The Ultimate Jool 5 Challenge - 1.0 to 1.3

[steveroof]

Hi all,

Here is my submission to the challenge.

- Which game versions did you use? 1.0.5
- What mods did you use, if any? Kerbal Engineer, Precise Node, Planetshine
- How many Kerbals are on the mission? Five (one for each moon)
- How many launches was needed to start your mission from Kerbin? Three
- How much did your mission cost? $740,260
- Did you needed a refueling mission? No
- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc? No
- Share the delta-V information too, if you tracked it! This was my planning sheet, based on these maps:https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalAcademy/comments/1qu5jv/deltav_charts/. I ended up with too much fuel at end of the mission because I had LF tanks for the nuke, but also LF/OX tanks to refuel the lander. I brought enough LF/OX to refuel the lander completely after each moon, but I didn't realize that Bop and Pol would take almost no fuel. I also was not planning to have fuel left in the transfer stage, but I did so I put that in the main ship as well during the mission. I used the procedural test weights mod and lots of subassemblies while designing my ships, so that KER would give accurate deltaV info.

Maneuver	DeltaV	Note	Eccentricity Correction	Plane Change Estimate	Active vehicle
Kerbin to Jool transfer, outbound	1920			100	Transfer stage
Kerbin to Tylo transfer, inbound to low orbit	1050				Transfer stage
Kerbin to Laythe transfer, inbound to elliptical orbit	50	Aerocapture			Main ship
Kerbin to Laythe transfer, inbound to low orbit	50	Aerocapture			Laythe lander
Laythe descent	Black boxed				Laythe lander
Laythe ascent	Black boxed				Laythe lander
High Laythe orbit	590				Lander
Laythe to Vall transfer, outbound	10				Main ship
Laythe to Vall transfer, inbound to low orbit	290				Main ship
Vall descent	Black boxed				Lander
Vall ascent	Black boxed				Lander
Vall to Tylo transfer, outbound	280				Main ship
Vall to Tylo transfer, inbound to elliptical orbit	10				Main ship
Low Tylo orbit	760	After arriving in low orbit, lander must refuel at transfer stage			Lander
Tylo descent	Black boxed				Tylo lander
Tylo ascent	Black boxed	After arriving in low orbit, lander must refuel at transfer stage			Tylo lander
High Tylo orbit	760				Lander
Tylo to Bop transfer, outbound	10		10	0	Main ship
Tylo to Bop transfer, inbound to elliptical orbit	120		80	530	Main ship
Low Bop orbit	50				Lander
Bop descent	250				Lander
Bop ascent	250				Lander
High Bop orbit	50				Lander
Bop to Pol transfer, outbound	60		60	0	Main ship
Bop to Pol transfer, inbound to elliptical orbit	80		80	230	Main ship
Low Pol orbit	30				Lander
Pol descent	170				Lander
Pol ascent	170				Lander
High Pol orbit	30				Lander
Pol to Kerbin transfer, outbound	1070			100	Main ship
Pol to Kerbin transfer, inbound to surface	0	Reentry direct from interplanetary transfer		0	Main ship
Description	DeltaV	Max Eccentricity Correction	Plane change estimates	Total
Main Ship delta v, with lander docked	1980	160	860	3000
Transfer stage	2970		100	3070

- Any additional note or description? I have some aesthetic clipping on my craft...I have angled nosecones clipped into a fuel tank to give a smooth appearance. I thought it would be fine since the nosecones do not have any fuel in them, and the same could be accomplished with normal struts. I do not have any fuel tanks clipped into other fuel tanks.

Edited February 13, 2016 by steveroof
Fixed the video embedding.

[rudi1291]

Pol is a weird place...

Thats a flag, and when i try to go up there, it teleports down

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

9 hours ago, Thalamask said:

How on earth did you get 8km/s dV out of THAT?! When I build something of a similar size and fuel-capacity, I was lucky to get 3km/s dV! My current attempt at Jool-5 is a MONSTER, so any way of trimming the mass would be appreciated....

TWR of 0.07.  I also asparagus staged the tanks.  Of course, I could squeeze even more out if I did some clever lander reuse, like @steveroof did. 

