A noob exploring in career mode

[Geschosskopf]

and make your craft explode, all parts of the ship overheated within ~1 second of entering the atmosphere, even when the periapsis was at 198km. I managed to survive it once with a periapsis close to 199km. But then the ship was not slowed significantly.

If anyone have any tips on how to do it I would be glad to hear.

I did go in at the right side of jool so the surface velocity was lower than the orbit velosity, but still close to 9km/s

Whoa...... 9km/s?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? I don't understand where you got all that speed. From your pic, your transfer looks perfect, right at your Ap, so your velocity relative to Jool should have been close to the minimum possible. Even with the rather sloppy transfers I usually do, I don't recall ever having more than about 5km/s after falling in to the vicinity of Jool (and much less when I entered the SOI). Normally, it's considerably less than that, like about 3.5km/s.

HOWEVER, now that I think about it, I had a similar problem the 1st time I went to Duna in 1.x. I did a perfect transfer but instead of entering Duna's SOI with a velocity within the customary range of about 900-1200m/s, my ship inexplicably was going about twice that. This led to some deep-diving aerobraking with massive fireworks, whereas normally at Duna you get no flames at all, either before or after 1.0. I couldn't figure out why that happened, either, but fortunately it hasn't happened again. I've been to Duna quite a few times since then and things have worked as they've always done (other than having to adjust Pe for the new atmosphere).

So, I don't know what to tell you. Sorry.

[Nefrums]

Now i have completed the first landing:

I used arobraking at laythe as that was much easier:

After this maneuver i did a 300 dv burn to get captured, and then did two more passes in the atm to get to a nice 300-100km orbit.

Jeb and Bob boarded the lander:

Landing was the easy part:

Jeb and Bob at Laythe:

I flew around a bit and visited The Sagen Sea, Dunes and Shores biomes.

I managed to get a apoapsis of around 80km while the engines where still in air breathing mode.

Docking back as the Jool Explorer 3 with 42 fresh new experiments:

The lander was drained of all fuel and abandoned. in laythe orbit

[Mister Dilsby]

Interesting. Did you hit Laythe atmosphere at the same velocity (9km/s) that you did Jool?

[Nefrums]

not even close. About 2.9km/s. When entering jool soi i had about 1.6 km/s. This increased to close to 9 when falling all the way to jool. But when catching Laythe from behind in its orbit it was mush less.

Now i'm at the next stop. Down to the last radial tanks on the tail section, but this is actually a bit better than planed. I expedited to ditch the entire tail section at Tylo and i now have the 21200 unita of fuel in the central part of the tail section left, that should give about to 2000 dV.

[Geschosskopf]

not even close. About 2.9km/s. When entering jool soi i had about 1.6 km/s. This increased to close to 9 when falling all the way to jool. But when catching Laythe from behind in its orbit it was mush less.

Yeah, I stand corrected on my last. I just sent several ship through Jool's atmosphere and they all got there with velocities in the region of 9km/s. Strange. Still, I didn't burn anything up but some retracted dish antennae that were outside the fairings.

[Nefrums]

Time to do landings on Vall:

Starting with a landing on the Vall highlands

Jeb and Gen on Vall:

Back to orbit with 300 dv to spare,

Refueling back at the Jool explorer 3:

This time Jeb took Alski down for a landing at the Vall Lowlands:

From the lowlands the lander had about 60 dV left when returning to the Jool Explorer 3. I thanked myself for doing the last minute adding of the extra fuel tanks inside the cargo bay of the lander.

Then it was Wentes turn for a visit to the midlands:

Landing sites:

As the ship is is a ruffly equatorial orbit i do not believe that the lander could reach the pools biome and return, and I do not wan't to spend all that fuel required to move the hole ship into a different orbit and then back. 3/4 biomes visited on Vall will do as my target is at least half the biomes on each moon, so this concludes the visit to Vall.

I have only used about 2500 out of 7000 units of spare rocket fuel for the lander. So there is plenty of fuel to do more complete explorations of Bop and Pol.

Next up is Tylo!

[Geschosskopf]

I really like the retro "Buck Rogers" styling of your lander .

[Nefrums]

So it was time to land on Tylo. A 300 dv burn and a 100 dv retro burn put the Jool explorer 3 in a very high orbit around Tylo. As it would require about 1100 dv to get to a low orbit and as much to get back i had not planed to take the entire ship down.

