others) to compensate for the irregularity in mass distribution.

Yep, I'm not particularly proud of this rocket. But it looks cool.

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At this point, I stepped away from the control center to receive the Kerbel prize for peace. You see, aggressive nations were on the brink of nuclear war on Kerbin. But then I launched Flying Christmas Tree, with 16 RTG and 24 NERV. Plus Not Albatross, sporting 7 RTG and 1 NERV. And finally Dancing Porcupine, with "only" 4 RTG.

I launched so much fissile material in orbit to empower my nuclear rockets, there was none left to make bombs! The warring nations wanted to unleash atomic warfare, but they couldn't because a space agency had bought and used all the available uranium already.

Now, with the pieces in orbit, it was time to assemble them together

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This is the part where I dock with Dancing Porcupine.

After that, I test the engines to see if I distanced them enough that they can work without hitting some wheels.

Then I grumble, scrap Christmas Tree, make it again with longer girdles, and launch again.

Make a new docking, a new test firing, and find it lacking. And again I go making a new version with even longer girdles. Which is this one shown. Perhaps I should have kept some of the old screenshots I took for the older version, some of them looked better than what I ended up with

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And here is the whole ship. I'm already breaking the record of the Marco Polonium as strangest shape I've ever flown.

I genuinely can't tell if this thing look awesome or silly. Probably a bit of both.

The docking port on Not albatross is balanced to be in the center of mass of the ship, so it won't cause problems with the thrust. But that goes with full tanks. With tanks mostly empty, and no way to visualize the center of mass exactly (I'm told there are mods, but I loathe installing mods to solve every small nuance), I again resorted to shutting down some engines to keep thrust even. I also put a good dozen large reaction wheels on the Christmas Tree, specifically because I knew I'd be dealing with those kind of problems.

Docking several strange landers on a ship that's supposed to actually move is more complicated than it seems.

yC59q7t.png

Solar panels are there to help with isru, not needed otherwise. I think the ship looks better with them retracted?

I spent most of my fuel getting to orbit. That's all right, as before setting for Jool, I'll be stopping to refuel at Minmus.

2B: refueling at Minmus

Minmus is the ideal place to refuel. Very low gravity to make landing easier, and very large patches of perfectly flat ground, clearly recognizable from space. On the equator, no less! Its main drawback is that it has low Ooberth effect, so to get a decent efficiency you must fall back on Kerbin to make your main burn close to it. And the slow pace of Minmus orbit means you can't choose very well the time of your departure; for this reason I normally choose Mun as a refueling ground. But Jool launch windows are very large, it's not a problem.

And I needed all that, because I'm tasking Jeb with landing Christmas Tree with Not Albatross on top.

The thing is, Not Albatross, with its Jool ascent stage, holds some 120 tons of fuel.

Flying Christmas Tree only has nuclear engines; but planning for it to act as mothership to smaller vehicles, I included some generous rocket fuel tanks. They can hold 36 tons.

This is more than enough for all my purposes. Dancing Porcupine keeps 32 tons of fuel. Not Albatross, without the Jool ascent stage, has room for 12 tons - and it's supposed to only need its rockets refueled twice. 36 tons of fuel to service those vehicles is even too much. I would have used smaller tanks, if I had them available of the right size.

Unfortunately, If I want to refuel the Jool ascent stage, I'd have to make 4 trips.

In a real world, where safety is a concern - especially on a super expensive space vehicle carrying many astronauts and several tons of nuclear material - they would do exactly that.

I tried it. I took on a challenge where I could not reload games, that would force me to play safe all the time. And man, it was the most BOOOORING thing I'd ever did in this game. Real life is boooring. There must be a reason we play games instead, after all. Don't get me wrong, real life has a lot of cool stuff you can do with it, but the fact that everything takes so much preparatory work is so damn annoying. I don't want a game to simulate that.

I know Jeb is with me on this issue. So, after transferring all the rocket fuel left in dancing porcupine and leaving it in orbit, and after transferring all the liquid fuel in the bottom tanks to lower the baricenter as much as possible, I asked Jeb to land the christmas tree. With 50 tons of plane sitting asymmetrically on top of it.

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And by night. I would not have put landing lights if I was not planning to use them

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Almost perfect landing, but the ship is bouncing around... please stay up, please stay up, ple #######

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I fell on one side. Thanks to Minmus gravity, I didn't break anything. The reaction wheels can turn me around, but not pull me up. Time to reload the game? Jeb wants to use Not Albatross engines to push ourselves straight first. I still have a smidgen of rocket fuel I was keeping for the vernor rcs engines. Just enough for a few seconds of push with the vectors.

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Success! After tilting around dangerously for a while, the rocket stabilizes

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Time to refuel everything, then rejoin Dancing Porcupine in orbit (I had left Val to guard it). And then a big time skip until the Jool launch window

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Pretty standard manuever.

Onward, to jool!

P.S. rule 4 of the challenge says

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There's funding for one main ship only so all the crew, lander(s) and other stuff has to go to Jool as one big ship.  The ship can separate once in Jool's SOI.

