The Ultimate Jool 5 Challenge Continued

[JacobJHC]

23 hours ago, JcoolTheShipbuilder said:

hmmm... i have a plan for a massive mission, with a gigantic mothership that might be able to land on Vall to refuel, but it will carry two large capacity landers for Tylo and Laythe, i might bring 100 kerbals (although the massive mothership can hold 360) lol

Please post a screenshot once you build it!

[GRS]

@JacobJHC

Sorry, but do you mind reviewing this thing ? Thanks

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, GRS said:

Sorry, but do you mind reviewing this thing ?

Reviewing which thing?  Your link goes back the first post of the very thread you're posting in.

[JacobJHC]

On 9/12/2020 at 9:34 AM, GRS said:

@JacobJHC

Sorry, but do you mind reviewing this thing ? Thanks

Yeah the link is just going to the thread's first page, not your submission.

[arctangent]

I think that's the forum trying to be helpful and failing... if you click the tiny link at the top where it says "GRS replied to a topic" it takes you to the right place

[JacobJHC]

On 6/20/2020 at 10:03 PM, GRS said:

Name : Sheep v4

Delta V : Up to 100 000 m/s

Kerbal count : 5

Landing count : 51+14

Mass : around 3700 Tons

Length : 21k Years

@JacobJHC

Congratulations on completing the Jool 5 challenge on level 3! You did quite a few extra landings, while I'll be sure to mention when I add you to the winner board...

[SiriusRocketry]

Managed to engineer a 21.5t Tylo/Pol/Bop/Vall lander that seats two, so I can have a pilot and at least one kerbal landing on all the moons. Going to try go for Level 3!

[KingDominoIII]

I flew most of the mission, but I'm stuck in a highly elliptical orbit of Kerbol with only about 800 dV. My perihelion is near Kerbin orbit and my aphelion is around Eeloo orbit. Any advice?

[sturmhauke]

53 minutes ago, KingDominoIII said:

I flew most of the mission, but I'm stuck in a highly elliptical orbit of Kerbol with only about 800 dV. My perihelion is near Kerbin orbit and my aphelion is around Eeloo orbit. Any advice?

If you're lucky you might be able to lower your periapsis and get an aerobrake that won't melt your craft. You might also try for an Eve gravity brake. It's gonna be tough either way.

[jinnantonix]

6 hours ago, KingDominoIII said:

I flew most of the mission, but I'm stuck in a highly elliptical orbit of Kerbol with only about 800 dV. My perihelion is near Kerbin orbit and my aphelion is around Eeloo orbit. Any advice?

I would go for an aerobrake at Kerbin. Try Pe at between 55 and 60km and see if your craft can handle the heat of a Kerbin atmospheric brake.  If so, you might try for a deeper Pe.  If you can;t get into Kerbin elliptical orbit, just  orbit Kerbol  until you get another encounter with Kerbin, and try again (this time with much less velocity).  Eventually you should get into Kerbin elliptical orbit.  Time and patience, and lots of quicksaves.

 

.

Edited September 18, 2020 by jinnantonix

[dnbattley]

10 hours ago, KingDominoIII said:

I flew most of the mission, but I'm stuck in a highly elliptical orbit of Kerbol with only about 800 dV. My perihelion is near Kerbin orbit and my aphelion is around Eeloo orbit. Any advice?

From a similar situation, I engineered a Duna "handbrake turn" to get back to Kerbin, because you can hit that atmosphere at ridiculous speeds in (relative) safety...

[JacobJHC]

On 9/17/2020 at 7:13 PM, KingDominoIII said:

I flew most of the mission, but I'm stuck in a highly elliptical orbit of Kerbol with only about 800 dV. My perihelion is near Kerbin orbit and my aphelion is around Eeloo orbit. Any advice?

I would make a few flybys of Kerbin to lower your orbit. Then when your orbit is very similar to Kerbin's an aerobrake should be safe to do.