Instead I detached the rover lander with integrated tug.

I had about 900 units of fuel for the nervs to get to low orbit:

The tug where then dumped.

Alski started the retro burn to come in for the landing:

I Intended to land in oneof the Mara zones next to one of the big crates, This would enable me to get science from those two boims plus the surrounding low- mid and highlands. I overshot the landing a bit and landed in the lowlands.

Time to start driving.

To my surprise i found the minor crater and major crater bioms on the edge of the mara:

That was four bioms with only 12km driving.

I continued towards the big crater that i had intended to visit as the midlands should be on the way, and the highlands that is the intended rescue zone was to the north of that crater, the whiteish area:

As expected the midlands was on the way.

As the rover has no way of getting of Tylo, Jeb will have to come down and rescue Alski. Will hopefully post how that goes later tonight.

Edited June 15, 2015 by Nefrums

[Geschosskopf]

Congrats on surviving a Tylo landing. Many ships attempting that have been eaten by the Tylosaurus .

It must have been interesting flying that thing down with its off-center thrust. I'm guessing the orange radial engines were there to balance the main thrust out. How much testing did it take to work out just how to angle them? Also, how much juice were you getting from the solar panels? I found that a Gigantor in the Jool system produces less than 1 EC/s these days so had figured the small panels would be about useless.

[Nefrums]

Yes the orange radial engines is there to balance the thrust (and to increase the TWR). they are not angled, I just positioned them so center of thrust aligned with center of mas in VAB. It is actually flys quite well.

The tug with the nervs however..... that was a pain to fly. Small boosts at low power then wait for the hole thing to turn back on course, repeat.

The 5 solar panels are totally insufficient, but there are a 1k battery in there so it can keep going fore a while before i need to stop and timewarp recharge it.

Lets just hope i can land the other lander that is supposed to get them back to orbit. There is 17 engines on it, so it should work.

[Nefrums]

The second landing was a bit.... interesting...

Al started well enough with the second lander detaching and Jeb boarding it:

Then The problem starts.

I have put the command chair facing the wrong way!!!

All controls are screwed up and sas don't work, except stability assist. This is going to be an interesting landing i think...

At least the tug has the command chair on the right way. So getting to low orbit is easy, it has two command chairs as is supposed to return the crew to high orbit.

Time to detach the lander and try to land with f--ked up controls ans no working SAS and no working navball....

pitch works like it is supposed to, but Yaw is Roll and Roll is reversed Yaw.................

Almost to easy.... emm... Lets say that that was the first attempt... not the 374856378:th attempt..

Ow well that was fun. And i only landed 98km from where i tried to land..

Time to do some driving:

[Nefrums]

After a long drive i finally got to the lander.

The trip back to orbit was a lot easier than landing. And i did not need to get that close to the tug to be able to eva over:

and a second eva after tip to high orbit in the tug.

I git science from 6/8 bioms on tylo. It was better than expected. but also more difficult due to my poorly constructed lander.

The rest should be easy, I have alot of fuel left and i'll be using the same lander as i did on vall.

[Nefrums]

Compared to Tylo, Bop was not very exiting:

The lander could easily visit all 5 bioms and return to orbit with close to half the fuel left.

[Popeholden]

if this is noob behaviour...what does that make me... : (

[Nich]

Holy hell a KSP savant for sure. I think it took me longer to get good at docking then your entire career lol. Thought of applying at NASA or are the too far below you lol

[Nefrums]

thanks!

I have sunk a lot of hours in to this game by now, so i would not really call myself a noob anymore.

The Jool mission is now finished!

Fist the last planet to visit Pol:

I had a few contract on Pol:

The low gravity enables my lander to visit all 4 bioms as well as complete the two contracts, and then return to dock with more than half the dV left.

I have overestimated the amount of dV needed for traveling betwean the jool moons alot and now have almost 3k dV left before i need to drop the aft section of the ship, and then some 9k more dV in the fropnt section and 3k dV in the return craft.

As I have way more dV than i need i Plot a fast return path that takes less than 2 years:

At kerbin i finaly drop the tail section of the ship during the 3k dV retro burn:

I leave the ship in a 100km orbit and detach the return craft. The ion powered return craft was planed to be detached at jool, not a 100km kerbin orbit.