There can be a slight argument that what I did, separating Dancing Porcupine while I was refueling on Minmus, violates the second part of the rule. But the main body and intent of the rule, that everything goes to Jool in one big ship, was respected completely. Also the stuff about funding for one main ship. I do belive I'm fully respecting the rule.

Edited by king of nowhere
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Part 3: settling around jool

there are two ways to reach a stable orbit around Jool: the first involves burning a lot of fuel, the second involves complex gravitational dances amid the moons. while the second is obviously the best choice, there is the risk of overthinking it and spending more in correction manuevers than you're saving in gravity assist. anyway, the beginning is simple: use a laythe assist to get a free capture around Jool

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You normally don't want a low periapsis, as it will result in a greater intercept speed with the moons, but in this case i wanted to dip inside jool's atmosphere once before stopping around vall

jB1azEM.png

Laythe flyby

Around Laythe, I detach Not albatross. I will send them on slightly different trajectories, which will be magnified by a Tylo gravity assist; the plane will start an aerobraking manuever inside Jool, while the spaceship will take a slight dip in the atmosphere and then go for Vall

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Not albatross trajectory, sending it passing inside Jool.

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while christmas tree will stick with a 198 km periapsis, entering atmosphere just enoigh for an analysis (here it shows 195, i made a slight correction at apoapsis).

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The two slightly different trajectories taken by the two vessels

Not albatross starts aerobraking. It is supposed to do this manuever pointing prograde, but at 8000 m/s the heat is way more than even the reinforced nose can take. So, at least for the beginning, I must do it with the thermal shield in the front. This configuration is aerodinamically unstable, but for those small dips the reaction wheels can compensate, and it lets me shed some speed. about 20 m/s for each pass inside the atmosphere.

Which, coupled with an orbit of 3 days.... yes, you can guess. Not albatross spent several months aerobraking.

jXBxzEo.png

As you can see, I put Val in the cockpit.

I have no communication back to kerbin (christmas tree has antennas, but I didn't want to use them. I wanted this mission to be self-sufficient), and I want a pilot to plot manuevers once I have to leave Jool. Which is also the reason I needed to make a pass in the atmosphere with the full ship and couldn't just take all the measurements with Not albatross, I can't refresh the science jr and goo.

the first choice for a pilot to drive an experimental plane into a crazy dive inside jool would be jeb. But then, I considered the issue of sexism.

So, instead of having a man be the first to reach the inside of a gas giant and perform extraveicular activity there, I will send a woman in a crazy dangerous stunt getting near killed by heat and pressure, conscious that the slightest mistake would eliminate that "near" from the equation, and I will even make her leave the relative safety of her vehicle in one of the deadliest environments ever reached by a kerbal. And before that, I will force her to spend several months locked up in a space narrower than any prison. I'm a monster!

at least the view is good.

meanwhile, on christmas tree, jeb is starting the rendez-vous manuever with vall

0BQUmuY.png

At this point, I realize a dire planning mistake. Christmas tree originally had 4000 m/s available. that was more than enough to do anything, with ISRU.

Isn't it a bit low for nuclear engines, though? Yes, it is. because, to keep a decent twr to land on vall, I had to use 24 of them. i didn't realize at first, but that makes 72 tons of dry weight. one third of my ship is made up of the engines alone! I realized using 4 wolfhounds would have actually been more efficient. it also would have eliminated the need for several hundreds of small liquid fuel tanks making my game lag.  but what the hell, the ship certainly looks better as it is.

no, anyway it's not this the mistake. So I made 2 mistakes, actually

the mistake was not accounting for how ferrying a 50-ton rover and a 170-ton plane would impact range. The 1300 m/s I needed to get from Minmus to Jool exhausted most of my fuel supplies. Now that I dumped the big plane the problem is less dire, but I have few enough fuel left that I can't land on Vall; the 1067 m/s are for capture and circularization, then I'd need 900 additional m/s and I don't even come close. And sure, I could take a larger gravity assist on laythe and try to go to Pol. It would work, but I wanted to go to Vall.

But it's fine, I have plan B! christmas tree has many tons of oxidizer it does not need, to supply the landers. as far as the nerv engines are concerned, that oxidizer is dead weight, so I can dump it and extend my range. I installed fuel drain valves just in case I was in such a situation.

Now I only need to select them... huh, where did i put... crap!

turnes out I have no fuel valves. Or, rather, I did, but they were installed on the lateral modules and were not part of the symmetry; so they got deleted the last time I detached and reattached the part in the VAB.  I can't dump fuel

But it's fine, I have plan C! that fuel does not account for dancing porcupine. I can transfer fuel from dancing porcupine, while using the rover to store the excess oxydizer in orbit

Ok, i'm doing just that... and now christmas tree has.... crap! 700 m/s. Not enough to land on Vall.

But it's fine, I have plan D! Dancing porcupice has isru capability; I can land it on Vall, and use it to ferry fuel to christmas tree.

Yep, this one works. barely. 4 less tons of fuel (after starting with over 100) and I wouldn't have been able to pull it off.

But it would have been fine, I had plan E! Not albatross is still full of fuel, I could have sent it to resupply christmas tree. With 170 tons, most of them fuel, it certainly had enough to allow it to land. But doing that would have been dishonorable, after all the trouble i went through to set it on its course.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, there's no such thing as too many backup plans.

