The Ultimate Jool 5 Challenge Continued

[Kerbolitto]

I'd like to try this challenge too but despite having around 2000 hours on this game, I never landed on any Julian's moons except Bop O_o

As of all challenges, the more expertise you get through multiple landing & transfers, the easiest it becomes!

[mystifeid]

This was supposed to be a quick and dirty (stock) Jool 5 attempt but yesterday, when I was almost finished and landing back on Kerbin, I decided to read the rules. No clipping. Hmmm - weren't those nukes originally clipping into the ADTP-2-3 joining the booster and preventing it from staging? Eventually the only way I could get rid of it was by turning the engines on and exploding it. Hardly an advantage but rules tend to be rules. It was, like now, (not so) early in the morning and of the available options - hide/cheat/ignore it, beg for leniency or repeat the challenge - only one was honorable.

Honor was not my first choice.

I decided to see if some integrity would return with a few hours sleep and happily it did.A few cups of coffee after waking and my ships had been scoured for clipping with a fine tooth comb as well as being modified to fix the odd shortcoming noticed the day before.

Soon after I set sail amongst the stars again and this time found everything a lot easier. All landings, for example, were perfect first time - even on Tylo. (Those crashes yesterday really paid off.) The route yesterday was harder though. Today I started at Laythe and worked my way outwards which is very easy. Yesterday I did Tylo-Vall-Bop-Laythe-Pol.

Two rocket launches were used to take a mothership and lander into LKO. The same lander was used for all landings. The booster used to take the lander into orbit transferred remaining fuel to the mothership before the lander docked with it prior to transferring to Jool. The lander had a small ISRU and (today) the mothership had a large ISRU. Funny that I was sweating about the extra weight today but didn't even come close to running out of fuel. The mothership held room for six Kerbals and the lander had room for two more but only six Kerbals were taken. Bill landed on all moons for the sake of the mining and a different Kerbal accompanied him on every new moon but because both the lander and the mothership landed on Pol, all Kerbals landed on Pol.

A stock install was used - no mods.

Two days and two Jool 5 missions. Wow, it would be really nice if this one was ok, but if it's not, please try and let me down easy.

Imgur album - https://imgur.com/a/hG0Vm1V

Tylo circularization burn

[JacobJHC]

Congratulations @mystifeid for completing the Jool 5 Challenge on level 3! I really liked your lander, I haven't seen those making history engines used by anyone here yet. I also liked how you were able to make a universal lander that could handle all the moons. A lander like that has to be very adaptable. Overall, through and through great job!

[mystifeid]

16 hours ago, JacobJHC said:

Congratulations @mystifeid for completing the Jool 5 Challenge on level 3! I really liked your lander, I haven't seen those making history engines used by anyone here yet. I also liked how you were able to make a universal lander that could handle all the moons. A lander like that has to be very adaptable. Overall, through and through great job!

You know, I always forget that those engines were part of the DLC. There are other options though - four Skippers or even three Mainsails can be substituted for the Skiffs. Maybe fewer of these engines can be used but I just tested these configurations. Fuel tanks are bigger (particularly for the Mainsails) adding more weight but since fuel was never a problem and no aerobraking or gravity assists were used, I don't think the extra weight would matter. The lander with four Skippers was actually the easiest of the three to land and I'm kind of regretting not thinking of trying this in the first place.

Usually I just see if a rocket can SSTO to a 150km Kerbin orbit. If it can do that, it can usually handle Tylo and Laythe - provided it takes an ISRU and a drill to the surface. But what the hey - below is the four Skipper variant landing on Tylo and Laythe starting from the same orbital height as in the original mission - 200km.

A couple of small notes regarding your summary of my mission - it was Bill that landed on all moons and the album has not been linked.

Anyway, thanks for your kind words and also for not requiring me to do this mission again!

[sdj64]

I'm a little late since I was on vacation last week, but it's been just over 6 months that @JacobJHC has been managing the Jool 5 Challenge!  Great job so far!

And great job everyone who submitted an entry!  It's great to see that even after almost 5 YEARS the Jool 5 keeps inspiring people to come back or try it for the first time.

[IncongruousGoat]

You know, it's been a while since I did this challenge. It's high time I did it again.

Fine folk of the forums, I present to you Amalthea, a 42-part Jool 5.

Mission album is here: https://imgur.com/a/0V7TogV

Designing for low part count leads to some interesting tradeoffs. Laythe especially is a tricky one to get a low part count on, because of the high variation in flight regimes and the high delta-V requirement. In the end, though, I managed to cram everything I needed into 42 parts. I could have taken it lower still, but I was doing this for the Douglas Adams challenge.