[OutInSpace]

On 9/17/2020 at 7:13 PM, KingDominoIII said:

I flew most of the mission, but I'm stuck in a highly elliptical orbit of Kerbol with only about 800 dV. My perihelion is near Kerbin orbit and my aphelion is around Eeloo orbit. Any advice?

Try a Kerbin aerocapture. When I did my J5 trial run, I was able to brake out of a Jool-Kerbin transfer orbit by lowering my Kerbin PE to 40km and spinning like a top to prevent melting. My mothership was pretty rigid though, so this might not be a good idea if you're leaning more into wet noodle territory.

[dawg]

Hi Everyone,

I did a Jool-5 all the way back in 2013 (Ziv's original thread, one of the first handful of Jeb's level, which I botched mightily by failing to take a screenshot of the recovery science), long before ISRUs, when we were allowed refuel missions, had nowhere near as powerful/large parts as we do today (the launch rockets were all complex asparagus setups, tanks were relatively tiny, etc), etc. Honestly, it's a miracle I succeeded, as Tylo almost got me (seriously, I tried that landing so many times and finally landed it by hand after numerous MechJeb and hand flight failures because that craft was super complex) and I had more landers than I really should have needed. I completed it at Jeb's level. After that, which took weeks of planning/building/testing and days of doing the mission, the draw of Jool was low and I haven't been back. Not that I've been playing much over the years - that was a real burnout mission.

Over the last week or so, I've been putting together my second Jool mission with the same core targets (landing on all the moons), then thought I'd actually document it and see if I could complete another Jool-5 mission. It turns out that at least one of my modern construction patterns was forbidden (clipping the nuclear engines inside a fuel tank so I could radially mount them, as I do on all my short-range tug ships). Had to do a little reconstruction, change a few things, and fiddle a little more to get it to where I needed it. I decided I'd go for a Level 3 instead of a Jeb's this time, just because Science is so crazy now with everything you need to pack. The original plan was for the SSTO to dock in LKO before heading to Minmus for a refuel and then setting off for Jool, but I found that it was nearly impossible to balance the ship with this method of construction and I'd have needed to heavily redesign one of my fairly reliable SSTO designs more than I already did to support Laythe, so I ultimately decided to add more rockets and simply launch the whole thing all at once with these new bigger parts and fairings.

I present to you the mothership that will bring our five brave Kerbals to Jool, Laythe, Vall, Tylo, Bop, and Pol: The Indefinite

And to prove that this mess can get into orbit without resorting to cheats, a test launch:

 

Let me know if you notice anything obvious that would make this ineligible based on the rules as I understand them:

1. Removed HyperEdit in preparation for this mission, but did use it for testing while developing the landers so I'm not caught with a lander that doesn't have enough fuel to land somewhere (although that mining lander is sketchy and I have never tested it at all, not even landing it on Minmus; hopefully MechJeb is right and it'll have the TWR to lift off from Bop and Pol).
2. This ship has no clipped parts except, possibly, the tail fin on the spaceplane, which I had to absolute position into place. Most of this ship is fuel tanks, crew quarters, and engines. I unclipped the nuclear engines from their respective Mk1 fuselage tanks, which is standard on my Kerbin region tugs that are parked on all my stations (one will be seen in the post-mission briefing).
3. One launch. One. Launch. This is insane. It took a bunch last time.
4. Should have everything I need here, though it will be rearranged frequently for the landings.
5. All Kerbals are in cabins.
6. Using ISRU since refueling is not allowed. This ship is designed to convert ore to fuel, which boosts the dV enough to get it to Jool, and it will be refueling itself while in transit to Jool.
7. Verified that the Tylo and Laythe landers have working ladders that allow entry to the ships from the ground.
8. Normal. CommNet is off in the new save that I'm using for this mission. This save also has one of my standard orbiting Minmus Fuel Stations at 250km stocked with all fuels and ore. There is also a lander on Minmus used for refueling that station.
9. The target is to return the Kerbals from LKO using an SSTO shuttle.
10. This is stock with the DLCs and MechJeb, with which I hope to do almost all maneuvers.

My current plan for the actual submission is to make a video of the entire mission, I just need to find a time when I can do it in one shot, as it'll probably take ~4-5 hours...

