The Ultimate Jool 5 Challenge - 1.0 to 1.3

[sdj64]

I ... just sent a ship out, spent a number of hours missioning, landed on Laythe, and was about to land on Tylo ... then I noticed I'd had HyperEdit installed the whole time (as I'd been using it to test my Laythe SSTO and forgot to uninstall it for the actual mission). Do I need to do-over everything or is this okay? I should clarify that I never actually used HyperEdit during the mission.

EDIT: Nvmd, looks like my Tylo lander doesn't work so it's quite irrelevant.

If you go into the options for Hyperedit you can hide the H button without uninstalling it. I understand that it's useful for testing but don't use it in your mission of course.

I'm back! I've now finished my Great Expedition and made a thread describing it. Here it is: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/133811-Jool-5-And-Then-Some?p=2185701#post2185701

I think this is the first ISRU submission, if it is accepted (which is most likely going to happen.) Thanks to anyone who reviews it!

Wow, great mission! Too bad you could not get Eve but SSTOing there is another whole challenge. It's great that we could see all of your attempts, not just the successful ones. It really shows the work you put into it. I'd put some small landing gear on it but it looks like you pulled it off without. Mammoth engines have pretty good crash tolerance.

[Whovian]

I just restarted my mission, this time with a Tylo lander that actually WORKS ...

If all goes to plan, this mission is going to have a spaceplane Laythe lander, a reverse Laythe assist to get into Jool orbit, a relatively small Tylo lander, a mothership that doubles as a Vall lander, and an ion-powered Bop/Pol lander.

Oh, and I'll take the shuttle retrieval of crew option.

Edited September 12, 2015 by Whovian

[cubinator]

Wow, great mission! Too bad you could not get Eve but SSTOing there is another whole challenge. It's great that we could see all of your attempts, not just the successful ones. It really shows the work you put into it. I'd put some small landing gear on it but it looks like you pulled it off without. Mammoth engines have pretty good crash tolerance.

Thanks! The problem with landing gear is they're too small for such a big ship. The mammoth engine was the most efficient engine I could get without a ridiculously low TWR, and I found it's really good for my purposes.

First to approve your Expedition

What a looooong journey with lots of nice pics !

Woohoo!

Yes, I like my visual enhancement mods.

A lot of tries on Eve, no success, but i know that Eve SSTO is another challenge...

That's why I called it the "Great Expedition" instead of "Grand Tour" I knew it was iffy, but everything else I knew was possible!

[Whovian]

If you go into the options for Hyperedit you can hide the H button without uninstalling it. I understand that it's useful for testing but don't use it in your mission of course.

I'm not entirely sure I understand; does this mean an entry will be considered even if I didn't use Hyperedit but managed to forget to uninstall it?

[sdj64]

I'm not entirely sure I understand; does this mean an entry will be considered even if I didn't use Hyperedit but managed to forget to uninstall it?

Make sure to include a lot of pictures so we can be sure you're not cheating. Go ahead and post it.

[Mister Dilsby]

I'm not entirely sure I understand; does this mean an entry will be considered even if I didn't use Hyperedit but managed to forget to uninstall it?

Well, ALT-F12 is always installed whether you want it or not; it's up to your honor as a gentlekerb (and also your screenshots) that you didn't take unfair advantage.

[Overfloater]

Hey... Does Jebediah's level still require 5 kerbals, one for each moon?

[Thunderous Echo]

Allow me to try to help.

3RD LEVEL: There's not enough time left for training one crew for all the moon landings, so five Kerbonauts go to the mission and each are trained to land on one moon and come back safely.

JEBEDIAH'S LEVEL:

...

- Besides the above, the rules are the same as for 3rd level.

It looks like yes.

[Thunderous Echo]

WHY DID THIS WORK

96 RAPIERS carried 64 tons of equipment capable* of doing the Jool-5 Challenge into orbit today.

So I guess that's what I'm doing. The Jool-5 Challenge, as launched by a gigantic friggin' SSTO**.

*on paper

**by gigantic, I mean that it runs at 1fps and crashes my game if it touches the launchpad.

Science has gone too far.

