MiniMatt

Yep, gets rather complicated rather quickly! After numerous f5s looks like overall burn time is going to be around 17 minutes. Just completed first burn for six minutes which left me with 1150m/s to intercept (at c. 11 minutes on the now nuke only powered craft). That first burn has left my Kerbin orbit within a mere 50m/s of system escape, so next lap will be a big burn, hopefully don't dive too deep into the Kerbin atmosphere As for working it out, Kerbal Engineer gives a TWR, and whilst working it out should be just about within the realm of my mathematical abilities, I've adopted a finger in the air "that feels about right" attitude to much of this mission Individual landing scenarios are worked out properly (Tylo is going to be cutting it fine) but figuring intra-system DV taking into account dumped Laythe/Tylo stages is something I've winged somewhat. Worst case scenario, after last moon visited, I can dump the main landing stage (which also forms two of the six mothership nukes) and come home on four, saving 5 tons. Can also dump the lander module with it's associated science parts (as all will be saved in lab), saving another couple of tons. Absolute worst case scenario, there's always the ion tug EDIT: INTERCEPT! In four years and thirty-four days time, five brave kerbonauts will enter the Joolian system. 290m metre periapsis, so I'll bring it closer & try to tweak a Jool-aerobrake-into-Laythe-aerobrake-into-Laythe-orbit or similar partway into the journey. Kerbal Engineer reckons mothership has ~5,500dv left - out of that fuel must come Vall, Bop & Pol landings and Tylo ascent (Tylo descent & Laythe are staged seperately). Working on ~4000dv for intra-system travel, ~2000dv for return, factoring in dumped Laythe & Tylo stages & fuel sucked for afore mentioned landings, I'm..... quietly, recklessly, confident. EDIT 2: Recklessly confident indeed HAVE ARRIVED! Have arrived from a clearly odd angle as I'm coming in very fast. Very very fast. Looked up that very useful chart linked on page 1 for aerobrake height. Guessed at around 3,500m/s speed so narrowed my periapsis down to 118,000m altitude. I'm now at 200,000m altitude, just about to enter the atmosphere, and I'm travelling at 9,762m/s. That's ~0.00003c. This is why we quicksave EDIT 4: Or maybe not so bad after all - dumped into an orbit that looks perfect for a Vall intercept. Yeah, sod the quicksave, lets roll with this. Let's get the mothership into a Vall orbit then maybe tug the lander down to Laythe. EDIT 5: Or maybe not Vall - just expending the 2.4dv needed to raise my Jool perapsis out of the atmosphere gives me a Laythe intercept on the very next lap I tells you, this mission is blessed

Thanks for the best wishes Arnie And best of luck for the final leg of your mission! I'm only taking one "lander" with one set of science modules - different landing gear/engines/wings are then docked onto this lander for the different moons; the Habitation/Science module in the middle is just the hitchhiker can and mobile lab - as you say, I'll be transferring the science plundered from Joolian shores to this mobile lab after visiting each moon, then landing the hab/lab module back on Kerbin. And just as you're almost on your way home, I'm just setting off - I'll remember to lean out the window and wave at you as we pass In contrast to the care and planning taken with the mission ship, my launcher to get the whole kaboodle into LKO in one shot was rather slapdash. The new SLS parts introduced in 0.23.5 have made me lazy and I just kept throwing MOAR BOOSTERS at it till it worked - a 1,500 ton 360 part monstrosity on the launchpad LESSON LEARNT: You will always need more struts and more SAS torque than you thought. But I'm now in a 105km kerbin orbit, with a whopping 400dv left in the launcher stage to give a handy shove toward Jool. A 2,000m/s intercept with the jolly green giant has been luckily stumbled upon - estimated burn time showing as 2m 47s - but with the four-fifths of the burn being on 6 nukes rather than the mighty S3 engine I'm going to guess at around 10m and press the big red button early. EDIT: Ooops! Not nearly early enough - another 16 minutes of burn time on the nukes to get through the remaining 1,600m/s! Going to have to do this over the course of three orbits I think

