The Ultimate Jool 5 Challenge Continued

[MythicalHeFF]

I just realized that I believe I completed the Jool-5 challenge on level 3 as part of a larger grand tour mission of the stock system and OPM back in 2020. Given that I visited all moons of Jool and returned to Kerbin, would such an entry still meet the stipulations of the challenge? I will post an Imgur album later once I get home from vacation.

[king of nowhere]

Meanwhile, I'd like to put forward another Jool 5 I did over one year ago, as part of another challenge. At the time, I wasn't even aware there was a Jool 5 challenge in the first place

The report starts from a No Contract Career challenge. The first time I went for the trip, I failed, but I still linked that part because the subsequent part, where I improve the mothership design and then go on landing in all the outer Kerbol system and orbiting Eve before coming back home, would make no sense without the premise.

It's quite a peculiar entry because it won't compete for low cost, low tech, tech gathered, or caveman limitations, but it had to deal with all of those issues in some form.

[JacobJHC]

On 1/11/2022 at 7:48 AM, Kerbal Productions said:

So KSPIE is not allowed... Dang it, I've got an ISV in here that still has spare fuel.

Please verify if it's allowed or not. If so, I'll do it. If not, then I won't. Essence of life

Yeah sorry, KISPIE isn't allowed.

[Kerbal Productions]

1 hour ago, JacobJHC said:

Yeah sorry, KISPIE isn't allowed.

Oof, well I'm still interested in this so if I find the perfect opportunity I'll go with this

[OJT]

@JacobJHC Am I allowed to ditch my landers in Joolian system and return to Kerbin with the main ship only? Or must I return with the whole stack? There's still quite a lot to do for me before returning, but ditching landers can save me decent amount of dV that might come in handy

Edited January 24, 2022 by OJT

[king of nowhere]

23 hours ago, OJT said:

@JacobJHC Am I allowed to ditch my landers in Joolian system and return to Kerbin with the main ship only? Or must I return with the whole stack? There's still quite a lot to do for me before returning, but ditching landers can save me decent amount of dV that might come in handy

you only need to return the crew. people pushing for low mass/low cost have been returning with nothing but a kerbal and his jetpack

[OJT]

15 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

you only need to return the crew. people pushing for low mass/low cost have been returning with nothing but a kerbal and his jetpack

That will make things easier, thanks for the tip

[OJT]

@JacobJHC Here's my submission: Thread link

Level 3, Jeb's Level with ISRU in Normal Career mode. KER and visuals are the only mods, everything else is stock. No DLC parts. 26871.3 Science points recovered. If you have any questions hit me up 

[JacobJHC]

On 1/13/2022 at 3:08 PM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

I just realized that I believe I completed the Jool-5 challenge on level 3 as part of a larger grand tour mission of the stock system and OPM back in 2020. Given that I visited all moons of Jool and returned to Kerbin, would such an entry still meet the stipulations of the challenge? I will post an Imgur album later once I get home from vacation.

Yes. Please do post, I'd like to see such a mission!

9 hours ago, OJT said:

@JacobJHC Here's my submission: Thread link

Level 3, Jeb's Level with ISRU in Normal Career mode. KER and visuals are the only mods, everything else is stock. No DLC parts. 26871.3 Science points recovered. If you have any questions hit me up 

Will review this weekend or early next week. I have a bunch of stuff IRL I have to get done by the first so life's a little busy atm.

[king of nowhere]

On 1/15/2022 at 2:57 PM, king of nowhere said:

Meanwhile, I'd like to put forward another Jool 5 I did over one year ago, as part of another challenge. At the time, I wasn't even aware there was a Jool 5 challenge in the first place

The report starts from a No Contract Career challenge. The first time I went for the trip, I failed, but I still linked that part because the subsequent part, where I improve the mothership design and then go on landing in all the outer Kerbol system and orbiting Eve before coming back home, would make no sense without the premise.

