Elcano Challenge: All Planets/Moons Complete

[Claw]

Duna

Why am I doing this to myself? -- I have no idea...

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So...On to Duna!

The crew hopped back into the mothership and waited patiently for alignment on the Duna day side to do their transfer operations. After taking seats in a new rover, they decoupled and proceeded to land on Duna. The landing was nearly uneventful, except for the rear wheels breaking upon landing. Obemy was able to fix those pretty quick while also planting the starter flag.

As with Ike, the mission director was convinced (by one of his other mission director buddies) do also do Duna via polar route. So the crew set off mostly straight north, but wandered a bit to the east to catch a glimpse of one of the massive craters north east of the landing site.

Julella describes Duna as quite hilly, which most of you probably already know. If you ever decide to do this challenge with a similar rover, it was very much like doing a Baja through the desert. Except it’s a really, really, (really) long desert. For the most part the terrain seemed smooth (through the mesh transitions) with only an occasional rover flipping fold in the terrain. The transition to the ice cap is also pretty neat, with some very unusual terrain. There are even some valleys along the way. It was actually quite fun trying to decide which way to twist and turn through (or over) the dunes.

That is, until the crew arrived at (or maybe we’ll just say near) the North Pole. Not the whole snowy polar area, mind you...just the terrain right at the pole. There are some seriously bad things Obemy wants to say about the North Pole, but I told him to keep those to himself (as momma always says, if you can’t say something nice...). Julella’s theory is that there is some elf magic up there keeping kerbals out of a secret workshop. In any case, the North Pole was like some sort of rover-impervious fortress from the Kraken realm. Julella drove as slowly and as far as she could along one of the radial ridges, but after constant flat tires, crashes, and random flipping, she simply turned around and backed out. (The terrain starts to turn into sharply angled triangles.) Also, it wasn’t wholly obvious to the crew before they arrived near the North Pole, but even if they could get to the pole itself, the sheer radial cliffs make it impassible by rover anyway.

So the mission director didn’t tell the crew how long, but it took a heck of a long time to get around the pole. Running south along the “back side†of Duna was actually quite pleasant, or maybe it just felt that way after doing the North Pole. I think I went several hours before experiencing any blown tires, and even those were from being stupidly aggressive. The South Pole...well, I was hoping for it to be different than the North. In all, it actually took me several days of play time to get through/around the near pole areas. Several times it was bad enough that I quit playing early that night due to frustration. I guess as rugged as my rover is, it’s just not well suited for dealing with the shattered terrain that exists at the poles of Duna.

As with the Ike post, I’m just going to post one the route and one of Duna here, and you can peruse the rest of the album if you’re interested.

For the most part, the route is straight north from the landing site, and nearly straight south around the back side of Duna. I took a few side trips to check out some of the larger craters, and to follow the numerous gentle valleys that grace the landscape.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Rover Status: At the end of the trip, the rover lost two of its three reaction wheels, a probe core, both lights, and the two top most solar panels. These parts are on the upper half of the vehicle and, for the most part, the lower half parts survived well. I’m not sure if it’s due to the differences in the terrain, or if the rover adjustments actually did some good. Most of the damage the rover took was when it flipped over and landed on its back or tail, so I think further adjustments might be made to strengthen the top.

While I would choose to do another polar route on Ike, I don’t think anyone could pay me enough to do a polar Duna route again. It was interesting to see the poles (I hadn’t before), but came with a hefty price.

Cheers,

~Claw

[damerell]

What's the terrain like? I mean, "hilly", but is it locally smooth like Minmus or lumpy like Mun or something else, please?

[Claw]

What's the terrain like? I mean, "hilly", but is it locally smooth like Minmus or lumpy like Mun or something else, please?

Locally it's more smooth like Minmus, though the gravity is obviously higher. It's not exactly like Minmus though. Minmus has much more flatness to it, with some steep drops. Whereas Duna is more "rolling" hills. I didn't really "catch" on the terrain as much as what seemed to happen on Mun.

