The Ultimate Jool 5 Challenge Continued

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

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.

I would agree.  If the fairing is merely protection during  assembly & transfer, that's one thing.  If it's a functional part of the system, that's another very different thing.

That is, if you can fly the mission from LKO to LKO* whether or not the fairing is there it's cosmetic.  If the fairing is required for any part part of the mission and would prevent mission success if absent, then it's functional and must be recovered to be considered reusable.  "Imagination and pretending there is a cargo door" is, to me, contrary to the spirit of the challenge because that is in effect a mod that alters the physics of the game.

* My definition of "re-useable" for spacecraft as opposed to boosters.

[JacobJHC]

@king of nowhere just want to update you that I am in the process of reviewing your submission. Have gotten through main ship completion and will view the rest shortly but just wanted to let you know where I'm at.

@MoeKitsune Unfortunately that would qualify under the last line in the prohibited mods segment, however I would gladly put you in the gatecrashers section if you submit a JNSQ mission.

[JacobJHC]

On 2/28/2022 at 11:54 AM, king of nowhere said:

@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.

Congratulations @king of nowhere on completing the Jool 5 Challenge! Given that you collected science, I think this should qualify as a Jeb's Level submission. Otherwise, I have to say that this may be my favorite Jool 5 submission I have ever reviewed. The sheer amount of work that went into this is staggering.  Slowly watching the mothership grow as you kept adding such tiny modules to it was suspense building, and I found your method of getting around the launch pad launch mass limits to be really clever. Again, considering you were literally building your rockets on the pad and launching them, and did SO MANY LAUNCHES to throw this thing together, I can't say this is any less than that this Jool 5 probably has more work put into it than any other Jool 5. Congratulations! I'll add your mission to the leaderboard now 

[JacobJHC]

On 3/4/2022 at 8:56 AM, cqIpb said:

Hello @cqIpb! Congrats on completing your Jool mission! I'm happy that this thread inspired you. Back when I was new to KSP, the Jool 5 thread of the time inspired me as well, so it's nice to see the trend continuing. If you have any more screenshots from this mission, we'd be happy to see them. Since it sounds like the lander was to unstable on Laythe and you had to skip it (apart from the station you took there for the contract), I want to add this mission to the leaderboard under the honorable mentions section. I also want to congratulate you on being one of our first Xbox submissions!

[king of nowhere]

18 hours ago, JacobJHC said:

Congratulations @king of nowhere on completing the Jool 5 Challenge! Given that you collected science, I think this should qualify as a Jeb's Level submission. Otherwise, I have to say that this may be my favorite Jool 5 submission I have ever reviewed. The sheer amount of work that went into this is staggering.  Slowly watching the mothership grow as you kept adding such tiny modules to it was suspense building, and I found your method of getting around the launch pad launch mass limits to be really clever. Again, considering you were literally building your rockets on the pad and launching them, and did SO MANY LAUNCHES to throw this thing together, I can't say this is any less than that this Jool 5 probably has more work put into it than any other Jool 5. Congratulations! I'll add your mission to the leaderboard now 

thanks for the nice words. i am flattered

[obnox twin]

I might try this challenge as I haven't even been to Jool/landed on any of its moons matter of fact so it will be fitting to do a jool 5 challenge. But I want to know is Restock allowed? it revamps stock textures to make it more nice from what I've heard it doesn't alter any parts.

[cqIpb]

On 3/11/2022 at 8:10 PM, JacobJHC said:

Hello @cqIpb! Congrats on completing your Jool mission! I'm happy that this thread inspired you. Back when I was new to KSP, the Jool 5 thread of the time inspired me as well, so it's nice to see the trend continuing. If you have any more screenshots from this mission, we'd be happy to see them. Since it sounds like the lander was to unstable on Laythe and you had to skip it (apart from the station you took there for the contract), I want to add this mission to the leaderboard under the honorable mentions section. I also want to congratulate you on being one of our first Xbox submissions!

Thank you so much for the mentioning! Unfortunately I don´t have more pics...but I can clarify on the Laythe landing. I tried to land with the science lab attached but this failed as the lab turned out to be too unstable in order to provide the whole Lander from tipping over. Therefore I had to ditch the Lab on the approach to the landing spot and land on Laythe "just" with the lander. This worked as intended and allowed me to continue my Jool 5 Mission afterwards.

Thanks again for the nice task!

[JacobJHC]

On 3/29/2022 at 8:47 PM, obnox twin said:

I might try this challenge as I haven't even been to Jool/landed on any of its moons matter of fact so it will be fitting to do a jool 5 challenge. But I want to know is Restock allowed? it revamps stock textures to make it more nice from what I've heard it doesn't alter any parts.

Go for it!

[camacju]

The single engine Jool-5 is finally complete! It's kinda hung out in the limbo of incomplete KSP missions for a long time now, but I finally dredged up the motivation to complete it.

