Sqwazare

Hi Slashy Well I got there, I had doubted I would have the patience to design and fly blind like this, but the challenge got the better of me. I think I did it a lot harder than entirely necessary, I don't know how many flights I ended up making but it was quite a few, picked up every decently paying (science wise) test contract and did those, lost a probe to solar orbit when it was misdirected from the sun on Mun transfer so ran out of power, still science from high above the sun. In the album I say 3 landings as I haven't counted where I impacted too hard to call it a landing... I didn't take pictures of many of the craft, they were all leading up to the standard lander, and nothing very interesting. Thanks for a great challenge

This is one of the most difficult challenges I have attempted, I can't remember a time that I have built or flown without KER, and the lack of patched conics got me on the first couple of probes I sent to the Mun as it didn't show an encounter... Still three more (successful) flights and I will be there.

Thanks Ziv, this was a great challenge. I went with the floating idea after being unable to hit any sufficiently level land, and having seen this concept applied at Eve. It also was a good place to keep all the extra fuel I needed for the rest of the mission.

Having looked through your videos and albums I believe you have completed the challenge, everything looks to be as it should. I also almost gave up with trying to land on Tylo, it certainly is not the easiest place to land, though you seemed to have judged your second landing much better than your first. I give this a positive review and nominate it to qualify for the Jool-5 challenge

You have definitely achieved the spirit of the challenge, and have clearly built a craft capable of achieving the challenge, I am quite impressed with your landers, as I thought they were going to have clipped parts, but you have done a good job with that design. I also can't fault not wanting to go back, the burn to get into orbit at Moho is awful. You have achieved level 1 of this challenge

Hi Foxster, Your entry is missing some information. I need to see the crew assignments in the VAB to be able to see that it is an all rookie crew.You don't have the resources tab open at any stage, you do have the maneuver nodes open but you have the navball closed which hides the delta V information I would be wanting to see.

You do not need to have 6 independent landers, both your suggestion here are fine. But that is either a huge lander to hop from biome to biome, or some precise targeting to hit a boundary like that. (Or a great deal of patience to run) Why would you want to lift the extra weight? Moho is a fairly short duration transfer each way and the Mk1 pod provides all the supplies that 1 Kerbonaut could need.

Having recently attempted some of the big challenges here I have decided to launch my own challenge that will force me to conquer my nemesis – Moho. I have never successfully landed on Moho and returned to date, I always somehow underestimate the delta V needed. So having taken a bit of inspiration from the original Project Mercury I present Project Moho The team at KSC after a hard nights celebrating of their first semi successful unmanned sub orbital flight have announced that their next project is big one. We are going to Moho. Unfortunately in the cold light of day after the hangovers cleared they realized what they had committed themselves to. But if you are going to have a first manned mission then why not make it a big one…. The Challenge You will recruit 6 new rookie Kerbonauts, (This must be their first flight) and send them to land on 6 different biomes (with all 6 on the ground at the same time) of Moho and return them safely to Kerbin. However as Project Moho is the first manned mission being carried out by the new team at KSC there are a number of limitations that apply. Command Pod Mk1 only – No external seats, no lander cans, no hitchhikers, the Command Pod has been specially developed for Project Moho and it would be a shame not to use it. No docking – The techniques for rendezvousing and docking have not been practiced yet and there is no funding to fly the missions to train anyone. This means 1 launch only, and what they land on Moho in must get them back to Kerbin. No SAS modules – You are welcome to use the SAS built into the Command Pod but no further assistance is permitted. No probe cores – Due to the concerns raised during the unmanned mission it has been declared that everything is to be actively manned at all times, and there is to be no reliance on automation. No Ion engines – The wonders of Xenon have not yet been harnessed by the time that Project Moho starts so Ion propulsion is not available. All 6 on the ground at the same time – Obviously I am not seeking synchronised landings but I do require a synchronised Moho walk The other rules. 1. No cheating. ( Including F12 menu) 2. Stock parts, stock physics only 3. No glitch exploits 4. No part clipping. If it is visible that there is clipping then it won’t be accepted 5. You can hack science points and funds in a new savegame to have all parts and enough money. 6. All Kerbals must be rookies and must do all their travel in a Command Pod Mk1 7. All the landings must include a spacewalk and each spacewalk must include a picture showing absolute time. To show that all are outside at the same time I will expect to see a picture of each Kerbal taken within 1 minute. 8. All the Kerbals have to arrive back to Kerbin surface safely. 9. Mods. Permitted mods: Mechjeb KER Kerbal alarm clock Any other mod that doesn’t change the the intention of the challenge. 10. All major events must be documented: This includes the ship in the VAB, the launch, and every 30s of the ascent at both Kerbin and Moho, every maneuvre node on the way to Moho, sufficient pictures of Moho capture to get a real feeling for it, 3 or 4 of the descent process and any others you feel help explain whats happened. 11. Keep you resources tab open – This mission is very fuel taxing and I want to see everything looks right. 12. Mechjeb can create a maneuver node for you, but you must fly it yourself. You cannot use Mechjeb for landing assistance. There are 3 levels of achievement 1st level – 6 Kerbonauts are on Moho simultaneously 2nd level – Gravmax, 2Hot, Double-C, SC-9001 and Mystery Goo rsults are returned from each biome 3rd level – All of the above without using the LV-N I have begun working on this challenge and will post my completed one soon, I am aiming for level 2, but my first attempt has taught me 2 things, you need a lot of delta V to get from the surface of Moho back to Kerbin, you can never have too much delta V on your Moho capture stage.

