DennisB

My Eve plane was optimized for low speed, safe landing, high altitude flight and science collection. It could reach 50m/s at low altitude, 55m/s at cruising altitude (4-7km) and 83m/s at maximum altitude (22km). It had a Mk2 cockpit for two kerbals, a cargo bay for all science experiments and foldable wings for easier transport on a rocket. It could land on the sea, but couldn't take off. It was patience necessary, but I explored Eve with it, and visited all biomes.

Yes, I know that setting. I read your posts and I know, you use it. Back then, I didn't understand, why it was important for you to turn the night into day. I found your screenshots with the original light settings good too. I simply didn't know, how much worse dark pictures look on other screens different from mine.

That's interesting, because on my laptop, most of the pictures look fine, and I have the brightness setting of my screen on minimum. I looked at the pictures on the computer in the office, and on that monitor, with a much brighter screen setting, the dark parts of the pictures looked much darker, than on my laptop. I think, the contrast there is simply too high. I use the same settings always. Were my screenshots from the VAB, Kerbin, Gilly and Eve dark too? I think, Bop is really dark, even at daylight.

Episode 3 - Bop, and more vessel introductions (Feb 28-Mar 03, Mission day 1-58) This episode will cover the entire science collection on and around Bop, the drive on the surface, some refueling, more vessel introductions, and probably the first highlight of the mission. I don't know, if the intro or the launch from Kerbin already was a highlight for you, but this one will be something different. I hope, it won't be too confusing, but I will present the timeline as it happened. That means, I will jump between the vessels and missions, like I did it in the game, so you can get an impression, how everything happens for me while playing. This episode is really long (probably the longest), because I give more detailed descriptions of the vessels, which I didn't do in the first episode, to keep the tension, and I won't go into the details as much in the future episodes at the repeating processes. Part 1 Introduction of Sloth - Crew: Reibrecht (pilot), Meidunja (scientist) Part 2 Introduction of Wasp - Crew: Valentina (pilot), Ernstpold (engineer) Part 3 Introduction of Tetrapus - Crew: Hemmens (pilot), Adeldorstina (engineer), Kaydre (scientist) Part 4 Introduction of Veterinarian - Crew: Jaseida (pilot), Bill (engineer) Part 5

Why don't the surface experiments count??? As you didn't mention the deployed science experiments in your Pol post, I was really surprised, and I had the hope, to get more points than you, even without the ability to "land" on water.

That's amazing, how different vessels and mission plans can exist to reach the same goal. Especially to reach Jool's lower atmosphere, I think, the only common in our missions is the crew (pilot-scientist), and that is only because you accidentally deviated from your original plan , everything else is probably as different as possible.

Episode 2 - From Kerbin to Bop (Feb 22-25) In this episode I go to my first destination, Bop. It took a little longer, than expected, because I had to do half of it twice. I used the time warp function of the alarm clock, and at maximum time warp the game didn't recognize the Tylo encounter, and I left Jool SOI again. So I had to reload for the first time, but I think, it wasn't really my fault. In the future, I won't use that function. I will use the alarm clock, but I will start the time warp manually, and won't use maximum speed, if I have a SOI change on my route. I chose Bop as my first destination for several reasons. All the landings with Wasp (except on Tylo) will be refueling trips too. I will arrive to the Jool system with mostly empty tanks. To fill the tanks for the missions to the large moons, it's the best to begin with the small moons, Bop or Pol. I start with Bop, because it's more expensive in terms of dV, so it's better to go to there, when the spaceship has less mass. On the way to Bop I can use a Tylo gravity assist to reduce the inclination, and I have the tanks less than half full at the transfer to Pol. With the tanks nearly full, it's easier and cheaper to go to the large moons fron Pol than from Bop.

Episode 1 - Introduction and launch (Feb 19) Here we are again. My KSP clock shows 672 hours, and the next mission is ready to launch. According to my latest calculation, it should be possible to collect up to 94,2% of the theoretically available science points of the Jool system, if my calculation is correct. I'm sure, you all are curious to see the rocket after that long time waiting.

I wanted to do this already last year, when I did this mission, but my computer was simply too weak for it. It struggled already with KSP alone at a significant part count. With my new computer it's much better. It still lags, but it runs much smoother, even if I'm capturing a video. I want to make videos on my Jool mission, and as a test, to find out, how it works with video capturing, editing and publishing, I decided, to redo some parts of the Eve mission. I used the original save files, and tried to fly the same way, like I did it back then. Meanwhile I would do some parts in a different way (I would use more throttle control). The launch from Kerbin is straightforward. This is a little better, than the original. The Eve descent was a little hotter, but I landed this time on a more horizontal terrain, and the landing was really smooth. Meanwhile I landed on all moons of Jool, so I have more experience in that. At the end I included a small flight of the airplane. The Eve ascent is worse than the original. I tried to avoid the explosion of the rocket, and switched SAS to stability instead of prograde, but the rocket still exploded, and I needed longer to get it on the right course again.