Edited September 13, 2015 by Thunderous Echo

[Overfloater]

Allow me to try to help.

It looks like yes.

TY very much. Maybe it got to me if i re-read it 50 more times.

[blam]

kis and kas were allowed in the previous version, why the change?

[sdj64]

kis and kas were allowed in the previous version, why the change?

KAS was allowed but KIS wasn't. That rule was made before KAS needed KIS, and combined they have a lot more functionality than just KAS alone. I'm not sure what Ziv's reasoning was, but my reasoning was that it provides two major benefits that you can't do with stock, which are securing docked components with struts, and modifying a lander by adding or throwing out parts to save weight or add something like parachutes for Laythe.

[Halo_003]

I've been working on this for a while, big ship, lots of dV remaining. Any ideas on how to get a decent transfer to Bop or Pol from a 100km equatorial orbit around Tylo? I've already landed at Laythe and Vall and finished my Tylo landing as well.

[Joshwoo70]

hmm why is Corvus Command Pod not allowed? cannot we ferry from kerbin to the mothership? (in orbit aroundkerbin ) and then let it burn up?

[sdj64]

I've been working on this for a while, big ship, lots of dV remaining. Any ideas on how to get a decent transfer to Bop or Pol from a 100km equatorial orbit around Tylo? I've already landed at Laythe and Vall and finished my Tylo landing as well.

Pol is not bad since you don't need a large plane change. If you leave Tylo you can try to use a gravity assist to change your orbit closer to Bop's. They both have really small SOIs so play around with your maneuver nodes until you've got it. If you still can't get one, leave Tylo orbit and make a correction at the ascending or descending node that brings you into the plane of the orbit, then it should be easy.

hmm why is Corvus Command Pod not allowed? cannot we ferry from kerbin to the mothership? (in orbit aroundkerbin ) and then let it burn up?

Corvus pod is too lightweight for the two kerbals it carries. If you want a Gemini inspired pod try the K2 pod instead, its weight is more balanced. Yes you can ferry crew and cargo up to the mothership before it leaves. You can also send up a mission to retrieve the crew from a low Kerbin orbit after you get back (if your mothership or crew pods can't land).

[Mikki]

@sdj64

JOOL-5 attempt failed...

Hi OP, i discovered yesterday a significant lack of deltaV on my planned Tylo landing. My Jool-5 attempt is definetly aborted, i will post some details on my CRAZY BANANA thread in the fan works later this weekend. Crew is safe, moving to Laythe for further instructions.

Sad but true.

I have learned a lot, i will retry the Jool-5 challenge soon!

[sdj64]

As far as I know, nobody has attempted a grand tour without ISRU or refueling since 1.0 was released. Here goes crazy:

[CAKE99]

Is SpaceY Expanded allowed?

[parzr]

As far as I know, nobody has attempted a grand tour without ISRU or refueling since 1.0 was released. Here goes crazy:

http://i.imgur.com/qjk5dcO.png

whaaaaa! only one pic?

[JebsDead]

(spoilers)






Craft files: http://kerbalx.com/XKerbal

I just finished my Jool 5 mission. The tanks in the second stage are ever so slightly clipped but only because I went for the flying saucer look. I could have rotated those first two stages to a standard vertical orientation and it would have improve things due to reduced drag.

This ship could have completed the mission without the refuel mission. The refuel gained me about 1500 m/s dv on the second stage... enough to do the braking burn at Jool on the mainsails instead of the nukes.

[sdj64]

I'm going to say no on SpaceY Expanded. Though NecroBones' mods are usually really well balanced, the Penguin engine is OP. Like a skipper with only 50 less thrust but with 400 ISP instead of 320 in vacuum? It would be the go-to engine for a wide variety of uses.

I started a thread in Mission Reports for my Grand Tour attempt. By now I've only made it to Kerbin orbit, so there aren't a ton more pictures, but I have VAB pics of all of the components. You can see it here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/134907-Origin-Grand-Tour-Stock-no-refueling-no-ISRU

That flying saucer looks great, JebsDead! I'll review your submission in a day or two.

