Jool Fuel

[Lohan2008]

2 stacked ships: 18x720 (X200-16)

Bottom powered by 6 Skipper engines:

2nd stage powered by Nuke/s.

=

Just enough to get two probes there.

Edited September 29, 2013 by Lohan2008

[Evrion]

1) Jool eats fuel for breakfast!

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Cheat_Sheet

Notice the 2600 m/s just to get from intercept to orbit (though this can be done with a lot of aerobraking.) I did a Tylo Landing mission that used about 5 orange tanks of fuel to get from LKO to Tylo then back, not that I'm saying I was efficient.

2) Skippers are quite inefficient, try using something else. I like the Nuclear engines.

3) Forget the advice, just give it a shot and see! It's the Kerbal way

Edited September 26, 2013 by Evrion

[Lohan2008]

I needed to specify that this is the probe mission, which Jool moon is easiest to target ??

Edited September 27, 2013 by Lohan2008

[Scarecrow88]

Here's my ship I use for getting to Jool. Single nuke engine to eke out the fuel, and the lander usually has some left over after visiting a moon and coming back to orbit which is transferred back to the command ship. That gives more than enough fuel to get back to Kerbin.

[Captain Sierra]

Nuclear engines are better. Those skippers mean you probably won't make it. Nukes take an eternity to burn but you will get there and need a lot less fuel.

[Lohan2008]

If I use the skipper to launch from Kerbin, I can replace top ship engines with nukes.

2 x pic

[Captain Sierra]

That sounds much smarter. Much higher chance of success.

[mellojoe]

I think my most recent Kerbin to Jool jaunt used 3 nukes.

Obviously, it depends on the mass you are pushing, but you just want enough thrust-to-weight ratio to keep your burns short enough that you don't pull out all your hair waiting on a burn. Scott Manley is OK with 30 and 40 minute burn times. I am not. If my burn time goes over 15 minutes, I'm redesigning. And on those, I'm happy to turn on MechJeb and 4x physical time warp to execute the maneuver.

The more engines you add, the more weight you add, making your craft less effecient, meaning you need more fuel, which is more weight ....

[-Velocity-]

There's no need to burn any fuel to go from a Jool intercept to capture. You can either aerobrake using Jool (which, due to Kraken bugs, can cause parts of your vessel to anomalously detach from each other), you can aerobrake using Laythe (which is not buggy, to my knowledge), you can gravity brake using Laythe, or you can gravity brake using Tylo. Lots of options. You will probably need to burn some fuel after your gravity brake/areobrake to put yourself into a safe orbit, however, but it shouldn't be an extreme amount.

Anyway, in my experience, after slingshotting yourself out of Kerbin's SOI using Mun's gravity, it takes about 2600-2700 m/s delta V to get to a Jool intercept. If you can find a way to work in a gravity assist from Duna and/or Kerbin, you can lower that amount.

Anyway, my last trip from Kerbin to Jool took about 10 hours of real time (spread over three days). It sucked. My ship was acclerating at 1 m/s^2 (0.1g is pretty good for a deep space spacecraft), but the ship was so damn big that the game was running at like 1/12 speed, and going to 2X time compression would rip the thing apart. Never again! Keep your Jool-bound spacecraft simple enough that the game can run at a reasonable speed!!!!!!!!

Anyway, after arriving at Jool, I did a gravity brake with Tylo to get captured. The previous giant spacecraft I had sent to Jool used a Jool areobrake for capture, and thats when I discovered a nightmare of Kraken problems with aerobraking using Jool.

Edited September 27, 2013 by |Velocity|

[Lohan2008]

Does not matter which order you target moons, just take enough fuel !

Edited September 29, 2013 by Lohan2008

[Sun]

When I get to Jool, is there any tips on which order I should target it's moons ?

Do it in the order you want, but I like to go to Laythe, gravity assist from Vall to Tylo, land at Tylo, get back into orbit around Tylo, go from Tylo to Bop, Low G probe #1 to land, then go to Pol, deploy Low G probe #2 to land, then burn to a near-out-of-SOI orbit, and return to Kerbin.

[Lohan2008]

Laythe:

Using 36 x white (720) fuel tanks.