Vanilla: All Moons of Jool and return.

[Semmel]

Hello, my name is Semmel, I'm the new guy and I present a crazy mission: Jools moons, all at once, and return.

The mission is complex. The goal: Visit the Jool system, and have a Kerbal on all of its moons simultanously, with one mission. It sounds krazy, but this Werner kerbalguy is convinced it is the cheapest mission to do the job. So after he disappeared from our basic training some month back, he came to me with this idea. After my successful Dona landing and probing of Eve, he asked me to send a probe to Jool. Unfortunately, the mission was unsuccessful because our batteries went flat and the thick atmosphere didnt let enough light through to refill our batteries. So we have a second try, "And this time do it right!" he said. Of course, I couldn't say 'no' so here I am. There is one complication though, Werner is very impatient, so he decides that we have to go to Jool at once, he has no time to wait for an other launch window to emerge in one year, so we have to go in one piece. Also there is only a limited supply of 6 atomic rocket motors. Better bring them all back!

The Mission details are:

Send one shipto the Jool system, and return in one ship.

Have 8 kerbonauts on the trip. They need to be comfortable, give them room to live and perform experiments during their travel.

Steer a robotic probe into Jool and have it stripped of all of its science.

Land on all of its moons with at least one Kerbal each simultaneously.

Bring a surface probe from all of the moons back to kerbin.

Keep a science probe on the surface of all of the moons, for long term study.

Use at maximum 6 Atomic Rocket Motors. Bring them all back safely to Kerbin.

So the plan is, to build the spaceship in Kerbin orbit before heading out to Jool. In Jool, aerobreaking is used to get into an orbit. After that, detach the landers and recombine them with some cruising stages to get them to the moons and back to the ship. Use the 6 Atomic rocket motors for that, so make them detachable as well and use them with some transport fuel to do the taxiing. After all Kerbels are back, use the return vessel to get back to Kerbin. Leave the used lander modules and empty fuel tanks behind.

I will keep you posted of our progress. Its not going to be easy though. Maybe impossible. But Werner demanded that I shall not ask for help from other space programs (no mods that alter game-play). Do it the Kerbal way: Failure is always and option!

Me and Jebedia have already done some tests. The Laythe lander for example is able to get into an 80km Kerbin orbit. That should be ok. Here it is:

The lander will remain on Laythe, only the upper stage will get back into orbit.

The Tylo lander will probably be similar (just without the parachutes, but I am unsure if the fuel will be sufficient to break and take off again. Does anybody know how much fuel Tylo requires compared to Laythe? Maybe it requires an extra fuel tank below the batteries? I dont know. Maybe the 4 engines are not strong enough to ensure a safe landing? But I dare take more powerful ones, because they might be too heavy or thirsty to do the job! This ship can launch on Kerbin, so it (in theory) can land on Tylo. But will there be enough fuel left after the landing?

[Odo]

Ive always wondered how people can take off from laythe. Does it have less of a gravity, thinner atmosphere, or both?

[ElJugador]

Ive always wondered how people can take off from laythe. Does it have less of a gravity, thinner atmosphere, or both?

both (10chars)

[Semmel]

Last time, I showed you the design for the two heavy moons Tylo and Laythe. The other three moons are fairly small and probably wouldnt require much of anything, let alone thrust. But since we need to protect the precious science equipment, we cant just ditch it to the ground, so we use the standardized and tested science lander module of the other two landers with a smaller landing engine on top. Jebedaya looked at it and smiled. I guess he likes it! See for your self:

The stage that holds all of the landers is fairly simple. It looks a bit like a radio tower, maybe if we put enough power on the struts, it will send some signal? Anyway, the big sun collecting thingies are there as well. I love how they unfold! And the brave kerbonauts going onto the mission will sit warm and save inside the big white tanks. White is good, eh?

Looks neet or what?! Wernher however, was not pleased. He thinks that it will get too flopsy with the landers attached. Well, lets see about that later. For now, I will work on the fuel tanks and the engines that somehow need to be connected at the bottom. We have 3 connection points, one for a fuel tank and 2 engines each.

Ill work on them next.. Happy kerbling everyone!

[Semmel]

The tanks are pretty simple.. so I thought. But Werner just shook his head (almost shook it off looked like it). It was too unstable dangling all behind the connecting stage, so I had to redo my design. I came up with this solution: Connect the tanks with additional docking ports to make them more stable. They have to be aligned perfectly though. So maybe Ill connect them in orbit first before putting them on the connector. Lets see when we are there. If they are all together and connected, it should look like this:

The sideways docking ports that stick out are for the rocket engines. They need to be detachable because they should be used to cruise the landers around in the Jool system. Jebedaia likes my design a lot, he is somehow fan of huge spacecraft that fall apart and reassemble again. Only Wernher Von Kerman seems to be a little conservative and said, the engines need to be more stable as well. So I made a small docking port on the sides again in order to give them more stability.