[obnox twin]

Just wanted to be sure is making stock gravity rings okay? like its not clipping parts but is it alright?

[JacobJHC]

On 4/3/2022 at 5:44 PM, obnox twin said:

Just wanted to be sure is making stock gravity rings okay? like its not clipping parts but is it alright?

Yeah those are fine

[king of nowhere]

On 4/2/2022 at 11:11 AM, camacju said:

The single engine Jool-5 is finally complete! It's kinda hung out in the limbo of incomplete KSP missions for a long time now, but I finally dredged up the motivation to complete it.

while your technical accomplishments are always amazing, I can never appreciate them because your style of report doesn't explain what you actually do. I would actually appreciate some elaborate technical discussion on how the ship is made, why it's made that way, what's the mission plan, what are the main technical problems and how they are solved.

[camacju]

21 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

while your technical accomplishments are always amazing, I can never appreciate them because your style of report doesn't explain what you actually do. I would actually appreciate some elaborate technical discussion on how the ship is made, why it's made that way, what's the mission plan, what are the main technical problems and how they are solved.

I actually didn't think people would appreciate the details! I'd be glad to go into the mission.

The challenge here was to land the Jool-5 using only one engine. I decided to not go with a mammoth + mining setup because I don't like mining, so the obvious choice was the Rapier (Rapier craft have a max payload fraction somewhere between 50 and 60 percent, but a Mammoth can get maybe 25% if you're lucky).

The main design constraint here was to get a craft that could do the Tylo landing using one Rapier engine. I decided pretty early on that a single stage design would be really massive and maybe not even possible, so I came up with something pretty similar to the final craft - having a single drop tank that's dropped on descent, detaching more tanks with EVA construction on the Tylo surface, and doing the ascent on one stage. 

Another design constraint was to get a plane that would be balanced with cargo and without cargo. Normally this would mean putting the engines and cargo at the center of mass, but this obviously wasn't possible. This meant that I had to deal with some center of mass shifting between ascent and descent. I minimized this by using the fuel tank cage design that you see in the final mission, so the payload can fit between the Oscar tanks and sit nearly at the center of mass. This made docking a bit harder, but it made the ascents much easier.

The plane itself is a pretty standard root fairing body SSTO, except the fairing is wide so it can fit the payloads. I always use the Big-S wing strakes for a craft because they have a free fuel tank, which saves some dry mass.

Now for the actual mission:

I launch six modules into low Kerbin orbit - five fuel tanks and one service module (containing a probe core, the Tylo drop tank, and some liquid fuel for Laythe). I probably could have gone with four fuel tanks instead of five, but I wanted to be safe. The first and most of the second fuel tanks are used for a Mun transfer.

The path to Jool is similar to what I normally take. I use gravity assists off of Mun to get an encounter with Minmus, use Minmus to increase Mun relative velocity, and use Mun to eject into a resonant orbit of Kerbin. Then, I pass by Kerbin and Mun one more time to get enough energy to get an encounter with a different planet.

I tried a different gravity assist route after getting the final boost from Mun, just because I wanted to have a little fun with it. I went Kerbin-Duna-Kerbin-Eve-Kerbin-Jool, as I've never seen anyone use a Duna assist while outbound to Jool. Normally you would use an Eve assist instead, but it's not actually that much more effective because your Duna/Eve relative velocity is pretty low on the first encounter, so you don't make full use of Eve's deeper gravity well. Additionally, Duna's inclination relative to Kerbin is smaller, so it's easier to set up an assist in the first place. 

Upon encountering Jool, I use an assist from Tylo to capture around Jool, then Laythe and Vall assists to put me onto a Tylo intercept with very low relative velocity (~6 m/s capture burn). I leave three full fuel tanks in elliptical Tylo orbit and take the mostly-drained fuel module through a Vall assist to aerobrake around Laythe. Then, I leave it in elliptical Laythe orbit. This will again enable extremely small transfer burns.

After the Laythe landing, I pull off all the unnecessary parts from the craft using EVA construction, transfer to the fuel tank, and pull as much fuel as I can from it. Then. I do the Vall landing before transferring to Tylo. The reason for this is that a Vall->Tylo transfer needs much less of a capture burn than Laythe->Tylo, and I have enough fuel to do the Vall landing without needing to drag another fuel tank along with me.

The Tylo landing is the hardest part of the mission. I take two fuel modules down to low Tylo orbit (in retrospect I probably could have used just one) and then do the Tylo landing. Then I bring the fuel tanks back to an elliptical Tylo orbit and dock with the final fuel tank in elliptical Tylo orbit.

The other two landings are pretty trivial, as I don't do any fancy docking stuff again. I did do multiple Pol flybys to correct inclination and relative velocity, but I had enough spare fuel to not need this and this was just for fun.

If you've got any more questions about it, please let me know!

