Story of a A Jool Sarnus-10 Journey

[JessShadowheart]

Hi erveryone,

I decided to do an entry for the Jool Sarnus 10 chalenge (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/25-challenges-mission-ideas/&page=2).

Instead of doing it and then writing a mission report all at once at the end, I am going to report progress here whenever there is something new.

So right now I have not done anything other than thinking about how I want to do it and here is the mission plan:

Ship:

- Main ship which shall be capable of landing at Minmus, Bop, Pol, Val, Eeloo, Hale and Ovok.

- ISRU unit as detachable part of the main ship, which will be used to refuel on minmus, Pol and Eelo (or maybe one of the other small moons). The ISRU unit will stay on the moon while operation in the Jool / Sarnus system is in progress.

- specialised landers for the Moons with athmosphere (not sure weather it will be one for Tekkto and Laythe or one for each) and for the high gravity moons

- landers will be launched without fuel and will be fueld in Jool / Sarnus system

- no lawnchair landers, each Kerbal deserves a decent can

Mission goals:

- Land a Kerbal everywhere and get a surface sample

- Do temperature scans (and the other little science thingies)

- return home safe and sound

Mods:

- (TESTING ONLY) Hyperedit

- Mechjeb, since I don't feel like doing all the manuvers by hand

- GravityTurn (since I like it better than mechjebs ascend guidance)

- Outer Planets (and it's dependencies)

- propabliy something that allowes to jettison fuel (in case I decide to go with 1 plane for Laythe and Tekkto)

 

 

 

Edited December 4, 2016 by JessShadowheart
forgot about one thing

[Cherubiel]

Whats your plan on remaining below the funds limit? I've looked through the challenge info and see no way to do that and not use cheapo landers with external seats.

Do post pics of your creations when testing, I'd be interested

 

TACs fuel balancer mod for managing and dumping fuel, fyi.

[JessShadowheart]

First bit of planning is done. Its the Laythe (and hopefully tekkto) lander.

http://imgur.com/a/HUSI1

Also its about twice as much as a normal capsul lander would be I hope this one is capable of doing Tekkto as well (can't test right now because of a small KSP update that messed up my outer planet mod). Science experiments will be added later once I have the full setup for the mission because they are rather expansive -> might go with only a few of them depending how the budget turns out in the end.

 

@Cherubiel:

Thank you for the advice on a fuel balancer mod.

The plan for staying under the funds limit:

- ISRU, ISRU oh and ISRU (at least I hope ) The idea is to have a small craft that can only push the landers around between planets when they are empty. This should allow for a significant reduction in tanks and seperators needed. A first refueling stop is planned on minmus which will allow a rather light launch, helping with the cost of the ascend rocket. My guess is the most fuel will be needed going from Minmus to Jool with all the landers And with no fuel in the landers this should not be hard to accomplish. The plan for refueling is to have some tanks stay in space and some on the surface so it should be possible to get enough fuel into the ship to continue its journey. Also my plan is to park the refueling equipment on one of the moons and then push one fueled lander to its destination at a time. Also to save costs for many landers I hope to bring only 2.5 dedicated landers. One for Laythe and Tekkto, one and a half for Tylo and Slate (in form of a a second breaking stage for the same lander) and do the rest of the landings with (parts of) the mother ship.

Edited December 7, 2016 by JessShadowheart
spelling

[JessShadowheart]

And another small and frustrating update:

On the good site I managed to get my outer planets mod running again.

On the bad side: seems I underestimated Tekto's athmosphere. The lander plane seems to be incapable of getting to orbit on Tekto.

This means out with the lander plane and in with... good question, first guess would be 2 more descend stages for the Tylo and Slate lander.

 

[JessShadowheart]

The image gallery https://imgur.com/a/HUSI1 is now updated.

What happened so far:

- Tekto and Laythe Landers now use conventional capsul design and are disposable .

- Tylo and Slate lander(s) were tested on slate from a 30 km orbit -> performed nicely (as long as it lands on a flat surface).

- All landers integraded into one Stack

- no science added so far -> That will be done once the final cost for the system is clear -> 250K budget limit for the chalenge

Cost so far is about 45K with a weight of 22t. I hope I get the chance to build the transportation and ISRU stage later today.

 

[JessShadowheart]

The image gallery https://imgur.com/a/HUSI1 is now updated.

What happened:

- Main ship was assembled. The idea of having a decoupleable ISRU part was ditched, it just proofed to be impractical in this setup

- Science was added (no goo, no materials bay but otherwise everything) to each lander.

- launcher was "designed" and tested.

 

The flightplan:

- launch to LKO

- landers get decoupled

- Fuel is mined on minmus

- landers get brought to minmus Orbit

- Refuel again

- go to jool system

- refuel at pol (couple of round trips to also fuel Laythe and Tylo lander)

- visite Laythe, if fues allows visit Val -> refuel at pol and get Tylo lander

- visit Val if it was not done, visit Bop

- refuel at Pol and head for Sarnus

- refuel at eelo

- visit tekto

- refuel at eelo

- visite Slate

- visite the other moons

- go home

Since I will Take Jeb, Val and Bill I expect the ship to leave a trail of little Kerbals behind so the mission will be easy to track

[JessShadowheart]

The image gallery https://imgur.com/a/HUSI1 is now updated.

What happened so far:

- launch went off nicely.

- refueling and getting the landers to minmus was no problem at all

- while I was toying with manuever nodes I accidently found a (not optimal but ) possilbe launch window to Sarnus and decided to go for it.

- mechjeb overcooked a manuevernode while I was preparing dinner, but it was recoverable.

- landing at Eeloo was ok but the TWR was a pain during ascend

- Landed on on Ovok and Hale with annoyingly low gravity

- on a transfer burn to tekto I wasn't paing atention and let mechjeb do it while controll was set on a cockpit facing the wrong way. Ship ended in up hitting Ovok.

Since the ship was not performing as well as I hoped for I decided to redo the entire mission.

The mothership will get a couple of modifications:

- drop 1 of the nukes

- install a couple of conventional engines (which will only be used for landing / takeoff on Eeloo and Val)

- ditch 2 of the gigantor solar panels and bring a fuelcell array instead

- MAYBE exchange the drill and convertotron to their bigger brothers.

 

[JessShadowheart]

The Image album has been update.

What happened:

• Ship redesign:

1.   Only one Nuklear enging
2.  3 assistant engines for takeoff at Eelo and Vall
3. Less solar pannels, more batterys
4. 3rd drill -> now on most moons 1 day is enough to get the tankes filled with an engeneer on board.

• Ascend now with enough liquid fuel to get all the landers directly to minmus with the main ship
• 2 Poll landings (or maybe 3) to refuel
• Laythe landing