The polar route was really only painful because of the poles themselves. The pole was pretty much impassible by rover (at least by my rover), because there was no way to climb the vertical. Some of the terrain up there is very jagged, though I didn't run into those problems on Ike.

Hopefully that helps out.

Cheers,

~Claw

[Claw]

So I still don't know if anyone cares about Elcano challenges, but this post here reminded me that I never posted my Elcano Dres trip. I actually did this trip a bit over a month ago, but 1.0.5 sort of stalled out my posting (then I completely forgot).

As it turns out, I even wrote up the post (about a month ago). I just never got around to editing and uploading pictures. To kickstart myself, I'm going to post the transition pictures, and my month-old writeup:

 

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Dres Transition

 

The mission director wasn’t even thinking about Dres until the crew was nearly done with Duna (probably for good reason). He had actually started thinking ahead to Jool and how difficult Tylo is likely to be. But when studying the solar map, the mission director realized that the crew on Duna was smack in the middle of a transfer window from Duna to Dres.

The Duna Mothership is already carrying two spare rovers for Duna. One rover is parachute capable only, but the second has roughly 1200 dV (more than enough to land on Dres). Also, the Mothership is carrying excess dV. The only real problem here is that there are only two recovery vehicles, both of which have been spent on Duna and Ike.

After looking at transfer windows from Duna to Kerbin, then out to Dres, the Mission Director decided to try a new approach. The transfer window from Duna to Dres is open now, so the crew will do a more optimal style transfer directly from Duna. The window for Kerbin to Dres doesn’t open for some time. However, since only a small recovery vehicle is needed, the Mission Director gave the go-ahead to send a small crew recovery vehicle on an “out of window†high-dV transfer to Dres. While this will be more expensive, it’s better than the alternative of waiting a couple years to transfer the Mothership to Kerbin, then wait a couple more years to transfer it back out to Dres.

With that decision, the Elcano crew began immediate preparations to transfer to Dres. They sent the spare parachuted rover and remnants of the recovery vehicle on a burn-up reentry back into Duna. Julella plotted a course while Obemy warmed up the nuclear engines.

Meanwhile, back on Kerbin, the KSC crew cobbled together a recovery vehicle using existing designs. When the news media asked how the engineers were going to get the recovery vehicle there so quickly, a KSC engineer was quoted as saying, “more boosters.â€Â

“Whoosh†is about the only thing that seems appropriate here. When asked if this was overkill, a KSC engineer was quoted as saying, “Yep, it sure is.â€Â

Here's the rest of the transition, but not the Dres Elcano. Stand-by for another post...soon.

 

 

Cheers,

~Claw

[Claw]

 

 

Dres

 

The sweet vacation

The “almost forgotten†Dres turned out to be a bit of a treat. The mission certainly started off in an exciting way, since the Mission Director decided last minute. The extra recovery vehicle was basically shot directly at Dres, but will still take some time to arrive. In the meantime, the crew enjoyed some rest in the comfort of the Mothership while waiting for the recovery vehicle to arrive. There was no need to sit on the surface waiting when they could wait up here and head down to Dres after the recovery vehicle’s arrival.

The descent was pretty uneventful, considering the lander had excess thrust and fuel for the job. However, after landing, the real fun began.

It took several days of driving about near the landing zone. Turns out there's some sort of terrain kraken hiding around on Dres. Any time I got around 1200m, the rover would sometimes spontaneously blow up as if hitting a wall. The F3 log reports "crashing into terrain," except that nearly the whole rover would vaporize. Sometimes there were only wheels left, sometimes only the rover's engine core. It wasn't even tied to terrain tile seams. I'm not really sure what it was, but it cause a drastic change in routing near the beginning of the mission. I was planning on an equatorial route, but couldn't get more than about 2km east of the landing zone before blowing apart. As it was, it took me nearly two days to find my way out of the mine field.

