The Jool-5 Chronicles

[Thalamask]

The Jool-5 Chronicles  [Failed]

 

Welcome to the chronicles of my attempt at the Jool-5 challenge. I hope you enjoy it. Feedback and comments always appreciated! 

 

 

The Plan

I'm aiming for a Jebediah-level completion (i.e. collect the most science possible) of the Jool-5 challenge. To that end, I've decided that my best approach is going to be dropping rovers onto those moons that will reasonably support them (Laythe, Tylo, Vall) and going with a high-dV lander for those that won't (Pol, Bop). Hopefully, this approach should let me hit multiple biomes on each moon and collect all tha science! To ensure that I've got the best chance possible, I've put the mission into the hands of the ever-capably Valentina Kerman, who will be my pilot throughout the mission. I've also got an engineer along (to fix stuff), and five scientists who will be doing the actual landings... well... not the actual landings. Those will be remotely piloted by Val. But somebody has to be around to scrub the goo containers between biomes so...

 

The Mothership

The mothership consists of four primary sections - engines, fuel, crew and modules:

• The engines for this mission are eight NERV nuclear engines. Not much in the way of TWR, but I'm hoping that the ISP will be worth it.
• The fuel section contains five Mk 3 liquid fuel containers which (again, hopefully) should provide enough delta-V to get to Jool and back.
• The crew section consists of six Hitchhiker Containers, a Command Pod and four cupola's to admire the view from. That should provide plenty of space and supplies for the crew of seven to complete their long journey.
• The modules section has the five landers and the three rovers (along with the rovers' skycranes). The landers for Laythe, Vall and Tylo are simply down-up vessels, as most of the work is going to be done on the surface, using the rover. As rovers don't work so well on Bop and Pol, I've designed high-dV ion-powered landers which should each be able to visit multiple biomes.

The mothership clocks in at 370 parts, 274 tons and vF800,000. With the mothership loaded and onscreen, time dilation is around x3-x4.

 

The Assembly

 

The assembly of the mothership took a total of 16 launches and cost just over vF2 million.

 

The Journey

Next up, we cover the journey to Jool, and the unfortunate discovery that we didn't pack nearly enough fuel for this trip. After mucking about with it for a while, I decided that even with a refuelling mission, it was unlikely that we could complete the challenge and scrapped this attempt. I'll have to look at lightening the payloads and packing more fuel for my next attempt.

 

 

 

More to come not-so-soon! I'll have to have a rethink and replan before anything else happens here.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Thalamask

[Thalamask]

Updated for the unfortunate failure of the mission, Oh well... next time, I guess.

[Thalamask]

Jool 5 Chronicles - Attempt 2 [Complete]

This is the recording of my second attempt at the Jool 5 Challenge. I certainly hope it goes better than my first attempt. Wish me luck!

For this attempt, I've stuck with 1.0.5. I'm having crash trouble with 1.1.2, and I started working on this back in 1.0.5 and I don't really want to try to transfer all the ship files over to a new install. I'm running stock except with infomods like Engineer, 'Jeb and Kerbal Alarm Clock and the necessary Kerbal Joint Reinforcement for having large ships. I'm aiming for a level 3 completion, so I've got five Kerbals loaded up and ready to go. I'm also planning on taking no chances with this mission. I've cut back on mass, so no rovers, satellites etc. like on my last mission, I've got docking ports on everything just in case, and I'm sending a refuelling mission along even though I don't know whether I'll need one yet.

In this first post, I'm just putting together the craft I've spent much time building and testing. I launch my mothership in one big launch, followed by six refuelling missions to refill the mothership's tanks. I then launched my refuelling mission, with another launch to refuel the refueller!  All in all, I launched nine rockets costing 3.8m Kerbucks to get this attempt off the ground.

A short imgur album of getting everything into orbit follows:

 

Edited June 26, 2016 by Thalamask

[Thalamask]

In this episode, my mothership and refueller transferred to Jool. I put the mothership into orbit around Laythe, after a detour to drop off the Tylo stage as I forgot to put an AI core onto that stage so that it could proceed separately. Current position is - 1) Refueller still on encounter path for Jool, 2) Tylo lander stage in orbit around Tylo, 3) Mothership in orbit around Laythe. All in all, things are looking passable, but I think I'm going to need the fuel in that refueller to get home. In the next part, we'll start the moon landings with Laythe up first.

 

[Thalamask]

In this episode, I perform the Laythe landing, even hitting land on my first attempt (it took me a couple of goes to stick the landing though, but we won't mention that)! After landing on Laythe and sticking a flag in it, I returned to orbit, then swapped active crew members and transferred over to Vall which also gets a flag stuck in it. The Vall lander, which will also be landing on all other moons, then reorbits and docks back with the mothership.

 

[Thalamask]

In episode four we continue our quest to plant flags on all the moons of Jool. We start by transferring to Tylo, landing on that and sticking a flag in it. Then our refueller arrives (not a minute too soon) and we put that into Tylo orbit, rendezvous and refuel. We then put our mothership into a holding orbit beyond Tylo and prepare for the landings on Bop and Pol.

 

[Thalamask]

In our final episode we plant flags on Pol and Bop, return to Kerbin, rendezvous with the Kerbin Return Vehicle and bring our five brave, exhausted Kerbonauts safely home. I breathe a HUGE sigh of relief as I finalise my entry for the Jool 5 Challenge!

 

[Jesrad]

Congrats ! Second time's the charm.

 

Did you consider using a ion-driven lander for Pol and Bop ? Back when I did my own Jool-5 it was doable (with landing seat in lieu of a pod).

[Thalamask]

4 hours ago, Jesrad said:

Did you consider using a ion-driven lander for Pol and Bop ? Back when I did my own Jool-5 it was doable (with landing seat in lieu of a pod).

I did, but I couldn't make one that would work on Vall and Tylo as well, so instead of having two landers, I just made sure that the one I brought could do everything.