Can't believe I haven't found this thread before! It's a gold mine! Thus far my singular attempt to put a small satellite around Jool ended in a savage kraken attack shortly after entering the system. Naturally, therefore, my next attempt should be a massively complex, expensive, and ambitious mission to plant a flag on every Joolian moon & plunder their secrets for science. Early on in the design I realised knowledge was lacking so turned to the good folks in Gameplay Questions who furnished me with their customary wealth of help and who also pointed me in the direction of this thread. The result being I'm now just about ready to depart (as soon as the Kerbals over on my career save figure out how ion engines work): Will be a five-kerbal science led single launch, hopefully not requiring any refuelling or rescue and, with judicious use of quicksave, fatality free Mods are limited to kerbal engineer.

Oh I am LOVING THIS. And I haven't even left the ground yet I've always loved the engineering aspect of Kerbal, evidenced by most of my posts on this forum being taken up by Xeldrak's BSC challenges (always a finalist, never a bride, CURSE YOU GIGGLEPLEX). But this mission has thrown up two new problems for every one I've solved - and I love it I wanted to get rid of the slightly cheesy part clipping I mentioned earlier, but even the largest landing legs are shorter than the length of an unclipped nuke engine. Solution was to use pocket i-beam girders hanging off the fuel tanks and use those to mount tipper style landing legs and on the underside, wheels. This added about 700kg mass, but that was within my dv & twr safety margins. Then realised that alignment of module docking was going to have to be *perfect* given horizontal alignment of lander and wish to re-use landing gear (as tug and/or mothership engines). I can dock within a degree or so of perfect rotation, but this wouldn't be enough to prevent icky torque or wing dynamics. Even double-docking not likely to result in VAB/SPH perfect alignment. Solution realised was that only the Laythe lander module needed horizontal alignment - everything else could be classic vertical lander style - and perfect alignment here could be attained by having the Laythe module pre-attached on the mothership at launch. But.... jet engines don't have twin attachment nodes, so would have to mount ~7 tons of craft off-centre or backwards. Solution to that was the Rapier engine, because that *does* have two attachment nodes. So now I find myself redesigning the one part that I'd got right, that worked perfectly, that looked damn cool (because that's important), and the part I started this whole mission from - the Laythe SSTO configuration. It's great

Good point. Back-of-cig-packet maths, with Vall, Bop & Pol the fuel saved by tugging is likely to be in the order of 1.5 tons - ie. less than the mass of another nuke engine. But Laythe & Tylo are likely going to cut it close enough that either a tug is necessary or I've got to bring the whole damn mothership down into low orbit. Guess at least with using xenon in this instance you're not worried about missing launch windows or messing up the accuracy of your ejection angle by ejecting over multiple orbits. Question: Am I correct in assuming that the bulk of delta-v saved by leaving the mothership up high is through not having to bring the apoapsis down? Ie. bring mothership's periapsis down to 500-1000km or so (thus getting some Oberth benefit upon departure) but leave apoapsis just under the moon's sphere of influence? PS. That Jool-5 Challenge thread, and your mission report amongst it, is a goldmine!

Sound very similar to issue I had last year - thread at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/46747-Uneven-fuel-ducting-when-feeding-from-one-tank has pictures and very helpful answers from folks on this board (as ever). (short version, highly suspect fuel loop) edit: from post three on that thread things become clearer

Yeah the tug idea is growing on me. Going to need to figure out if approaching with a tug masses less than packing more dV into the lander such that it can handle it's own approach. Vall, Pol & Bop would all be approached on nukes & with ample dV. But Laythe will approach on 350isp 48-77s with fairly tight dV & Tylo, well, Tylo is scary. Perhaps a Xenon tug?

That's a really great thread & full of very useful info. The note everybody has made about leaving the mothership in a very high orbit around each moon rather than taking it in low is also going to be a key one.