 

 

However, after that, the trip was relatively uneventful. It was actually really fun to drive on Dres, after I got over the initial (and extreme) frustration. Also, turns out the poles aren't anywhere near as messy as Duna. The south pole is also home to a nice canal in the polar area. I would definitely not recommend driving on Dres at night. The terrain is quite dark, and when the sun goes down it's pretty much a black hole.

Anyway, took me long enough to get around to posting this, so it's not a particularly clever post. Thanks for tuning in!

Cheers,

~Claw

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I'm still reading these.

[Claw]

Oh dear. I see that I have some post editing ahead of me.

In the mean time, I also have a new announcement...

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The fine line between inspiration and insanity has been completely erased.

JoolCano 5?

The mission director’s ego must be swelling bigger than his own head. Given the recent success on Duna and Dres, the mission director has decided to go ahead and build another Mothership style design to Elcano around the Joolian System.

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Well, I’m not quite sure what to call this. I don’t know if this was a flash of inspiration or if I’ve utterly lost my mind with the whole rover driving thing. Dres had some rather infuriating moments, so I’m not entirely sure what I’m thinking here. I suppose I wanted to have another grand adventure, and the Elcano missions always seem to end up with a bit of interesting quirk. As many Elcano travelers know, many hours are spent with absolutely nothing going on. However, there are some interesting bits along the way, and some neat pictures that come out of it.

 

And after all...as Fengist says...it’s all about the adventure.

 

So with that, I started looking toward the next Elcano mission. The one big thing I realized about Elcano is that I’m doing and seeing things in KSP that I haven’t done before. So I took a look at the Jool system and started mapping out what was left to explore. I’ve been to Laythe a few times and already circumnavigated it, but sadly, I’ve not even been to Pol or Bop and have only been to Vall and Tylo maybe once. (It just takes so darn long to get to and around Jool.)

So I thought maybe I’d try to do something really ambitious. It seemed like it might be a fitting time to try to tie in the Jool 5 Challenge to what I was already planning. There is only one major problem to this plan. The crew has already circumnavigated Laythe. And while that trip was quite straight forward (relatively speaking), it doesn’t fit the Jool 5 criteria if the crew skips Laythe on this trip. So perhaps, instead, the crew can prove that La Cucaracha is capable of making the trip with the Jool Mothership and landing on Laythe, along with a recovery vehicle, that will fit the bill.

I’m not sure if the mission director realizes how much insanity salsa he’s eating, to think of the “Jool 5 Challenge” as some sort of subset to this maniacal plan he is inflicting upon the crew.

And then the engineers realize that although the Duna Mothership was built to be mostly reusable, it probably isn’t going to be capable of hauling a full Joolian mission...at least not in its current configuration.

So my initial look at dV requirements for Jool came from looking straight at the standard dV map. Though I know this is really rough, I needed to start with a vague idea of the requirements before starting anything else.

Spoiler

 

Jool – Intx: 1930, Orbit: 160 (Elliptical Orbit)

Laythe – Intx/Orbit: 930 + 100, Crew: 100 + 2900, Boat: 100, Return: 2000, Total: 6130

Tylo – Intx/Orbit: 1500, Crew: 2270 + 2270, Rover: 2270, Return: 1500, Total: 9810

Vall – Intx/Orbit: 1530, Crew: 900 + 900, Rover: 900, Return: 1530, Total: 5730

Pol – Intx/Orbit: 980, Crew: 130 + 130, Rover: 130, Return: 980, Total: 2350

Bop – Intx/Orbit: 1120, Crew: 220 + 220, Rover: 220, Return: 1120, Total: 2900

Return – Intx: 1930 + Exit SOI + LKO Capture

(Note: During further analysis, I found out just how far off these numbers are...but it was a start.)