So here is my entry for the Jool 5 challenge. Game Version: 0.9 Mods: KER, MechJeb, TAC fuel balancer. (Hyperedit for testing) Number of Kerbals: 12, 4 Pilots, 4 Scientists, 4 Engineers Launches: 6. Main ship, Refuel Mk1, Refuel Mk2, Pol-Bop lander, Refuel-Rescue, Refuel for refuel Living quarters: All Kerbals travelled between Kerbin and Jool in Hitchiker containers and all landings were carried out in Mk1 lander cans So having travelled to Jool and landed two Kerbals on each moon I have learnt a number of things. 1. Test everything – I tested the Laythe lander, but didn’t really do any testing on anything else. I barely managed to land on Tylo 2. Check you have all the parts you need – I forgot a probe core and a decoupler in the main vessel 3. Make sure your decouplers function as you expect – I probably should have been using stack seperators in a few places and it almost killed my mission as nothing worked properly post landing on my Laythe lander until I got the decoupler off the top. 4. Just because you think you might have to reload when something doesn’t seem to be working, take the pictures as if it does work you will probably want them So without any further delays here is my mission. I launched my main ship which contained my Laythe lander, my Tylo/Vall lander and my tug for getting the landers to the moons with the first launch. I had everything set up using asparagus staging but part way up I realized I would want to keep a couple of the empties or I would end up really struggling on the transfer. Luckily I had enough delta V to make this work so this launch was highly successful. Stage 2 was to start the refuel process; the first refuel ship took up 6 Kerbodyne 7200 fuel tanks and had a little left in the fuel tanks of the upper stage. Flying this mission it seemed to me that this wasn’t ideal and I could do it more efficiently so for the second stage of refuelling I built my Mk2 refueler. This used a little less fuel but was an absolute pig to fly and wasn’t worth the effort, I also thought I better take up some extra monopropellant as I will have a number of dockings and don’t want to run out. This was unnecessary as I had massive amounts of monoprop left over. Even though I thought I had done the calculations to know how much fuel I needed to lift, it turned out that no I still need heaps more. My final fuelling mission also sent up the Pol-Bop lander as this wasn’t sent up initially to leave a docking port free on top for refuelling. The Pol-Bop lander brought 5 Kerbodyne 3600 tanks and did complete the refuelling. I didn’t take any pictures of the docking and refuelling here, and I am not sure why I didn’t. Stage 3 was transferring to Jool and establishing orbit. I got a good transfer with a minimal wait and set off for Jool, of course the good transfer did mean a very slow transfer but sometimes it is worth it. I aerobraked hard at Jool to set myself up in orbit approximately halfway between Laythe and Vall so as to control the amount of delta V to go to each moon. In retrospect I should probably have set up between Vall and Tylo as I used a lot of fuel in transfers to Pol and Bop that would have been reduced further out. Having established myself in orbit I sent the first landing crew out. Jeb and Bob jumped into the lander, which was already attached to the tug. The tug moved to a safe location and set up for the burn to Pol. Following a fairly uneventful trip the boys circularized at Pol and prepared the lander for descent. A fairly innocuous spot was picked from the window and the deorbit burn commenced. It was a very easy landing on Pol as there was heaps of fuel so a very slow descent was used. Aster collecting as much science as was readily available Jeb and Bob jumped back in and headed back into orbit. They then went with a minimum velocity escape from Pol (as I had got this wrong a few times I don’t have any pictures of the return as I didn’t know if it would work) After rendezvousing with the ship the lander docked, swapped out its crew for Dodfred and Rodsey, cleared all the science to the lab and cleaned the experiments. The lander then redocked to the tug (which was not refuelled) and headed out to Bop. Circularized on arrival at Bop and aimed for a fairly high point to land on. Landing was made at 17,495m and was one of the more difficult as Neither Dodfred nor Rodsey were a pilot so there was no SAS on the lander. After getting out and collecting science and planting a flag it was time to head back. Very straightforward ascent and circularization, rendezvous and docking. The return to the main ship was more interesting, as my escape burn was probably all wrong so there was a huge (422 m/s) burn required to match planes that I hadn’t factored in to my fuel calculations. I then had a circularization burn (257 m/s) before the rendezvous proper could start. At this stage I had a little over 1000 m/s left in the tug and I was thinking I am going to have to quickload from before going to Bop and refuel the tug, however I persevered in case I might make it, however as I wasn’t expecting to keep it I stopped taking pictures. Along the way I transferred all fuel from the lander to the tug to give it a little more and got fairly close to the main ship. I ran out of fuel while closing the final gap, however as I had over 1400 monopropellent I allowed it to try to finish with RCS, which was successful. I then docked the tug to the Tylo/Vall lander and the lander to the main ship. The Tylo/Vall lander was crewed up with Wehrsen and Lemvis and was ready to go once the tug was refuelled. The transfer to Tylo was fairly easy, but the circularisation burn at Tylo took a fair bit of fuel (730+ m/s). After having saved in orbit I then spent a large number of attempts to land on Tylo. Again I ran into the problem of lack of confidence in success resulting in fewer than ideal pictures. After 10 attempts I was able to impact Tylo at a speed that did not result in an explosion, I was however falling over on the bounce. I finally worked out the right position for the burns and stuck the lander to the surface of Tylo. What it wasn’t was a pretty landing and the craft was on a 15° lean, luckily it was a stable lean so the crew disembarked, collected their science and