Tylo X - Tylo landing/return mission all in one launch! (Craft file included)

[Jamie Logan]

Hey KSP People! I'm back with my latest project: A complete Tylo landing mission included in one single launch vehicle!

I have been testing this design intensively, and have been successful many times in both landing, and returning to Kerbin without running out of fuel or losing any Kerbals. The mission isn't particularly difficult as long as you follow the flight plan and use your fuel as efficiently as possible in your injection burns, course corrections, orbital maneuvers, and most critical of all: the landing.

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FLIGHT INSTRUCTIONS:

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Pre-launch notice: Make sure that the angle between Kerbin and Jool is ~95 degrees for optimum planetary phase. This will make sure that you go directly into a Jool encounter after your injection burn with minimal course correction needed.

Launch and Jool injection burn:

1)Engage SAS, throttle to 100%, hit spacebar

2)Gravity turn ~10,000m

3)Stage outer boosters when they run out

4)Hit the horizon wtih an AP of ~50,000m

5)Stage central booster when it's empty

6)Coast to AP, use small "poodle" stage to put you into a circular orbit

7)Stage away "Poodle" stage, sepatrons will deorbit it

8)Activate both nuclear rockets

9)Set a maneuver node as shown in photos, Delta-V requirement should be ~1950m/s

Side notes:

1)You will need to make the injection burn in multiple passes, three usually works the best for me

2)The nuclear engines will draw fuel from both the lander's tanks and from the command module's tanks. This is not a problem because you can transfer the fuel back into the lander before landing. Another option would be to just disable fuel flow from all six lander tanks. Whatever feels right to you

Journey to low Tylo orbit:

1)Make any necessary inclination corrections to match Jool's orbital plane. This Maneuver should be small because Jool's inclination is close to Kerbin's

2)Try to reduce your Jool PE to as close to Jool as possible (or even into Jool itself) prior to entering Jool's SOI

3)Once in Jool's SOI, adjust your PE to ~128,000m for aerocapture. Aerobreaking at this altitude will put you onto a highly eccentric orbit around Jool

4)After aerocapture, coast to Jool AP, and create a maneuver node that will boost your Jool PE up to the Tylo orbiting altitude

5)Coast down to Jool PE and make a slight retrograde burn (I suggest using RCS instead of fuel to be more precise) that will adjust your orbital period so that the next time you return to the altitude of Tylo's orbit you will enter Tylo's SOI with a PE of ~60,000m

6)Continue around your eccentric Jool orbit one last time that places you right into your Tylo encounter

7)Once in Tylo's SOI, make several retro-burns at PE to place your craft into a circular orbit at ~60,000m

Side notes:

1)Make sure you aerobreak in Jool's atmosphere in the correct direction (East) otherwise you will encounter Tylo in the retrograde direction and will have no hope getting into orbit

2)This part of the mission can be different every time because it is impossible to plan for Laythe and Vall to be out of your way when making orbital maneuvers. Most of the time you wont have to worry, but beware you might need to make further adjustments to avoid unwanted encounters.

3)On more than one test I didn't need to make the Jool orbit Period adjustment maneuver and subsequent extra orbit because Tylo happened to be in the right place when I returned to my Jool PE. If this happens to you then just go with it and skip step 5

4)Keep your Tylo orbit above 60,000m to allow for faster time acceleration

Pre-landing:

1)Transfer two Kerbals via EVA from the Command Module to the two seats on either side of the lander

2)Transfer fuel into lander to make sure it is full if it isn't already

3)Undock, and plan make a slight retro burn shortly after sunset so that you will end up landing on the day side of Tylo (landing in the dark is suicide )

4)Perform slight retro burn to lower your PE to ~6,500m THIS IS CRITICAL! if your PE is too low you will collide with surface and if it is too high you will have high gravity losses and will run out of fuel when returning to orbit after landing

5)coast down to PE, use physical time acceleration once below 30,000m so it doesn't take forever

Sidenotes:

1)Once you leave the Command Module in orbit, it is stranded due to lack of engines. If you are feeling extra wimpy, you will always have the option of aborting the landing and coasting back up to your 60,000 AP in order to rendezvous with the CM. But that wouldn't be the right stuff now would it?

