Muetdhiver

I'll gladly do Bop and Pol. Unless someone who didn't yet fly want a piece of it I'm looking forward to the Tylo landing ! About Jeb sliding : it happens when the ladder is parallel to the radial - antiradial vector IIRC. My guess is that ladders are treated as some kind of high friction surface, and when they are parallel to the acceleration vector (radial), and said acceleration is high enough, the kerbal slides off. I had it happen during Kerbin ejection and Jool insertion near Pe (i.e. when the acceleration is strongest). Turning the craft in an other orientation solves the problem.

TBH l have switched off most tanks to avoid accidentally draining them with the main engine. As for the Laythe plane let's just say that it would be best if I don't fly it . My skills are definitly lacking in the spaceplane area (I only ever built two of those, one being a caveman model). I tend to strongly disagree with aerodynamics XD.

I have redone the Jool insertion, prograde this time There is inclination to correct, but it on the way down from Ap, so we'll have to do it then. I think I created a new pull request, but I'm not 100% certain it went through. I'm a bit confused.

Retrograde orbit... oh dear... I was so focused on the Jeb on a ladder thing that it did not even cross my mind I have a save If required.

Okay cool ! I would suggest detaching and then raising the Pe of the two other landing crafts. This way the next players in line just have to do the insertions and we avoid the risk of losing MIKE plus the landers to some unfortunate Laythe or Tylo encounter on the way back to Ap. Do you guys see what I mean ?

Thanks for the recap, I got the order wrong I'm looking forward to watch the Tylo landing. TBH I will 100% fork it to do it for the giggles. The only thing worrying me is the Laythe part. It seems... hard.

The plan is to have the landers sent forward and then Jeb going from Tylo to Laythe and the Vall and then bop and pol. So no problem here. By having the landers already in orbit of the target bodies we avoid any gravity assist unpleasantness.

Just throwing my 0.02$ here : It would be best if we could avoid having MIKE doing further orbits. At some point we will meet Tylo or Laythe and get into trouble. IMO the three missions should start when MIKE get to Ap during the present orbit. I do not have tools for navigating in Jool's system. So maybe one person should juggle with all those insertions and captures and then pass on the hand for the Tylo landing mission ?

Jool arrival complete. Jeb says hello from Periapsis The insertion burn went well, some inclination leftovers had to be cleaned up. Mainly due to compensating Jeb drift. We are in high ellipical orbit at bit higher than the last moon. We have ~170 m/s left in the main tank. This could push the Pe a bit up if required. Though I doubt it would be enough to reach Laythe orbit. I wasted quite a bit of fuel between the pickups, inclination correction (100 m/s) and sign error in the correction burn (250 m/s). Well... that's what margins are for I guess I created a pull request (I hope correctly this time). Who's up ?

Okay nice. If so a previous "cheap rocket" challenge : Could be of interest.

So, this needs to be a space plane, or any SSTO or spaceplane on a rocket ? Sorry, but I'm a bit confused.

Actually I can see a way to do it with lower tech, but it would be quite a nightmare to pulloff. Here is what one can do : assuming we don't use the T4 node, one would have to go with reliant only. So, to go to Mun a way to do it would be to push one craft with an other one without docking ports for ejection burn to Mun, then use the pushed craft to land an return. As I said, quite a nightmare to pull off IMO. But yeah, 89 point is the best possible in a single launch for sure.

Turns out the the mistake was making the radial burn in the wrong direction instead of for the course correction Silly me. Don't drive while tired seems to include spaceships as well Who knew ?

Jool arrival ! The encounter was pretty poor, costing 250 m/s DV to correct the Pe to 1000km. I still have 680 m/s in the tank for the capture. After correction. It seems I may have screwed up with the correction burn or something. What I did not plan for was that the X8 tank did not display fuel units to the 0.01 like the LF-T400 does. I guess the deep space Jeb pickup did not help either. Anyway, we got there. capture will cost about 200, so I could use the 480 remaining to lower Ap quite a bit and correct the inclination. All the other tanks are full, and RCS is completly untouched This was not easy, but I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of keeping the kerbal from drifting too far off. Last, we are starting to get far from the Sun and the solar panels start to feel a tad weak... Jeb happy to arrive at last. That was a long flight.

Smooth ride so far ! I have found a way to keep Jeb drift to a minimum (~50m for 100 days) and the correction burn seems on the money. I decided to not retro burn the excess DV, since I was not really sure about it. Picking up Jeb before second part of the ejection burn. Correction burn calculation. Results : 31.68 m/s... seems I was on the money with my estimate. If all goes to plan, Jeb will reach Jool this evening. I have some screens for an album and quite a bit of video to montage.

Status report : collecting Jeb with MIKE is a pain, but I'm getting the hang of it. More seriously : I did the ejection burn, but I overcooked the burn a bit (about 30 m/s from the looks of things). Since the TWR is "not great", I had to do the burn in two passes, which complicate things. That implied a Jeb drop and Pickup between burn one and two. Next step is doing a retro burn to uncook a bit the ejection burn, then proceed as plan with the correction burn calculation and stuff.

Quick update : I have launched a Lima-Taxi variant with Jeb, and did the approach to 1km. I lost one of the spark due to a collision with the ladder trolley, so it was a tad more challenging than expected ^^ I also added some code for small burns and I am trying to put everything in a short video as it's more convenient than a pile of screenshots. (This will be my first, so it might take a while) Anyone has a good suggestion for basic free video editing software ?