 

The initial thought is to leave a mothership in orbit around Jool, and create a single lander that the crew can reuse. Hopefully this will cut down on the overall requirements, at the cost of having to design an “all in wonder” lander. So from there, engineers started doing some analysis on exactly what the Jool-SOI fuel requirements would be for transferring around between the mothership and all the stops. The worst case transfer was either going to be Laythe or Tylo. Laythe because it would require a boat (which will be much heavier than the rovers), or Tylo because of the gravity and size of the lander needed to put down a rover and recover a crew.

All-in-all, the Tylo lander was estimated at about 5 tons for the crew vehicle and 8 tons for the rover lander. The Laythe boat is a huge unknown (due to the changes in 1.0.5), so they left that alone for the time being. (I actually started working out the basics of this plan before 1.0.5 came out, but based on announcements, I knew La Cucaracha would no longer work.)

 

The engineers actually sketched out a single-lander design that would work on Laythe and Tylo, while potentially delivering a rover to Tylo at the same time. Turns out this created a rather massive lander, needed lots of fuel to get around Jool, a high TWR for landing, and still be relatively low drag to get off of Laythe. Overall estimate for fuel requirements alone for the mission portion of the JoolCano5 was about 46 tons!

Over 26 tons. Talk about overkill...

 

Sorry, not a lot of exciting pictures here, but I wanted to lay out the plan so you can pick at how ridiculous I’m being. (Also, I’m posting the Jool 5 and Elcano rules here for my reference.) My JoolCano5 is actually underway. But much like my first postings, the mission reports are lagging a bit.

 

 

Spoiler

 

CHALLENGE RULES

Given the scale of this challenge, everyone who completes the mission successfully gets a spot in the hall of fame.

1. No cheating, including alt-f12, HyperEdit, or config file editing.
2. No part-clipping of functional parts (fuel tanks, batteries, crew pods, engines, science parts, SAS) into each other. It is okay to clip structural and non-functional parts.
3. You are allowed to edit science points and funds into a new save to have enough money and parts to complete the mission.
4. Any number of launches are allowed to assemble the ship in Kerbin orbit. All launches must be flown, no HyperEdit!
5. There's funding for one main ship only so all the crew, lander(s) and other stuff has to go to Jool as one big ship.
6. Kerbals must be in a pod or cabin (no seats) for the interplanetary journey. Seats are okay for landing and flying within the Jool system.
7. One refueling mission is allowed in the Jool system if you run out of fuel on any levels except ISRU. The refueling mission can only transfer resources, not parts, to your Jool 5 craft. This mission must actually be flown!
8. On all of the landings, the Kerbal must be able to get out and walk (or swim!) around on the surface.
9. Use at least 100% reentry heating and at most 100% science rewards, AKA Normal mode or harder. Also, don't use any science increasing strategies.
10. All the Kerbals have to arrive back to Kerbin surface at the end of the mission, happy and alive. You are allowed to either send up a craft to get them from LKO or just land the crew pod(s) from your main ship.

11. Mods: All mods listed in green are cleared for takeoff. All mods listed in red are prohibited. Any mod not on this list is prohibited until you ask if it can be allowed.

ENTRY SUBMISSION RULES
12. Submit your challenge as an imgur album, with good captions and descriptions, as a video or series of videos, or as a thread in Mission Reports.
13. Pictures or it didn't happen! Please keep the resources tab open, as well as show the informative windows from Mechjeb or KER if you use them. Take a picture of every important moment, including transfers, dockings, landings, stagings, and refuelings. Alternatively, video submissions are a great way to show everyone your mission as well. These will help the peer reviewers and future participants to see exactly how you accomplished each part!
14. If you just barely did something (like landing on Tylo with a low TWR, for example) then post more pictures about that heroic part of the mission so everybody can be sure it really happened as you say! If it is really improbable I may ask for your craft file to test it.
16. If you finished the mission, please post information and pictures with some additional statistics:
- Which game versions did you use?
- What mods did you use, if any?
- How many Kerbals are on the mission?
- How many launches was needed to start your mission from Kerbin?
- How much did your mission cost?
- Did you needed a refueling mission?
- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc?
- Share the delta-V information too, if you tracked it!
- Any additional note or description?

