The Ultimate Jool 5 Challenge Continued

[kspfreak]

On 2/16/2023 at 11:02 AM, king of nowhere said:

I thought back about being criticized for my kerbalism grand tours because my ships are unrealistically big, and I wondered, could I make a kerbalism Jool 5 with realistic constraints and the mass to orbit of a single Saturn V launch?

I had to cut comfort a bit too much at times, but here it is. A Jool 5 made to look as much as possible as a realistic mission with current technology. Well, if you ignore some whacky hijinks I had to pull because I'm only one guy doing this for hobby and can't plan as well as a real space agency.

 

Now that you did a realistic Jool 5 with kerbslism, I may consider installing kerbslism to do something like this one day.

Edited March 19, 2023 by kspfreak

[king of nowhere]

Another Jool 5 with a bizzarre premise: a speedrun.

the objective was to start a new career, and make a Jool 5 as early as possible.

Actually it started as an attempt to land everywhere and return in a speedrun fashion, but after I stumbled on that, I reloaded and decided to focus on just the Jool 5. So all the parts between 2 and 7 (included) are not part of this continuity. the actual jool 5 challenge includes part 1, 8 and following.

I took 6 days to gather the science and money to launch the mission, 219 days to reach Jool, 12 days at Jool to land on all the moon, and 145 days to return, ending on day 383

Edited March 29, 2023 by king of nowhere

[kspfreak]

On 3/30/2023 at 1:23 AM, king of nowhere said:

Another Jool 5 with a bizzarre premise: a speedrun.

the objective was to start a new career, and make a Jool 5 as early as possible.

Actually it started as an attempt to land everywhere and return in a speedrun fashion, but after I stumbled on that, I reloaded and decided to focus on just the Jool 5. So all the parts between 2 and 7 (included) are not part of this continuity. the actual jool 5 challenge includes part 1, 8 and following.

I took 6 days to gather the science and money to launch the mission, 219 days to reach Jool, 12 days at Jool to land on all the moon, and 145 days to return, ending on day 383

You really are the king of career mode optimisation @king of nowhere@.

Edited April 2, 2023 by kspfreak

[JacobJHC]

@king of nowhere I'm reviewing your submission today FYI, I've been glancing over the thread in the last week trying to make sure I have a proper understanding of it. I must say that the premise itself sounds very difficult and I'm impressed at the travel times you're achieving. It's a style of KSP I'm not overly familiar with so it's interesting to see in action.

[king of nowhere]

2 hours ago, JacobJHC said:

@king of nowhere trying to make sure I have a proper understanding of it.

I started as a full career, went as far as part 6, realized my jool mission was faulty, lost interest.

then i reloaded back to after part 1 - after I had farmed most of the science and money, but before I launched any interplanetary mission - and went for just a jool 5 intead.

 

if you mean understanding the maneuvers, the basic principle is to figure out where, more or less, your target will be in the time you'll get there, then make a big burn pointed in that direction. as I was often fast enough to have minimal influence from the local gravity field, it was quite akin to aiming a bullet.

[JacobJHC]

5 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

I started as a full career, went as far as part 6, realized my jool mission was faulty, lost interest.

then i reloaded back to after part 1 - after I had farmed most of the science and money, but before I launched any interplanetary mission - and went for just a jool 5 intead.

 

if you mean understanding the maneuvers, the basic principle is to figure out where, more or less, your target will be in the time you'll get there, then make a big burn pointed in that direction. as I was often fast enough to have minimal influence from the local gravity field, it was quite akin to aiming a bullet.

"And so I completed the Jool 5 in day 383, 1 hour and 9 minutes of a new career" 

Congratulations on completing the fastest Jool 5 in history! The fact you managed to get all landings done within a 12 day window is incredible, and your trajectories! I've never seen anything like it! I'll add this submission to the leaderboard now, congratulations!

[Lyra]

Hi, I'm about to attempt the challenge and am in the final stages of designing the craft. I have a very specific problem though - the RTG doesn't fully fit inside the 1.25m service bay when stowed vertically, and the top 1/3 or so clips outside of it, into a fuel tank. Would that be considered too much part clipping or am I good to go?

