The Ultimate Jool 5 Challenge Continued

[DennisB]

4 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

it's been a while, but iirc somewhat over 100 tons. the final plane is around 30 tons.

nowadays I am a lot more experienced and I recognize going reusable there was a suboptimal choice. Not Albatross is a perfectly fine laythe plane, to turn it into a jool plane I had to add somewhere between 80 and 100 tons. I could have made a disposable jool lander for less than that, and save mass overall.

Oh, OK. That's the reason, why I asked, because I wasn't sure, that I can estimate it from the video. Then we are in the same mass region though, it's only the design, which misled me.

[king of nowhere]

I considered, since @JacobJHC seemed to appreciate radiations adding spice to the mission, I have my second kerbalism grand tour that I never submitted here. It was done at hard level, which means radiation shielding is three times less effective - effectively tripling radiation doses. It led to a very tense mission where radiations, bugs, and life support shortages conspired to almost cause complete failure - until finally, after a dozen attempts, I managed to leave Laythe and rejoin the mothership with 10 m/s spare deltaV, 90% radiation damage, and half a day worth of food and water left. Definitely one of my exciting missions, worth submitting here

 

[DennisB]

I've finished the spceplane with all its attachments. Or let's say, I don't want to invest more time in it .

I put the first assembly together, and the main parts fit together better, than I expected. It still needs some fuel tanks (I have to calculate, how many) and some engines and structural parts. But how it will go through Kerbin's atmosphere.... .

My goal is, to do it in a single launch. Let's see, if I can do it.

I'm not sure about the crew. I think, I will leave the return module temporarily uncrewed. In this case I will have 11 kerbals on the mission, and a maximum of 5 crewed and 3 uncrewed vessels operating simultaneously.

[Astrogator]

Hello everyone, I'm a new user on this forum, and I've decided to start my adventure with the Jool 5 challenge, but I want to do it as realistically as possible. That means using rockets that could realistically exist in the future. The freighter is modularly built in orbit, adaptable to any mission, and it features an artificial intelligence in the form of a modified GPT chat that can, in some cases, take control of the mother ship. It generally behaves like a properly functioning HAL 9000.

However, I have a question. Are the parts placed on the Laythe shuttle okay? I built it a long time ago and have been improving it ever since. I'd like to use it for the mission because I like it, but I can also build something else.

P.S. There was once a movie where a group of astronauts went to Mars and Jupiter's moons. One of the astronauts died from radiation, and I think the ship was called Discovery

https://imgur.com/a/sA0pzUt

Edited December 20, 2023 by Astrogator

[Kimera Industries]

I have a question concerning my Jool 5, a link to which can be found in my signature.

I was preparing to launch another module to my mothership, a simple one just to top off the monopropellant tanks. I usually make quicksaves pretty frequently, and my procedure for every launch is to delete most of the previous quicksaves from other missions. As I did this, I accidentally loaded one of those quicksaves I was trying to delete, and in it, my mothership only had the nuclear tug built. "No problem." I thought, "I'll just load persistent." I thought. Well, persistent had autosaved, so my most recent quicksave was that of the mothership having only the nuclear tug. 

As you can imagine, I was very frustrated, as the docking process for each module was painfully slow due to the bad FPS and slow turn rate of the tug, and I didn't want to have to relaunch those three modules. I came across the best solution to recover my work: I would use alt+f12 to rendezvous each module with the station, then re-dock it. I didn't use the cheat menu for anything else, all I did was complete the station to the point it was before. As I post more of my mission in the mission report, you will be able to see that I am capable of launching those modules and docking them. The only mission required will be the one to top off the tanks, as it was before.

Is this OK under the rules of the challenge? If it's not, then I will relaunch and dock all of those modules without cheats, but I'd rather not.

[DennisB]

On 12/17/2023 at 6:46 PM, DennisB said:

But how it will go through Kerbin's atmosphere.... .

My goal is, to do it in a single launch. Let's see, if I can do it.

IT WORKS!!! 

As I put the parts together, I didn't really believe, this could fly through Kerbin's atmosphere and reach orbit. But once I attached enough fuel and engine power, it could. I think, I've managed all the difficult parts of the design process. Now, it's time to work on the details and practicing the mission. I don't expect problems anymore, I just have to solve all the unexpected problems, which will come (in the last days I had some trouble with exploding rover wheels, because of a bug).