It's quite a peculiar entry because it won't compete for low cost, low tech, tech gathered, or caveman limitations, but it had to deal with all of those issues in some form.

bump

@JacobJHC I don't want to put pressure on you if you have real life business. just don't want this entry to be submerged in new posts

[JacobJHC]

On 1/15/2022 at 8:57 AM, king of nowhere said:

Meanwhile, I'd like to put forward another Jool 5 I did over one year ago, as part of another challenge. At the time, I wasn't even aware there was a Jool 5 challenge in the first place

The report starts from a No Contract Career challenge. The first time I went for the trip, I failed, but I still linked that part because the subsequent part, where I improve the mothership design and then go on landing in all the outer Kerbol system and orbiting Eve before coming back home, would make no sense without the premise.

It's quite a peculiar entry because it won't compete for low cost, low tech, tech gathered, or caveman limitations, but it had to deal with all of those issues in some form.

Congratulations @king of nowhere on completing the Jool 5 challenge on the first level! The multitude of extra constraints made this mission one of the more unusual ones,  but that also makes it far more impressive. I found your mission thread very entertaining to read. I also found your solution to swap docking ports for claws to be interesting and funny to look at (looking at you, claw gripping cupola). In addition, the fact you were able to visit Duna, Ike, Eeloo, Dres, and Eve in addition is wild. That was almost a grand tour! While you said yourself it originally wasn't done as a Jool 5 submission, it will gladly be accepted as one. Congratulations again! I'll add you to the leaderboards now. 

[OJT]

On 1/27/2022 at 11:46 AM, OJT said:

@JacobJHC Here's my submission: Thread link

Level 3, Jeb's Level with ISRU in Normal Career mode. KER and visuals are the only mods, everything else is stock. No DLC parts. 26871.3 Science points recovered. If you have any questions hit me up 

Bumping up my submission if y'all don't mind

[JacobJHC]

On 1/31/2022 at 12:29 PM, OJT said:

Bumping up my submission if y'all don't mind

Congratulations @OJT for completing the Jool 5 Challenge on Jeb's Level. I just want to say that your submission has to be one of the best from a visual perspective. I kept finding myself staring at your screenshots, they truly are beautiful. Additionally, I liked your mothership design. Simply yet effective. I also admire your patience for the refilling missions on Pol. A possible idea for a future mission: a docking port or claw that could allow the lander to go in front might allow the overpowered lander to directly land with the entire mothership sitting on top. I tried landing a really tall 3.75 meter rocket on Pol once and it didn't want to stay standing so maybe not, but I digress.  Your thread did a good job detailing the entire mission from the relay probes to the final Kerbin descent. Adding you to the leaderboards now. 

[OJT]

1 hour ago, JacobJHC said:

Congratulations @OJT for completing the Jool 5 Challenge on Jeb's Level. I just want to say that your submission has to be one of the best from a visual perspective. I kept finding myself staring at your screenshots, they truly are beautiful. Additionally, I liked your mothership design. Simply yet effective. I also admire your patience for the refilling missions on Pol. A possible idea for a future mission: a docking port or claw that could allow the lander to go in front might allow the overpowered lander to directly land with the entire mothership sitting on top. I tried landing a really tall 3.75 meter rocket on Pol once and it didn't want to stay standing so maybe not, but I digress.  Your thread did a good job detailing the entire mission from the relay probes to the final Kerbin descent. Adding you to the leaderboards now. 

Thank you for the review! Glad you liked the eye-candy
The next Jool 5 mission will be quite different. I am currently testing out some concepts and if they work, I will post it here. I am definitely not making any "thin, superlong, tiresome to refuel" motherships that's for sure 

[Admiral Fluffy]

Made a Tylo lander. Figured because I did that, might as well do the rest of the moons.

[Akagi]

Would it be OK to only use command seats?

[JacobJHC]

On 2/19/2022 at 2:13 PM, Akagi said:

Would it be OK to only use command seats?

Yeah that's fine

[OJT]

@JacobJHC Here's my second Jool 5 submission: Thread link

Level 1 with ISRU, fully reusable (except for fairings, but I'm not sure if ditching fairings still counts as fully reusable, lemme know). KER and visuals are only mods like last time, Normal difficulty in same career save

 

[king of nowhere]

@JacobJHC here's my new submission. Sorry if the report is long and gets a bit messy.