[JacobJHC]

On 4/2/2022 at 5:11 AM, camacju said:

The single engine Jool-5 is finally complete! It's kinda hung out in the limbo of incomplete KSP missions for a long time now, but I finally dredged up the motivation to complete it.

Congratulations on completing the Jool 5 on the 1st level! I never would have thought that a mission like this would be possible (especially with a rapier) which just shows how bad I am at using that engine! In all seriousness, your cargo "door" design is rather intriguing, as it looks like the air intake is offset, and therefor the fariring's front isn't causing drag? Also, I must congratulate your engineering for being able to produce a rapier Tylo lander, and then incorporating that into a cargo SSTO design. I'll add this unique submission to the leaderboard now!

[obnox twin]

I am working on the mission report well the first part as time is annoying as school and the computer I am using for it is used by other family members but the mothership K.I.V Jool is done and will be releasing in parts.

[farmerben]

I finally ran this mission and created and album.  Its been a long time since I posted images.  Can someone please guide me how to do that.  I don't want to register any more accounts than i have to.  

[obnox twin]

I am now started my Jool 5 its not done yet as stated but I am in progress

 

[camacju]

On 4/9/2022 at 6:34 PM, JacobJHC said:

In all seriousness, your cargo "door" design is rather intriguing, as it looks like the air intake is offset, and therefor the fariring's front isn't causing drag?

There's an interesting bit of KSP tech called "Root fairing body" that I use frequently to squeeze a little bit more out of my missions. If the root part of a vessel is a fairing, the fairing shell produces no drag - it can be any shape you want - and only the fairing base will produce any drag. The fairing will still shield any parts inside it from aero heating or drag, making it perfect for a cargo SSTO.

This means that if the fairing's front and back nodes are fully occluded, which you can check using the aero debug info (enabled from the debug menu), the entire fairing will produce very low drag. In fact, if you've heard of "magic wings," a properly angled root fairing will have a weak magic wing effect. I haven't gone far enough into optimization to need this yet, and it results in pretty odd looking crafts.

So I have the Rapier, the shock cone, and a few random structural parts attached to the fairing's main node and interstage nodes to provide an extremely low drag craft. Once I leave Laythe's atmosphere I can pull off the occludor parts since I don't need any special aero properties anymore.

[OJT]

37 minutes ago, camacju said:

There's an interesting bit of KSP tech called "Root fairing body" that I use frequently to squeeze a little bit more out of my missions. If the root part of a vessel is a fairing, the fairing shell produces no drag - it can be any shape you want - and only the fairing base will produce any drag. The fairing will still shield any parts inside it from aero heating or drag, making it perfect for a cargo SSTO.

This means that if the fairing's front and back nodes are fully occluded, which you can check using the aero debug info (enabled from the debug menu), the entire fairing will produce very low drag. In fact, if you've heard of "magic wings," a properly angled root fairing will have a weak magic wing effect. I haven't gone far enough into optimization to need this yet, and it results in pretty odd looking crafts.

So I have the Rapier, the shock cone, and a few random structural parts attached to the fairing's main node and interstage nodes to provide an extremely low drag craft. Once I leave Laythe's atmosphere I can pull off the occludor parts since I don't need any special aero properties anymore.

Wait a minute, wasn't it the other way around? As in, fairing produces way too much drag if it is set as a root part. It had something to do with a bug in KSP (I dunno if it was fixed as of 1.12). Or I got the wrong memo on all of this lmao

[camacju]

13 hours ago, OJT said:

Wait a minute, wasn't it the other way around? As in, fairing produces way too much drag if it is set as a root part. It had something to do with a bug in KSP (I dunno if it was fixed as of 1.12). Or I got the wrong memo on all of this lmao

Root fairing produces a ton of drag only if the front and back faces aren't properly occluded, which may have been your problem. This bug has not been fixed as of 1.12 so it likely never will be.

[OJT]

2 hours ago, camacju said:

Root fairing produces a ton of drag only if the front and back faces aren't properly occluded, which may have been your problem. This bug has not been fixed as of 1.12 so it likely never will be.

Oh, I assumed that even with occluded nodes it still produced lots of drag, which I thought was the bug that wasn't fixed. That's good to know actually, thx for the tip

[obnox twin]

Is it alright to use BetterTimeWarpContinued as I don't won't to waste 11 minutes babysitting my mothership doing a 11 minute burn

[JacobJHC]

19 hours ago, obnox twin said:

Is it alright to use BetterTimeWarpContinued as I don't won't to waste 11 minutes babysitting my mothership doing a 11 minute burn

Yes

[obnox twin]

FFFFFFFF I didn't add drills to my lander now I have to restart. I think I can land on some moons but I cannot return

Edited April 20, 2022 by obnox twin

[JacobJHC]

On 4/19/2022 at 8:32 PM, obnox twin said:

FFFFFFFF I didn't add drills to my lander now I have to restart. I think I can land on some moons but I cannot return

F