Edited September 24, 2020 by dawg

[dawg]

Thoroughly Kerbal landing where I failed to shut the engines off or even line up with the runway perfectly, so it went bouncing off and came to a stop out here, but they're all back in one piece. Five moons, a number of malfunctions, a huge screwup on Laythe, a few crashes, and lots of ore, but here we are. Remarkable how small ships can be these days. I tried to reduce some weight and ended up without enough power for SAS on Laythe and didn't realize those puny solar panels would barely charge the plane, so Jeb flew most of that mission manually. The remainder of The Indefinite (hitchhiker module, lander can module, mining lander, main engine tug, and adapter tug) is still in orbit with approximately 6000 liquid fuel worth of Ore and full tanks. Considered returning with just the crew quarters and lander can, but wasn't sure I could pull it off and wanted a little extra space for the Kerbals on their long journey home.

Had to fly the mission over multiple days, so I'll need to clip, merge, and speed up the video. It took nearly 9 hours to fly the mission.

*EDIT: OpenShot is processing the video now. Hopefully it turns out over night so I can upload tomorrow.*

*EDIT2: OpenShot failed. Switched to Shotcut and it is capable of using hardware encoding. Should have the entire thing done in 2-2.5 3-3.5 hours, then it's the long slog to upload the 2GB 4.5GB-5GB (or so) of recompressed/accelerated/cleaned video to YouTube.*

*EDIT3: I'm also uploading all the originals with the crashes and assorted junk at the beginning and ends. Will make a playlist for those, if anyone really wants to watch the entire thing in real time. There are 52.6GB of these raw videos.*

Route:

• Kerbin: Ascent
• Minmus: Docking and transfer of fuel and ore before departing Kerbin for Jool.
• Kerbin: Ascent of Indefinite SSTO. Left in LKO.
• Jool:  Orbit between Tylo and Bop. Reconfiguration for Tylo landing.
• Tylo: Landing and ascent. Lander can connected to small tug/adapter for remainder of trip.
• Jool: Docking and refuel. Reconfiguration for Bop landing.
• Bop: Landing, mining, refueling, ascent, docking, refuel, reland, mining, refueling, ascent, and docking.
• Jool: Docking. Relocate to orbit between Laythe and Vall. Reconfigure for Laythe landing.
• Laythe: Landing without SAS after power issue, ascent was similarly troubled due to power issue, docking, and probe flight into the atmosphere to burn up, because garbage. Originally planned to leave it in orbit for future missions.
• Vall: Reconfigure for landing, landing, ascent, and docking.
• Pol: Landing, mining, ascent, and docking.
• Jool: Orbit, depart for Kerbin.
• Kerbin: Orbit, dock with Indefinite SSTO, transfer crew, descent, landing, and photo.

Edited October 1, 2020 by dawg

[dawg]

Mission video:

I should have trusted MechJeb. Alternate landing ending, using MechJeb to land.

This is the playlist of the original videos from the mission. Includes crashes.

[GRS]

Left too long...again, Thanks

[s_gamer101]

Hello everyone, here's my submission to this challenge. It was a single launch using an reusable launch vehicle. I made 4 imgur albums instead of one because I didn't upload all the pictures on the same day.

https://imgur.com/a/Ct9UjMe
https://imgur.com/a/mMslCr3
https://imgur.com/a/8VzOpru
https://imgur.com/a/maIXma1

It's a 3rd level mission. I had five crew members. Here's who landed on which moon:

• Laythe: Kerfrey Kerman and Jeb
• Tylo: Bob and Jeb
• Vall: Val and Jeb
• Bop: Laing Kerman and Jeb
• Pol: The entire crew

Mods used:

• Kerbal Engineer Redux
• Transfer Window Planner
• Kerbal Alarm Clock
• ManeuverNodeSplitter
• RCS Build Aid
• Editor Extensions Redux
• Trajectories

I also used both Making History and Breaking Ground.

