Kethane Ironman Challenge

[SkyRender]

can we send the "mothership" up in parts?

Pretty sure that, as long as you end up with only two distinct ships at the end of it, that should be fine. My own Kethocentric mothership was assembled partially from the lander launch and partially from the mothership core launch, for example.

[Pbhead]

I did it!

I landed on tylo!

AHhahaha!

hahaha!

ha!

whoo.

man, that was intense.

now... let seehhiiitt

...

[SkyRender]

It's time to tackle Tylo.

This is one body I really don't mind getting a proper inclination change on.

There it is, in all its nightmarish glory. One look at the orbital velocity should tell you a lot about why Tylo is so feared.

Kethane on the day side! At least one thing will be easy in this expedition.

The thing about Tylo is, it's the horror story we tell to new players to scare them off of trying to land on everything. It is as big as Kerbin and has only 2m/s less gravity than Kerbin too. The only possible saving grace is that it has no atmosphere. How the hell is that a saving grace, you ask? Simple: you need less fuel to get OFF of Tylo than you do Kerbin.

Here I am just a few seconds before landing. Just look at how low my fuel reserves are! I had only 200 or so liquid fuel left by the time the landing was done.

Unfortunately Newgee's planting of the flag wasn't captured this time, but I'm sure you can guess what it said for the first 3/4ths (the last bit just says "The worst is over!").

The mining process didn't take very long since the sun was almost directly overhead, which is nice. Not so nice is that we're so far from the sun that it drains the battery very fast to do any mining at all.

Getting back to the Kethocentric is almost exactly as taxing as getting onto Tylo was.

And for the first time since launch, the mothership is transferring fuel into the lander. Tylo was always going to be a loss, which is why I fueled up so heavily at Bop. Jool's Hell is conquered, and next up is the far easier Vall! Stay tuned!

[Lions]

Lol Sky....i will land on that freaken tylo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you cant do this alone

Ps... WD Pbhead!!!!!!!

[Lions]

can we send the "mothership" up in parts?

Yes as long as it is one ship in the end

[SkyRender]

Lol Sky....i will land on that freaken tylo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you cant do this alone

Tylo's a tough one. If you don't have at least 3070dV, odds are good you won't make it. And even if you do, you need enough thrust to fight Tylo's gravity. My own lander has 1.78 TWR on Tylo when full, and almost 3 when it's about to land, so I was able to do a very low (for Tylo) pass of 20,000M for my landing. Your results probably will vary.

EDIT: I did a quick mock-up of your ship based on your design in the screenshots, and you should have enough dV (it has around 3,750 by my estimate) and thrust (1.2 TWR around Tylo is the figure I've got there). 20,000M will probably be too low and smear you on the landscape; try around 50,000M. Also, make sure your mothership and lander are starting from a low enough altitude; 75,000M is a safe bet in your case, I'd wager. I got away with 105KMx130KM because my lander has a ton of thrust and thus can overcome the losses due to gravity more easily, but you're not so lucky!

Edited September 27, 2013 by SkyRender

[Lions]

@SkyRender so i start my burn on 20 000m?

[SkyRender]

@SkyRender so i start my burn on 20 000m?

If you want to be a smear on the landscape, sure. 1.2 TWR is not enough to pull off a suicide burn at that starting height. I suspect your main problem is that you're not doing an efficient landing maneuver.

Efficient landing requires you to start from as low down as possible: you kill your horizontal velocity before anything else, and if you do it just right, you'll have enough altitude for your thrust to let you kill your vertical velocity before the ground kills you instead. 50,000m is the standard height on Tylo for that for low TWR; 20,000m only works if your TWR is notably high (generally around 1.6 or more; a lot depends on the fuel-to-payload ratio of the craft, too).

[Lions]

If you want to be a smear on the landscape, sure. 1.2 TWR is not enough to pull off a suicide burn at that starting height. I suspect your main problem is that you're not doing an efficient landing maneuver.

Efficient landing requires you to start from as low down as possible: you kill your horizontal velocity before anything else, and if you do it just right, you'll have enough altitude for your thrust to let you kill your vertical velocity before the ground kills you instead. 50,000m is the standard height on Tylo for that for low TWR; 20,000m only works if your TWR is notably high (generally around 1.6 or more; a lot depends on the fuel-to-payload ratio of the craft, too).