Landing:

1)Begin your landing descent burn once you reach your 6,500 PE. At this point your horizontal velocity should be ~2,050m/s

2)IT IS CRITICAL that you maintain a vertical velocity no greater than -10m/s while retroburning. Any greater and you will be descending too rapidly and will slam into the ground moving at ludicrous speed. Do this by constantly adjusting your angle of burn to maintain a -10m/s vertical descent velocity

3)Once your surface velocity hits ~500m/s you can allow your vertical velocity to increase so that you begin your final descent quickly to cut down on gravity losses

4)Lower your landing gear

5)LAND THAT SUCKER!

Side notes:

1)At some point during the descent burn the two exterior tanks will run out, so decouple them as soon as they are empty. They can also be used to get an estimate on your radar altitude on your final approach so watch the distance indicators on them up until they impact the surface

2)Deactivate SAS and activate fine controls just before landing. By this point the lander will be fairly light and overly responsive so be careful about over thrusting and losing control just before touchdown.

Launch back to orbit:

1)Place both Kerbals back into their seats after a glorious EVA

2)Throttle to 100%, liftoff, and orient the lander to the east ~45 degrees to vertical, at first as to gain primarily horizontal speed but altitude as well in order to avoid colliding with those pesky crater rims

3)Lower your angle of burn as your horizontal velocity increases and continue until you have an AP on the other side of Tylo of ~40,000m

4)Coast to AP and make a slight prograde burn to circularize your orbit

5)Rendezvous with the CM

6)Transfer landing crew back into CM prior to docking. If not they will be knocked off lander because of weird game physics

Side note:

1)Select "Control from here" on the CM's docking port to allow easier docking, as you will need to dock the CM backwards onto the lander because it has no RCS

Return to Kerbin

1)Prior to leaving Tylo orbit, make sure that Tylo is in the correct position relative to Jool and the Sun. You want this angle between the Sun and Tylo (with Jool as the vertex) to be ~100 degrees

2)Place a maneuver node that will allow you to escape Tylo in the Tylo retrograde direction, and drop into a tight Jool PE as shown. This burn can and should be made in one pass

3)Once you have dropped into your low Jool PE make a prograde burn to achieve Jool escape velocity. If your phase angle was set up and timed properly then you should be escaping Jool in its retrograde direction and falling down to a Sun PE that matches Kerbin's orbital altitude

4)This point is specific to the circumstances of your mission. if you can manage to get a Kerbin encounter on the initial injection from Jool then great! If it would happen that Kerbin is simply in the wrong place when you reach your Sun PE then simply make a slight retro burn to adjust the time it takes for you to make one extra pass around your solar orbit to arrive back at your PE exactly when Kerbin gets there. This method will always work, with the trade off of waiting a loooooooong time to make an extra solar orbit

5)Adjust your final approach to Kerbin to intersect the atmosphere. In this case I decided to land at the north pole just for fun

6)Deploy the Parachute

7)Open up a bottle of champagne to celebrate another successful mission to the far reaches of the solar system

Sorry this is a lot of text and a lot of pictures but I really wanted to show you all this mission and I hope you will give it a try and tell me what you think!

Mediafire Download-http://www./download/cgwotj9chdf0dw6/Tylo_X.craft

[Giggleplex777]

Good thing your Tylo mission didn't end like mine from almost half a year ago:

They never got back to orbit.

Their spacecraft looked like this:

I really like how you used the lander's engine as the entire spacecraft's powerplant.

Edited September 28, 2013 by Giggleplex777

[adinfinitum]

Nice mission! I really like how clean your design is, I always like efficiency in ships. And your kerbals look oh so happy to have their backs strapped to a couple of fuel tanks

[Exothermos]

Yeah, this is a really clean, simple design. Cool! Also the chair lander is so "kerbal" it hurts.

[TheWanderer]

only just found this now but really liking the design. some really good features, especially liking the external seat lander