The ascent stage (also forming single stage vall/bop/pol - thrust severely tweaked down for latter two) has ~3,200dv - it looks quite compact as I've allowed myself some rather cheesy part clipping with a couple of nukes occupying the same space as the outboard FL-T400 fuel tanks - I'm normally quite down on part clipping, but fitting everything on the horizontal plane is hard enough as it is. TWR of this stage on Tylo is ~1.3 full. The descent stage in the third picture is still something of a work in progress, mainly assessing the tipper style landing & strength/rigidity of docking ports, but currently has roughly 2,600dv. Was looking to aim for about 3km/s dv each way for Tylo. Good point, I usually find myself engineering in generous safety margins for every stage, the net result being that by the final burn I've got far more dv left than I was expecting. But would be heartbreaking to have to rescue such a successful mission (we hope) at the very last stage all for the want of a few teaspoons of rocket fuel

Deleting the mod is straightforward, simply nuke the mod subfolder from the GameData folder (eg. d:\steam\steamapps\common\kerbal space program\gamedata\engineer) The effect this will have on your station is less predictable. Might just load up sans the mod parts. Might... not.

Many many thanks! Bop/Pol order is really useful info and with both destinations requiring the same lander setup (ie single stage, thrust tweaked low) it shouldn't impinge upon delivery vehicle design. Re aerobraking it looks like best plan is to see where I end up upon entering system and figure out options available. Personally use very frequent quicksaves (and more than one botched aerobrake) rather than mechjeb. And intra-sytem delta-v notes are very welcome news, difference between a c.8-9000dv mothership and a c 14-15000dv one (+ all the lander fuel use) is going to be significant.

I've been Kerballing for over a year and a good few hundred hours yet, barring a single kraken ravaged satellite mission, I've never been to Jool. It's time to change that. Working on the premise that any mission not massively over-complicated and ambitious just isn't kerbal, I've decided on a single mission to tour all moons, plant a flag & recover science from each, and return budding the kerbonaut(s) safely home. Thus I've designed a modular lander, capable (I hope) of being a Laythe SSTO, a single stage Bop/Pol/Vall lander, and a two-stage Tylo lander dependent upon equipped modular engines/wings & fuel. For extra Kerbal-ness the Bop/Pol/Vall engines also form the acsent stage of the Tylo lander and form the main engines of the inter-system delivery vehicle. Being able to tune engine thrust mid-mission is going to be very useful. Preliminary lander design: (Tylo descent stage still needs some work) (1) Getting the placement order of all these modules right in the delivery vehicle requires knowing optimum order of visits. I'm guessing on working from the inside out - thus Laythe first, then Vall, then Tylo, Bop, and finally Pol? (2) Assuming Laythe first - aerobrake direct into Laythe or use Jool to slow and setup a Laythe encounter? (3) Re Laythe SSTOing - I'm quite good (now, finally) at Kerbin SSTOs - am I correct in believing that a craft that is just barely capable of Kerbin SSTO should have plenty of safety margin when Laythe SSTO-ing? Any special Laythe considerations? Noting lack of decent landing spots I've enough lift such that it can take off/land at around 40m/s on Kerbin but don't know if there are any other gotchas like needing a bit more air-hoggy compared to Kerbin. (4) Intra-system delta-v - how much is likely necessary to transfer from Laythe to Vall, Vall to Tylo, Tylo to Bop, and Bop to Poll? Delta-v maps assuming independent transfer to each from Jool would seem to suggest at least 10,000 delta-v could be needed to perform all transfers - I'm hoping this can be greatly reduced if going inter-moon. (5) Departing the Joolian system from Pol to return home - significantly harder or easier than from any other location? I'm working on about 2,000dv to get home.