 

Also, I feel like I have to apologize in advance. Elcano missions are already a bit picture heavy. The requirements of Jool 5 are such that it's extremely pic intensive. I will try to reduce size, convert, and combine pictures like I have in the past...which also likely means more delays in posting.

So seriously, if people are interested in this, give me a thumbs up of some kind since this is a bit of a time investment...

 

Cheers!

Edited December 2, 2015 by Claw

[SpaceplaneAddict]

By all means, do crash something into Tylo for me? Just 'cause I hate that place and everything associated with it?

[Claw]

8 hours ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

By all means, do crash something into Tylo for me?

Hahaha. I'm sure it'll happen once or twice.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

I meant as a reminder, so a permanent object, to Tylo, that we players at IT'S master!

plz?

[Claw]

Maybe I'm still lost, but yeah, it'll have a rover and bits of a lander left on it. Maybe I can also leave some mothership parts behind.

Also, I need to post some more status updates!

Edited December 5, 2015 by Claw

[Claw]

 

Scientists are mystified at the sudden change in Kerbin’s oceans. The Cockroach became nothing more than a paperweight.

1.0.5, you crush my soul...

Back to the Drawing Board

 

     The engineers didn’t know if this was a godsend or some sort of punishment for their insolence. The Cockroach and La Cucaracha are no longer seaworthy. Whey they do look ahead to the prospect of developing a new boat design, the prospect of spending a couple weeks relearning hydrodynamics also feels kinda painful.

     However, the fun part is that there are some new ISRU parts to play with. And smaller ones! It might be quite possible to develop a smaller ship this time around, which will certainly be useful, given the huge requirements of a JoolCano5 mission. So I cracked. I figured if I’m going to do the Jool5 challenge along with Elcano, I might as well go ahead and do Laythe (again). I figured if I skipped out on doing the Elcano of Laythe on this trip, then someone along the way can say that I never really did a full JoolCano5. Also, the water has changed enough that at least it’ll be a different experience (if ever so slightly).

     So without further ado, here are some of the different lengths of wire I used to design my new space-boat. (That’s a Futurama reference, for any of you fans out there.) As the boat took on various evolutions, the other thing that became obvious was that a boat that floated well while fully fueled, floated way too high when running out of fuel. That sounds like it wouldn’t be much of an issue, but it often resulted in a lot of flipping and bouncing. On the opposite side, boats that floated well while empty, were much (much) too deep when fully fueled.

 

     Boat designs ranged in weight from 10t to 60t, but the two primary prototypes are pictured below. One is based on the old Cockroach design, and the second is a smaller version of the Cockroach using the new (smaller) ISRU parts.

 

 

     Adding wings and control surfaces to compensate for fuel mass had mixed results. CoM shifts seemed to cause even more issues for boats than what they do for airplanes. Humorously, this resulted in boats that either bounced excessively, or simply became airborne. Again, the huge shift in fuel mass created a problem where lift needed at heavy weight was way too much when at light weight. I even tried using “flaps” as a form of adjustable lift control (deflect them at heavy weight, retract them at light weight). That also didn’t work out so well for...various reasons.

     So to try and ease the burden on the drag in the water, while keeping the lift rating low enough that the boat was less likely to flip, the engineers decided to test out some hydrofoil designs. Though not ideal, the hydrofoil designs showed a lot of promise. Initial testing showed dramatically improved fuel efficiency, even at heavy weight. At light weight, the boat could run at half throttle or below, and still remain at fairly high speed. (Much above about 80m/s, and parts began to rip off.)