[king of nowhere]

On 12/20/2023 at 10:36 PM, Astrogator said:

However, I have a question. Are the parts placed on the Laythe shuttle okay? I built it a long time ago and have been improving it ever since. I'd like to use it for the mission because I like it, but I can also build something else.

https://imgur.com/a/sA0pzUt

wha do you mean by "ok"?

it's ok in the sense that it will work? as far as i know, yes, because pretty muh anything can be made to work. I'm going to land a whole aircraft carrier on laythe, a shuttle won't be an issue.

it's ok in the sense that it is best optimized? depends optimized for what. certainly not for low mass, as you can go below 5 tons. but it may be a good way to do what you want. whatever it is you want to make. in this game there is no such thing as being "ok", there are only mission objectives.

23 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:

I have a question concerning my Jool 5, a link to which can be found in my signature.

I was preparing to launch another module to my mothership, a simple one just to top off the monopropellant tanks. I usually make quicksaves pretty frequently, and my procedure for every launch is to delete most of the previous quicksaves from other missions. As I did this, I accidentally loaded one of those quicksaves I was trying to delete, and in it, my mothership only had the nuclear tug built. "No problem." I thought, "I'll just load persistent." I thought. Well, persistent had autosaved, so my most recent quicksave was that of the mothership having only the nuclear tug. 

As you can imagine, I was very frustrated, as the docking process for each module was painfully slow due to the bad FPS and slow turn rate of the tug, and I didn't want to have to relaunch those three modules. I came across the best solution to recover my work: I would use alt+f12 to rendezvous each module with the station, then re-dock it. I didn't use the cheat menu for anything else, all I did was complete the station to the point it was before. As I post more of my mission in the mission report, you will be able to see that I am capable of launching those modules and docking them. The only mission required will be the one to top off the tanks, as it was before.

Is this OK under the rules of the challenge? If it's not, then I will relaunch and dock all of those modules without cheats, but I'd rather not.

only the challenge keeper can answer that, but regarding quicksaves: don't you any any more recent quicksave? or did you already delete all of them, except the first one which you accidentally loaded instead?
i recommend you never delete your most recent quicksaves. the persistent file is not reliable. also, the best way to delete quicksaves is to go in the game folder, not to do it in game one at a time

[Kimera Industries]

26 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

Don't you any any more recent quicksave? or did you already delete all of them, except the first one which you accidentally loaded instead?

I did not. The most recent, not deleted quicksave was the one that was accidentally loaded.

27 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

I recommend you never delete your most recent quicksaves. the persistent file is not reliable. 

Yeah. I just learned that the hard way.

27 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

Also, the best way to delete quicksaves is to go in the game folder, not to do it in game one at a time

I just learned that too. That really should be fixed.

[Astrogator]

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wha do you mean by "ok"?

 

Quote

That means using rockets that could realistically exist in the future.

English is not my native language, so perhaps I'm not expressing myself precisely enough. I was referring, of course, to the rules of the challenge. Although there seems to be a rule against such construction, I am already halfway through this thread. Many times during the construction of ships, similar aesthetic modifications have been made. Of course, my shuttle could go below 5 tons and exploit glitches, but as I wrote, that's not my goal. Looking at examples from previous Jool 5 missions, I suspect my shuttle would be okay. But just in case, I'll change its design

[DennisB]

14 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

I'm going to land a whole aircraft carrier on laythe.

Do you already have a working design?

I tried a more simple solution, but it didn't work, and to improve it further, I'd have to destroy the aerodynamics of my plane, which I don't want. I also don't want to add a further vessel to my assembly, because I already have six (or more?).

I see, you are close to the end of your Grand Tour, so I don't have much time to beat the record, at least for a short period of time. But if you are fast enough (or I'm slow enough), it's possible, that we will do our missions at the same time.

[king of nowhere]

3 hours ago, DennisB said:

Do you already have a working design?

I tried a more simple solution, but it didn't work, and to improve it further, I'd have to destroy the aerodynamics of my plane, which I don't want. I also don't want to add a further vessel to my assembly, because I already have six (or more?).

I see, you are close to the end of your Grand Tour, so I don't have much time to beat the record, at least for a short period of time. But if you are fast enough (or I'm slow enough), it's possible, that we will do our missions at the same time.

