Laythe in 1.0.4

[X-SR71]

I'm having so much trouble aerobraking at Jool / Laythe that Im about to give it up and let bill ride off into the void...

I don't have heat shield because.. well, it's an SSTO with mk2 parts and it would look silly.

I will blow up instantly aerobraking from interplanetary transfer into Laythe at 6+km/s.

This and the solar panels not generating juice way up there anymore are making the jool system less and less atractive now..

[Laie]

Just made my first ascent from Laythe (rocket, no jets) and the atmosphere has a soupy feel to it... I find that I have to make a steeper gravity turn than I'd make on Kerbin, approaching the "straight up, then take a left" paradigm.

[Evanitis]

I'm having so much trouble aerobraking at Jool / Laythe that Im about to give it up and let bill ride off into the void...

Multiple gravity assists could slow that plane enough to survive Laythe aerobraking. Than you can circularize in a few passes, land as planned and hopefully even take that beauty home.

I also found that solar panels work there - just pretty slowly. An array of gigators could power either my ISRU or the mobile lab, so I bet even those small panels will keep that plane running.

[eddiew]

Edit: A pic of slingshot shenanigans to capture at Jool and get the orbit down near Laythe's:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61004449/KSP/1.0.4/LSSTL/screenshot408.png

That's completely magnificent and genius... but it feels rather hard to be "working as intended" ^^;

[Coga19000]

I do realise that this is, well, KSP and not Super Realistic Orbit Simulator, but isn't it kind of realistic that aerobraking is so Damn hard? I mean, real life space programs never use aerocapture for a reason. Yeah, it is true that the situation is absurd for Laythe and Jool, things blowing up on the mere semblance of atmoshpere, but...

[ajburges]

I'm having so much trouble aerobraking at Jool / Laythe that Im about to give it up and let bill ride off into the void...

I don't have heat shield because.. well, it's an SSTO with mk2 parts and it would look silly.

I will blow up instantly aerobraking from interplanetary transfer into Laythe at 6+km/s.

This and the solar panels not generating juice way up there anymore are making the jool system less and less atractive now..

http://i.imgur.com/lKR6P4j.jpg

6 km/s you say? Are you perhaps entering Laythe SoI from a retrograde, hyperbolic, Joolian trajectory with a tangent intersection? Prograde vs retrograde tangent intercepts can be a huge difference! Secant intercepts of any kind fall between the two extreams.

A perfect Hohman transfer from Kerbin to Jool orbit will have your velocity 2.3 km/s less than Jools before SoI change. Laythe orbital velocity is 3.2 km/s. Even if you intersect at a lower energy state (say from Eve transfer), you should be able to get a low dV rendezvous intercept with Laythe given a little planning. Just use radial correction burns to control the time, and thus position, of you intercept. Radial may be inefficient, but free capture outweighs that.

[Anglave]

Just made my first ascent from Laythe (rocket, no jets) and the atmosphere has a soupy feel to it... I find that I have to make a steeper gravity turn than I'd make on Kerbin, approaching the "straight up, then take a left" paradigm.

I also felt that the atmosphere was unexpectedly soupy. It seemed like it stayed quite dense up to an unreasonable altitude, given its overall height.

I'm curious if you'd share or screenshot your craft. I've been told authoritatively that the ~2800 m/s ÃŽâ€v is correct for sea level to orbit in 1.0.4, but I can't seem to do it for anywhere near that little. I was planning to make and test several variant crafts with higher TWR or better streamlining, but having your lander as another data point would be great.

[Laie]

I also felt that the atmosphere was unexpectedly soupy. It seemed like it stayed quite dense up to an unreasonable altitude, given its overall height.

I'm curious if you'd share or screenshot your craft.

Not worth it, it was nothing special. Just get hyperedit and any old rocket and try for yourself. The Kerbin approach of starting the gravity turn early and reaching 30° pitch @ 20km altitude won't work on Laythe because as you say, the atmosphere remains very dense until you're very high.

Trying to land a plane, I found myself doing the antipode bomber thing, skipping on the upper atmosphere like a flat stone on water. Two Big-S shuttle wings for a 16t craft is a lot of wing, granted, but the amount of lift still surprised me. On a second attempt, I could maintain a 20m/s descent from 45 through 35km of altitude -- in other words, I could remain at these altitudes for nearly ten minutes or a good 1/3rd of an orbit.

Turbojets at 1200m/s will flame out somewhere around 35km.

[nsgallup]

Sorry if this is a necro, but I tested this out and it seems like I consistantly need nearly 4k delta V for a Laythe ascent

[Warzouz]

Sorry if this is a necro, but I tested this out and it seems like I consistantly need nearly 4k delta V for a Laythe ascent

I think MJ can display expended dV (gravity loss and drag loss). That would be interesting to compare those data with Kerbin ascent.