jinnantonix

Awesome, and well done. Link? I am worried that my computer can't handle this. But I am going to attempt anyway. Working now on reduced part count.

I see your point. I am not really using the freighter as a rover, even though I could. I will create a separate craft. BTW, do you know if anyone has ever completed a Jool 500?

@JacobJHC I have a question about the rules. My architecture includes vehicles that satisfy two requirements simultaneously (see example below). In this case I have a large freighter (I will deploy 2 per moon) which can carry a minimum of 50 tons of cargo ( 25t for Laythe/Tylo) and also up to 5 Kerbals between biomes and also to orbit. Do I get points for both requirements with a single craft capable of doing both roles? Rovers and planes 4. Long-range transports (rovers, boats, or planes) are required for your colony to be a success. Send at least 2 to each moon. Each should be able to transport at least 5 kerbals. (+1 point for each long-range transport vessel that can carry at least 1 short range vehicle (+1 point per vehicle carried). Ideally they should also be able to generate power. (+4 points for each long-range transport; +1 additional point if it can carry two resource transports; +3 additional points for any fuel-using transports that can replenish that fuel; +1 additional point for transports that have a science lab). Space Transport 3. Large freight transports are going to be important for your colony. Each should be a highly specialized vehicle able to lift or drop at least 50 tonnes of cargo from the surface of the moon it is sent to (or 25 tonnes for Laythe and Tylo). Each freighter should be able to get into a stable orbit of that moon with a full load of cargo (50 tonnes),and return to their moon's surface with another full load (50 tonnes) of cargo. Send at least 1 to every moon. (+10 points for every transport; +1 point for every 10 tonnes of cargo capacity to/from the surface of that moon; +4 points for ability to replenish fuel; (points are awarded per transport)). Edit: This may come down to whether a rover can have liquid fueled rocket engines, or should be electric.

@JacobJHC I am really starting to love this challenge. I am wondering, has anyone actually achieved the goal of 500 Kerbals in the Jool system when using life support? Based on my calculations so far, I am sure it can be done but Wow! what a challenge. As I develop the solution I have found that in order to enhance my Laythe colony's resupply and science gathering I am keen to go underwater. Water ballast tanks are a must. I find this simple mod does the trick. Download here. Approved? And why oh why can't I mine water on Vall? The scanner says: Water = resource unknown. Hmmm.

LOL. I mean water to mine and consume by thirsty Kerbals. Not to float on.

I have loaded USI-LS and Planetary Base Systems, and having some fun designing a base. I can support 15 Kerbals in a neat 32t base which works on land and floating on the Sagen Sea. The only problem in using this base is the availability of water. Apparently in the Jool system only Laythe has water, and I have learned that Vall has no water, I was so certain that it should have.

Mining on the launch pad. Scanner advises heaps of water available. Have tried on Minmus also, same. Can't mine for ore either. Edit: I reloaded all the mods from scratch, and reverted to a previous save. All good now. Sorry, just having a noobie moment.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't water required . And most of Jool's moons have no water ?

Apologies if this is a hopelessly noobie question. I am using v1.6.9. The water drill does not collect water. Is there some trick to the deployment?

The aerocapture was actually at Laythe. The Poodle got quite hot, but the ADTP-2-3 tanks are really robust and protected the rest of the craft. Stabilisation using the hard points on the Laythe lander legs was crucial.

Define "station". Also, when you say “science data”, be aware that the M700 requires a stable orbit between 1.5 and 26 Mm. Pretty sure there are no stock parts that can get this close to Kerbol.

Hi @JacobJHC, please find below my low cost Jool-5 mission entry, at 34,663 kerbucks. V1.7.3 KSP with Breaking Ground, with KER, Trajectories, PreciseNode and MinAmbientLight, and no part mods. I had a lot of fun doing a low dV K-E-K-K-J flyby transit, and also a double Eve flyby on the return to Kerbin. The mission architecture was built around a fuel tanker station-keeping in a highly elliptical orbit around Laythe, with a lightweight re-usable “bike” to act as a tug and transport Val around the Jool system, using aerobraking at Laythe to keep the dV to a minimum, and refuelling the "bike" at the tanker for each new moon mission. The craft uses no reaction wheels, although I needed a basic RCS system in the tanker to assist with docking, and fine tuning during the flyby adjustments. https://youtu.be/bbY5DUQa2bM

ACES has the rights specs. But ULA is busy getting the Vulcan ready, and doesn't appear to be interested in bidding for any of the contracts.