In order to account correctly for MIKE's kerbal catchup manoeuvres I would have to know the net DV values for all three vector components, then solve the lambert problem as planed. This is not impossible but probably quite difficult. However, one can do the burns and note the fuel use each time. Collect the kerbal and the perform the same burns in reverse. That way the error on arrival should be about the distance crossed to pick up Jeb. Aka : not that much. Call me lazy but if this causes a 200km error it's fine IMO. I have to think about a bit more. It could be useful to note the pro-target angles on the nav ball as an insurance policy in case of mishaps.

I did it for 66 points in a caveman run (with the, but I'm 100% positive that this result can be much improved. For example I know that I can put a kerbal in Munar orbit for 93 points (using reliant only). I think that @5thHorseman 89 points is probably the lower bound. I will give it a shot when times permit. I love those kind of challenges. Terrier is 100% necessary, and I think putting drop tanks on top of the craft might help to grab a few extra m/s. Such as : The only problem I see is that without the sparks, the lower stage poor thrust will cause a lot of wasted deltaV. Side boosters require an other T3 node and are horrendeous as far as ISP is concerned. Multiple launches can't work without extra node till T5... but there is always the silly caveman idea of pushing one craft with an other without docking nodes XD

Reports for mission #21 and #22 are up ! Ladder rides to Mun and Minmus polar orbits. Lots of good science done, all biomes Low Orbit EVA's collected. A nice way to get hands on experience with ladder rides during transfers and mimimizing RCS usage. Enough science to unlock aviation and general construction aka on-pad assembly ! Missions #23 and #24 are the ladder rides to Mun and Minmus surface to pick up sandstone and munstone ! Hopefully that will allow to unlock an other T5 node. I am very tempted by picking up electrics to go greenolith hunting.

Indeed ! Moving Mike is to catch Jeb is a good idea. I can always do the inclination correction afterward. (I did four full ladder missions to Mun and Minmus, and LKO rendez-vous still costs me about 0.3 RCS fuel at best) About the Jool transfer correction burn : moving mike would be an interesting idea, however it must be done with the utmost care since if the orbit changes (net thrust is not zero) then the Jool encounter will be changed. However, as long as it's done in a clean way (i.e. precise burn, coast, then precise equal retro-burn, it would be okay in principle.) If the burns is small in terms of DV, given Mike's mass and mass ratios, we can probably assume linearity and just use the fuel gauge to do just that. (i.e. burn 1.5 unit of fuel pro-target, coast, burn 1.5 unit of fuel anti-target.) The introduced error should be acceptable if the coast distance is no more than say 100km. Once in the jool system, moving Mike to pick up Jeb makes a lot more sense than using RCS fuel. In fact this should be pretty much be the guidline for all rendez-vous : use craft's fuel, not Jeb's whenever possible.

Okay Here is what I will do : 0) Check the Duna arrival in the NCD run. If okay, proceed with 1). If not, check the procedure again. Also, add a new function for precision burns using the fuel gauge rather than the displayed DV. that way I can get to 0.1 m/s accuracy. 1) Check if MIKE inclination is really zero (compared to Mun orbital plane). Correct if necessary (turns out that small inclination will give a few m/s in normal/anti-normal and create errors in the thousands of kilometers) 2) Warp to launch window minus one day. 3) Get Jeb up there and rendez-vous. Since personal RCS fuel comes at at premium, I will try to do it at physics warp. 4) Ejection burn and navigation shenanigans. Correction burn, using precise burns based on the fuel gauge. Then propagate the new orbit and check numbers. Do a second Lambert porkchop to check for residual corrections. 5) Wait till getting into Jool SOI. 6) The plan is to get into high elliptical orbit and correct the inclination for as cheap as possible by trying to put the node as close to AP as possible. Then pass on the save with the craft high in the orbit (i.e. close to AP). Then the next persons separate the landers and do the different orbital insertions manoeuvres. I suppose we can do those manoeuvres without a Nav Tool (I could try to pull of something, but it would be rather imprecise). I will try to be frugal with the RCS fuel, but each correction burn will cost us a bit. Everyone happy with the plan ?

That is one beautifull badge. Way above my art skills XD I have my NCD duna mission close to arrival, so it will provide a good final check for the Nav tool in real conditions. If I see things correctly, we only miss our passenger now. Shall we time warp to the Jool window and then send the Kerbal up (who do we send by the way) ?

Missions #21 & #22 : Ladder rides to Minmus and Mun polar orbit to collect all biomes. Minmus goes first. The plan is to attempt a landing if possible, but not taking too many risks. Lauch goes smoothly. As does the rendez-vous with the "Tankard" tender. The Jr's are here to complete minmus high/low orbit, then ditch them. It is at this point that I realise that bob could have cleaned up the experiments. Oh well... Minmus transfer is okay, but not great. Collecting bob used quite a bit of the Jetpack RCS fuel, but not a crazy amount. I need to get better at this. Bob is having a blast floating arround for days. We finaly get the slope EVA and then I decide to abort the landing. Fuel will be too low. Next time I guess Bob goes in the capsule and we get back home The onion capsule is an amazing piece of hardware. The 20 units of ablator seems to do miracles and gets barely used up. Incredible. The science returns are really nice. We are close to 90, which could open a new T5 node. But I have other ideas. Instead, I'm going to do the same mission with Mun and then unlock construction and aeronautics for the landing gears. The Mun mission is repeat : Ladder riding is finicky but not very hard. At least for Mun and Minmus. With 129 science I can unlock the techs for on pad assembly. The objective is to build that : To get Bob to the surface of minmus with an extra refueling in LKO. Things will not go to plan...

Kudos on the debugging ! Nice to see that we're nearly done with the assembly. This is looking good. The real hard part of ladder riding will start soon