I MADE ITTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lol it took me 2 hours and 20 tries..... but i am here on Tylo, so tired now will upload the pictures tomorrow. Im so happy woooop. Thanks Sky

[SkyRender]

I MADE ITTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lol it took me 2 hours and 20 tries..... but i am here on Tylo, so tired now will upload the pictures tomorrow. Im so happy woooop. Thanks Sky

Excellent! The challenge goes on, then. I knew you'd pull it off. The first Tylo landing is always the hardest, and even Tylo vets like myself still have bad runs; even with all of my experience, I still had to attempt the landing twice during this run!

[Lions]

K for the iron men that wants to complete this challenge.... I have updated the main page with the complete route. Good luck all....see you on Kerbin!!!!

Ps..I have uploaded 2 pictures of me on Tylo, i will post more soon, i just woke up

[SkyRender]

K for the iron men that wants to complete this challenge.... I have updated the main page with the complete route. Good luck all....see you on Kerbin!!!!

Ps..I have uploaded 2 pictures of me on Tylo, i will post more soon, i just woke up

I gathered that must be the case given that the route you've outlined 1.) does not include Tylo and 2.) actually asks us to land on Eve and return. Hate to tell you this, but nobody (yourself included) built a lander able to handle that massive gravity well and atmosphere. Also, you've got Laythe before Vall, which is not how the Jool system works: it goes Laythe, Vall, Tylo, Bop, and Pol (meaning your reverse order should be Pol, Bop, Tylo, Vall, and Laythe).

Edited September 28, 2013 by SkyRender

[Pbhead]

My lander should be able to handle eve. in theory. If I can land on reasonably elevated terrain. That's why it is having so much trouble on tylo... The staging that is set up for eve + the dead weight of the kethane jets means that I lose TWR as I come in for my landing... and hot-transferring fuel is not always the best Idea. IIRC I have 3090 deltaV if I dont stage... as you pointed out, I need 3070... very slim margins there.

Now, if we had done eve before jool, the core of my lander would have no problems on tylo.

Honestly, I am more worried about kerbin... which I didn't think would be part of the route.

Edited September 28, 2013 by Pbhead

[Lions]

I gathered that must be the case given that the route you've outlined 1.) does not include Tylo and 2.) actually asks us to land on Eve and return. Hate to tell you this, but nobody (yourself included) built a lander able to handle that massive gravity well and atmosphere. Also, you've got Laythe before Vall, which is not how the Jool system works: it goes Laythe, Vall, Tylo, Bop, and Pol (meaning your reverse order should be Pol, Bop, Tylo, Vall, and Laythe).

Oki sky i changed it, check if that is fine.

[SkyRender]

Oki sky i changed it, check if that is fine.

That makes more sense. You should probably note that an Eve land-and-return operation is worth some sort of bonus, since if you CAN pull that off along with everything else, you've got an amazing setup indeed.

[Lions]

That makes more sense. You should probably note that an Eve land-and-return operation is worth some sort of bonus, since if you CAN pull that off along with everything else, you've got an amazing setup indeed.

Ok done... If you can get back to Kerbin you are a Golden Iron Man!!

[Lions]

So... Ye i can land on Tylo, but i don't have enough fuel to get to Orbit. My biggest mistake was that i have never been to Tylo, and i went there from Bop without completely refueling my mother ship. So currently my mother ship is in orbit with No fuel. This challenge is definitely possible, i just made some stupid mistakes. I am going to redo this and redesign my setup. I will make sure to test it on Kerbin 1st to make sure i will not have this problem again. I have removed myself from the Iron man rank as currently i have failed .

I hope some of you can do this to encourage me to do better :'(

regards

Lions

[Pbhead]

aww.

Are you sure you cant take off? taking off for me at least takes less fuel than landing (assuming equally fueled crafts)... tylo is easy in that regard, in that there is no atmosphere, so you can just scrape the side of your lander along the ground at 2000 m/s for uber optimal fuel consumption.

Make sure you start a new save... you really want to hit the day ~850-900 window from jool to eeloo, it is a wide window, but its the best window for thousands of days.

My mothership just did a 180 in low eeloo orbit... because.

1. Can

2. bored.

3. Nukes.

4. was retrograde, and was spending 120 extra deltaV on docking that I was tired of wasting... I want to fill up my entire kethane reserves before I head to moho... which means 5 more landings. the moho to eeloo transfer is going to require TONs of deltaV.