 

 

     The real kicker here, is that the hydrofoil designs are very unfriendly to time warp. They tend to sink, dig in, and then turn into a submarine while under time warp. This could be quite the problem, given the amount of driving required... However, with the time spent already, it was decided that this design would be “good enough.” Rather than spending more time perfecting the boat design, the Mission Director decided that he would accept spending less time traveling at warp speeds. (I think I heard the flight crew cry a little.)

 

     The other driving factor was trying to keep the size smaller to fit into a cargo bay or fairing. Mostly I wanted to force a smaller size in order to give the new parts a try. Though I think I’m going to pay for it horribly later, since the small converter runs at 10% the rate of the big one. I fully anticipate this to be a huge problem, but thought I’d give it a try anyway.

 

Edited December 6, 2015 by Claw

[Claw]

The engineers cackle as the first simulations of the grand JoolCano Mothership come back. 

Well This Should Be Easy

1.0.5, you continue to crush my soul.

 

     With the redesign of the boat and the total fuel requirements, the engineers elected to go for minimalist designs. The Tylo Crew vehicle contains seats only (no capsules) to keep weight down. Also, the Tylo rover and Tylo crew vehicle are going to land separately (again, to keep size and mass down). A single lander would be capable of bringing down both parts together, but the overall size starts ballooning.

 

     Also, the crew needs a way to get the rovers (and themselves) from the Mothership to the other landing sites. Initially the engineers started designing a tug that would move the landers and rovers around the Joolian system. The initial designs ended up in such a way that the tug had more than enough dV and TWR to get to and land on Pol and Bop. A couple gold donut tanks were added to ensure there was enough dV for a trip to Vall, and the JoolCano5 Tug was complete. It will also be used to drop the boat and crew vehicle on Laythe, as well as deploying the rover and crew vehicle for Tylo. Best of all, it’ll act as a rescue vehicle in the event of an issue getting to orbit, much like the previous Elcano-Laythe trip experienced.

 

     The basic Duna Mothership design was used as a starting point for the JoolCano5 Mothership. Really what it amounted to was mounting the boat and landers in a fairing on top of the rover carrier. The whole ship would then fly to Jool and aerobrake around Jool (since that is supposed to work now, right?...RIGHT!?). Also, because I simply didn’t feel like docking all this stuff together in LKO, I simply stuck it all together and launched it in one go (plus that felt like it fit the Jool5 rules better, though not completely necessary).

 

     The thing is so tall and wibbly-wobbly, I wasn’t even sure it would make it to space. But after a few tries it did.

 

     I ultimately sent it on its way to Jool to give it a tryout. After many (many) failed attempts to aerobrake at Jool and Laythe, the design was finally abandoned. It was simply too bendy, too tall, not enough control authority, and the aeroshell was ultimately a failure as a heat shield. I’m not sure that the fairing would have worked before 1.0.5 either, but there simply isn’t a big enough heat shield part that works with this configuration.

 

Aerobrake: Failed

Aerobreak: Highly Successful

(FYI, this post covers around two weeks of work, lots of frustration, and led to taking a break from Elcano for a while.)

Next up will be actual mission start. I promise.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

No need to rush Claw, I would know. Take your time, test ALL of your stuff. Maybe use Hyperedit to see how the rover handles low G at Bop and Pol.

Edited December 8, 2015 by SpaceplaneAddict

[damerell]

Tylo is going to be a nuisance - I didn't appreciate by what a margin it was the highest-gravity no-atmosphere world.

[Freshmeat]

I admire your insanity.

[Claw]

2 hours ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

see how the rover handles low G at Bop and Pol.

I've learned to trust my little rover quite a bit. Although I fully anticipate having to take things slower on those bodies, if Minmus is any indication.

 

1 hour ago, damerell said:

Tylo is going to be a nuisance

Indeed. I will probably do it last on my profile, since it's probably going to be the longest and most annoying. Though Laythe might also take that title, since I already did it...