[Racescort666]

I just finished my Kerbin insertion last night and landed Val back safely on Kerbin. I haven't had time to upload all of the pictures (there are almost 600 of them!) but I have uploaded a highlight reel. 

I was worried I would have to break down and use MechJeb to land on Tylo but I managed to land it myself successfully. Probably the hardest yet most rewarding thing I've done in this game.

[Racescort666]

On 2/13/2016 at 8:41 AM, rudi1291 said:

Pol is a weird place...

Thats a flag, and when i try to go up there, it teleports down

I was having a very similar issue when I was landing on Pol. I was also having a randomly exploding ship and Kerbal problem there too.

[ProtoJeb21]

@sdj64 Are participants allowed to complete flybys of other objects to get to the Jool system? And are mods with other planets allowed for gravity assists? I've known about this challenge since good ol' 0.90, and I'm finally going to give this a shot. May the Holy Mother of Jeb (oh, and the Kraken, too) watch over my easily killable kerbals.

[sdj64]

On 2/6/2016 at 1:25 PM, Jetski said:

Yikes!  Just read the rules more carefully, and realized that the way I'm running this mission would disqualify me, as I am not returning directly from Jool, but meeting another ship before I run Eve and Moho.  So I forked the savegame, and instead of continuing on, here's what Val does if she's trying to just complete the Jool 5 following the rules.  Instead of going to Eeloo and on to the rest of the planets, she just does a simple return to Kerbin, landing safely behind her giant heat shield and leaving the mothership in orbit for another day.  This concludes my Jool 5 entry for easy level, but the adventures will continue over in the Ultimate Challenge thread.

Congratulations Jetski, you have completed the Jool 5 Challenge on Level 1!  You used modular design to its fullest potential.  Good luck with your grand tour!

On 2/13/2016 at 8:17 AM, steveroof said:

Hi all,

Here is my submission to the challenge.

Congratulations steveroof, you have completed the Jool 5 Challenge on Level 3!  Excellent combination of aesthetic design and efficient flying!

 

@Racescort666 That's an enormous ship!  Looking forward to seeing more pictures.

@ProtoJeb21 You can use gravity assists or even land on and mine ore from any stock planets or asteroids.  Please do not interact with modded planets for your mission.

 

[steveroof]

18 minutes ago, sdj64 said:

Congratulations steveroof, you have completed the Jool 5 Challenge on Level 3!  Excellent combination of aesthetic design and efficient flying!

Thanks! 

[Racescort666]

 

- Which game versions did you use? 1.05
- What mods did you use, if any? Several. Here are the important ones: RCS Build Aid, Docking Port Alignment Indicator, KER, Remote Tech, SCANsat, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Transfer Window Planner. No parts mods were used for this mission although I leveraged SCANsat data for landings.
- How many Kerbals are on the mission? 6: Jeb, Bill, Val, Sietrix (Scientist), Madchell (Engineer), Gianna (Scientist)
- How many launches was needed to start your mission from Kerbin? 10 Launches to assemble vehicle, 12 total successful launches in support of mission. 4 Launch Failures.
- How much did your mission cost? 3,129,198
- Did you needed a refueling mission? No
- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc? No, there was a SCANsat probe mapping the Jool system before Taranis got there though.
- Share the delta-V information too, if you tracked it! Taranis Transfer had a total of about 5km/s if all the fuel from everything was used. The only thing that I actually planned on for dV budget was Laythe and Tylo ascent/descent vehicles which turned out to be overkill.
- Any additional note or description? I wanted to bring the same command module to every moon and the lifter vehicles to look relatively like rockets. This required some creativity and a rather large transfer ship. Also, I wanted to bring several Kerbals around for the whole mission. For those interested, there are 14 albums posted in their own thread with some more comments on each album. EDIT: one more thing to add, Taranis Transfer consisted of 649 parts in the transfer configuration.

@sdj64 finally complete, hopefully everything is acceptable, I had a great time flying this mission. It was quite the challenge.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Racescort666

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Oh, and here's my Jool-5 mission report, I forgot to link it here before:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/132126-kasper-kerman-and-the-moons-of-jool-chapter-1-the-waiting-game/

 

[rudi1291]

Finished! Pictures here: 

And for the questions:

- Which game versions did you use?

1.0.5

- What mods did you use, if any?

