How to keep a probe alive on the "surface" of Jool?

[Motokid600]

I plan on sending a probe down into Jool's atmosphere. And im thinking of ways I can design something that will keep a small probe body alive on the surface. If at all possible. I was thinking something along the lines of a roll cage made out of I-beams. Has anyone ever tried anything like this?

[swiftgates24]

At Jool's surface, you go below 0 Meters, and can not move the camera. Also, the physics go crazy, and a roll cage would be useless as you have to be going about 2 m/s to survive anyway.

[Rhyunix]

To my recollection, you are taunting the kraken right there. Whole ships have been lost down there mate. Its a brilliant Idea, I want to see this thing. I would strongly suggest that parachutes and an engine are inside this roll cage and that any equipment is in another roll cage

[Sapphire]

After a couple probes and an airship I sent down into Jool, I deduced that Jool has a 95m deep layer below the surface. In that layer, the clouds turn dark green and the camera becomes restricted. At the bottom of that layer, there's a bouncy barrier that kills Kerbals and rips ships apart, or at best bounces them around and prevents you from leaving the probe without ending the flight. The trick is not to touch the bottom of that 95m deep layer. You can do this with Hooligan's airship mod, and use KAS to drop a grappling hook or anchor into that layer (you might have to config edit to make the cable reach far enough).

Pic is relevant: An old 0.20 science platform anchored just over the "Kraken Lair" layer.

[Sma]

THere's also a "quantum anchor" effect you can get with quantum struts. Scott Manley has a video about it. You could likely use this to "anchor" your self above the kracken layer and with a big enough platform you could setup a base on it, for whatever good it'd do, being as I don't think Jool has kethane, or much else thats useful, unless you have the mod that can pull stuff out of the atmosphere. COuld be good for bragging rights though I suppose.

[Motokid600]

I'm going to check that mod out Sapphire thanks. It's as small of a probe I can make so It should only take a small balloon.

[magnemoe]

I have done some testing of Jool, it appears that it has changed dramatically since 0202.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/44346-Jool-special-report-%28confidential%29

Done some other testings and found that neither the anchor who worked in 0.19 or the grappling hook who worked up to 0.202 let you save while floating and anchored to the surface.

The crash zone has changed from -100 to -250 meter and it appears far more violent now, previously you could actually drop things down and it would survive for some time jumping around.

I even managed to land Jeb on Jool back in 0.202 and get him back out, however I was unable to get the plant flag option.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/41769-Trying-in-vain-to-plant-the-flag-an-Jool-landing

KAS and the airship mod is pretty much required for playing down there.

[M5000]

The crash zone has changed from -100 to -250 meter and it appears far more violent now,

I can confirm the "violent" part. I recently sent down a small probe and it landed nice and soft at some tiny velocity and it absolutely shattered everywhere.

[Wheffle]

Last week I wondered if I could put enough parachutes on a small probe to have it essentially float at a certain atmosphere level. I made a few prototypes on Kerbin, but never tested the theory on Jool, although I have my suspicions that it wouldn't work. At any rate, you wouldn't be able to leave it there without some kind of anchor.

I ended up just launching an infini-glider into Jool and flying it around until I got bored.