The Ultimate Jool 5 Challenge Continued

[HeronRocketry]

6 hours ago, Xephosas said:

Does it hace to take place in a carear game?

No, it does not. Feel free to do it in sandbox!

[starcaptain]

16 hours ago, Xephosas said:

Just try it!

I usualy equipe my Interplanetary schips with Near future reactors and engines 

What makes this alsow a chalenge for me. Also be advised that landing on Tylo is very hard because you have the same orbital speed as Kerbin but no atmospere to slow you down so you have to get rid of that speed manualy wich is not fun i spennt 5 houres yesterday to build the lander.

Hope you succed

There's a fair rule of thumb for making a Tylo Lander: if it can ssto from Kerbin to orbit, it can land and take off of Tylo with fuel to spare for orbital maneuvering.

[Xephosas]

3 hours ago, starcaptain said:

There's a fair rule of thumb for making a Tylo Lander: if it can ssto from Kerbin to orbit, it can land and take off of Tylo with fuel to spare for orbital maneuvering.

So you propose a more brute force aproach? I tryed with Nuklear emgins and srbs to get rid of a lot of speed. I don't have a plan if this is a good aproach?

 

[Xurkitree]

Since I don't have screenshots of the launches from kerbin or the Jool transfer, do I have to recreate this launch for the entry or not?

[starcaptain]

30 minutes ago, Xephosas said:

So you propose a more brute force aproach? I tryed with Nuklear emgins and srbs to get rid of a lot of speed. I don't have a plan if this is a good aproach?

 

There's no "correct" approach. Nukes are efficient but not powerful, so they're best used getting you into orbit after you already have some time before you reach apogee. But they're not so good for landing or the first moments of liftoff, since that's when you really need a good TWR: you'll only have maybe 4 minutes to change your speed as much as 1200m/s during those phases.

[JacobJHC]

 

On 4/26/2018 at 7:27 AM, Xurkitree said:

Hey quick question.

I know that I said I had 4 crew members in my mission, but playing career mode, I saw a contract to rescue a Kerbal stranded in Laythe orbit- which was where I was having completed my Laythe landing and liftoff. So I rescued her (Lesen Kerman - Pilot) and she came with Valentina and Elifel to land on Bop. So my question is whether it allows for 2nd lvl or 3rd level Jeb?

If you pick up the fifth Kerbal at Jool it won't count towards the scoring. All Kerbals who are counted must come from Kerbin, launched by the player.

[HeliosPh0enix]

If I have Kopernicus installed, but only to make pretty Jool rings with SVE and EVE, will my entry still count as stock?  If not, I'm going to load up on some part mods.

[JacobJHC]

7 hours ago, HeliosPh0enix said:

If I have Kopernicus installed, but only to make pretty Jool rings with SVE and EVE, will my entry still count as stock?  If not, I'm going to load up on some part mods.

Yeah, you're good. Using visual mods won't affect anything.

[starcaptain]

Paradoxical success! I've managed to procure all science from Pol (52 data slots, exactly as predicted), but it all fit in one science box (???). Well, at least I've spare room.

The only downside is the fact that I've spent an additional year and a half mining new fuel because I rolled poor ore content for Pol. I'll just pretend they have hibernation berths inside their cabins or whatever.

Edited April 29, 2018 by starcaptain

[Xurkitree]

Oh, all right.

On 4/28/2018 at 4:15 AM, JacobJHC said:

 

If you pick up the fifth Kerbal at Jool it won't count towards the scoring. All Kerbals who are counted must come from Kerbin, launched by the player.

In other news, the mission is back! Just picking them up from LKO with another ship now.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Xurkitree

[starcaptain]

Protip: if you're going for max science, DO NOT make a Vall biome hopper. It's gravity makes this a painfully slow process due to all the mining you'll have to do. Bring a rover!

(I did but it's attached by a decoupler and will only be used for Tylo. In this regard, I'd recommend treating Vall and Tylo the same.)

[Elon Kerman Jr]

This seems like such a challenge so I might try it also @JacobJHCwhat is low mass mean

[JacobJHC]

On 4/27/2018 at 12:14 AM, Xurkitree said:

Since I don't have screenshots of the launches from kerbin or the Jool transfer, do I have to recreate this launch for the entry or not?

In order to count as a submission, you need to have documentation of the launch and Jool transfer. 

On 5/2/2018 at 8:06 PM, Elon Kerman Jr said:

This seems like such a challenge so I might try it also @JacobJHCwhat is low mass mean

Low mass means what is the lightest launch mass you can get to and still complete the mission. Here's a good example: 

 

[Xurkitree]

A

39 minutes ago, JacobJHC said:

In order to count as a submission, you need to have documentation of the launch and Jool transfer. 

Low mass means what is the lightest launch mass you can get to and still complete the mission. Here's a good example: 

 

Alas.Can I retry again in a science mode run? I got over 37000+ science from the Jool system in the original save... I don’t really mind, I can optimise my mission further.

 

Except those are two weeks of my life I’m never getting back

Edited May 4, 2018 by Xurkitree

[JacobJHC]

5 hours ago, Xurkitree said:

Can I retry again in a science mode run?

Of course. Do you have screenshots of the original mission at all, or even a craft file so I could verify that it works myself?

[HeliosPh0enix]

What is a general ratio for liquid fuel/mass to nukes? I am working on a mother ship to carry ~50 t of landers to, around, and back from the Jool system, and I do not know what the ideal amount of nukes is to get maximum delta-v while also maintaining a usable TWR. 