He was quite satisfied. Of course, the struts will be gone once, all the engines have been used. But on the return trip, all the tanks are much emptier and all the science modules will be missing as well, so the reduced stability might be compensated by the fact that the space ship will be much lighter.

Last but not least, the probe that goes into Jools atmosphere needs special treatment. Because of the thick atmosphere, solar panals dont work. So what ever energy is required needs to be taken with it. And the spacecraft cant really return either, so it has to deliver lots of science, using lots of energy. And it has to be transmitted fast before the gravity crushes the probe. So here it is, it will be sitting on the top of the Jool Spaceship.

Wernher already made more comments to the earlier parts. For example, he doesnt like that the science modules are not all identical. So ill work on that for a bit and once I am done, I hopefully can show off the entire spaceship.

And dont forget: Failure is always an option!

[Scotius]

Your computer will hate you with passion when you put it all together This ship is awesomely overengineered - can't wait to see it in action Keep updatin' Cap'tn.

[Semmel]

Today, I was heading out to the launch pad in order to just shoot the parts up into orbit and build our wonderful new ship there. Jebediah named it 'Green Moskito'. Dont know where he got that from, but it got stuck. Maybe it will bite into the green Atmosphere of Jool when we arrive and airobrake (hopefully). As I was saying, I was heading over and Wernher just stood in my way and said I should put all the parts together in the intigration hall. Our zero-gravity design hall will be ideal to see if everything works if it is put together. So we went there and connected all the parts, one by one. We noticed something odd, but before, here is the magnificant Green Moskito, which was not named that way at the time the pictures were taken.

Now.. we Wernher, Jebediah and me observed something weired. It seemed like time was slowing down the more, the more parts we put together. Might be we exedently created a time mashine? I dont know, wouldnt be the first thing that we Kerbals invented exedently! But Wernher immidiatly mumbled something of relative times or something like kerberal relativity of parts.. or .. I forgot what he said. Hopefully, we dont encounter the same problems in orbit. Would be a pain in the pempers if that were true.

Anyway, I moved on and launched the first fuel stage into orbit. Its now rotating at roughly 120km height, so it can easily be docked by other aircraft launching later.

We left the huge fuel tank there for now, maybe we can use the fuel for something later. We just noticed, that the RCS fuel on the orange tank is a bit low by the time the stage reached orbit. So we decided to put larger RCS tank on the other rockets that lift off the other two fuel stages.

Until next time, when we continue to build our Space Ship: Green Moskito!

[DMagic]

It seemed like time was slowing down the more, the more parts we put together. ... Hopefully, we dont encounter the same problems in orbit. Would be a pain in the pempers if that were true.

Yep, that'll happen. What's your total part count for the assembled ship? Pretty much anything over 500 parts (regardless of how powerful your computer is) will cause at least a little bit of slow down. If it gets really bad I would recommend going through your designs and try to remove anything unnecessary (excess RCS thrusters, batteries, reaction wheels, or any aesthetic parts).

Nevertheless I look forward to seeing how well this works out; I always like to see new designs.

[Geschosskopf]

I love huge monstrosities like this. They have an aura of awesomeness unmatched by more paltry efforts. Semmel, you may be new but you picked up the idea in a hurry .

[Semmel]

Thank you for your encouragement, I noticed my system will be very slow by the time I put the ship together. It has a little over 1000 parts, but all of them are necessary. I went over my designs numerous times. It is how it is at moment, if it crashes on me or is not playable, I might consider the mission to be a failure. But as we know, failure is always an option! It will be slow, lets find out how slow. Also I try to roleplay a kerbal. Its hard to think in this direction, so bear with me. Ill try my best though. But it means, from a kerbal perspective, their world is not a simulation on a computer, so they dont know whats going on. They wouldn't even notice it because their thought process would be as slow as the world is simulated. So I cheated a little there, its fun though

[dellcom1800]

It looks great! I would consider reducing the number of batteries as with solar panels you likely will not need anywhere near that many.

I recently ran into a fuel shortage issue on my large ship so I would recommend sending a fuel barge to Jool ahead of time in case you need it. But you have an awesome idea and it looks great! Make sure to utilize aero-capture to get in orbit of Jool, that should save you quite a bit of fuel when you get there

Keep us posted!

