what next?

[gamersvers]

i have done plenty of successful mun missions and have had plenty of successful mun return missions I've even been to minmus multiple times but i dont know what to do now i know how to go between planets ( I landed on duna once and also sent a probe into eves orbit but never returned) and was just wondering where to go with the game next and any tips for landers and returning.

[Cunjo Carl]

1 hour ago, gamersvers said:

i have done plenty of successful mun missions and have had plenty of successful mun return missions I've even been to minmus multiple times but i dont know what to do now i know how to go between planets ( I landed on duna once and also sent a probe into eves orbit but never returned) and was just wondering where to go with the game next and any tips for landers and returning.

Sky's the limit! Once you have your feet wet for going interplanetary, a great number of places become available all at once. Which you choose depends largely on what you're in the mood for. It's probably worth noting that Mun and Minmus are two of the most geographically interesting bodies out there, so a large part of what makes the other planets interesting is the challenges you face in getting to them! I've ordered these roughly from easiest to hardest.

 

Ike: Probably the easiest body to land on and return from once you go interplanetary, Ike combines a Mun-like surface gravity with a huge SOI around its parent body, Duna. There's ways to line up your interplanetary burn to land on Ike directly, but I'd recommend just entering the Duna system, and burning retrograde above Duna at ~60km altitude to enter an eliptic orbit with the Apoapsis on Ike's orbit line. Your path will cross with Ike soon enough! (if it doesn't you may have resonance, just increase your Apoapsis slightly).

Gilly: Tiny, lumpy and obnoxiously low gravity, this little satellite wandering near Eve will test your ability to find an encounter with its tiny SOI, high eccentricity/inclination and pondorously slow orbital velocity. The upside is that getting there is very easy from a delta-V and landing perspective! Just don't sneeze. . Eve aerobraking is purely optional, but a fun way to save on some deltaV if you don't mind getting a bit crispy.

Dres: Meh. (J/k) Dres has a roughly Munar gravity and a cool two-tone calico color. It doesn't have any particular hazards or quirks, which makes it a nice like-the-Mun-but-harder planet. I'd highly recommend you aim for the white bits though, or landing is tough!

Bop/Pol: These two little moons of Jool are relatively easy to land on once you go interplanetary, but they heavily encourage you to do a gravity assist off Tylo or Laythe on the way in/out.

Eeloo: A once again "Mun-like surface gravity" comes together with an enormous deltaV requirement to get there. It also requires a decent TWR for your capture stage because you tend to come in screaming fast!

 

** Each planet has its own landing and returning requirements, so if you let us know which sounds fun, I'd be happy to send pointers. Wherever you choose to go, good luck and have fun!

Oh, and the ever wonderful Alex Moon transfer calculator... I can't go interplanetary without it! https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/

Edited April 10, 2017 by Cunjo Carl

[gamersvers]

3 minutes ago, Cunjo Carl said:

Each planet has its own lander requirements, so if you let us know which sounds fun, I can send some pointers. Wherever you choose to go, good luck and have fun!

Oh, and the ever wonderful Alex Moon transfer calculator... I can't go interplanetary without it! https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/

I really like the look of the new calculator I used to use this but I'm definitely going to try yours the first one for me seems to be Bop i checked it out in map view and it looks to have some amazing views although it does have an inclination that looks like a pain

[Cunjo Carl]

46 minutes ago, gamersvers said:

I really like the look of the new calculator I used to use this but I'm definitely going to try yours the first one for me seems to be Bop i checked it out in map view and it looks to have some amazing views although it does have an inclination that looks like a pain

Ooh, Bop's a fun one. Landing on Bop is pretty much like landing on Minmus, only rather than having perfect smooth icy planes to land on you have terrible craggy slopes .  Finding a flat patch on that planet can be surprisingly difficult, so rather than building a traditional upright lander, I often forgo the landing legs in favor of enough SAS to simply twist the rocket upright (after a short tumble down whatever slope I touched down on.) Also, be sure to bring lots of lights, including some of the narrow beam! It can be very dim and hard to judge slopes sometimes.

Getting there is probably one of the most fun (read: most painfully challenging but rewarding) of the planets I listed. You have a constant tradeoff between mission complexity and deltaV. There's a million ways to planetary billiards your way onto that potato, so I'll just write the few ways I happen to enjoy doing it.

- Launch from Kerbin and setup your interplanetary transfer so the trajectory goes somewhere within the Jool SOI
- About half way there, line up your trajectory to put you near Jool (anywhere within Bop's orbit is fine)
- From here there's three easy ways to enter Jool's SOI:
   1. Aerobrake at Jool
   2. Powered gravity assist at Laythe (my new preferred)
   3. Powered gravity assist at Tylo

-  Ways to line up with Bop:
   1. Do a plane change onto Bop's orbit (might be a new thing for you! you can practice between Mun & Minmus), then bring the Periapsis up above Tylo and wait for a convenient alignment to present itself.
   2. Leave your Apoapsis very high in Jool's SOI, and finagle an intercept (probably the easiest)
   3. Fully enter an elliptic orbit of Laythe/Tylo and wait for a transfer (from a calculator) to line up well with your orbit (best option for deltaV)

- Land on Bop (easier said than done) -> Celebrate

- To come back, you gotta Jool dive! Totally necessary, no other options! (<- Joyful sarcasm). When it's about time for the Jool->Kerbin transfer, wait for Bop to be about 20-30 degrees before the angle that's straight up from midnight on Jool. Then, burn so you eject from Bop retrograde fast enough that you drop to ~10km above Jool's atmosphere (or if you wanna be baller, a few hundred meters into the atmosphere). Do your burn home to Kerbin from here! It saves deltaV, is easy to setup (when you get the hang of it), and looks awesome!