It started as a nanocristalline diamond caveman (parts 1-6, there's no strict need to read those), and when I needed an interplanetary mission to finish I decided to go big and do a Jool 5. So I started building a big mothership, which required well over 100 launched and capped at 530 tons and 900 parts. (parts 7-15). Then part 16 is the trip to Jool.

My original plan was running the Jool 5 as part of the NCD challenge (which includes a no reload policy), but I immediately lost the Tylo lander. At that point, to avoid jeopardizing the NCD challenge, I decided to skip the difficult landings and just do a reduced mission (Parts 17-21) - luckily I included a backup lander pod for such an occurrence.

Then, completed the NCD, I reloaded back to just arrived at Jool, and I did the Jool 5 with some reloads (parts 22-26). Technically you don't need to read parts 17-21, as those are not part of the Jool 5 continuity; except that I referenced stuff from them, as in "I brough Navis Sideralis Neanderthalensis back to Pol in the same way as described already", so I think they can be confusing if one has not read parts 17-21.

This is a third level Jool 5, the second submission in caveman (if I didn't miss anything), the first with commnet enabled (basically means, no kerbal on a ladder, had to use the heaviest pods for everything). I also got 11395 science that could deserve a mention in the Jeb level; it's a pittance over what can be achieved there, but it was still quite complicated to achieve, as science jr and goo cannot be refreshed and I had to bring 20 expendable containers to run those experiments (almost) everywhere.

Edited February 28, 2022 by king of nowhere

[JacobJHC]

On 2/27/2022 at 4:20 PM, OJT said:

@JacobJHC Here's my second Jool 5 submission: Thread link

Level 1 with ISRU, fully reusable (except for fairings, but I'm not sure if ditching fairings still counts as fully reusable, lemme know). KER and visuals are only mods like last time, Normal difficulty in same career save

 

Congratulations @OJT on completing the Jool 5 on the 1st level! As for ditched fairings being reusable or not, I'm not fully certain myself. I have come up with concepts to use robotic parts to clip the payload through the fairing and release it and just using my imagination to pretend there was a cargo door, but I don't know. I'll put fully reusable* and then explain the fairing part. Other than that, it is an impressive follow up and simplification of your previous mission, and I'm glad you were able to work around the dozens of refueling flights from the lander.  I'll add you to the leaderboard now.

[OJT]

40 minutes ago, JacobJHC said:

Congratulations @OJT on completing the Jool 5 on the 1st level! As for ditched fairings being reusable or not, I'm not fully certain myself. I have come up with concepts to use robotic parts to clip the payload through the fairing and release it and just using my imagination to pretend there was a cargo door, but I don't know. I'll put fully reusable* and then explain the fairing part. Other than that, it is an impressive follow up and simplification of your previous mission, and I'm glad you were able to work around the dozens of refueling flights from the lander.  I'll add you to the leaderboard now.

The reason I am not so sure about whether it is fully reusable or not is that there are ways to make cargo bays out of non-deployable fairings (notable example is Stratzenblitz's Jool Infinity submission), however it requires certain manipulations in the VAB that the general players don't know of or at least don't know how to properly implement and, honestly, I can't say these manipulations were intended by devs in the first place. Also, unlike other parts left in the space, fairing shells don't get marked as debris in Tracking Station and they actually fully disappear when you use a non-phys time warp, which kinda puts them in a limbo I guess? Like, yes, you can retrieve them, but it is not exactly straightforward. All things considered, I have nothing against an asterisk on my submission . But I would like to hear what fellow players/challenge contenders think about it

As for the workaround, it really was kind of spontaneous: I knew that the landing legs could handle the weight from my previous experience with building recoverable heavy boosters, and I knew that main ship had more than enough reaction wheels to keep it pointing upward if the surface is not perfectly flat. The one thing I was having doubts about were docking ports and whether they could hold the ship together under its own weight, and side docking port was truly initially meant for refuels: plane would be docked to the back and lander would refill the main ship from the side for ease of access. But I simply couldn't even stand the thought of spending lots of time on refuel runs again and seeing how the stack survived very fast Laythe reentry, I decided to YOLO it on Vall and thankfully docking ports proved to be sturdier than I expected