[king of nowhere]

31 minutes ago, Lyra said:

Hi, I'm about to attempt the challenge and am in the final stages of designing the craft. I have a very specific problem though - the RTG doesn't fully fit inside the 1.25m service bay when stowed vertically, and the top 1/3 or so clips outside of it, into a fuel tank. Would that be considered too much part clipping or am I good to go?

while only the challenge keeper can give an official answer, I had a similar problem three years ago and the answer was no. here pasting the quote so you can look up the whole conversation if you want

On 11/9/2020 at 9:41 PM, JacobJHC said:

The propellers are fine, although the science bay needs to have the clipped science parts and RTG moved. I also think the roverarm needs to be moved so it isn't clipping as well, although I am not sure what I would suggest you do with it.

 

 

on the plus side, I put three cargo bays lined up, and wrote that I'd pretend it was a single, longer cargo bay. so the rtgs would occupy one and a bit of a second. that was deemed acceptable

 

[Lyra]

17 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

while only the challenge keeper can give an official answer, I had a similar problem three years ago and the answer was no

Thank you for the answer, guess I'll move them to the exterior somewhere. They were on my "mothership" which is a huge ugly mess of nukes and has loads of free space, so it's fairly inconsequential.

[Geek25]

Hello! Being very inspired by this, I will be attempting a jool 5 myself soon. However a have a question about the rules:

is it ok that I use the near future parts such as cargo bays, pods, solar panels e.t.c? Obviously not NF propulsion, but more for aesthetics. I will to try a very cool looking mothership, and NF has very cool parts. If not, I understand.

 

turns out it was only two parts from NF used: the 7-kerbal 3.75 m pod, and the megalodor solar panels

Edited June 20, 2023 by Geek25
Update

[king of nowhere]

On 6/18/2023 at 12:35 AM, Geek25 said:

Hello! Being very inspired by this, I will be attempting a jool 5 myself soon. However a have a question about the rules:

is it ok that I use the near future parts such as cargo bays, pods, solar panels e.t.c? Obviously not NF propulsion, but more for aesthetics. I will to try a very cool looking mothership, and NF has very cool parts. If not, I understand.

 

turns out it was only two parts from NF used: the 7-kerbal 3.75 m pod, and the megalodor solar panels

though only @JacobJHC can give a final answer, if those are the only modded parts you used you should be fine.

Edited June 23, 2023 by king of nowhere

[Geek25]

Thank you for the answer, I will get started right away.

you have inspired me with crazy, ridiculous and kerbal achievements @king of nowhere

Edited June 24, 2023 by Geek25

[Lyra]

Finished uploading my single-launch Jool 5 yesterday evening! Here it is for review:

It's in 100% stock with no DLC. Commnet was turned off for the mission. Feel free to ask questions about specifics, although I may not have screenshots of every single maneuver or moment.

[camacju]

Yet another Jool 5, this time optimized for low mass.

[Lyra]

5.2 tons?! That would break the current record, amazing!

[Geek25]

Wow, that’s crazy. He also did a grand tour with 14.4 tons by the way

[king of nowhere]

Though I'd find it a lot more amazing if the spaceplane with a flat front flying without drag or the basic fins surviving an exposed descent into laythe's atmosphere didn't scream "aerodinamic bug exploiting".

Mind you, it still requires a huge skill to build those kind of contraptions - not to mention all the other parts about optimizing trajectories - but I think those designs that exploit ways to make parts frictionless should go into another category, or should at least come with an asteric attached.

[camacju]

On 7/14/2023 at 5:27 PM, king of nowhere said:

the spaceplane with a flat front flying without drag

I'm actually not using the dragless fairing trick here. The air intakes are attached to the front of the fairing and offset backward, partially occluding the front drag cube face (the rest is done with fuel tanks attached to the interstage nodes, which is still a little exploity but certainly not on the level of eliminating all drag). This was to save the mass of an engine plate.

I offset the air intakes backward to balance out the body lift of the fairing base, otherwise the craft would become very unstable around Mach 2. They produce the same amount of drag either way. 

(The fairing base is at the front so I can drop the jet engine out the back and avoid a lot of funny stuff with colliders).