I aim for KSC and begin the assent:

I miss KSC and land on the other side of the mountain ridge.

the results:

45513 Science!!!!!!!!!!

Jeb gets the most exp as he has landed on all the moons. The 5 scientists all go up to level 5 despite only having landed on one moon each (3 of them on Vall) even the ones that where rookies that hadn't even been to Kerbin orbit before.

[Geschosskopf]

The Jool mission is now finished!

And the crowd goes wild .

45513 Science!!!!!!!!!!

Quite a haul! How much of it did you still actually need?

Anyway, great mission! And there's no such thing as too much dV in the tanks

[Nefrums]

Quite a haul! How much of it did you still actually need?

I had maxed out the tech tree with the duna mission already. And that screenshot was taken for the Ultimate Jool challenge, for the continuation of my career game i actually recovered the lander with the licensing policy at 95% giving 4M funds instead. And I had 6-7 missions completed in the Jool system. science data from moon x etc. so i now have about 15M funds.

If anyone who reads this would like to post a peer review in the Ultimate Jool-5 challenge thread i would much appreciate it.

Edited June 18, 2015 by Nefrums

[Ziv]

Nice Laythe landing, I really like your general "X-wing lander", the Tylo rover solution with the rescue is AWESOME, and nice-looking ion-driven home-going capsule at the end with that stylish aerobrake solution.

I didn't check all your fuel consumption in-depth but I think this is an absolutely valid mission for JOOL-5 and you deserve the badge!

[Nefrums]

Thanks!

I like the x-wing style lander myself, as it is so easy to fly and it looks good to.

I had way to much liquid fuel for the nukes. I could probably have completed the mission without any of the 12 radial 5000 units tanks on the tail section.

In retrospect I could have made a second trip with the Laurie plane as I had the fuel for it.

But overall I'm happy with the way the mission turned out.

What should I do next? It is a bit hard to find a mission that can match this one

Edited June 19, 2015 by Nefrums

[Mister Dilsby]

What should I do next? It is a bit hard to find a mission that can match this one

*ahem*....................................................................................................................|..|..|

..............................................................................................................................\/.\/.\/

[Nefrums]

Write a greate Web comic? I would never do as good job of that as you do... Or do you refer to the Eve badge?

Eve sea level and back...

Challenge accepted!

[Nefrums]

Taking of from sea level on Eve is a bit tricky.. Especially as all guides I have been able to find don't work in 1.0.2.

The problem is that most engines cannot even lift themselves at the 5x Kerbin atmospheric pressure on Eve.

After a lot of investigation i have determined that there are only 4 engines that can be used, These are the top 4 in both TWR and Isp at Eve.

[TABLE=width: 500]

[TR]

[TD]Engine[/TD]

[TD]Isp[/TD]

[TD]TWR[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Mammoth[/TD]

[TD]198[/TD]

[TD]10.0[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Aerospike[/TD]

[TD]186[/TD]

[TD]3.9[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Mainsail[/TD]

[TD]148[/TD]

[TD]7.1[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Twin-Boar[/TD]

[TD]148[/TD]

[TD]5.9[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Of those the Mammoth is the by far best.

The Aerospike have good Isp but suffers from low TWR. I still found this easier to use than the others as it is a small engine.

Note that an Aerospike cannot even lift a single FL-T800 tank of the ground.

I finally managed to build a 2 kerbal lander that can get to orbit from Eve sea level. One Mammoth and 16 Aerospikes gives this 186t ship a TWR of 1.3...

The Mammoth and the Aerospikes attached to it get the ship up to about 10km, at that attitude the 8 top Aerospikes and one Swivel have enough trust to take it the rest of the way.

Vac. dV is about 9.7 km/s

Now, how do i get this to Eve..

[Mister Dilsby]

Eve sea level and back...

Challenge accepted!

Excellent! And yes that is what I meant I agree with your analysis, the Mammoth is the way to go on Eve. It has a very acceptable Isp and best of all does not lose too much of its awesome thrust at sea-level pressure. I'm kind of where you are at this point--a lander that can get to orbit from sea level, and an incomplete plan for getting it to the surface in the first place. No doubt you will be there and back well before me--good luck!

[Jodo42]

You may want to take a look at the aerospike again now that 1.0.3 is out. Its mass has been reduced. I'm not sure if it's enough to beat out the Mammoth, but you might be able to make a significantly smaller lander.