I am tempted to actually transfer to eve, and use eve to aerobreak my arse, refuel on gilly, and then drop down to moho... as that maneuver will take much less delta V than... i dont know, going from the farthest out planet to the nearest.

Then again, doing a paint-scrape on moho at over 9000! m/s does sound like fun.

Its just, I think I would have to burn all my mothership's fuel... jetison the extra tanks, burn all my kethane, jetison the kethane tanks, burn the emergency reserves, burn 1/2 the lander's fuel... undock, land the lander, refuel the lander, take off, CHASE MY MOTHERSHIP (which by then would be back in interplanetary, catch up, then wait for another orbit...

Edited September 29, 2013 by Pbhead

[SkyRender]

If you're trying to lug up Kethane with you, that's part of the problem. Your craft's TWR is dangerously low as it is for Tylo, and it only compounds matters when you consider that fuel conversion is less than 100% efficient too. Unless you're converting fuel the whole way up, you're never going to make it to orbit like that. That's the main reason why my Kethane setup was designed to keep Kethane on board to an absolute minimum, in fact.

For future reference, always be prepared for the worst with Tylo, Laythe, and especially Moho (not for landing, but for arrival; no atmosphere means an absurd amount of dV you have to expend to circularize!). They're not planets/moons you mess around with. Eve is in a category of its own even from them: unless you set out specifically to go to Eve, don't.

[Pbhead]

Are you sure about that kethane thing? because to me it seemed like if you use the bigger conversion unit, and the largest tanks, kethane is pound for pound lighter than standard fuel. Mind you the weight of that converter probably more than cancels out any benefits, unless you have a HUGE craft...

[SkyRender]

Are you sure about that kethane thing? because to me it seemed like if you use the bigger conversion unit, and the largest tanks, kethane is pound for pound lighter than standard fuel. Mind you the weight of that converter probably more than cancels out any benefits, unless you have a HUGE craft...

Unless the mechanics have changed significantly, I'm pretty sure it still works that way. Kethane is 1/5th as heavy as liquid fuel + oxidizer, it's true. However, Kethane tanks hold exactly 5 times as much Kethane as their equivalent LF+O tanks, meaning a full Kethane tank weighs exactly as much as its equivalent stock fuel tank. The most efficient any Kethane conversion operation gets is 99%, meaning at best you're getting 1% less fuel out of your mined Kethane than if you'd just stuck on an extra fuel tank instead.

The only kind of craft that's justified in having large Kethane reserves on-board is one that uses KIntakeAir on Duna or Eve.

[Guest]

I've been trying for 2 days to get a kethane jet powered craft off of Eve. I really don't think it's possible. I haven't even made it halfway. Too much drag and the equipment is just too heavy. If I were allowed to shed the jets when they're not needed anymore, it might be possible. But even then, carrying those jets down to Tylo and back up again sounds difficult. I'll be surprised if anyone figures this out. One craft that can land and take off of every planet and moon may be unattainable.

[SkyRender]

I've been trying for 2 days to get a kethane jet powered craft off of Eve. I really don't think it's possible. I haven't even made it halfway. Too much drag and the equipment is just too heavy. If I were allowed to shed the jets when they're not needed anymore, it might be possible. But even then, carrying those jets down to Tylo and back up again sounds difficult. I'll be surprised if anyone figures this out. One craft that can land and take off of every planet and moon may be unattainable.

Outside of overpowered mods, it basically is. Single-stage to orbit for Eve is impossible, no matter how you slice it. Even if you did a crazy combination of Hooligan Labs airship envelopes plus KIntakeAir jets plus rockets to get the necessary altitude, you'd still never make it without shedding something.

[Lions]

Outside of overpowered mods, it basically is. Single-stage to orbit for Eve is impossible, no matter how you slice it. Even if you did a crazy combination of Hooligan Labs airship envelopes plus KIntakeAir jets plus rockets to get the necessary altitude, you'd still never make it without shedding something.

Ye Kethane jets is useless IMO, i wont use them even if you pay me

[Pbhead]

Done with moho... Now preparing to head to that hell of a planet eve...

You know, I dont think I am going to even try to mine on eve, since I know I cant haul kethane up off the surface... If I take a fuel load of kethane down, that should be enough to refuel myself from a powered landing... then bleed off the rest though the jets so that I have just enough so that I run out of atmosphere at the same time I run out of kethane, and then stage those suckers out the window.