I think you have nailed the constraints for Artemis perfectly. In many of the speculations around best HLS design, it has been pointed out that the most efficient design is a 3-stage lander using a transit vehicle for the first stage to get from NRHO to LLO. Much talk of re-usability, nuclear engines, etc for this transit stage. However beefing this up so it can act as a general purpose tug for various LEO to cislunar operations, and going cryogenic and expendable, makes sense. Being able to use this to craft to deliver payloads directly to the lunar surface would be an alternative to the lander carrying payloads, and allows the SLS/Orion/HLS design to focus on just humans (and all it's safety overheads). So a potential high level mission design for Artemis 3 could be: (1) Commercial carrier launches tug and static payload direct to lunar surface. Includes rover, science instruments, emergency habitation etc. (2) Commercial carrier launches tug + HLS (lander ascent and descent vehicle) to NHRO or lowly elliptical staging point (3) SLS/Orion delivers humans for LOR at staging point, shortly after HLS system arrival. Humans transfer to lander, and tug delivers lander to LLO or suborbital path to lunar surface landing site, tug expended Expendable HLS descent vehicle carries the humans to the lunar surface After surface operation HLS ascent vehicle has sufficient dV to return directly to the stage point. Re-usable AV? Transfer to Orion and return to Earth. So, one SLS launch and two large commercial launches, with one LOR and no fuel transfer required to complete the mission. If the AV is reusable, launch 2 would carry fuel + pumping facilities and provisions instead of the AV.

I am sure the teams putting together the HLS bids are well aware of that. My video above simulates a 3-stage craft with a 2.7t ascent vehicle and 1 ton surface payload delivery (including humans and life support). The ascent vehicle is reusable provided it can be refueled at the Gateway. Perhaps this is adequate to achieve the Artemis mission goals?

Excellent graphic, with a lot of really interesting information. I tried to follow your "napkin maths", but with difficulty. The basic points I get are: LLO is ideal for optimising the lander for delivery of payload to lunar surface. Basically you can get a better lander and more payload to surface per mission. NRHO or Lagrange Point is ideal if building a space station, and LLO or ELO is not ideal. Lowly ELO is better than highly ELO is better than LLO. For delta-v, lowly ELO is better than NRO, Lagrange, and highly ELO. Good point in favour of the Gateway. From your points above, it does make sense that if there is a space-station, NRHO or Lagrange is the best location for station-keeping. So, two options emerge if Gateway happens, then the Artemis plan for NRHO is OK as it provides best station-keeping, though places stress on the lander design **, and reduces payload to surface. if no Gateway ++ then: Modify Orion to allow it to go to lowly ELO, as this gives best compromise between station-keeping and payload to surface Scrap Orion and start again with an Apollo style capsule, and potentially single launch to lowly ELO. Notes: ** if the current tender for HLS fails to come up with an adequate facility for humans and payload delivery, it may yet spell doom for the Artemis architecture, and Gateway. ++There is probably no option for lander re-usability in the "no Gateway" option. There is no question that FH could be man-rated, the same for New Glenn, but it would result in a delay of at least a decade. And if we were going to do that, then we would likely scrap Orion in it's current form and rebuild that with a LLO capability, and also scrap SLS altogether in favour of FH and NG. So $Billions in development costs wasted, and throw a lot of people out of work, probably lose a lot of skills and experience. What staff remain will likely be tax-payer funded to achieve the man-rating on the commercial carrier. This would kill the current inertia toward a moon landing this decade, with no certainty it would start up again. Not sure why anyone would want that. My vision (and I am sure I am not alone) is that FH and NG will eventually be man-rated and will be the primary carriers of humans and equipment to space by 2030 and beyond. The R&D for this can and will be carried by the commercial carriers, not the taxpayer. If we want anything to happen this decade, we need SLS and Orion. The only question is whether we go ahead with Artemis and Gateway, or redesign for Apollo style single non-re-usable missions.