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En route to Vall

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Capture burn

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dancing porcupine released and ready to land. Bob and Leiga crewing it, scientist and engineer for the two main tasks. Having only one pilot, I decided to leave Jeb on board. Plus, the external seat for the third passenger doesn't look very comfortable

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I always like how this rover lands. it reminds me of back to the future.

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Landed! Before refueling, I will take a small tour around for science and ground features

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I saddled my rover with a heavy and totally unnecessary cupola for those views. In a long trip like the one I'm going to take, hopefully the variety will keep me from getting bored

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and now I finally settle for refilling the tanks.

unfortunately, with 2 small drills and a small convert-o-tron, the process is very slow.it takes around 50 days to fill the rover's tank to its capacity of 2880 units. of those, i need around 1200 to reach orbit, and i must save 1000 for safe landing. i can only transfer a few tons of fuel on each trip. this is going to be long. perhaps even longer than the jool aerobrake...

 

meanwhile, lower in jool orbit...

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after a few dozen aerobraking passage, val is finally able to reorient not albatross forward.  this makes the whole process faster.

not because aerobraking is more efficient. but now that the plane is stable, i can run the whole atmospheric pass at 4x speed. it does not speed things up in the slightest for poor val, still stuck in her cockpit.

 

Edited by king of nowhere
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Part 4: soaring quite unlike an albatross

From now on, I've been using my three vehicles simultaneously, swapping from one to the other whenever there was a pause. For practicity, I'll present them one at a time, starting with Not Albatross because it was the first to finish its targets.

4A: inside Jool

It took a loooong time aerobraking, but eventually I shed enough speed. I discovered that the conditions to survive a Jool reentry are quite strict, and a slightly wrong trajectory can still make Not Albatross explode.

Reaching the lower atmosphere of the gas giant is a grueling ordeal of burning in the atmosphere with your heating indicators inching ever closer to the breaking limit, hoping to have made no mistakes and powerless to do anything about it. It's also a lenghty process, over 10 minutes with accelerated time. I already included the video, greatly accelerated, as presentation for Not Albatross on kerbalx, but here I include the long version because, well, it's quite an experience. Video is cut short because, as free user, I have a 15 minutes limit.

Includes sending Val out of her cockpit to get a crew report. I have no idea what kind of science one can hope to get by listening to a pilot hanging for their life from a ladder on a speeding plane, buffeted by winds faster than sound and uncomfortably close to burning up. Actually, on retrospect, we did get some science: we proved that kerbals are indeed made of iron, that Val is capable of holding herself in position on the ladder against winds at 500 m/s and close to atmospheric pressure. What kind of stamina would that take? We also learned several new and interesting curses while listening to her open communication while at it.

After taking the measures and getting out of the atmosphere, I still have Val stranded around Jool, without enough fuel to get to Laythe (increasing apoapsis in low Jool orbit is damn expensive).

That was taken into account, now Christmas Tree (which, after a couple refueling trips from Dancing Porcupine, had enough fuel to land on its own and refuel more efficiently) is coming to rescue her.

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Using a Laythe gravity assist to lower Jool periapsis

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Not Albatross didn't have enough fuel to reach Laythe, but raising apoapsis as much as possible makes it cheaper to recover it. Christmas Tree has some 4000 m/s available, but 1800 of those are to take off from Vall and land back, and it needs to refuel Not Albatross. There isn't so much to spare. From this orbit it's only a few hundred m/s to reach Laythe

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Next step is Laythe exploration. Besides resupplying, Not Albatross needs to swap pilot. I need to restore the science jr and mistery goo at every biome, this requires a scientist on board.

Val, your task is ended. You can leave your cockpit and get inside the crew storage module. You will have 10 cubic meters, all for yourself!

Mandocia, it's your turn to drive. Don't worry about being trained as scientist and not as pilot, the remote guidance unit will help you with stability. As for manuever planning, that would require a connection to ksc that we don't have, so you'll have to eyeball them.

The first part is getting into a polar orbit to get a gravioli reading of all biomes in low and near space, and a spacewalk in near space.

Being very close to Jool, I figure changing my inclination to aim for polar insertion would be too expensive, and I decide instead that I will go to Vall (where Christmas Tree is headed anyway for refueling, may as well tow Not Albatross), and from there go for a polar insertion.

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I take advantage of another Laythe gravity assist for it

Now, I cannot plan manuevers with a scientist on board, but I can plan manuevers with Christmas Tree and then replicate then with Not! Albatross. See Mandocia, those experts here will guide you step by step.

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500 m/s. Going from Jool would have probably been cheaper, but whatever. Having isru, I don't have to worry about fuel economy anymore

4B: Laythe explorer

After all those missions spent avoiding the thick Laythe atmosphere, I finally have a vehicle sturdy enough to perform aerocapture! I could even land directly! In fact, I had to find the right altitude for this manuever by trial and error, as I wanted to stay in orbit.

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A moment of aerobraking. The stock airbrakes are unsuited to this because they are not heat resistant, but who needs airbrakes when deploying your landing gear achieves exactly the same effect?