A Jool plane with 45t , respect. But how does it fit to the title "a score of hapazardly stacked oversized vehicles"?

After my successful Eve mission (mission report below) it's time for the next big one. According to the rules of the challenge it will be a Jool 5.5 on Jeb level. 5.5, because it will include, beside the 5 moons of Jool, Jool's lower atmosphere too. My original goal was to break the record of the collected science points, which is currently held by @king of nowhere, but I have inside information, that a new record mission is already on the way, and it may be finished before mine. But, after I invested hundreds of hours in this, I will do it anyway. Since the Eve mission I made some progress in KSP. This time I will perform some gravity assists and aerobraking too, and I will use ion engines. I used this time advanced tweakables to adjust the fuel flow and for AUTOSTRUTS, which is essential at this complexity. What is still the same in this mission too, I will do it without heatshields. The spaceship for this mission will be the Tree of Life, and like in the evolution, not all parts will survive till the end. I designed it to reuse parts within the mission, but not for further mission. So, if you get stressed (or get in some other unwanted medical condition) when you see space debris, you may not read the further posts. It will be messy. The parts of the Tree of Life: - Falcon - Jellyfish - Wasp - Sloth - Tetrapus (it reminds me on an Octopus, but with only four tentacles it's definitely not an Octopus, but I don't want to get problems with copyright) - Veterinarian - Cocoon and there are six uncrewed vessels without proper names. Which will survive the evolution process? I set a rule for myself, that all crewed vessels will have a pilot onboard. This leads to a crew of 11 kerbals (5 pilots, 3 engineers and 3 scientists). Like on the last mission, I want to minimize the number of reloads. Here are the stats. There are a lot of stages, and they will change through docking and EVA-construction. There will be only a single launch from Kerbin. The cost of the spacecraft is astronomical, because it has 27 RTGs and several xenon tanks, which makes almost half of the total cost. I could lower the launch mass below 1000t, but that would make the already very long mission 20-30 hours longer. The engine specs 12x Mastodon and 8x Separatron only for the launch on Kerbin 2x Vector 2x Wolfhound 1x Reliant 1x Rapier 1x Terrier 6x Nerv 9x Cub 4x Twitch 6x Dawn 4x small electric engines for the propellers I will launch the mission soon, but before, I want to figure out how to make videos. Videos of the most complex parts of the mission would be cool, because I could focus on the controls and wouldn't need to think about making enough screenshots at the right time, and you could become a better impression, what happens.

That could be possible too. I have more drag for sure. I see it, when I reach level flight on Jool, my speed decreases much faster. It will be interesting on the real mission, if the problem is somehow random, and the plane will behave different again. Then I will need fast reactions. Luckily I have five engines of four different types, so I can switch some of them on and off to get the best balance.

It's good, that I decided to do further research on that. It turned out, that it wasn't exactly that, what I thought, so a redesign, like mentioned in the second option, wouldn't solved it. The troubleshooting was a really difficult process. I tried to change the fuel flow, because the imbalance could come from increased drag, so moving the center of mass forward could be a good idea, but it didn't work. After several tries, I managed somehow to reach level flight, so I could start the ascent, and at the first staging, the docking port collapsed, which never happened during the development process. I checked the autostrut settings, and I was surprised. One docking port was set to heaviest part and the other one to parent part, but on the old plane the second one doesn't have any autostrut set. According to this, I removed the autostrut on the actual plane. This time, the docking port didn't collapsed, but it was still floppy. Conclusion, the connection of the docking ports are more stable, if they are attached in the VAB/SPH than attached in space. I fixed it with a physical strut, but the plane was still too unstable. It seems, there is still a misalignment, but not on the yaw axis, like I thought before, but on the pitch axis, which I can't solve. The only solution is, to mitigate it. I added two more reaction wheels, two more ruders, and increased the gimbal range of the Vector engines. It still doesn't fly as well, as it should, but I could reach orbit. Good, that it had a dv margin of 500m/s, now I need most of it. Let's see, what will come at Tylo, because this statement is still true.

To avoid it, set the gliding coefficient to 1 (I don't know, how it's called in English, but it is an adjustable bar in the middle of the window). I know that, and in the development phase I tested the plane from orbit to orbit of course. My problem has a different reason. Because I do some docking and EVA construction during the mission, my plane is simply not the same, when I arrive at Jool, as when it would come fresh from the factory.