KER, MJ, Kerbal Alarm Clock, NavHud, AntennaRange, EVE, scatterer, Planetshine

- How many Kerbals are on the mission?

7

- How many launches was needed to start your mission from Kerbin?

12

- How much did your mission cost?

~3,100,000 funds

- Did you needed a refueling mission?

I did a lot of ISRU...

- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc?

A station  Also, more landers than needed...

 

Edited February 28, 2016 by rudi1291

[Ziv]

Hey! I'm happy to see that the JOOL-5 is still up and running! 

Congratulations sdj64, you are making a great job on running the JOOL-5 Challenge at the highest level! 

And I took a glance at some of the missions, awesome! Great to see that there are always new ideas! 

[Luovahulluus]

I'm planning to do this challenge again. I did it Jebediah level back in 0.24, when mach 20 aerobrake was just a gentle breeze. First I'd like to clear two mods I'm using.

I believe those are both ok. The first gives information about trajectories, the second is a simple auto pilot.

Edit: Found my old entry. Damn that asparagus pancake is huge! I made some quite interesting modular design solutions back then, ended up overengineering the ship by 6500dV! For those interested: http://m.imgur.com/a/Onck0

I might have to do something even bigger this time…

Edited March 3, 2016 by Luovahulluus

[Jetski]

5 hours ago, Luovahulluus said:

I'm planning to do this challenge again. I did it Jebediah level back in 0.24, when mach 20 aerobrake was just a gentle breeze. First I'd like to clear two mods I'm using.

I believe those are both ok. The first gives information about trajectories, the second is a simple auto pilot.

Edit: Found my old entry. Damn that asparagus pancake is huge! I made some quite interesting modular design solutions back then, ended up overengineering the ship by 6500dV! For those interested: http://m.imgur.com/a/Onck0

I might have to do something even bigger this time…

For what it's worth, the trajectories mod doesn't work correctly with the new aero 1.05

[Luovahulluus]

30 minutes ago, Jetski said:

For what it's worth, the trajectories mod doesn't work correctly with the new aero 1.05

Depends a lot of the craft. Some rockets I manage to land within 500m of the estimated landing site, some an eighth of a planet away. Anyway, I find it is easier to plan a landing with it.

[Jetski]

1 hour ago, Luovahulluus said:

Depends a lot of the craft. Some rockets I manage to land within 500m of the estimated landing site, some an eighth of a planet away. Anyway, I find it is easier to plan a landing with it.

Yes, I think it doesn't calculate drag for various angles of attack.  Not sure how it could, really, as a slight change in craft attitude changes landing location dramatically. Good for a rough estimate though

[Amianoob]

The Jool 4. I failed...

 

Here is a brief log of my failed attempt at the Jool 5 Challenge, I had a day off and chucked this together, I didn't test anything and my Tylo lander wasn't up to task, I continued the mission anyway and went to Laythe, Vall, Bop & Pol. So with no further ado here is my Jool 5 Mission that became the "Jool 4"  please do learn from my mistakes.

Thanks for checking out my attempt, I shall have to try again soon.

 

Edited March 7, 2016 by Amianoob
I couldn't work Imgur...

[Claw]

22 minutes ago, Amianoob said:

For some reason it won't imbed it directly so here is a Ghetto link to Imgur itself.

Try using the imgur button (far right of the format toolbar, looks like an "i" on a black background). Then paste the five letter identifier.

 

[Amianoob]

6 hours ago, Claw said:

Try using the imgur button (far right of the format toolbar, looks like an "i" on a black background). Then paste the five letter identifier.

 

Aha, Thanks, I had tried that but I was rushing and managed to do it wrong somehow haha

[sdj64]

On 3/2/2016 at 2:14 PM, Ziv said:

Hey! I'm happy to see that the JOOL-5 is still up and running! 

Congratulations sdj64, you are making a great job on running the JOOL-5 Challenge at the highest level! 

And I took a glance at some of the missions, awesome! Great to see that there are always new ideas! 

Thanks Ziv!  The Jool 5 keeps drawing people back all in itself, with its combination of all of the skills required in KSP and a certain feel to the Jool system that you can't find anywhere else.  And it's all thanks to you for the brilliant design of the original challenge!