I also needed some course correction, because my orbit wasn't exactly polar and I was a few degrees shy to get the biome. Anyway, this is the end result. An eccentric orbit, one side lets me do biomes in near space, the other high space. Passing over them all was quite a chore, as some of them (crater island and crescent bay) are tiny, most orbits will miss them, and even when I am spot on I only have a few seconds to make measures.

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Now I need to dip into high atmosphere, as the spectrovariometer can make measures in biomes there. This is the most complex task here. I can fly up to 10 km on propellers, and I have a lot of autonomy in space with the nerv, but high atmosphere? I can't stay there indefinitely. Exploring that region where there is not enough air to fly, but too much to orbit, is actually more difficult than exploring remote planets.

Luckily I don't need to get in that atmospheric region. I only need to enter atmosphere; 49.5 km are adequate for this. So I enter a very low orbit. As long as I keep a periapsis above 50.25 km, I can still accelerate time

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And when I see my next orbit will pass over a biome, a very slight dip is sufficient. Not Albatross is very aerodinamic, and coupled with the high altitude, I'm losing almost nothing to drag. If needed, a small burn with the nerv compensates.

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Overall, it took two weeks in-game, but I got all the space and high atmosphere science. Time to land. And for another video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RHjbSO9DQQ

End result, Mandocia plants a flag at the south pole.

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Not! Albatross is a pleasure to drive. It's not as stable or manueverable as some (a trade-off to let it take off from water), but once I am in stable flight, I can take my hands off the controls and it will fly straight. It also can make sharp manuevers in the pitch direction, though too much yaw will send it spinning. It generally can recover from that, though. I also enjoyed finally being able to land. I took the chance for some daring manuevers, some of which left me as a smoldering crater on a hill.

And with a cruise speed over 200 m/s and no worry about fuel, I can explore the whole planet fast and leisurely. So, time for a gallery.

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At this point, though, I discover a terrible weakness in my plan: it's impossible to take seismic and atmospheric readings while landed on water. But it's possible to take them from the ocean floor (yes, you can measure the atmosphere from below water, but not from above. Don't ask).

Anyway, the tragedy is, Laythe has 5 all-water biomes, and I will not be able to gather those measures from them. But gathering those measures is, in theory, possible. So

Quote

Objective: gather every single science point possible from the Jool system

MISSION FAILED

Well, nothing to be done at this point. But I know the current record holder for this challenge has not taken measures from the ocean floor either, nor from inner Jool atmosphere. I should still be able to make a new record.

At least I managed to collect those measures from the shallows biome, due to a glitch in biome distribution (no, those are not lakes)

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Since I was on Laythe, with a vehicle capable of gliding on water at 50 m/s indefinitely, I decided I'd also take the chance to pull an Elcano challenge: circumnavigation of a planet from the ground.

I reported it here

Long story short, it didn't involve doing much, but it was rather boring. It made me decide to not try and replicate it with Dancing Porcupine on Vall, despite already having to tour half the planet.

All is done on Laythe. Time to take off. There are videos of Not Albatross reaching orbit in the craft presentation on kerbalx, but the vessel is not graceful while at it. When it starts burning with the darts, it becomes rather unstable, and the pilot has to fight with the commands. All to reach a high apoapsis, then slowly, sloooowly circularize with the nuclear engine, trying to finish before reentering atmosphere. And in all this, i'm too busy trying to keep the ship straight to take pictures.  On Laythe it's not too difficult, though. And while I spend quite a bit of fuel before arriving, I had more than enough for orbiting

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Not enough for leaving Laythe's orbit, though, so I had again to send Christmas Tree (who had refueled in the meanwhile) on a resupply mission

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There are no more atmospheres left to scout, but Not Albatross still has one mission: among the crafts I sent to Jool, it's the lighest, and the one with more deltaV. Especially if I refuel it only with liquid fuel, as I'm doing. I need something in high orbit to take measures from the polar regions of Tylo. Changing inclination is gonna be expensive, hence a low consumption vehicle.

4C: orbiting Tylo

I don't need a scientist anymore. Val already had her turn driving Not Albatross. So this time I'm sending Jeb, who hasn't yed had a chance.

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Tylo's outer space starts at 250 km, so I'm sure to get it. Tylo has 9 biomes, 3 of them are prevalent and the rest are scattered in very small batches. Overall quite difficult to plan a passage over, but Tylo rotates very slowly, so all I need is waiting, and all the biomes will pass underneath. I'm focusing on high space science because, for near space, all I need to do is take off with Dancing Porcupine for a short suborbital flight once I reach the biome on the ground.

With all the biomes measured, Jeb has now to wait Dancing Porcupine and its 50 days to refuel before rejoining the rest of the mission.

Sorry Jeb. You got the boring part of the mission.

Edited by king of nowhere
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Part 5: meanwhile, on Vall

Exploring Vall by rover was basically a matter of patience. I don't have much of it, so the rover must be fun to drive. Not much to describe here, so this will mostly be a picture gallery.

Vall is awesome, the more time I spent on it, the more I'm liking its views. I ended up snapping over 70 screenshots, though I'm not so crazy as to upload all of them.