 

17 minutes ago, Freshmeat said:

I admire your insanity.

I'm not sure if I should say thanks or not.

 

[SpaceplaneAddict]

Nope, Minmus is Tylo compared to Pol or Bop

[Claw]

When you get thrown off the horse...you have to get up, dust yourself off, and get yourself a new horse.

Back to the Drawing Board...Again!

 

     So the Mothership needed a total redesign. It couldn’t aerobrake and didn’t have enough fuel to slow down without aerobraking. It’s flawed at a fundamental level (especially for 1.0.5), so rather than bellyache about what’s lost, the Mission Director just scraped the whole thing.

     The engineers actually went back to some previous ideas for a Mothership which included symmetric cargo bays on the sides of the ship, rather than along the length. The general idea is a more pancake-like Mothership with symmetric fuel/engines on two sides, and symmetric cargo modules on the other two sides (#BringBackThePancakes!). With that idea as the basis, they set to work first on figuring out how to get the crew home (i.e. building the mission backwards).

 

Core Crew Vehicle

     After iterating through several design concepts, the Mission Director  decided to go with a separate smaller return vessel for the Jool->Kerbin return trip, rather than trying to bring the whole Mothership home. The issue was that with all the extra cargo storage needs and heat shields, the baseline Mothership was quite heavy.

     And then the engineers said “Smaller! What the heck, it still weighs over 20 tons!” The Mission Director figured at this point in their career, Julella and Obemy have earned a little comfort during travel. But even with the comfort, the Jool 5 Challenge puts the crew in the position where they have to come back down to Kerbin at the end of the mission (a required part of the rules). So in addition to the “comfort” module, the engineers included a handy-dandy Mk1-2 capsule for the crew to recover on Kerbin.

 

 

Cargo Modules

     Unfortunately, as it turns out, the cargo bays are heavier than fairings, and are also not quite long enough for the Laythe boat. The tips of the pontoons dig into the end of the bay, and lengthening the bay means adding several more tons to the ship for zero real gain. That’s actually rather unfortunate because I think the bays look really cool, but the ship is already quite large. At this point, I need to start shaving off weight where I can. Partially because I don’t want the ship to get too heavy, but also because I already know part count is going to be a killer when trying to launch this entire thing at once.

     So the cargo modules will still use fairings for storing the mission payload. However, I still wanted to keep the cargo areas on the side of the ship, because the extreme length of the previous Mothership became a problem. That also means the ship will be wider and need a huge heat shield for aerobraking.

 

Fuel Tanks and Engines

     After the main components of the Mothership were established, the fuel tanks and engines were built around the cargo fairings. During building and testing, the engineers filled the cargo fairings with cans of silly-putty to simulate the mission payload and save on part count.

 

 

 

Mating the Mission Payload

     Filling out the cargo modules was also rather interesting. Because of how the ship is built, the fairings needed to be constructed first so that struts and structural members could run through the fairing walls for support. So the fairings were put into place, then the cargo fit inside. In some places, that meant some interesting rotating and offsetting to get all the parts and pieces inside without clipping.

 

     Heat shields were fitted to the bottom of the ship. They actually became a fairly integral part of the overall structure. There’s not much to say here, other than they look pretty cool when heating up...

 

Mothership Shakedown Mission

     The crew is excited, yet terrified, of this mission. It’s such a long endeavor that failure to meet a Jool-5 objective near the end will kill so much work. I think, as such, this will be an all or nothing attempt. Elcano is the priority, so failing at a Jool-5 objective will likely result in forever abandoning this grand Jool-5 / Elcano adventure. (I’m not going to restart and drive all those worlds again.)

     So, as a pre-Jool checkout, the entire ship was flown on a test mission through the Kerbin SOI. All of the major elements that weren’t tested as part of the design phase were tested in space around Kerbin.

