Laythe Voyager -- BY PSAA

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Here we see the Laythe Voyager launch vehicle (some new Jumbu XXXL rocket or something, no current identification). The payload is only some 40,000 kerbucks but the rocket + payload is 144,000 kerbucks. The payload includes two Flowergoo landers and 2 Roborover rover vehicles. The base payload root part is a small probe equipped with a very limited xenon gas and ion engine designed for minor course corrections. The only mod used is MechJeb for efficiency!

More to come as I launch

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So Alexmoon projected 2027 m/s for Joooooooooooolian transfer but MechJeb managed to get me a 42-second 2032 m/s burn. Close enough

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Night-time quick transfer! The joys of Mansails and not LV-Ns!

Here we gooooo!

By far the easiest interplanetary transfer I have ever experienced. And because I had so many different panels on my probes (855 electric charge) I didn't have to worry about running out of electricity like I am afraid to admit I often do!

[Illumia-Star]

Nice looking ship there OP! Anychance we could get a .CRAFT file? We love to do some dune surfing on Duna--

I-I mean conduct perfectly ethical and safe science on a cosmic body..Yeah. Mhm >~>

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Some 1000 days later, Laythe Voyager arrived at Jool. (This is going quite quickly for me however )

Going to flyby Jool and just aerobrake at Laythe to save some delta V I would have to burn when I mess up the Jool aerobrake.

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Hurtled past Jool extremely fast

Went slamming at 8200 m/s into the Laythean atmosphere. I went down to 19 kilometers and shaved 5 km/s off my velocity yet I still had to fire for less than a second to bring myself into orbit.

*So this is why NASA doesn't do aerobrake like this*

(as probe swirls around with flames everywhere at 4000 m/s)

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Seperated from the last mainsail in order to use the crappy ion engine (WAS ONLY FOR EMERGENCIES) to finally circularize the orbit to 70,000 m.

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Finally in Laythe orbit (gave up on 70KM, now eliptical 55-1420 orbit )

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First Flowergoo lander seperates and goes in for a 45 KM orbit to begin slowly falling down to the surface

Edited January 3, 2015 by whiterafter

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So the first Flowergoo probe is taking quite some time to get to the surface, so I launched a second Flowergoo probe with a 27.5 KM periapsis and it touched down in the northern Arctic Circle about 50 KM south of an island.

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I detatched the first Roborover probe from the Laythe Voyager and made sure through basic targeting that it would land on land. I got some 200 science from it because I remembered to take an atmospheric scan as I re-entered.

Moment of truth was seeing if it ran well, and the rover did absolutely fantastic and was perfectly stable! Time for some exploring!

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In boring science news, PSAA has measured several new information about Laythe from Roborover II, at Coconut Crater on one of Laythe's southern islands.

Average period of sunlight (not including Jool eclipse) = 7 hours, 30 minutes

Average period of night = 7 hours

Total Laythe Day = 14 hours, 30 minutes

Average length of Jool eclipse = 1 hour, 12 minutes

The eclipse pattern is

Tylo / Vall / No Eclipse / Vall /

We also estimated a Tylo year to be 58 hours, 54 minutes long, and a Vall year to be 29 hours, 30 minutes long and double-checked our estimations. It turned out that the Tylo orbit was around 8.5 hours, and Vall was about 4 hours, which was somewhat embarassing.

Nobody at PSAA expected the period between eclipses to not equal the rotational period. In retrospect that was quite stupid.

However our Laythe day length was right on spot, so we have that going for us.

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Because it has some 2500 m/s left in DV on the ion probe, I sent the Laythe Voyager Base Module to Vall. It's in a nice 900KM circular orbit. No science instruments with me however.

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For the low price of only 65.1 m/s DV, the Laythe Explorer Base Module, now renamed Jiove, was now headed out to Tylo orbit. No encounter yet but quickwarp will easily handle that. Jiove's inclination is very close to 0 from the 2 transfers, which were at most 400 m/s, far less than the 1000 needed to change inclination in Laythean orbit.

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Okay, for like 9 m/s I just burned retrograde to try to lower my Tylo encounter closer, and somehow I made it such that it just.. captures me? Could someone explain this is very fascinating to me

Edited January 5, 2015 by whiterafter

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I soon left Tylo, because it wasn't that interesting and I got my photo album. I discovered the huge gravity well when if I burned 1 m/s to escape on one side of the planet, it would send me flying off to interplanetary space, and on the other side, down to Laythe orbit. I went with the Laythe orbit and performed a slingshot manuever to boost my velocity heading to Pol.

Laythe slingshot

More pictures to come