I marked my path with flags at irregular intervals. I often named places, generally according to some random occurrence.

Vall has 9 biomes. 4 are easily accessible anywhere, the remaining are localized. 2 are near the north pole, 2 are near the south pole, and then there are the poles themselves. Landing on the equator, I started going north to the first biome, then to the poles, then down to the second. There I refueled before taking off to the skies

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I went into a high orbit, where I collected all biome science from there.

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Afterwards, I landed in the southern emisphere.

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The two biomes I needed to visit are on opposite sides, so I landed on one, passed over the south pole and went for the second. Vallhenge was fairly close and required only a small detour, so I visited there too.

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I'll start with Christmas Tree landed for refueling. Luckily I only needed a couple of (really slow) trips with Dancing Porcupine before this thing had just enough fuel to land itself and use its much more efficient mining gear.

https://youtu.be/H6otPSIQicY

This video is a typical exploration: I go forward for a while, at some point I lose control and crash. If I survive I save the game, if I don't, I reload. Good thing Dancing Porcupine survives most of the time.

I'd like to save more often, but I need to stop before the game allows me to. And with that big fuel tank and rockets, it's definitely a heavy rover: 50 tons full, 19 empty. Accelerating is slow, braking is sluggish. And it consumes a lot of electricity, while the solar panels are virtually nonfunctional and the rtgs are not enough to power up a vehicle this size. So, I really can't be bothered to stop and save until an obstacle stops me.

https://youtu.be/WXeVTVZAfE8

And this is a most spectacular accident, where I decided to go down a ravine without braking just to see what would happen and I reached the crazy speed of 120 m/s before finally losing control. I am quite proud that my sturdy rover managed to protect its crew and even to retain enough wheels to keep moving. At that speed, I wouldn't have bet on any outcome other than total destruction.

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This is mount Heart, so dubbed because of its shape

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Taking a group picture on the slopes of mount Heart

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This I called mount Godzilla because it looked like a giant lizard. Though I'm not seeing it again. At most it can be a frog. I also wanted to give it an impressive name because it was the first mountain above 7000 that I climbed; but it was dwarfed later by other peaks.

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When the slope gets really hard, I must help myself with rockets. I had to build in this feature because the rover is heavy and has problems upslope. I fear Tylo will be much harsher.

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Even though I keep telling them the rover is perfectly safe, Bob and Leiga don't look particularly persuaded.

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This is Enchanted valley, a place that struck me as particularly beautiful even in an already beautiful planet. Though I'm sure part of it is the light, just right to create a magic atmosphere.

The image of the solitary floodlight piercing the darkness has a strong impact on me. It's like... here is nature, big, majestic, uncaring. But here there is a light. here is a bastion of civilization.  Here is comfort, safety. I am reveling in the majoesty of the wilderness, but I'm prepared to deal with it. It's a bit like watching a snowfall outside the window while warmly snuggled in front of the fireplace.

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This is Batman pass. it reminded me of batman's head. Once more, the similarity is less striking when seen in retrospect

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This is northwestern basin, the last biome I visited in the northern emisphere. I stopped here for refueling

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And here I landed in southern valleys

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I let Bob ride outside for a while. He liked it

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Some more nice imagery with internal perspective

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this is "Seen it First" ravine. I stopped and saved before going down and I took this picture in the process.

Just 20 km earlier I passed a crest and suddenly found myself going down a steep ravine, crashing the rover. I've been driving nonstop for 15 minutes, and I had to reload that far back. I called that "Oh Crap" ravine. After that nasty surprise, I was more careful to scout in advance for such obstacles. I discovered this early on and avoided crashing on it, so i named it "Seen it First".

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And this is the south pole. While most mountains in this game are flat-ish and not at all impressive, this peak stands out for its near vertical slopes. The peak itself is part of a fairly impressive mountain range, whom I called the Mohawk range because this straight, long and narrow crest of mountains on top of the planet reminded me of a mohawk haircut. But the south pole is the most impressive. The patch of stars is a glitch happening at the poles of most planets. If you fall in, you die.

So, I named it "Kraken Maw peak"

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You can better appreciate the open maw, ready to swallow hapless explorers. The flag on the tip is barely visible at this distance

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And the underlying cliff

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The view is amazing, though. Uninterrupted line of sight on all the ecliptic

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This straight line is a terrain feature following almost exactly 90 degrees east. From the ground it's not easily visible, it looks just like a natural part of the landscape that there would be an incline there. But from high up, its artificial look cannot be denied. It points straight to the valley where Vallhenge is, so I called this the Vallhenge channel. It looks like it continues northward too.

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The Vallhenge channel crosses those mountains through this narrow pass. They look nothing special, but the pass itself is at 6500 m. The mountains around must be among the tallest on the planet. Vallhenge is on the other side.

This part of the path is on the southern face of the mountains in the southern emisphere, and so it is always in shadow. I named it the "Shadar Logoth trail". Fans of the Wheel of Time will recognize the name, for everyone else it would take too long to explain. The path is very rugged and very steep, I had to burn a lot of fuel to climb and I broke my rover a record number of time. It was well named.

