Planing a Trip to Jool

[Explorer- NWB]

Hello Fellow travellers,

I'm new to the forum and very excited to join in on this amazing quest , I'm sure there is a lot to learn from you guys.

I'm currently planning a trip to Jool and trying to build a simple ship to get there. My initial thoughts was to fly the whole thing to Jool, once I'm in Jools orbit I would separate the smaller ship and do a couple of flybys on any of the Jool moons. I have been reading a lot though and I understand that Jool needs a lot of Delta V but I'm not sure if you guys think this will be enough, I will not be landing on any of them body mainly fly bys to get some science.

Questions:

- please let me know if you have any concerns regarding the design ? obviously it very simple not to advanced at this point but your input will be highly appreciated.

- If you think I have enough fuel to go and back ?

Thank you so much in advance and I look forward to hearing your comments

 

Cheers

 

[Aegolius13]

Hello, and welcome aboard!

You'll get the most/best responses to a question seeking gameplay advice if you post it in the "Gameplay Questions and Tutorials" section.  The "Suggestions" section is more about suggestions of changes people would like to see to the game itself.  A mod should be able to help you move this thread to get the right eyeballs on it.

From looking at the screenshot I'm not really able to tell what each of the component segments is tasked with doing what, so in that way it's a little hard to tell if the ship has what it takes.  From your description it sounds like you're not planning on landing on any of the moons; is that correct?  (That said, Pol and Bop are so low-gravity that it's easy and cheap to land on them if you're going there anyway.).  Are you planning to visit all of the moons?   It might also be helpful if you could post delta-v stats from the various components.  

All that said, some general thoughts:

-Your engine selection looks pretty good - Poodles and Terriers are good for this kind of role, and staging away the side pods with the Terriers is a smart move. But you possibly may have more engine/TWR at some points than you need to maneuver in deep space. In particular, it looks like you have a Poodle section on each of the two pieces, but will only be using one at a time. You could probably save some weight/delta-v by designing so that you only have one.   Put another way, if the "first" Poodle has enough thrust to move the entire stack, the "second" Poodle, which will be moving less weight, probably has more than enough thrust for its job, unless you're using it to land on a big moon or something.  

-The other major option for engines is NERVs.  They're pretty popular for Jool missions, and if you're not planning to land on any big bodies, their low TWR is not much of a drawback.  But they're certainly not necessary.

-Long rockets with floppy parts in the middle (like docking ports) can tend to get wobbly when under thrust.   If you've test-fired this thing and it's not currently a problem, you should be good to go.  Struts can help but they will go away if you separate and re-dock.  Autostruts can help (without that problem) if you're fine with using them.  

-Solar panels are quite weak at producing electricity as far out as Jool.  It does not look like you have any electricity-hogging applications, but, you you're likely fine there, but something worth keeping in mind.

Edited April 14, 2019 by Aegolius13

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

[Explorer- NWB]

On ‎4‎/‎13‎/‎2019 at 11:13 PM, Aegolius13 said:

Hello, and welcome aboard!

You'll get the most/best responses to a question seeking gameplay advice if you post it in the "Gameplay Questions and Tutorials" section.  The "Suggestions" section is more about suggestions of changes people would like to see to the game itself.  A mod should be able to help you move this thread to get the right eyeballs on it.

From looking at the screenshot I'm not really able to tell what each of the component segments is tasked with doing what, so in that way it's a little hard to tell if the ship has what it takes.  From your description it sounds like you're not planning on landing on any of the moons; is that correct?  (That said, Pol and Bop are so low-gravity that it's easy and cheap to land on them if you're going there anyway.).  Are you planning to visit all of the moons?   It might also be helpful if you could post delta-v stats from the various components.  

All that said, some general thoughts:

-Your engine selection looks pretty good - Poodles and Terriers are good for this kind of role, and staging away the side pods with the Terriers is a smart move. But you possibly may have more engine/TWR at some points than you need to maneuver in deep space. In particular, it looks like you have a Poodle section on each of the two pieces, but will only be using one at a time. You could probably save some weight/delta-v by designing so that you only have one.   Put another way, if the "first" Poodle has enough thrust to move the entire stack, the "second" Poodle, which will be moving less weight, probably has more than enough thrust for its job, unless you're using it to land on a big moon or something.  

-The other major option for engines is NERVs.  They're pretty popular for Jool missions, and if you're not planning to land on any big bodies, their low TWR is not much of a drawback.  But they're certainly not necessary.

-Long rockets with floppy parts in the middle (like docking ports) can tend to get wobbly when under thrust.   If you've test-fired this thing and it's not currently a problem, you should be good to go.  Struts can help but they will go away if you separate and re-dock.  Autostruts can help (without that problem) if you're fine with using them.  

-Solar panels are quite weak at producing electricity as far out as Jool.  It does not look like you have any electricity-hogging applications, but, you you're likely fine there, but something worth keeping in mind.

Hello Aegolius13,

Thank you so much for your insights and recommendations, I will be making some adjustments and will post updated set up soon. I was planning to do a fly by for 1 or 2 moons but I might consider landing on pol or bop as suggested.

cheers,

Expl

 

 

[TheTripleAce3]

What version of the game are you on?