I haven't tested the flight yet, but my plan is to simply brute force the whole thing.  the "carrier" is just a handful of massive fuel tanks, with structural panels to provide an even ramp for the plane to crawl over from the sea (i am not capable to land the plane on the ship, I'm landing it on water and sliding it over a ramp instead). so if I fill those fuel tanks and strap some rockets to it, I expect to have at least 5000 m/s. that's enough to fly straight up slowly until I'm out of the atmosphere.

So I'm ultimately adding a crapload of mass to brute force a problem. I got used to kerbalism missions with 5000 tons ships, the carrier is going to be in the 1000-2000 tons range, it's nothing new. it's surprising how rare it is that a problem can't be solved by adding mass.

Quote

I see, you are close to the end of your Grand Tour, so I don't have much time to beat the record

I am close to the end, but I don't expect to be done before another couple of months. reaching ammenon requires 5 km/s to lower periapsis, and 10 km/s for intercept. I'm going to spend weeks running gravity assists there.

16 hours ago, Astrogator said:

 

English is not my native language, so perhaps I'm not expressing myself precisely enough. I was referring, of course, to the rules of the challenge. Although there seems to be a rule against such construction,

what? no rule against realism, certainly not. the only relevant rules on ship design are those

Quote

2. No part-clipping of functional parts (fuel tanks, batteries, crew pods, engines, science parts, SAS) into each other. It is okay to clip structural and non-functional parts, wings, and heat shields.
7. On all of the landings, the Kerbal must be able to get out and walk (or swim!) around on the surface.  Make sure your ladders work!

if your ship does not violate those two rules, it's fine

Edited December 23, 2023 by king of nowhere

[DennisB]

2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

I haven't tested the flight yet, but my plan is to simply brute force the whole thing.  the "carrier" is just a handful of massive fuel tanks, with structural panels to provide an even ramp for the plane to crawl over from the sea (i am not capable to land the plane on the ship, I'm landing it on water and sliding it over a ramp instead). so if I fill those fuel tanks and strap some rockets to it, I expect to have at least 5000 m/s. that's enough to fly straight up slowly until I'm out of the atmosphere.

So I'm ultimately adding a crapload of mass to brute force a problem. I got used to kerbalism missions with 5000 tons ships, the carrier is going to be in the 1000-2000 tons range, it's nothing new. it's surprising how rare it is that a problem can't be solved by adding mass.

That sounds really huge. Probably it must be, if you want to prevent it from flipping over when trying to climb on it with the plane.

My complete assembly had on the first successful launch test 1500t launch mass on Kerbin, and it ended up with too much fuel left in Kerbin orbit. There is still room for improvement.

[DennisB]

I had the plan to do the mission without CommNet, because it's allowed by the rules, and I wanted to use KerbNet for the biome search, assuming, that the necessary data is on board of the vessels, and I didn't want to move around relay satellites. But now I realized, this is no option, because with a deactivated CommNet, the surface deployed science experiments transmit the data immediately, without a communication device, and I have no chance to recover the science points . Now I have the choice to bring relay satellites with me and deactivate them, when I run the surface deployed experiments, or I have to deal with the situation, that I don't have KerbNet all the time .

Update: That's really bad. I just found out, that I can't switch off the large relay antennas. I need the strongest antenna to get connection to Kerbin, but it's so strong, that I have to place it in a 450Mm orbit to guarantee, that the surface deployed experiments don't connect to it. But a HG antenna in the moon's orbit also can't connect to it, and with the next larger relay antenna, the surface deployed experiments have contact. This means, that all my vehicles, which use KerbNet, must have a large direct antenna, which doesn't work on Laythe, because it will be destroyed through drag.

Luckily, I have a dedicated Science Orbiter, and on the airless moons I can probably mount an antenna on the rover. But on Laythe I have to find the biomes without KerbNet. Is it in the spirit of the rules to find that special places, where a biome covers both water and land parts, to collect landed and splashed science, during the preparation and make some notes for myself to find those places in the real misson?

Edited December 26, 2023 by DennisB

[DennisB]

The assembly is complete and ready for the final test.

I really had trouble with the maneuver nodes. I don't have enough TWR to do a direct transfer to Jool, so I have to use some gravity assists. The problem is, when I have more than two maneuver nodes or more than one flyby, the next maneuver node doesn't work well. It jumps randomly, when I'm adjusting it. How do you plan sequences of maneuver nodes for gravity assists? Do you use mods for it, or do you get the maneuvers from somewhere else (developed by other users), or don't you have this issue? It took me 1,5 days IRL to get from LKO to Jool SOI .