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Pushing upward through Shadar Logoth trail

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Pass cleared, and first sighting of Vallhenge! I'm not even sure uploading the image kept a good enough resolution for seeing it

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Almost there

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From Vallhenge I started back to reach the southern basin, the last biome.

Then back to orbit to leave for Tylo.

Edited by king of nowhere
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  • 2 weeks later...

Part 6: truckers on Tylo

Reaching Tylo was a normal transfer. The only thing of note, I got very worried about my deltaV, since it would seem I wouldn't have enough left to leave the moon's orbit. Tylo is damn expensive, it takes over 800 m/s to go from intercept to low orbit and viceversa.

However, it turned out the game engine is really bad at calculating how much deltaV I actually have on something as complex as flying christmas tree. I made some manual calculations with the rocket equation and it turns out I am all right. Well, mostly right. I don't have much fuel to spare if I want to reach Bop, but I have enough.

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First thing to do is recovering Jeb, who has been sitting on his inclined orbit after finishing the high space survey. with the slow nuclear engine aboard not albatross, it took 8 minutes of burn split into several orbits. Jeb has been waiting there for something like 50 days while dancing porcupine was refueling on Vall, going through all the variations of solitaire known to man to pass the time.

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I felt a bit bad about giving him the unexciting task, so I decided I would send him aboard dancing porcupine in the external seat. I was reluctant to use it because it looks uncomfortable for long missions - which are the only kind of missions dancing porcupine is ever sent on. but, Jeb being Jeb, I figured he would appreciate

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Indeed, he does! Jeb's happy face is well worth the time it took to fly him in the seat.

I also rotated the rest of the crew, to give anyone a chance to land. This time I have Bill and Mandocia (scientist).

One month ago I would have never cared who got where as long as it got the job done, but I'm starting to humanize my kerbals.

 

So, Tylo. I've only been there once before. Landing was extremely difficult and required a lot of save scumming. Though I was in the middle of a challenge where I had no isru, so I was trying to save every last drop of fuel I could, on a lander that was built with as little fuel as possible. Now I'm not under any such constrain, and I have 3300 m/s available. Should be easy, right?

Wrong. It's incredible how skewed landing mechanics can become when you need a several minute burn. It doesn't help that dancing porcupine has a fairly low twr - it was never meant for Tylo, and it performs poorly there. And once I start braking from orbital speed, I hit the ground very fast. In the end, I had to ignite the engines at an altitude of 30 km, and it was barely enough. After several minutes of uninterrupted burn while the altimeter was dropping faster and faster, i stopped in midair only a few hundred meters above the ground. And I landed on one of the lowest areas of the planet, I would still have crashed almost anywhere else.

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Tylo has 9 biomes. most of the surface is made up of 3: lowlands, highlands, midlands. Then there are minor craters and mara, those are very tiny biomes and hard to get from orbit, but they are scattered around all the surface, so it's not hard to reach one with a rover equipped for long trips. The last 4 biomes, though, are individual craters.  And they are at opposite sides of the planet.

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There is really nothing to be done, I will have to cross half the planet to reach them all. My landing site is close to the leftmost big crater. It also has some conveniently placed minor craters on the rim and a mara between it and the next big crater, so I can get those biomes easily. then i will face a really long trip to the last two craters.

First, though, I have to solve an unplanned problem: how to get my kerbals back inside the rover after they went out.

All the crew hatches are on top, and there are no ladders. normally I use the jetpack to reach them. Dancing porcupine can only visit low gravity worlds, and it seemed pointless to add more parts. Then I adapted it for tylo, and forgot that the jetpack doesn't work there. Crap.

But no despair, I have a lot of moving parts, I will manage something. Indeed, I discover that after extending the rockets, if I run towards them and jump, I can grab and climb them.

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From there, scrambling up the fuel tank is possible.

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The solar panels mounted on the roof didn't appreciate being stepped on, and they all became broken very quickly. but hey, this far from kerbol they were hardly producing any electricity anyway; if I could go back to design, I would have removed them entirely, they are not worth their weight.

Some obligatory images of working the rover arm

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Driving on Tylo is a different experience from all the other worlds I trudged upon before. The high gravity grants stability, so I can go much faster. on the other hand, it also makes going uphill more difficult. I cannot climb any slope steeper than 5°, and descending at more than 10° means my brakes won't be able to stop me. And that's with empty tanks; with full tanks I can basically only move on flat. I can, of course, use my rockets. But weight makes driving harder, so I'm keeping only a few tons of fuel. I'd deplete them fast if I used them too often.

On the other hand, the easiest way to overcome a slope is to have a high speed when coming to it. And on tylo, fast means fast. I've easily reached speeds over 100 m/s, and sometimes I even managed to survive it and come to a safe stop eventually. At those speeds, the porcupine armor won't help much. So I'm stuck between going downhill fast to keep the speed for going uphill, which results in reloading several times every stretch of road before managing it without exploding. Or braking downhill, then zigzagging uphill to reduce the slope, which results in going really slow. Or using rockets to go uphill, which results in having to stop for several kerbin days to refuel every few hundred kilometers.  This planet is the nemesis of my rover.