[Goody1981]

Hi - finally giving this a go after 3+ years in KSP, pretty excited  thanks for maintaining the challenge!

Question about extendable ladders - you know how they clip into anything while extended? Is that clipping ok? And also, how they have this massively deep body that penetrates into the ship? Is it ok that I have the ladder placed normally on a fuel tank, but that body clips through the fuel tank? (I didn’t offset it in there, that’s just how ladders behave when you place them)

cheers

[JacobJHC]

20 minutes ago, Goody1981 said:

Hi - finally giving this a go after 3+ years in KSP, pretty excited  thanks for maintaining the challenge!

Question about extendable ladders - you know how they clip into anything while extended? Is that clipping ok? And also, how they have this massively deep body that penetrates into the ship? Is it ok that I have the ladder placed normally on a fuel tank, but that body clips through the fuel tank? (I didn’t offset it in there, that’s just how ladders behave when you place them)

cheers

Hi. That isn't a problem at all. Good luck on your mission. 

[Goody1981]

1 hour ago, JacobJHC said:

Hi. That isn't a problem at all. Good luck on your mission. 

Thanks!

[JacobJHC]

On 5/5/2018 at 5:32 AM, HeliosPh0enix said:

What is a general ratio for liquid fuel/mass to nukes? I am working on a mother ship to carry ~50 t of landers to, around, and back from the Jool system, and I do not know what the ideal amount of nukes is to get maximum delta-v while also maintaining a usable TWR. 

That depends, what is your definition of a usable TWR?

[HeliosPh0enix]

1 minute ago, JacobJHC said:

That depends, what is your definition of a usable TWR?

I don’t really know what I have in mind, which I guess might make the question unanswereable. I was looking for something middle ground where the delta-v losses due to burning far away from the apses are relatively minimal and still be able to complete capture burns around the moons in time, but be able to squeeze in as good of a mass ratio as I can, which means less engines and less TWR. It is probably completely up to personal preference, but I was just wondering if anyone with more experience than me had figured out any good rules of thumb. 

[herbal space program]

On ‎5‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 2:32 AM, HeliosPh0enix said:

What is a general ratio for liquid fuel/mass to nukes? I am working on a mother ship to carry ~50 t of landers to, around, and back from the Jool system, and I do not know what the ideal amount of nukes is to get maximum delta-v while also maintaining a usable TWR. 

FWIW, I've always aimed for a TWR of at least 0.3 for my orbital maneuvering platform. Less than that and it can get pretty tedious. If you asparagus your nukes to keep your TWR between there and around 0.6, you can get quite a bit of dV and still be able to get around without falling asleep at the keyboard. As to the question of insertion/ejection burns getting too smeared out, I'd say the only places that might be a real problem are Tylo insertion, depending on how you get there, and ejection from Kerbin. For most ejections, you can break it up into a number of short kicks at your PE, but for that first burn going to Jool you're still looking at 900m/s if you're going straight there. However in general I use some combination of gravity assists to get up to Jool such that I only require a few hundred m/s above the speed at PE of a 70km PE/ edge of SOI AP orbit. You can also knock a good 600m/s off what it takes to get to Jool that way, making your dV budget quite a bit less tight. If you're not up for that though, I would make sure to have a TWR of at least 0.6 for the last burn ejecting from Kerbin, and then jettison engines down to around 0.3 after completing it. As to Tylo insertion, if you start from Vall you're only looking at a couple hundred m/s to get captured, but inbound or from other bodies it can get pretty expensive.

My general strategy has been to come into the Jool system on a trajectory tangent to Tylo's orbit such that I encounter it going in the same direction. You can scrub a whole lot of speed that way and send yourself to Laythe, where you can lose even more by gravity assists and/or aerobraking. Aerobraking directly to a Laythe capture from there can be pretty tough, but you can get an initial assist on the first encounter that allows you to re-encounter Laythe going quite a bit slower.  After you complete your Laythe landing, you can then boost yourself to Vall pretty cheaply, and thence back to Tylo. From there, Pol and Bop can require more dV than you'd think because of the plane change, but their gravity is so weak you can use ion-based landers to get there. I did the Jool 5 challenge way back in 0.90 but then never got around to submitting my entry. I think I might just try it again now! Those Saturn V parts will probably make the ship quite a bit less complex than what I had to use before! Anyway, good luck!

Edited May 10, 2018 by herbal space program

[Goody1981]

The launch of my Tylo lander, to wait in orbit and join to the mothership. My challenge is underway!

 

Edited May 16, 2018 by Goody1981

[JonnyOThan]

Awesome.  I’ve been working on a campaign speed run (do the progression contracts in as few flights as possible) and the Jool system is up next (8th career launch!). I might try to squeeze in Eeloo and Dres on the same launch.  My constraints are similar but also slightly different: I have to return a command part that landed on each moon to Kerbin, and I have to perform rendezvous and docking around each moon using a capsule hauled over from a previous launch.

[jinnantonix]

I am inspired by the Jool-5 challenge.  My aim is build a mission that has a Kerbal scientist visit and collect max science from every biome in the Jool system (including Laythe water biomes), and return to Kerbal with a storage container. I am pretty sure I can do it without any mods.  The trick I think is to be able to mine ore for fuel on the surface, and get to orbit in a single launch re-usable craft.  Tricky for Laythe and Tylo, but I think I have nailed it.  I am not sure how to submit though.  Where do I send my pics and videos?