[cqIpb]

Hi there,

after  roughly 950hrs of playime with KSP on my trusty Xbox I felt like a trip to Jool should be next and as there are 5 Bodies to land on I stumbled upon this great thread and inspiration for a way to do it...  So I looked up the net for recreatable ships and landers and came up with this design. Please bare with me as the quality of pics a I did is not the best but I should be able to add more on the design at least. What you see here is my trusty deep space exploration ship arriving in the Joolian system.  Besides some well timed Moon passes to brake the 2 remaining huge Tank/Mammoth Booster were used to insert the ship into a nice and stable orbit. For the launch I had 6 of these beasts on the ship and they were much needed  although the Xbox was at the limit framewise...

The Front was build as the command section and landing unit at the same time. The Lander itself was a replication  that I saw online so it contained a heavier and more powerfull 4xVector driven section for Laythe Ascent &Descent and Tylo Descent. For the Ascent from Tylo and Vall, Bop and Poll landings the smaller, upper part was used. I had to skip my first try on this mission as I noticed that the original design I came up with was too instable to launch from Laythe.

The Lab visible here was on the ship for a contract requiring me to have a full station on Laythe but I couldn`t land this configuration stable there and had to ditch this mission. Below you can see the fairing that I used to have an aerodynamic cover for the Launch. Below was the extra large tank to refuel the Lander.

Here is another pic from behind. The yellow tanks had 7 NERV Engines each and fed the inside tanks as well. They were discarded througout my journey from Laythe to Tylo to Vall, Poll and Bop.

Here is a shoot of the smaller Lander with the detached Cone that was needed for the ascent from Laythe. Since I never intended to document this journey the selection if pics is poor but I managed to return to Kerbin and even have a powered Landing near the KSC ( although this return vehicle carries 6 Chutes and a heat shield in case needed).

But after all the tanks were dropped I still had around 6k of d/V left in order to return to Kerbin. What an epic ride this was and I can`t tell how my quicksaves exploded and how often I got lost...Thanks for the inspiration to do this!

[MoeKitsune]

I was wondering if entries in JNSQ are allowed? For the most part it's harder due to the delta-v requirements being increased, but Tylo does have a thin atmosphere and I think lower gravity. I can't get the exact numbers right now though.

[18Watt]

On 3/1/2022 at 10:19 AM, JacobJHC said:

As for ditched fairings being reusable or not, I'm not fully certain myself.

 

On 3/1/2022 at 11:13 AM, OJT said:

But I would like to hear what fellow players/challenge contenders think about it

My opinion is I would consider fairing panels to be a consumable item.  Just like fuel, oxidizer, oil, paint, monopropellant, snacks, etc.  Those are items we know are going to be consumed during the mission, and won’t be coming back, at least not in the same condition.  Fairing panels are the same (to me).

Another comparison would be an ablative heat shield.  The ablative material is there to protect the payload.  We know it will be consumed during the mission, and will need to be replaced.  The fairing serves the exact same purpose- it protects the payload during a mission, it’s consumed during the mission, and we know it will need to be replaced after the mission.  Doesn’t mean the ship isn’t reusable, just needs to be refueled, repainted, fresh oil and snacks installed, a new heat shield, and fairing panels.
 

With that in mind, I do not consider fairing deployment to make a ship ‘non-reusable’.  

[king of nowhere]

On 3/1/2022 at 5:19 PM, JacobJHC said:

 As for ditched fairings being reusable or not, I'm not fully certain myself.

I would not consider them reusable if they are ditched.

the principle of reusable is simple: you should be able to do it again. If you have a reusable lander, you should be able to land, come back to orbit, then land again, then come back to orbit again, many times.

If your lander ditches the fairing, and then it's no longer able to function without the fairing, then it's not reusable. It can be recoverable, though, which is a slightly easier condition.

Edited March 5, 2022 by king of nowhere