I am quite puzzled that going uphill is so difficult. I have 8 ruggedized wheels, it's 1 ton of wheels for 20 tons of rover. And in gravity lower than kerbin's. What am I supposed to do to get decent mobility? A rover with 50% mass made of wheels? meh.

Of course, I decided to go fast and take risks. I have no patience to do otherwise. The reactions of my kerbonauts say it all, you can easily pick Jeb from the rest

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C'mon guys, don't be so afraid! what's the worst that could happen? Ok, this didn't sound very reassuring, let's try it again. Look at jeb, he's enjoying himself! Ok, still not reassuring. Well... It's only the fifth time I try to go down that ravine, I'm sure this time I will make it! No? don't worry, the porcupine armor protects the pilots! you'll live, you'll be merely stranded on a remote planet aboard a broken vehicle with no hope for rescue for at least the next 3 years! See? nothing to worry about

 

Tylo itself has a varied landscape. Half of it is flat featureless plain, devoid of anything interesting. Boooring.

The other half is killer mountains that will have you look fondly at the boring parts.

To emphasize this, while on Vall I was giving names to every feature I encountered, here I didn't even try. With a few notable exceptions like "el camino de muerte" and the "valley of fear" bestowed to some particularly difficult mountain passages, i named every other stop as "empty expanse", "the great void", "crappy hills", "more emptyness", "more hills", and so on.

the only feature that actually looked good is the sky, at least from the right angle

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I was hoping for a triple alignment, but the bodies never syncronize so. And I did not think to look for a Laythe eclipse by Vall.

 

Anyway, it was a long trek. Certainly the longest I ever undertook for distance; for time, maybe once in my career when I set out to drive some 600 km on Mun with a rover limited to 10 m/s was longer. difficult to say, it would depend on how much time i spent exploding and reloading (too much time, in both instances). But eventually I made it. A half circumnavigation of Tylo, about 2000 km. A week in real world time, 40 days in game time (mostly for refueling)

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with this i'm almost done; the last two planets are tiny, and I can make suborbital jumps if I really get bored.

One last refueling, and it's time to head for Bop!

 

P.S. launching to orbit was an absolute nightmare of shaking and low twr. Dancing porcupine is not made for high acceleration flight. nor is it meant to move faster than 30 m/s. Or in high gravity environment. Or so far away from the sun. But it did manage all this. To be adaptable, that's what it's made for.

 

Edited by king of nowhere
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Part 7: Bop, Pol and return

Tylo was the last major obstacle. From now on it's just a matter of some patience. I have isru, so I don't have to worry about optimizing trajectories. It's really spoiling me.

Instead of going for Bop during a transfer window, I launch immediately and use a double manuever. Less efficient, but easy and comfortable

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7A: Bop

Bop has very low gravity, which is not ideal for a rover. Plus, I've been at this challenge for 3 weeks already, at this point I just want to finish. So, I detach not! albatross and send it to scan for the poles biome. Then I realize, the gravity is so low it can even land there.

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To go back to orbit, I just had to start the engine uphill, no effort required. So easy, almost unsatisfying.

To show how little I care about conserving fuel by now, here is how I choose to rejoin with christmas tree; that's got to be the most inefficient manuever, ever. But it's fast.

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I don't care about fuel because I can refill my tanks on the ground. at least, I can try once I manage to land upright on this bumpy rock...

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Yep, that wasn't easy. I'm not even sure Christmas Tree would stay upright without SAS. It took me over ten minutes of bouncing around on that slope before finally stabilizing. I considered trying to find a flat surface, but I'm not sure there are any to be found on this planet.

Refueling done, it's time for Dancing Porcupine to explore the remaining biomes. This time I send down Val, Bill and Bob.

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I was expecting roving on Bop to be somewhat similar to Minmus, given the gravity. They are, instead, completely different experiences. Minmus is mostly flat, you can even get to 30 m/s if you accelerate slowly and are careful to manuever. On Bop, no such luck. The terrain is extra bumpy, and as soon as you bounce somewhere, you end up jumping for tens of seconds at a time. And let's not talk about trying to brake; basically, the only way was to capsize the rover. Furthermore, all those cliffs ensure you're always in some shadows, giving it all a gloomy appearance. In fact, you see better by night, because you don't have the contrast between sunlit and shadowed surfaces.

Sure, the terrain is interesting, but it's impossible to really drive, and the gloom really ruins it all. I'd give it 2 stars in my roving guide.

On the plus side, my porcupine armor makes me indestructible in this environment, and I no longer run out of electricity going uphill.

At least the 4 biomes i needed to visit were all very close.

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Let's finish this tour with Pol

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(don't mind the deltaV, the calculation is seriously bugged)

7B: Pol

Pol has even lower gravity than Bop, but it has some flat surfaces (not many, though). Its biomes are all scrambled, so after discovering that the poles are rich in ore, I went to land there, as the only biome I can reliably reach.

The previous time I was there I hadn't activated terrain objects. But now... Pol is beautiful!

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The gravity is even lower than Minmus, but the terrain is flatter than Bop, so it's a bit easier to use a rover. Still it's an achievement to reach 10 m/s without starting to fly, but I can at least pick my direction a bit better.