[Ziv]

On 9/25/2018 at 3:53 AM, sdj64 said:

I'm a little late since I was on vacation last week, but it's been just over 6 months that @JacobJHC has been managing the Jool 5 Challenge!  Great job so far!

And great job everyone who submitted an entry!  It's great to see that even after almost 5 YEARS the Jool 5 keeps inspiring people to come back or try it for the first time.

Wow, since 5 years!!  
It's awesome, I'm so happy to see my original challange idea is still up and running! Thank you @JacobJHC and @sdj64 for your hard work on keeping it alive! Great job!!

...I started to play with the idea to do the JOOL-5 again!
Hmm, what style should I do it?  
1. Minimal stock?
2. Lightweight and small?
3. Huge expedition-style?
4. Mining and refueling?
5. Colonizating the moons in the same run?
6. ...or any other idea?!  

 

[Kerbolitto]

Is it okay if I post here a mission report of my Jool5 attempt, which I combined with STS challenge ? I think everything's checked for both challenges but I can put up a new post here if needed

 

 

 

Edited October 1, 2018 by Kerbolitto

[JacobJHC]

4 hours ago, Ziv said:

Wow, since 5 years!!  
It's awesome, I'm so happy to see my original challange idea is still up and running! Thank you @JacobJHC and @sdj64 for your hard work on keeping it alive! Great job!!

...I started to play with the idea to do the JOOL-5 again!
Hmm, what style should I do it?  
1. Minimal stock?
2. Lightweight and small?
3. Huge expedition-style?
4. Mining and refueling?
5. Colonizating the moons in the same run?
6. ...or any other idea?!  

 

Thanks for starting the challenge to begin with!

If you do another Jool 5 mission, I think either a huge expedition or a colony deployment (yas!) in the same mission would be cool. Back when I was designing my first Jool-5 ship I saw a youtube video where a guy was planning to colonize a few moons, and made a part one where he flew by the moon or something. Long story short the moons never got colonized, so I think it would be cool to see it finally be done. But in the end, any type of Jool 5 mission from the creator them self seems to be awesome enough in my opinion. 

3 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

Is it okay if I post here a mission report of my Jool5 attempt, which I combined with STS challenge ? I think everything's checked for both challenges but I can put up a new post here if needed

 

 

 

If you could put up a new post that would be nice. From the looks of it it looks good, although if at all possible could you submit a imgur album with every screenshot from the mission?

[jinnantonix]

I would be interested in trying a colony approach to Jool-5, and complete at Jebediah level.  What constitutes a colony?  Does it require adding a life support mod?  If so which one is best?

[Kerbolitto]

4 hours ago, JacobJHC said:

If you could put up a new post that would be nice. From the looks of it it looks good, although if at all possible could you submit a imgur album with every screenshot from the mission?

I'll create a thread in mission reports, if you don't mind ? All my pics are already hosted and a post is more enjoyable to read than an album imo

[Kerbolitto]

Here's my final report on Jool5 attempt

 

 

 

[sturmhauke]

That Tylo landing tho... 

[JacobJHC]

20 hours ago, jinnantonix said:

I would be interested in trying a colony approach to Jool-5, and complete at Jebediah level.  What constitutes a colony?  Does it require adding a life support mod?  If so which one is best?

A colony would just be a heavily populated base imo (15 at least, preferably 20 or more kerbals)

No need for a life support mod unless you want one. That's a challenge in itself.

[JacobJHC]

9 hours ago, Kerbolitto said:

Here's my final report on Jool5 attempt

 

 

 

Your mission looks awesome but I just have one question, how many Kerbals total did you bring and how many did you land on each moon? I'm trying to figure out if you're a level two or a level three entry.

[Kerbolitto]

12 hours ago, JacobJHC said:

Your mission looks awesome but I just have one question, how many Kerbals total did you bring and how many did you land on each moon? I'm trying to figure out if you're a level two or a level three entry.

Glad you like it !

I brought Jeb and Bill in STS HE, Val and an engineer in STS ST, and 1 pilot 1 engineer and a scientist inside the ground base . I always put a pilot and engineer in each cockpit in case I need to pack chutes or drive ISRU. I can provide a screen of those on the outpost if you want, there's still there

Bop : all 7

Pol : 5

Vall and Tylo : 2

Laythe : 5

Edited October 3, 2018 by Kerbolitto

[Kerbolitto]

On 3/17/2018 at 12:03 AM, JacobJHC said:

@Kerbolitto ISRU, Album here. Excellent mission done using two space shuttles capable of refueling on moons. Absolutely amazing job. In all things I ever thought I would see happen in KSP, a space shuttle landing on Tylo was not one of them.