 

Also, we have some more completions!  Sorry it took so long to review, with so much going on in your missions it was a while getting through all the screenshots.

Congratulations @Racescort666 and @rudi1291, you have completed the Jool 5 challenge on ISRU level!

These two entries have to be some of the most complicated yet.  I was very impressed with the diverse array of crafts you both carried to Jool, and your dedication and attention to detail were incredible.  I especially liked Racescort's miners and rudi's Laythe SSTOs and Pol station.

 

@Amianoob So close!  You demonstrated you have the design and piloting skill, so don't give up if you want to build a new lander and try Tylo again!

[Byronacles]

Here is my submission to the Jool-5 challenge (Level 3, with no refueling). I was inspired to give it a go after watching @steveroof's video (as is evident by the very similar design of my Lander Capsule). This was a very difficult and time-consuming endeavor, but it was also incredibly rewarding. I would rate it as being one of the hardest things I've done in KSP so far.

I apologize for the album length; it's 116 images long.

 

 

 

Which game version did you use? 1.0.5
What mods did you use, if any? Kerbal Engineer and Kerbal Alarm Clock
How many Kerbals are on the mission? Five (one for each moon)
How many launches were needed to start your mission from Kerbin? Three
How much did your mission cost? $2,032,400
Did you need a refueling mission? No
Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc? No
Share the delta-V information too, if you tracked it! I didn't track any flight information, however, I did post dV information on each portion of my ship in the album.

[rudi1291]

5 hours ago, sdj64 said:

 

These two entries have to be some of the most complicated yet.  I was very impressed with the diverse array of crafts you both carried to Jool, and your dedication and attention to detail were incredible.  I especially liked Racescort's miners and rudi's Laythe SSTOs and Pol station.

Thanks for reviewing my entry. The SSTO´s seemed like a good at first, but they caused a few problems  and they contributed a lot to the partcount (~40%). It was fun nonetheless, even the mining runs on Pol (37 in total i think) were not as bad as i thought...

[EvermoreAlpaca]

Video of mission with commentary

This began life in the design phase as a fully recoverable jool 5 mission.  It quickly turned into a full grand tour when I discovered how viable the modular lander approach was.  It uses stock parts, with a single launch of 94 tons.  The end result proved to be rather over-engineered, and had 26k+ units of xenon fuel left at the end

I landed on all planets and moons, without refueling or ISRU.  All parts were recovered with the exception of the Eve lander.   No Kerbals were harmed in the making of this video.

If I find some more time I'll put together a chart of all the dV.  There were a lot of maneuvers.

 

 

Edited March 14, 2016 by EvermoreAlpaca

[Jetski]

12 hours ago, EvermoreAlpaca said:

Video of mission with commentary

This began life in the design phase as a fully recoverable jool 5 mission.  It quickly turned into a full grand tour when I discovered how viable the modular lander approach was.  It uses stock parts, with a single launch of 94 tons.  The end result proved to be rather over-engineered, and had 26k+ units of xenon fuel left at the end

I landed on all planets and moons, without refueling or ISRU.  All parts were recovered with the exception of the Eve lander.   No Kerbals were harmed in the making of this video.

If I find some more time I'll put together a chart of all the dV.  There were a lot of maneuvers.

 

 

That's an outstanding mission @EvermoreAlpaca, those landers are insanely tiny, and I just learned ion engines don't lose thrust when covered.  Well done!

[astrobond]

On 11/3/2016 at 5:08 PM, EvermoreAlpaca said:

Video of mission with commentary

This began life in the design phase as a fully recoverable jool 5 mission.  It quickly turned into a full grand tour when I discovered how viable the modular lander approach was.  It uses stock parts, with a single launch of 94 tons.  The end result proved to be rather over-engineered, and had 26k+ units of xenon fuel left at the end

I landed on all planets and moons, without refueling or ISRU.  All parts were recovered with the exception of the Eve lander.   No Kerbals were harmed in the making of this video.

If I find some more time I'll put together a chart of all the dV.  There were a lot of maneuvers.

 

 

Absolutely fabulous mission @EvermoreAlpaca !!!

Congratulations for this nice video and all the explanations 

Btw, I'm touched to be in the closing credits 

Your minimalist modular lander approach is really incredibly good, and your piloting skills too !

I'm speechless... xD