The gravity is so low that if I balance on a wheel, SAS will be enough to keep me suspended in mid-air.

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Plus, the surface features not having actual substance can generate some funny effects.

All the four biomes can be reached within a few kilometers of each other, so I only remained on Pol a short time. I even considered refueling and then driving around with my rockets pointing downwards at a slow burn, generating enough of an artificial gravity to make driving more comfortable. But I really wanted to end.

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Dancing porcupine landed on a flattish area where I'll have no stability problems, so I try to land christmas tree on the same spot

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But, I end up missing the flat area by a few meters, and I end up on a ravine

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Well, on minmus I was able to tilt back by using not albatross engine, I can try it here too

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Success! I broke a solar panel in the process, but I don't care; this far from Kerbol, they are not worth their weight. Especially when you already carry 16 rtg.

And here are some more rendez-vous manuevers at ridiculous inclinations that I would never attempt on a planet with more gravity.

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7C: Home, sweet home!

All science collected, it's time to go home.

Once more, with virtually unlimited fuel I decide to go for a double manuever, first putting my apoapsis on a Kerbin intercept, then changing my orbital time to force an encounter

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I'm back in Kerbin orbit. I only have to land my crew.

I initially toyed with using not albatross. I send it down fully fueled, it brings down a kerbonaut. I recover the kerbonaut, then I send not albatross back to orbit. It refuel from Christmas Tree, and I can bring back another. After three or four trips I will have to go to mun to stock up on oxidizer.

Yes, I could have done it. But the rules allow for sending a craft to bring down the crew, so I decided to be fast. Also, it removes the science for "return a vehicle that has been to X", which I assume is not to be calculated towards the score; now all my science points will be true ones.

I didn't want to double-guess or make test, so i went for a safe design, with a big thermal shield and winglets on top to stabilize it against flipping and even rockets in case the parachutes were not enough

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Also, this design gave me an excuse to use the lateral docking ports on flying christmas tree, which I included but never used.

And now, transfering the science data! 610 experiments

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Some nice pics from reentry. I generally try to skimp with weight on reentry, I use no thermal shields and often I have unstable aerodinamics. This thing was a cakewalk. I can definitely see why most people want to put the extra mass there.

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In the end the parachutes really were insufficient, I was right in wanting to include rockets

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And finally, the science! I hope I'm not required a screenshot for the complete list of 610 items (the 611th is the recovery of a ship came back from Kerbin orbit, worth 0 science).

7D: science score, broken down

There are of course 6 planets (Jool plus the five moons); as for biomes, Jool is 1, Laythe has 10, Vall and Tylo 9, Bop 5 and Pol 4; in total 38 biomes.

Space science: 8 experiments available: crew report, EVA report, barometer, thermometer, science jr, mistery goo, magnetometer, gravioli. The gravioli experiment can be done on multiple biomes both in high and in low space. the EVA report can be made in multiple biomes in low space. So, high space experiments are 7*planet + 1*biomes, total 7*6+38*1=80.

Low space experiments are 6*planets+2*biomes=6*6+38*2=112.

Atmospheric science can only be done on Jool and Laythe, for a total of 2 planets and 11 biomes. There are 7 total experiments: crew report, EVA report, barometer, thermometer, science jr, mistery goo, spectrovariometer. The spectrovariometer can be made in multiple biomes in both high and low atmosphere; in low atmosphere it is also possible to replicate crew report, EVA report, and temperature.

So, high atmosphere experiments are 6*planet + 1*biomes=6*2+11*1=23.

Low atmosphere experiments are 3*planet+4*biomes=3*2+4*11=50.

Surface experiments are 9, and all can be made in multiple biomes: crew report, EVA report, barometer, thermometer, science jr, mistery goo, gravioli, surface sample, seismometer. It's impossible to land on Jool, so 37 biomes are available. In addition to that, on Laythe's 10 biomes the spectrovariometer can also be used. So we're looking at 9*37+10=343.

In addition, there are surface features: stone, boulder and geyser for Laythe, ice chunk, stone and cryovolcanoes on Vall, light stone, dark boulder and checkerboard on Tylo, gravel pile on Bop, yellow stones on Pol, totaling 11.

total: 80+112+23+50+343+11=619

Why am I missing 9? Well, you may remember that on Laythe I could not take seismic readings or atmospheric readings while landed on water. 4 biomes there are all water: sagen sea, degrasse sea, crater bay, crescent bay. I missed 8 experiments.

And the last one? No idea, but not particularly surprising. Though I kept a datasheet to keep track of experiments, and I checked for numbers after every biome, it would have been very easy to forget to take a report somewhere. I checked in the archives, and I discovered that I'm missing the spectrovariometer measure in high atmosphere over crescent bay. The biome is very small and I crossed it at high speed, probably I exited the biome just as I clicked to run the experiment, and I did not notice that I got the wrong biome.

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With a score of 105136 science gained from a Jool 5, I defeat the previous record of 82510 for Jeb's level. Though I failed my main objective of getting all possible experiments, I still came close enough

 

Edited by king of nowhere
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