After some troubleshooting in the first half of the test mission, now I'm facing the first major issue. Till now, I could solve all the problems with simply adding or replacing a part, and beaming the revised vessel to its position to continue the test. But now, my Jool plane failed. I knew from the beginning, that it has a critical part in its design. I developed solutions for Laythe and for Jool. I was really happy, that the solution at Laythe worked, and was confident, that the one for Jool will do it too, because its more precise. But it looks like, it's not precise enough, and the plane gets out of control in the lower atmosphere. (I shouldn't wonder, because it has 6 times the mass, 3 times the wing area and the speed as on Laythe at the same atmospheric pressure). These are the things, why I do the test mission, because some problems don't occur, when I beam the vessel to its position directly from the VAB, they come only, when I do the mission step by step. Now there are two possibilities (probably more of course, but I don't want to consider them). There are two possible adjustments, which I could do in-flight, but I'm not really confident, that they will solve the problem, and I still would have to test them. But I could invest that time to replace the critical part by a new one and test that, which sounds more promising. However, this will delay the launch. I had the hope, that I'll be able to launch the mission next week, but now.... And why is this necessary? Because I want to keep my plane design, my rocket design and the whole mission plan, which are, in my opinion, really cool.

Those nearly vertical surfaces in the middle (at the air intakes) don't make sense for me. They make almost nothing, just drag. What are they supposed to do?

I thought about several challenges in the past few months, but I don't have enough time to work on all of them. I decided to post the first one though, because I don't want to wait, until most of you switch to KSP2. The challenge is, to land on as many different celestial bodies, as you can, and plant a flag. BUT.... There is only a single launch allowed from the KSC, and at the end you have to return to Kerbin and land. No ISRU allowed! No docking or reusing of discarded parts allowed!!! --------------------------------------------------------------- This means, you have to land your whole ship (or the remaining part of it) on each celestial body, no landing with the personal jet pack from orbit. EVA construction is allowed to reconfigure your ship (you can even use docking ports for this purpose), but you can use only the actual parts of your ship. Once you left a part behind (over 1km distance), that part can't be used for the rest of the mission. There must be at least one kerbal onboard, which should be able to plant a flag at each landing and climb back into the vessel. The kerbal has to survive the final landing on Kerbin together with the command pod (or chair or whatever), no landing with the personal parachute. I think, this could be an interesting challenge, with a wide range of different approaches and strategies. -------------------------------------------------------------- The ranking The major score is the number of the visited celestial bodies. Because each celestial body counts only once, and no ISRU is allowed, it doesn't make sense to land anywhere more than once, except Kerbin. The mission starts and ends on Kerbin, but it counts only for the scoring, if you land there during the mission, between landing on two other celestial bodies. To get onto the leaderboard, you have to achieve at least 3 points. I think, the simplest tour would be Mun-Minmus-Gilly or Mun-Minmus-Ike, but if you want more points.... I'm curious, which combinations will be favored. If the major score is the same, the order depends on the highest ranked body visited, if it's the same, then the second highest, and so on. The ranking of the celestial bodies are: Eve--Kerbin--Tylo--Laythe--Duna--Moho--Vall--Eeloo--Mun--Dres--Ike--Bop--Minmus--Pol--Gilly If there's still a draw, that contender gets an advantage, who managed to land at the KSC at the end. There's no precision landing necessary. If your vessel (or a part of it) is still capable to transport your kerbal to the KSC, that counts too, but it doesn't count, if the kerbal just swim or walk by itself to the KSC. If there's still a draw, the final ranking will be decided on the lower launch mass (without launch clamps). ---------------------------------------------------------- Stock and DLC parts and of course visual mods are allowed. I tend to allow informational mods, but not part and flight assistant mods. Because I don't use any mods, I can't make decisions, which one should be allowed and which not. I don't want to ban mods generally, because I want to encourage people to participate. I hope, the community can decide the question, about the mods.

I will test this later. As I opened the game tonight, the decoupler, which I couldn't remove yesterday, wasn't there anymore. Very mysterious. I thought about the docking port, and probably I could edit it, because I undocked and redocked a vessel before, so probably it wasn't the root part anymore, and maybe that would work at the decoupler too, if it would be still there.

This sounds interesting. Then I had luck, that I can remove the docking port of the spaceplane, after the separation, but at the next one, I can't remove the decoupler, so I try to replace it with a separatron (which separates to both sides). How can I determine, which vessel has a higher priority? Regarding the inventory, my problem at first was, that I filled up all slots and forgot to remove the kerbals' parachutes, so I couldn't deploy the surface experiments, because the kerbals couldn't place their jetpacks and parachutes anywhere to be able to carry the surface experiments.

Just a little progress note. I'm still on the test mission. Till now I sorted out several issues of the vessel, like missing docking ports, monopropellant and inventory slots. I had also some issues with EVA construction, but I think it's fine too for the first part. I could do the docking maneuvers (after I had the docking ports at the right place), and my refueling strategy seems to work too. In the last days my maneuvers got also much better. Now, I'm sorting out the issues of the spaceplane, where I have to modify the decouplers and the surrounding parts, because I can't modify them on EVA construction. I still don't know, on what depends, which parts can be moved in EVA construction and which not. I really hope, when I change those parts in the VAB, I don't have to redo all the staging and the fuel priority settings, because I have at the moment 57 stages and 176 fuel tanks, and it matters at several points, in which order they get empty.