I'm not sure how much detail you'd like, but feel free to ask for further specifics. I've been mostly just laying out options so you know what sorts of things you can do. How you accomplish these options each have their own nuances, which are fun to experiment with. I might recommend tossing a probe out to the Jool SOI just to play with some maneuver nodes and see what fits your style. Or, if something in particular already sounds fun let us know if you want the how-to!

Oh, there's one thing I recommend you do first before playing planet pool... In the main menu's settings go into the graphics tab and turn on "always show closest approach for target". It'll make the blue target markers not disappear (normally). Very handy when lining up maneuvers with things out of plane. While you're here you can also pump the patched conics limit if you're so inclined to have KSP plot your path through more body's SOIs.

[gamersvers]

4 minutes ago, Cunjo Carl said:

- Launch from Kerbin and setup your interplanetary transfer so the trajectory goes somewhere within the Jool SOI

- About half way there, line up your trajectory to put you near Jool (anywhere within Bop's orbit is fine)
- From here there's three easy ways to enter Jool's SOI:
   1. Aerobrake at Jool
   2. Powered gravity assist at Laythe (my new preferred)
   3. Powered gravity assist at Tylo

-  Ways to line up with Bop:
   1. Do a plane change onto Bop's orbit (might be a new thing for you! you can practice between Mun & Minmus), then bring the Periapsis up above Tylo and wait for a convenient alignment to present itself.
   2. Leave your Apoapsis very high in Jool's SOI, and finagle an intercept (probably the easiest)
   3. Fully enter an elliptic orbit of Laythe/Tylo and wait for a transfer (from a calculator) to line up well with your orbit (best option for deltaV)

- Land on Bop (easier said than done) -> Celebrate

will do and will keep posted on my progress

 

4 minutes ago, Cunjo Carl said:

- To come back, you gotta Jool dive! Totally necessary, no other options! (<- Joyful sarcasm). When it's about time for the Jool->Kerbin transfer, wait for Bop to be about 20-30 degrees before the angle that's straight up from midnight on Jool. Then, burn so you eject from Bop retrograde fast enough that you drop to ~10km above Jool's atmosphere (or if you wanna be baller, a few hundred meters into the atmosphere). Do your burn home to Kerbin from here! It saves deltaV, is easy to setup (when you get the hang of it), and looks awesome!

wouldnt going into a gas giants atmosphere slow me down? (like a lot?) how does that save delta V?

[Cunjo Carl]

43 minutes ago, gamersvers said:

will do and will keep posted on my progress

I look forward to reading it! A good place to post progress on long-term missions like this is the mission reports board. Though if you just want to make one or two posts on it, you can always do the What'd you do in KSP today thread. In either case, folk love screenshots, and .jpg is the way to go! Images can be hosted through almost any service online, but the forum favorite is Imgur. I happen to prefer postimage for its simplicity, though. In any case, upload your image to the service, and paste the link it provides you right into your post. Then the picture appears like magic!

43 minutes ago, gamersvers said:

wouldnt going into a gas giants atmosphere slow me down? (like a lot?) how does that save delta V?

If you only dip a toe in, the atmosphere doesn't slow you down much. Meanwhile for a planet as massive as Jool, dropping the extra few hundred meters will speed you up a notable ammount, and the Oberth effect will save you a ton of deltaV (relatively speaking). In practice, it's not worth while, but can be a fun maneuver to do for shear style points. In any case, for reasons you mentioned, dipping deep into the atmosphere would definitely be ill advised!

Edited April 10, 2017 by Cunjo Carl

[gamersvers]

1 minute ago, Cunjo Carl said:

I Look forward to reading it! A good place to post progress on long-term missions like this is the mission reports board. Though if you just want to make one or two posts on it, you can always do the What'd you do in KSP today thread. In either case, folk love screenshots, and .jpg is the way to go! Images can be hosted through almost any service online, but the forum favorite is Imgur. I happen to prefer postimage for its simplicity, though. In any case, upload your image to the service, and paste the link it provides you right into your post. Then the picture appears like magic!

If you only dip a toe in, the atmosphere doesn't slow you down much. Meanwhile for a planet as massive as Jool, dropping the extra few hundred meters will speed you up a notable ammount, and the Oberth effect will save you a ton of deltaV (relatively speaking). In practice, it's not worth while, but can be a fun maneuver to do for shear style points. In any case, for reasons you mentioned, dipping deep into the atmosphere would definitely be ill advised!

this is all great to know!

while building the lander i forgot to add any solar panels to my lander so i have to completely redo the entire mission

 

my plan was to use a lander and an orbiter separately to tug there then when i got to jool match inclinations with bop then orbit it and land, then a few weeks before the transfer window take the lander back up to the orbiter and dock with it so that i can take it to use the slingshot maneuver you described and land back home