I did some calculations, and it should be possible for me to collect around 93,7% of the theoretically available science points (without the vessel recovery points). If everything works well, it should be more than enough to get the record, until @king of nowhere gets it back.

[Kimera Industries]

3 hours ago, DennisB said:

How do you plan sequences of maneuver nodes for gravity assists? Do you use mods for it, or do you get the maneuvers from somewhere else (developed by other users), or don't you have this issue? It took me 1,5 days IRL to get from LKO to Jool SOI .

What I've found out during mine is that since it doesn't show your trajectory beyond a certain point, i.e. leaving one of the SOIs, if you add another maneuver node in the last SOI that it shows in the chain, then it'll show your trajectory in the next SOI. Repeat until it extends as far as you need.

My Jool 5 is technically complete, but I am having problems with it exploding when I try to reenter Kerbin's atmosphere.  

[JacobJHC]

On 12/25/2023 at 3:02 PM, DennisB said:

Is it in the spirit of the rules to find that special places, where a biome covers both water and land parts, to collect landed and splashed science, during the preparation and make some notes for myself to find those places in the real misson?

If that's alright with you I don't see the issue. Biome information can be found online anyway so it gets difficult to say what would or would not be in spirit about that specifically. I think that it comes down to your save's lore (IE, how much does the KSC know about Laythe prior to the mission departure).

1 hour ago, Kimera Industries said:

My Jool 5 is technically complete, but I am having problems with it exploding when I try to reenter Kerbin's atmosphere.  

I believe in you!

[Kimera Industries]

2 minutes ago, JacobJHC said:

I believe in you!

Thank you! My crew has now splashed down safely and I got all the juicy science from it. I opened all the service bays to produce enough drag to make the reentry non-lethal and miraculously survived! I'll post the complete mission in a bit on my mission report, in my signature below.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Kimera Industries

[DennisB]

4 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:

What I've found out during mine is that since it doesn't show your trajectory beyond a certain point, i.e. leaving one of the SOIs, if you add another maneuver node in the last SOI that it shows in the chain, then it'll show your trajectory in the next SOI. Repeat until it extends as far as you need.

My Jool 5 is technically complete, but I am having problems with it exploding when I try to reenter Kerbin's atmosphere.  

My problem is not, that I can't see the trajectory.  My problem is, that it's wrong, if I adjust the final maneuver.

An example. As I wanted to set up the second gravity assist with the second maneuver, I grabbed the retrograde marker of the maneuver node. I pulled it as long as I got an encounter. It was at 95m/s. Then I changed the focus to that body to fine tune the maneuver. I set the step size in the maneuver edit window to the minimum, made one click, and the encounter gone. I went back to the maneuver node, pulled again on the retrograde marker, and got an encounter, this time at 140m/s. I repeated everything, and the same happened. At the next try, my encounter was already at 195m/s. This was the most extreme case.

Another example, which happens mostly. If I can adjust the maneuver with the smallest steps in one direction, let's say retrograde, then I want to add some normal to it or change the timing, the trajectory jumps away. If I do the last change back, it doesn't change back to the former trajectory, it changes depending on its actual place. This makes it impossible for me to see, where I will land after the second gravity assist, so I don't know, when to start the first one.

My workaround. Because my first gravity assist was at the Mun, I planned my trajectory at first without it, to get the start time right. Then I reloaded the game, and changed the first part to set up the Mun gravity assist, and eyeballed the following trajectory, to be similar to the first case, because I couldn't set up the second maneuver exactly. I ended up with two more correction burns, and my maneuver to set up the second gravity assist was also larger. The total dV was at the end slightly higher, than it would be without the Mun assist (or maybe not, because I didn't have enough oxidizer to run the chemical engines for the whole Kerbin escape maneuver, and the Nerv engines don't have enough TWR). This worked with the Mun, because its distance to Kerbin in time and space is small, but I have no idea, how I could set up a gravity assist with multiple planets, if I don't know, when to start and where I end.