planted their flag. Then with a lot of hope flowing they attempted to get back to orbit, as they had less fuel left than planned (only 2744 m/s). Having established a low apoapsis (30 km) the circularization burn was planned and showed there was sufficient fuel, which was a major relief. While retracting the landing gear I discovered the impact had been sufficient to make one of the legs immobile. I then rendezvoused the tug and docked it to the lander and towed it on back to the main ship. After docking, transferring science, cleaning out the experiments and swapping Dodfred and Robsey for Thomfal and Wehrbert we set off for Vall. The transfer to Vall was very easy and with a full fuel load in the tug I didn’t even think about the need to document it properly. The transfer and refinement put me on track for a polar orbit with only 236.5 m/s required to form the desired orbit. Undocked the lander from the tug burnt for deorbit and proceeded to land on Vall. Again the science, moonwalk and flag followed by ascent. Rendezvous and docking were carried out by the lander as there were huge fuel reserves. The tug then dragged the lander back to the main ship. The tug then docked back to the main ship, the experiments were transferred to the lab, the crew returned to their quarters and the experiments cleaned incase a second Vall landing was to take place. The ship was then readied for sending the Laythe lander out, at this stage it was discovered that you can’t dock through a decoupler, and it was also noticed that I had missed two parts from the main ship. There was supposed to be a probe core to allow the main ship to return by itself and there should have been a decoupler to allow the Hitchikers to separate so they were guaranteed an easy landing. At this stage I also didn’t know how much delta V would be available to the main ship as the Laythe lander was still attached and quite heavy. It was decided to launch a rescue/refuel mission to make sure the main ship could return. The rescue ship was simple, 4 radially docked nuclear engines with probe cores attached to enough rocket to get it close enough to the main ship. Once in orbit I decided to refuel the lowest stage to maximise available delta V so a refuel for the refuel was launched. I then planned the transfer at the lowest fuel usage window. Part way to the transfer window I decided with how much delta V I have I can use a faster sub optimum transfer and get there much sooner so the plan was changed and 800 m/s extra was spent to shorten the transfer by more than 250 days. Once in Jools SOI I adjusted the orbit to get a Laythe encounter inbound. I set up for aerocapture at Laythe and for little fuel got myself into a 100 km orbit. I then sent the main ship to Laythe to meet up with the refuel. The refuel then rendezvoused with the main ship and each engine was docked to the main ship. The whole main ship with Laythe lander still attached dropped its periapsis to enable the lander to hit a clear point in the Sagen sea. After transferring out the last of the fuel in Laythes flotation tanks the main ship was undocked, turned around and burnt to lift its periapsis above the atmosphere. The laythe lander then proceeded down into the sea on parachutes, which given that there were many were staged to open at various altitudes to minimise the stress on the lander. Following a safe landing the boys (Jonbas and Elger) went for a swim in the sea, and collected the science. They were very disappointed to discover you cannot take seismic readings in the sea but had to make do with what their instruments offered. After jettisoning some parachutes (5T worth) they ascended. The ascent was odd as KER was saying I was still splashed down. I don’t know what caused this but it was a major problem for me. I got into orbit easily enough but I was still splashed down, so there was no time warp available nor could I rendezvous, and because I was moving over land I couldn’t change vessel. I tried getting the guys out and then rendezvousing with them, but it just kept crashing the game when I tried to take both out. Eventually while feeling extremely frustrated I decided to try to control from the docking port to see if it would recognise that as not splashed down. When I did this it offered me to undock the decoupler, how a decoupler can be docked I don’t know, but this was the magic I needed, I was now recognised as in orbit. I then rendezvoused the main ship and spacewalked the guys and their experiments to the main ship. Docking wasn’t an option as there were no free docking ports and I had forgotten the RCS ports on the lander. Having successfully landed on every moon and returned with science it was time to head home. I moved the main ship to a circular orbit at around Bops altitude. I then brought the tug and landers (which had two of the crew inside in case I had wanted to do an extra landing) to meet up with the main ship. I disconnected an engine to free up a docking port, transferred the crew from the the Pol-Bop lander to the Tylo/Vall lander and all the fuel from the Pol-Bop lander too. I then docked the tug and lander filled up the main ship to max fuel,transferred the crew to their quarters, undocked the tug, redocked the engine and we were ready to head home. I nice early transfer window was available, so the journey home started only 34 days later. 1 course refinement after a year put me on a good course for setting up an aerocapture at Kerbin. I set up my aerobraking periapsis andgot a reasonable aerocapture, though the apoapsis was higher than desired, so I merely raised periapsis instead of circularizing. I then circularized at periapsis to give a 150 km circular orbit. When I had done a few orbits a landing window opened up (large patch of water in the sun). My deorbit burn had me passing over KSC on the way down which gave the crew their first decent view of home in about 6 years. Landing was primarily by parachute with a small burn to ensure a safe landing speed. 18648.9 science points were returned along with the 12 crewmembers who were now well experienced. Hopefully this will satisfy all the requirements for this challenge (what level I am not sure, I was aiming for a Jebediahs level but not sure if I hit everything needed)