On 7/14/2023 at 5:27 PM, king of nowhere said:

or the basic fins surviving an exposed descent into laythe's atmosphere

The Laythe lander is partially empty of fuel to save mass. As a result, it's very light, and has a lot of drag because a fairing was too heavy to be worthwhile. Also, I take a shallow aerobrake trajectory and angle the lander so the basic fins can provide lift. Note how reentry effects don't even show up on descent, because I slow down so much in the upper atmosphere that heating is never an issue.

On 7/14/2023 at 5:27 PM, king of nowhere said:

scream "aerodinamic bug exploiting".

The problem with aerodynamic exploits is that they usually require additional parts, and the extra mass just isn't worth it for this mission. 

[JacobJHC]

On 6/27/2023 at 7:35 PM, Lyra said:

Finished uploading my single-launch Jool 5 yesterday evening! Here it is for review:

It's in 100% stock with no DLC. Commnet was turned off for the mission. Feel free to ask questions about specifics, although I may not have screenshots of every single maneuver or moment.

Congratulations @Lyra on completing the Jool 5 mission on Level 2! Congrats on managing a single launch mission. I liked the tallness of your Tylo lander, as well as the overall design of your interplanetary vessel. The unique thing to me that I haven't seen done much with an interplanetary vessel was "barnacling" the smaller landers on the outer hull. It was a clever workaround to save weight on the landers by not needing docking ports. Congrats again, and I'll have your submission on the leaderboards momentarily!

EDIT: My wifi died immediately after posting that so NOW I'm adding you to the leaderboards.

Edited August 11, 2023 by JacobJHC

[JacobJHC]

On 7/3/2023 at 12:19 AM, camacju said:

Yet another Jool 5, this time optimized for low mass.

This is insane. I don't even know where to begin on what I just witnessed. Congratulations on completing the Jool 5 on the low mass challenge, though. Can I ask how you lifted off from the runway? What were those two tiny blue things? Were you using tiny flags as sleds?

[camacju]

3 hours ago, JacobJHC said:

What were those two tiny blue things? Were you using tiny flags as sleds?

Yeah, I got the idea from Ultimate Steve's grand tour. It's a bit annoying to take off successfully because of seams in the terrain but it's a lot lighter than normal landing gear. 

[Geryz]

Hey, I've got a question, is it allowed to return the mothership to Kerbin Orbit and send a crew retrieval vessel to pick them up from there? Or do you need to re-enter with a part of the mothership that was attached before launching off to Jool?
And if so, would that also have to be LKO or could it be a higher orbit?
Best regards

Edit: It would take less Delta-V to make a direct re-entry, obviously, and I have a pod and a heat shield attached, but it would feel more aesthetically pleasing not to have my 1000-ton giant nuclear interplanetary spacecraft go up in flames, y'know?

Edited August 18, 2023 by Geryz

[DerekL1963]

9 hours ago, Geryz said:

Hey, I've got a question, is it allowed to return the mothership to Kerbin Orbit and send a crew retrieval vessel to pick them up from there?

This is covered by Rule 9 :  "You are allowed to optionally send up a craft to return them from LKO."

[JacobJHC]

On 7/3/2023 at 12:19 AM, camacju said:

Yet another Jool 5, this time optimized for low mass.

Congratulations @camacju on the lowest mass Jool 5 mission to date! The craft design is so simply its difficult to understand how you made it work, yet at the same time the video is aesthetically pleasing and straight-forward enough that its easy to follow. I applaud the engineering masterpiece you've created, and will happily add it to the leaderboard now.

[Robin Patenall]

Quick question, does anybody know if using a mod like KSP_PartVolume to make more parts available to be moved using EVA construction would make the attempt a MODDED one?

I've got myself in a corner where I'm going to have to throw away fuel because I'm separating a lander and I don't have enough tank space on the mother ship to remove the excess fuel and save it (I think I have way too much fuel but throwing it away goes against the grain). I thought I could rearrange some tanks via EVA construction, but I've been playing with KSP_PartVolume too long and forgot that none of the 2.5m tanks (specifically the Rockomax X200-8 Fuel Tank) can be affected by an engineer.

I'd like not to throw away fuel, but I'd prefer not to have a MODDED entry when I don't need to.