Earth-Analogue Ascent

[SunJumper]

Your challenge, is to get a launcher to Jool, and then return to low Jool orbit, from the altitude where the pressure is one atmosphere (I believe this to be 27.1km. You are allowed 500m leeway.). You should use a balloon mod to have zero vertical speed at that height.

You may edit the intakes to work in all atmospheres.

There will be two leaderboards: Minimalist and Max Payload

Minimalist (minimise mass) Leaderboard:

Max Payload (maximise payload mass) Leaderboard:

As I have nowhere near the skill for this, and KSP grinds my computer to a halt, I will be unable to submit my own entry.

[skykooler]

Not sure this is possible. An Eve ascent is hard enough, and Jool has ten times the gravity.

[sewerbird]

Although I'm not sure this makes it possible, he only specifies "1 atm" (presumably one Kerbin) of pressure, so this isn't an Eve-like ascent. Main challenge would seem to be plopping the balloons on/off.

Naturally, challenge guidelines would prefer he had done it himself already: Feeling Lucky, OP?

[SecondGuessing]

I'd love to see your craft for this challenge TS.

[bulletrhli]

I'd love to see your craft for this challenge TS.

As this gentleman said, please read the challenge guidelines.

[Boex]

He did say that KSP grinds his computer to a halt...

Also, Eve ascent isn't actually too difficult, it's just that everyone uses the small scale parts to do it, in order to save weight for the journey over. If you were to use the larger parts, it is likely to be a piece of cake, but only if you don't have to get the whole thing from Kerbin to Eve's Surface.

If you were allowed to persistence edit your ship to 27.1km (he's evidently done his research), I think this is a legitimate challenge.

[metaphor]

It's actually probably easier than Eve. Jool has only about 0.8 g's of gravity at the surface so you don't need high thrust like on Eve. I tried lifting off from the 0 marker earlier with a 19 km/s delta-v ship but I needed 3 km/s more to reach orbit. So from 27km altitude you probably only need about 12-15 km/s delta-v. I made a balloon platform, now just need to put a lander on it.

[SunJumper]

Yeah, I'm not worried about how you get to Jool.