[camacju]

https://imgur.com/a/Hh7bXiE

Here's my Grand Tour mission as a submission for the Jool 5 challenge. The Jool system landings were Laythe, Tylo, Vall, Pol, and Bop in that order. Single launch mission which did split before Jool but the only parts that met at Jool were the mothership and an interplanetary tug.

Note that I didn't get the kerbal out on the surface of Laythe because I was afraid the lander would tip without SAS but I had forgotten that it had a probe core. So I could have done it but oh well

[The Space Dino]

A question - I take it that clipping nosecoses on the back of rapier engines is not allowed for this challenge?

Edited October 26, 2020 by The Space Dino

[s_gamer101]

On 10/26/2020 at 11:45 AM, The Space Dino said:

A question - I take it that clipping nosecoses on the back of rapier engines is not allowed for this challenge?

If you want to reduce the Rapier's drag, you could just attach a Small Nose Cone on it without any partclipping and it shouldn't overheat.

[Goufalite]

Hello, since lockdown has restarted in my country, time to start a Jool challenge! But I have some questions

- Is the World Stabilizer mod allowed? It's a mod that prevents ships from being destroyed upon scene loading when they are landed somwhere. It changes the gravity for a few seconds when a ship is landed. If no, I'll gladly unistall it (and raise my F5/F9-fu).

- I don't understand "All launches must be flown" in rule 3. Let's say I want to send a SSTO to Kerbin's orbit to rendezvous and dock with a mothership, and right after send a refuel ship to refuel that SSTO . Do I have to bring that refuel ship with me to Jool or can I leave it as debris in Kerbin's orbit?

Thank you in advance.

[DerkyJerkyWreaksHavoc]

@JacobJHC this challenge puts my KSP skills to shame... i wanna just puke... 

Spoiler

Puke your way to victory with the recent maiden flight of the Pukatron-6000* with kerbal features such as panicking, panicking, and more panicking to get you to whatever star system you need to go. Reserve now at WWW.ThisIsTotallyNotAScam.com to reserve your ticket to the Jool system and beyond!

*Not responsible for severe injuries and/or death by purchasing this flight ticket.

 

[GRS]

10 hours ago, Goufalite said:

Hello, since lockdown has restarted in my country, time to start a Jool challenge! But I have some questions

- Is the World Stabilizer mod allowed? It's a mod that prevents ships from being destroyed upon scene loading when they are landed somwhere. It changes the gravity for a few seconds when a ship is landed. If no, I'll gladly unistall it (and raise my F5/F9-fu).

- I don't understand "All launches must be flown" in rule 3. Let's say I want to send a SSTO to Kerbin's orbit to rendezvous and dock with a mothership, and right after send a refuel ship to refuel that SSTO . Do I have to bring that refuel ship with me to Jool or can I leave it as debris in Kerbin's orbit?

Thank you in advance.

-I'm sure its fine, i mean...it only prevents KSP from killing your craft for no reason

-You may have an infinite amount of launches before leaving LKO, afterwards, you must keep that one ship alone, no extra launches (unless refuelling is still allowed)

Either way, Good luck

9 hours ago, DAFATRONALDO2007 IN SPACE said:

@JacobJHC this challenge puts my KSP skills to shame... i wanna just puke... 

  Hide contents

Puke your way to victory with the recent maiden flight of the Pukatron-6000* with kerbal features such as panicking, panicking, and more panicking to get you to whatever star system you need to go. Reserve now at WWW.ThisIsTotallyNotAScam.com to reserve your ticket to the Jool system and beyond!

*Not responsible for severe injuries and/or death by purchasing this flight ticket.

 

LOL, awesome, i wanna see how it turned out...Good luck

Edited November 3, 2020 by GRS

[The Space Dino]

On 10/27/2020 at 8:53 PM, s_gamer101 said:

If you want to reduce the Rapier's drag, you could just attach a Small Nose Cone on it without any partclipping and it shouldn't overheat.

Well I already did a Jool 5 with the nose cone clipped, that's why I was asking if that would be allowed for my most recent mission to qualify, but if it doesn't it's all good (although the drag reductions were pretty much negligible anyway)