Thanks for the kind words I'm happy that STS Challenge in Jool's system lead me to try Jool5, this was a great experience and it was really cool to plant flags on moons I never explored

[jinnantonix]

On 10/3/2018 at 9:36 AM, JacobJHC said:

A colony would just be a heavily populated base imo (15 at least, preferably 20 or more kerbals)

No need for a life support mod unless you want one. That's a challenge in itself.

I am thinking of a mission to put a 3 man base on each moon, with hitchhiker, ISRU, science lab and equipment.  Mission includes delivering all 15 Kerbals, and returning them to Kerbin in a single mission.

[farmerben]

This is an extremely awesome mission.  I've failed several serious attempts so far.  It has really taught me to be careful about gravity assists.  I once made the mistake of trying to capture Jool by entering opposite the direction which its moons orbit... which adds about 2000 dV to try to capture the big moons.  Several times I've taken the incorrect gravity assist off the major moons and added over 1000 dV to the mission requirements to get my landers back to the mothership.  My best missions so far can accomplish everything except returning all my Kerbonauts safely to Kerbin, simply because I ran out of dV.  I am pretty happy with my landers.  To succeed now I think what I need to do is divide my mothership into two seperate pieces.  One that can just wait for the return journey to Kerbin, and another that can swing around all of Jool's moons and rendevous with the landers after their job is complete.  I haven't earned the badge yet, just getting close.  

 

A small craft I call "superbike" can land on Val and the other two small moons, and take off again.  The core stage is a single RCS tank and ant engine.  Below that are crossfeed enabled couplers with toroidal tanks and spider engine, currently 4 stages of those.  It's more spider engines than I need, but such a tiny fraction of overall mission payload that I didn't fuss too much about trimming in down for Pol...  The superbike has way more solar panels than it needs for one tiny reaction wheel, but using the fixed solar panels I once got stuck with my engines facing the sun and ruined the mission.  

 

The Tylo lander is a "superbike" with 3 radial extensions.  It also had another stage for decent, that was discarded shortly before landing.  

The Laythe lander is unique.  It lands on water with about 1/8 throttle on the Junos.  I rolled it onto shore for this shot.  

I have a comfy margin of extra dV on the Laythe lander.  The nose separates giving me plenty of dV to circularize the orbit, even if I spent extra fuel in the atmosphere.  However I do not typically have enough fuel to escape Laythe's gravity well.  Therefore another ship must spend ~1000-2000 dV to rescue this guy.

Edited October 5, 2018 by farmerben

[JacobJHC]

On 9/29/2018 at 12:16 PM, IncongruousGoat said:

You know, it's been a while since I did this challenge. It's high time I did it again.

Fine folk of the forums, I present to you Amalthea, a 42-part Jool 5.

Mission album is here: https://imgur.com/a/0V7TogV

Designing for low part count leads to some interesting tradeoffs. Laythe especially is a tricky one to get a low part count on, because of the high variation in flight regimes and the high delta-V requirement. In the end, though, I managed to cram everything I needed into 42 parts. I could have taken it lower still, but I was doing this for the Douglas Adams challenge.

Sorry for being so late. Congratulations for completing the Jool 5 challenge on level one! Your mission is by far one of the most simplified I have seen due to the low part count. I will be adding you to the scoreboard now.

Edited October 5, 2018 by JacobJHC

[IncongruousGoat]

Just now, JacobJHC said:

Sorry for being so late. Congratulations for completing the Jool 5 challenge on level two! Your mission is by far one of the most simplified I have seen due to the low part count. I will be adding you to the scoreboard now.

Wait, level two? I only had a crew of one.

[JacobJHC]

Just now, IncongruousGoat said:

Wait, level two? I only had a crew of one.

My bad, level one.

[EvermoreAlpaca]

Just to make a note here, I would personally be much more interested in doing this challenge again in this game version if there weren't some unnecessary and arbitrary rules attached.  Case in point, not being able to separate before Jool S.O.I.  I see no purpose in this; all it does is limit possible designs and creativity.

Also personally, If I can't send Bill around space in a command chair, I won't be doing the challenge.  

Neither of these rules add significant difficulty to the challenge, but they do prevent me from flying the way I like =)

Perhaps add another category if you are really invested in this particular ruleset?

Edited October 6, 2018 by EvermoreAlpaca

[sturmhauke]

I wasn't around when the previous two versions were running, but as far as I can tell those rules have been in place since it started.

[EvermoreAlpaca]

On 10/6/2018 at 1:21 PM, sturmhauke said:

I wasn't around when the previous two versions were running, but as far as I can tell those rules have been in place since it started.

This doesn't really constitute an argument =)  Why not make a new category for rogueish chaps that want to do a J5 mission, inspired by this challenge, but don't want to be limited in creativity by arbitrary rules that don't add to the difficulty? 

Edited April 6, 2019 by EvermoreAlpaca