Hi Laie, hopefully this will give you the rest of the information you need for assessing my attempt. Weight and Part count on Launch Pad -Lander – 538 parts and 3,693 Tons -Refuel – 319 parts and 4,500 Tons, the other two weren't much I needed an awful lot of fuel to haul my lander to Eve and be certain that I would have enough left to get back to orbit, given that I had never flown an Eve ascent. I had done a lot testing of other stages of the system but thought the ascent could wait for the actual mission. Weight and part count on Eve pre liftoff – 239 parts and 501 Tons. This was both lighter and fewer parts than planned as touchdown was a little hard, I broke off two LFB’s and the X32 tanks that were on top of them, plus the 3 legs on each. Here I was very lucky as they were the first stage and not the second so I only lost what little dV they had left. Also due to the difficulty I had in executing the landing burn, and the concerns I had about whether I had landed on the correct slope I completely failed to take pictures of the landing. (I had done previous landings where the slope was wrong so Jeb couldn’t get back onto his ladder, so I was fairly lax taking the pictures as I didn’t know if this would be the final one) I also got distracted by the explosions of the X32 tanks when they detached. Price tag for the mission as a whole would be in the order of 4.6 million, with very little if any fund recovery. Version 0.90 Mods used – MechJeb, KER, Hyperedit for testing various parts. I found the landing site by reading through the forums for someone who had posted co-ordinates of a nearly flat nearly sea level point, as I had built in enough dV so I wanted to land at less than 100m. However one thing I discovered was that although MechJebs landing guidance can hit a fairly small target normally, when you are doing your deorbit burn in a 1000 Ton behemouth it isn’t quite so precise so I couldn’t hit the spot I had tested at, and as part of the testing was the ladder I hadn’t thought a slight change in slope would put it out of reach. What went wrong, I didn’t test the rover at all and so had to ride around on the ladder as I didn’t get them set up right, this also meant I lost out on a lot of science as I couldn’t get it off the rover. I think it was my third attempt where my landing was on the right slope, and of course this was my worst landing, but it was enough, my first attempts were smoother with no broken parts. I would probably put on a lot more torque components on it; I was probably out by a factor of 5 for comfortable control. Also given the dV I had left I probably should have brought a second man and should have built something smaller and lighter. Hopefully between this and my original submission it covers everything you would want except the landing pictures I failed to take