[king of nowhere]

19 hours ago, DennisB said:

The problem is, when I have more than two maneuver nodes or more than one flyby, the next maneuver node doesn't work well. It jumps randomly, when I'm adjusting it. How do you plan sequences of maneuver nodes for gravity assists? Do you use mods for it, or do you get the maneuvers from somewhere else (developed by other users), or don't you have this issue? It took me 1,5 days IRL to get from LKO to Jool SOI .

l @king of nowhere

A big milestone in my skill level came as i learned to make chained gravity assists without knowing the end. 

It takes knowledge of what you can and cannot do with a gravity assist, which comes with experience.  And a bit of a leap of faith. I never plan more than two consecutive assists. 

In your case, i'd go for the first eve flyby knowing that i can keep ejecting in resonant orbits as long as i need to reach jool. Or, if i don't have enough speed, i can fix it with a kerbin flyby, or maybe a periapsis ignition if deltaV is not a big deal. 

 

[JacobJHC]

@king of nowhere I want to let you know I am reviewing your submission of the Bolt / Nail grand tour but my wifi is horrible and not loading any of the images. Apologies for the SLS levels of delay on my part.

[king of nowhere]

On 1/11/2024 at 3:21 AM, JacobJHC said:

@king of nowhere I want to let you know I am reviewing your submission of the Bolt / Nail grand tour but my wifi is horrible and not loading any of the images. Apologies for the SLS levels of delay on my part.

I saw your upvotes trickling in, and realized that you were reviewing. Pity about the wifi. My reports do tend to be very heavy.

Edited January 18 by king of nowhere

[DennisB]

Just a little progress note.

I'm still on the test mission. Till now I sorted out several issues of the vessel, like missing docking ports, monopropellant and inventory slots. I had also some issues with EVA construction, but I think it's fine too for the first part. I could do the docking maneuvers (after I had the docking ports at the right place), and my refueling strategy seems to work too. In the last days my maneuvers got also much better.

Now, I'm sorting out the issues of the spaceplane, where I have to modify the decouplers and the surrounding parts, because I can't modify them on EVA construction. I still don't know, on what depends, which parts can be moved in EVA construction and which not. I really hope, when I change those parts in the VAB, I don't have to redo all the staging and the fuel priority settings, because I have at the moment 57 stages and 176 fuel tanks, and it matters at several points, in which order they get empty.

Edited January 17 by DennisB

[Robin Patenall]

Generally, if you are having problems affecting a small part (which doesn't have other parts attached) using EVA construction it is because it is the root part of the vessel. This is particularly an issue with docking ports and decouplers as if you detach a section of a vessel that has the root part in it then the root part of the other half tends to be the decoupler / docking port.

The big problem is that there is no easy way to re-root your vessel while in EVA construction, the closest thing is to dock / grapple it with another vessel that has a higher priority (so the root part of the combined vessel is the original root part of the other vessel) and then you should be able to affect the part you were trying to, but this is a bit of a hit of miss thing.

55 minutes ago, DennisB said:

inventory slots

Yes, do make sure that you have that all correct. I managed to get to Jool to find that I'd left my spare parts (including several negative gravioli detectors) behind. Of course I noticed this as I realised that I'd accidentally put two barometers instead of a barometer and a gravioli detector on one of my landers. It was recoverable but I would have been really annoyed if I'd left one of the biggest sources of science behind.

[DennisB]

This sounds interesting. Then I had luck, that I can remove the docking port of the spaceplane, after the separation, but at the next one, I can't remove the decoupler, so I try to replace it with a separatron (which separates to both sides).

7 hours ago, Robin Patenall said:

The big problem is that there is no easy way to re-root your vessel while in EVA construction, the closest thing is to dock / grapple it with another vessel that has a higher priority (so the root part of the combined vessel is the original root part of the other vessel)

How can I determine, which vessel has a higher priority?

Regarding the inventory, my problem at first was, that I filled up all slots and forgot to remove the kerbals' parachutes, so I couldn't deploy the surface experiments, because the kerbals couldn't place their jetpacks and parachutes anywhere to be able to carry the surface experiments.

[Krazy1]

1 hour ago, DennisB said:

How can I determine, which vessel has a higher priority?

In flight, right click a command module part and click "configure vessel naming". It sets the dominant ship after docking, including ship name and map icon. (useful for stations)

1 hour ago, DennisB said:

because the kerbals couldn't place their jetpacks and parachutes anywhere

I hate parachutes in space. If it's a problem you can delete them from the savefile using KML.