[xebx]

The penguin ISP is only 400 when recent LH2LOx engines can have 465 ISP ! (Vinci engine)

Why do you say it's op when it's a nerfed engine, and when you are ok with highly unrealistic nerva engine (nuclear engines don't exist), this is not very science friendly.

Too many SciFi challenges here, not enough real science.

But the idea of the challenge is very good, people should do it with real and proven technologies (kerolox, hydrolox, ion/plasma, solar/capacitor, etc) coming with the smart mods and don't care about the absurd restrictions.

Edited September 24, 2015 by xebx

[Goomblah]

The penguin ISP is only 400 when recent LH2LOx engines can have 465 ISP ! (Vinci engine)

Why do you say it's op when it's a nerfed engine, and when you are ok with highly unrealistic nerva engine (nuclear engines don't exist), this is not very science friendly.

Too many SciFi challenges here, not enough real science.

But the idea of the challenge is very good, people should do it with real and proven technologies (kerolox, hydrolox, ion, etc) coming with the smart mods and don't care about the absurd restrictions.

xebx, the performance of real-life engines has no bearing whatsoever on KSP's fictional, scaled-down solar system. Realistic engines would be extremely OP in the KSP world, because all the bodies are so much smaller than they are in real life. An engine with 400 Isp and no balancing downside (heat for the NERV, huge electrical consumption for the ions, and low thrust for both) is, for the purposes of most challenges, very much OP.

Nuclear engines do exist (although they haven't been implemented in a launch system), and can have Isp ranging from 800 to 2000 seconds. Our Nerv engine is comparable to the real-life NERVA system, with a similar Isp; though it is balanced with the huge mass and heating issues in-game.

You really need to stop snarking about "[whatever] is unrealistic/absurd because it doesn't perfectly match up with commonly used real-life technologies," "spaceplanes and nuclear engines are evil and a joke because they don't exist in a finished state," "stop it with the sci-fi and start doing real science," etc. You aren't contributing anything except for an excessively negative attitude. KSP takes a slightly near-future / alternate history approach to the space program, with near-future tech like the RAPIER/SABRE engine and spaceplanes, as well as semi-abandoned older tech like nuclear rockets, all of which (including all the other rocket engines and parts) are balanced to accommodate for KSP's smaller planets. If the lack of present-day realism bothers you, just install the appropriate parts mods, use 64K or another scaling mod to tweak Kerbin up to a more realistic size, and stop griping about the stock game, which is more or less balanced.

[sdj64]

The penguin ISP is only 400 when recent LH2LOx engines can have 465 ISP ! (Vinci engine)

Why do you say it's op when it's a nerfed engine, and when you are ok with highly unrealistic nerva engine (nuclear engines don't exist), this is not very science friendly.

Too many SciFi challenges here, not enough real science.

But the idea of the challenge is very good, people should do it with real and proven technologies (kerolox, hydrolox, ion/plasma, solar/capacitor, etc) coming with the smart mods and don't care about the absurd restrictions.

The decision to accept or reject a mod is based on gameplay balance, not real life or fiction. In real life, engines are also much higher thrust to weight, the F1 (Saturn V engine) weighed 8.4 tons and had a thrust of 6770 kN, the Mammoth weighs twice as much and produces half as much thrust. Fuel tanks in real life can have a fuel mass as high as 96% of total mass rather than the 88% maximum in KSP. KSP's liquid fuel is probably not LH2 anyway, as it's much denser and doesn't boil off (ignoring hand-waving with the nerva). KSP does a pretty good job of nerfing everything in a balanced and appropriate way to keep an appropriate level of challenge in a solar system 1/10 the size of our own. Also, nuclear engines have been test-fired in real life, see here:

I aim for a balanced challenge instead of a realistic one, because if realistic was the goal then stock parts would be considered too weak. Goomblah does a good job explaining. If you want to do it on 10x Kerbin system with Realism Overhaul, be my guest. I look forward to your submission.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

B9 procedural wings?