The actual touchdown was very difficult and that is unfortunately why I failed to take any pictures of it as I was trying to keep my speed under control, as I felt I should be doing this manually and not leaving it to mechjeb. The 2 missing tanks were on the two LFB's that were broken off by the not quite as slow as it should have been touchdown, and exploded. If you would like some pictures of the touchdown, I can redo the landing in a similar area (Due to the enourmous size of this lander even mechjeb can't hit a pinpoint landing, as I have an on orbit save.

Have added titles to the pictures to make it all a little bit clearer. Second launch is the tanker, third the rover. The rover had its own launch as it was an afterthought between fueling up for the transfer and the transfer itself

So I finally got there and back. 4 launches (lander, rover, return ship and fuel tanker) for a total cost of 4,536,158 in funds and 8,679,850 kg. The lander on launch was 2,046,853 funds 3,679,850 kg The refuel ship was 2,231168 in funds and 4,500,990 kg ( I wanted only one refuel launch) The return ship was 53,127 funds and 114,315 kg The rover was 205,010 funds and 370,820 kg It took a couple of attempts on the landing, as I had tested landing the ship and the ladder before starting the actual mission only to discover that to reach the ladder I needed the right angle on the ground. I used mech jeb for the deorbit burn as I had a small landing area I was targeting and wouldn't trust myself to hit it, however the landing burn was carried out manually. Unfortunately I see that I didn't take a picture of the craft after landing, which may be good as it was a little rough and broke off one of my boosters. Luckily I knew I had way more than necessary delta-v so it was only a minor annoyance. My second ladder issue was on my rover, I hadn't though about how to get off the ladder and into the rover, luckily as it was remote I could just drive along with Jeb on the ladder. This was a painful way of doing things as he kept falling off and is was 12km of driving across the sea to get a soil sample. We made it eventually, and I see I also forgot to take a picture here (I was quite frustrated at this stage) then turned back to head home. Drive back 12km and we are ready to launch. The ascent was fairly uneventful but I see I had one pair of separatrons triggered on the wrong stage, luckily this didn't cause a problem. I had 2000 m/s of delta V left on reaching orbit from my launch height of around 50m. So I am certain I could launch from sea level. Rendezvoused with the return vessel, docked, transferred my samples, detached the lander can, waited for the transfer window and headed home. Left the LV-N engine in a solar orbit to avoid contamination and sorted myself out for landing. During this I noticed Engineer was giving me wrong numbers on my deltaV when I was using it twice as fast as expected, luckily I had enough to land close to home. The gallery is below which should thoroughly document the mission, and I believe that this is good for level 3

As there was a lab already launched as the core of the station the team at KSC thought sending up the experiments might be worthwhile. Having successfully docked these to Hotel KSS they moved on to planting a Khristmas tree on Eeloo. It was a simple idea, and they thought what better than a star at the top and decorations of science. 3 yrs later and we have Eeloo's first tree

Dec 15 - Dec 22 Put together 8 days into the one album.