My problem is not, that I can't see the trajectory. My problem is, that it's wrong, if I adjust the final maneuver. An example. As I wanted to set up the second gravity assist with the second maneuver, I grabbed the retrograde marker of the maneuver node. I pulled it as long as I got an encounter. It was at 95m/s. Then I changed the focus to that body to fine tune the maneuver. I set the step size in the maneuver edit window to the minimum, made one click, and the encounter gone. I went back to the maneuver node, pulled again on the retrograde marker, and got an encounter, this time at 140m/s. I repeated everything, and the same happened. At the next try, my encounter was already at 195m/s. This was the most extreme case. Another example, which happens mostly. If I can adjust the maneuver with the smallest steps in one direction, let's say retrograde, then I want to add some normal to it or change the timing, the trajectory jumps away. If I do the last change back, it doesn't change back to the former trajectory, it changes depending on its actual place. This makes it impossible for me to see, where I will land after the second gravity assist, so I don't know, when to start the first one. My workaround. Because my first gravity assist was at the Mun, I planned my trajectory at first without it, to get the start time right. Then I reloaded the game, and changed the first part to set up the Mun gravity assist, and eyeballed the following trajectory, to be similar to the first case, because I couldn't set up the second maneuver exactly. I ended up with two more correction burns, and my maneuver to set up the second gravity assist was also larger. The total dV was at the end slightly higher, than it would be without the Mun assist (or maybe not, because I didn't have enough oxidizer to run the chemical engines for the whole Kerbin escape maneuver, and the Nerv engines don't have enough TWR). This worked with the Mun, because its distance to Kerbin in time and space is small, but I have no idea, how I could set up a gravity assist with multiple planets, if I don't know, when to start and where I end.

The assembly is complete and ready for the final test. I really had trouble with the maneuver nodes. I don't have enough TWR to do a direct transfer to Jool, so I have to use some gravity assists. The problem is, when I have more than two maneuver nodes or more than one flyby, the next maneuver node doesn't work well. It jumps randomly, when I'm adjusting it. How do you plan sequences of maneuver nodes for gravity assists? Do you use mods for it, or do you get the maneuvers from somewhere else (developed by other users), or don't you have this issue? It took me 1,5 days IRL to get from LKO to Jool SOI . I did some calculations, and it should be possible for me to collect around 93,7% of the theoretically available science points (without the vessel recovery points). If everything works well, it should be more than enough to get the record, until @king of nowhere gets it back.

I had the plan to do the mission without CommNet, because it's allowed by the rules, and I wanted to use KerbNet for the biome search, assuming, that the necessary data is on board of the vessels, and I didn't want to move around relay satellites. But now I realized, this is no option, because with a deactivated CommNet, the surface deployed science experiments transmit the data immediately, without a communication device, and I have no chance to recover the science points . Now I have the choice to bring relay satellites with me and deactivate them, when I run the surface deployed experiments, or I have to deal with the situation, that I don't have KerbNet all the time . Update: That's really bad. I just found out, that I can't switch off the large relay antennas. I need the strongest antenna to get connection to Kerbin, but it's so strong, that I have to place it in a 450Mm orbit to guarantee, that the surface deployed experiments don't connect to it. But a HG antenna in the moon's orbit also can't connect to it, and with the next larger relay antenna, the surface deployed experiments have contact. This means, that all my vehicles, which use KerbNet, must have a large direct antenna, which doesn't work on Laythe, because it will be destroyed through drag. Luckily, I have a dedicated Science Orbiter, and on the airless moons I can probably mount an antenna on the rover. But on Laythe I have to find the biomes without KerbNet. Is it in the spirit of the rules to find that special places, where a biome covers both water and land parts, to collect landed and splashed science, during the preparation and make some notes for myself to find those places in the real misson?

That sounds really huge. Probably it must be, if you want to prevent it from flipping over when trying to climb on it with the plane. My complete assembly had on the first successful launch test 1500t launch mass on Kerbin, and it ended up with too much fuel left in Kerbin orbit. There is still room for improvement.

Do you already have a working design? I tried a more simple solution, but it didn't work, and to improve it further, I'd have to destroy the aerodynamics of my plane, which I don't want. I also don't want to add a further vessel to my assembly, because I already have six (or more?). I see, you are close to the end of your Grand Tour, so I don't have much time to beat the record, at least for a short period of time. But if you are fast enough (or I'm slow enough), it's possible, that we will do our missions at the same time.