Another one - the Inline Clamp-o-tron Mass 1t > 0.3t Drag 0.25 > 0.08 This one I'm rather happy about as the mass really precluded it's use in previous versions. Less significant perhaps is the Structural Fuselage: Mass 0.4t > 0.1t We also have a change to the Small Hardpoint: Mass 0.1t > 0.02t But seeing as physics significance flag was set to 1 in v0.23.5 and remains set in v0.24 the impact of this change is rather moot.

The quote below doesn't quite cover the full scope of your question but if I had to guess I'd say copyright remains with the author but author grants Squad full use. (I am not a copyright lawyer. I'm not even a personal injury lawyer. I'm actually not a lawyer of any description).

Think the LV909's been at 390 vacuum ISP for a while but yep, definite skipper change. The Poodle's also lost half a ton, going from 2.5 to 2.0 tons. (Oh and correction to note about SAS-twistyness values - looks like both 1.25m variants used to have 20 units of spin)

SAS changes! Haven't seen mentioned thus far (other than obviously implied in the first page changelog). The Advanced SAS module now has 100kg mass, down from 500kg, the regular stabiliser now masses at 120kg, down from 300kg. Further the regular one has 8 "units" of twisty-spinnyness and the advanced has 15 (think they were both 15 before with the large 2.5m variant being at 20?) I guess one could say that we've gone from not needing to use the advanced variant in the last couple of releases to not needing to use the regular one. But still options of fine tuning sas-authority is good.

Just bear in mind that if .25 is shelved because all the devs have type 2 diabetes thanks to excessive pizza consumption I'm not going to be happy

But nobody is saying no repercussions - they're saying no "game over, start again from scratch". It's pretty clear there will be repercussions, along the lines of restrictions to free reign, limited choice of basic contracts until funds and reputation recover. And that level of repercussion is something I'm fine with - the space agency might suffer temporary restrictions, but the space agency will not be shut down.

Whilst waiting, check out the latest pictures from the Rosetta probe mission - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28351234 Actual piccys of the rock they're planning to land on, from 12,000km out. It's rather spinny. And looks like a space duck.

Yeah, but ladders have been understood since well before that - yet Kerbals invent Mun-worthy rockets before ladders Real life doesn't exactly map to KSP Similar argument could made against having planetary body discovery, in that we've known about all the planets & moons, asteroid belts, and even the odd dwarf planet for ages. Yet if it would make a fun game mechanic then putting it in is a no-brainer.

I've always thought that launch windows built into the calendar could be part of the discovery mechanism - ie. science not just producing new parts but greater understanding of orbital ballet. EG. get enough graviton sensor equipped satellites up and scientists begin to better understand and predict launch windows, adding additional functionality to the in-game calendar.

Really like this idea. Gives a good reason to do something different without getting too pedantic about space cleanliness. Also gives another fun use for the ARM claw.

This second paragraph is where I'm at. I can see that the multitude of parts is rather overwhelming to new players and gradually introducing them is an ideal way of teaching systems and procedures. That said, the tree definitely needs tweaking (and undoubtedly will be) because as it stands, career mode is kind of a challenge mode for old players rather than a learning mode for new players - yes it's perfectly possible to land on the Mun without landing legs, yes it's perfectly possible to jetpack up to the capusle without ladders, but forcing this is requiring greater skills of new players than old as it stands. But as noted above, I see career as the precursor to sandbox (and the end of career as being essentially quite sandboxy in it's own right) rather than the other way round. That may not be a universal opinion. Anyway, hype train 502s are making the forums rather unusable at the moment, so I'm going to call it a night on this one and go find some Nordic crime drama on Netflix

Really? Sandbox is beginner mode? I mean, I may well be wrong, but every game I've ever played (and I gather we've played rather a lot of the same sort of games), sandbox mode is really something you do after you play the campaign/career mode.

Oh hell yeah, consequences for failure is something I can absolutely get behind. Having to restart from the beginning of the tech tree, elimination of all progress and infrastructure, starting from scratch again however - that's something I see as potentially adding zero enjoyment to career mode.