     The basic mission profile was a takeoff from KSC into about a 150km x 150km orbit around Kerbin. The launch included only one crew member who “volunteered” to test out the Laythe boat reentry capabilities. Julella and Obemy are still aboard the Duna-Ike-Dres Mothership in an inclined elliptical orbit around Kerbin. The Duna Mothership was rather slim on fuel when it returned from Dres, so this shakedown mission was also a good time to go pick them up using the tug. Julella and Obemy then went on to test out each of the major systems.

     The crew jotted down some notes during the mission so that the engineers could evaluate and make some adjustments for the JoolCano-5 mission.

 

 

     The Shakedown Mission finished about three days prior to the Jool transfer window.

 

 

 

[Claw]

The mission director gives the green light.

JoolCano-5 (Combined Elcano and Jool-5 Challenge)

The Voyage of the Iron Narcissus Begins

 

Objective: Circumnavigate all five Joolian moons in one big mission.

The Mothership, christened Iron Narcissus, has officially begun her journey to the Joolian system. This post marks the official start of the Jool-5 portion of my Elcano adventure, and is mostly to fulfill Jool-5 requirements.

As such, this post (primarily for Jool 5 requirements) is probably going to be a little more picture heavy than I usually do for an Elcano mission, and it’s only going to cover the beginning of the mission (through arrival at Laythe). The Jool-5 Challenge requirements are such that most maneuvers and major events need to be documented. Also, I’m embarrassed to admit that some of these events took a few tries to get right. So hopefully I can stitch the right pictures together.

Future posts might split the Jool-5 mission events out from the Elcano driving. This will hopefully make it easier to read and follow when verifying Jool-5 and Elcano rules are met.

 

Now that all of the blabbering is done, let’s get to it.

 

Iron Narcissus Statistics:

The Mothership itself (all the stuff that will go to Jool) weighs in at 244 tons and 508 parts, including 18,200 units of LF for the Mothership’s eight nuclear engines. With the launcher, the full ship weighs 2,300 tons, and puts out almost 27,000 kN of thrust at launch.

I also brought a new crew member along because the journey is so darn long, Marissa (a scientist). So the able crew of the Iron Narcissus sets as a crew of three: Julella (Pilot), Obemy (Engineer), and Marissa (scientist). I’ll leave the rest of the commentary for the album...

 

 

Things I learned about the Iron Narccissus:

• Heat shields for aerobraking = wasted mass (the ship is simply too massive)
• Carrying fairings all the way to Jool = wasted mass (not needed since it couldn't aerobrake)
• AIRBRAKES = sort of wasted mass (again, couldn't really aerobrake), but worked as designed to keep the ship from flipping when aerobraking
• It's a good thing I way overpacked fuel. Turns out I needed every bit of gravity capture and reserve fuel to get established around Laythe.

Next up is the landing and circumnavigation of Pol!

[damerell]

I admit I'd do Tylo first, since I expect it to be the hard bit.

[Claw]

@damerell

That would be my preference as well, except I'm going to end up having to move the entire Mothership over to Tylo to deliver the lander and rover. I chose to put the Mothership around Laythe so that I can aerobrake the tug when it returns from the other moons back to the Mothership. The alternative is to beef up the tug so that it can carry the Tylo rover and crew vehicle, but then it starts getting really big.

I think as it stands, I can't move the Mothership over to Tylo until I'm ready to do do Tylo and leave after. There just isn't enough fuel left to move it, and move it again. Or I could leave the Laythe boat in orbit around Laythe until it's time. Yeah, not an easy task though. What concerns me is if I get most (all) of the way through then hit a snag with Tylo. In that case, Elcano wins out. I'm not planning on starting the entire JoolCano over (and doing all that driving again).

[Starhawk]

You, sir, are truly insane. 

I salute you!

Happy landings!

[SpaceplaneAddict]

Now it's a race for me to finish Tylo before you get there!

[Geschosskopf]

Good liuck, Claw!  Thore are some impressive ships.