The SLS is designed to launch Orion, and it is by far the closest to achieving human rating. The fact is, Orion is a big craft, with room for 6 astronauts, much bigger and heavier than the Apollo return capsules. The intent is to have a craft more versatile for multiple BLEO operations (cislunar, heliocentric and Mars), and ability to return directly from heliocentric orbit to the Earths surface (ie survive >3km/s re-entry speeds). The downside of this is that it is just too big to get to LLO and return to Earth in a single launch with current rockets. A bigger human rated rocket is a decade away at least. I don't understand the obsession with getting Orion to LLO. Why is it necessary? Why not make it standard practice for Orion to enter a highly elliptical orbit, and lunar operations must then be capable of getting to and from the lunar surface from that point? I simply do not see the downside of that, and creating complex a difficult scenarios to achieve Orion LLO are only going to add cost and time. A better question: "Is the Gateway needed?". I would argue, no. There is no reason why each mission could be completed with an ad hoc LOR in highly elliptical orbit. But having a staging point for cargo delivery and a permanent position for advanced comms has some advantages. Here is my RSS simulation of Artemis 3 which assumes LOP-G is in place, and completes a manned lunar landing with two launches (SLS + FHe). I think this is basically what NASA is aiming at. My 3-stage lunar lander meets the spec for HLS, but may be too small in physical dimensions to support 2 astronauts on the surface for 2 weeks. The current HLS proposals seem to be too large and heavy to complete the mission from a single FHe launch. The options are single SLS Cargo launch (bad idea, way too expensive) or better two commercial Falcon Heavy launches with EOR.

@JacobJHC I have noticed there is no entry for "low cost", and thinking of giving it a try. Are there any rules regarding re-usability, e.g. subtracting recovered costs of the returning craft at the KSC, or is it just the cost of the craft (or crafts) at launch from KSC (no recovery)?

Without seeing your design, it is difficult to be sure. Can you move your rapier engine boosters so that they are aligned with the centre of mass of the craft? So when you eject them the CoM of the craft remains unchanged.

@Jestersage , further to @tater 's comment, Artemis proposes that the Lunar Gateway (LOP-G) will be in Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit, which is roughly equivalent to an elliptical polar orbit with Pe=2,000km over the north pole and Ap=60,000km over the south pole. Any en route craft (Orion or Lander) would do a TLI adjusted to pass close over the lunar north pole and dock with the LOP-G when it is about midway to Pe. The lunar lander undocks, decelerates to LLO, descends and ascends, then rendezvous and docks with the LOP-G. The crew then transfer to the Orion to return to Earth.

Sounds like a project manager's nightmare. I have seen this happen, where the delivery folk are incentivised to delay, or to sabotage presales activities, so they can sit on their hands and still get paid. Not saying it is the case here, but it does happen.

Boeing doesn't get paid until they deliver against the milestone. Yet they will have fixed outgoings for their permanent staff, and requirements for fixed outcomes against their contractors. So there is actually an incentive to deliver against a timeline, they need to reach the milestone or they run out of cash.

This will require additional avionics, a very complex remote control services (via the LOP-G?), more mass to orbit for lander legs and fuel - all for "possible salvage potential"? I think the plan for reuse needs to be very well established to make this a viable strategy. To resolve the problem of ejecta, attach stretchy, light weight, heat resistant fabric/mesh between the lander legs. On leg deployment, the material forms a skirt from above the pads, to a few meters below. Each craft has it's own skirt.

Apparently. At least that's what I observed.

I understand why a crasher stage looks ugly, but what the difference between a crashed drop tank or two, and a descent stage sitting neatly on the surface? How much are we willing to compromise efficiency with aesthetics? I sense the idea of the Dynetics design is that the AV is re-usable, including legs. If that is the case, then it's either a big inefficient single stage craft, or drop tanks/crasher stage.