[DMagic]

It has a little over 1000 parts, but all of them are necessary. I went over my designs numerous times.

All of those parts definitely aren't necessary, some of them might be nice to have, but they aren't required. You can always find way to cut down on parts, and every little bit helps.

[Semmel]

I dont know exactly how much energy will be necessary. Especially going into Jools atmosphere with the first stage. Last time, I had many batteries as well, but I got no were near half way through the science before the juice run out. I cant use solar panels in the atmosphere as well because they get blown away. So I suspect, that I will not be able to get all the science from Jool, despite the heavy use of bateries. The bateries on the landers are for the same reason: I want science during descent, and that needs to happen fast, so a big buffer is required again. The bateries on the connection stage are not really necessary for their energy, rather than for the distance they add to the structure. Batteries are one of the lightest elements you can use to elongate your ship. Also they provide energy for the Kerbals remaining in the ship for the time thy are in Jools shadow. I put a ship into Jools orbit for the first time. The last one ended up descending into Jool because I chose a too close approach to Jool during aero-capture. It didnt made it out again, so I guess I was just a hair too close. Wernher von Kerbal punished me with this mission for that mistake. Better not do it again! Anyway, due to my lack of experience, all the parts are necessary because I want to make sure the mission is a success. So that means to bring extra! And it doesnt hurt (much) to have some extra. As for the fuel, I guess I have enough. In the tank-engine modules are three orange tanks worth of fuel, plus extra from the structure of the connector and the atomic engine modules.. so maybe around 3,5-4 orange tankes to get there, cruise around and return. Should be ok. If not.. ohh well. We have to send a rescue mission. And because we dont have atomic rockets any more (we have only 6, remmeber?), sending fuel would be a pain. We do it the Kerbal way! Try first and fail later!

Anyway, the story of building Green Moskito continues. After putting the first tank-engine into orbit, number 2 and 3 followed close behind, this time with more RCS fuel. We started the second rocket when the first one was roughly 500km away, but that was too early, we had to get to a higher orbit to ketch down (opposite of catch up, obviously). But once we figures that out, we had a pretty good approach.

Docking went smooth like a charm! And I noticed we had a lot of fuel left in these lower lifting stages. They have both half a orange fuel tank left, They could have probably lifted us up to Jool all by them selfes. I guess, I underestimated their lifting capabilities. Would probably work without these pesky solid rocket boosters (I hate them!).

The third tank will go on the other side. But what are we going to do with all that fuel in orbit? It would be such a waste to just deorbit it..

What a wonderful moon in the background! Still.. what to do with all the fuel? We have world-slowing problems already, we need to get rid of the orange tanks!

[ElJugador]

What about RTGs?

[Semmel]

I considered about them as well for some time. But following the specs, they provide as much energy as a single solar panel at Kerbin orbit. To match the energy requirement of transferring the data in the time the probe descents in Jools atmosphere before being crushed, I suspect it would require a ton of RTGs. I dont think that is a viable way. I suspect (though I dont know), using them would increase the number of parts and the weight of the probe. I dont think that its worth it. You can only use them if you have a ton of time, which is not available in this case.

[DMagic]

I want science during descent, and that needs to happen fast, so a big buffer is required again.

I see, that makes sense. But the batteries aren't really the worst offender when it comes to inflating your part count (except for maybe that big tower-o-batteries on top; the long trusses probably don't alter your mass too much while cutting down on parts), it's the little parts that really add up. For instance, one ring of RCS thrusters is almost always enough for docking, it's not always quite as easy as using multiple rings, but it's not a big difference. And given how many components your final craft has, cutting down on RCS thrusters could really help your part count.

[Semmel]

Last time, we left the three fuel tanks with their atomic rockets in orbit. Next task is obviously, connect them with the connector module. I caught Jebediah and a few of his friends at the attempt to climb into the crew modules just before liftoff, lucky though, I got them! There is not enough life support yet, to make this soon to be space station habitable. The connector stage is lifted without crew, that will have to come later. Everything went very well, so the connector went up there. Unfortunately, it was nighttime when it arrived, but for exactly that reason, we brought some lights with us!

After that, something about the access fueltanks has to be done. I really did not anticipate to have so much fuel left in orbit. I guess, we will have to build a refulling station somehow. I dont know what to use it for to be honest, but since we have all that fuel, what else should we do with it? Before we start with that, we condense all the fuel in one tank. Then, we can deorbit the two empty fuel tanks.

After we disconnect the second tank, the solar panals are opened for the first time and we watch the tank burn up in Kerbins atmosphere.

We cant watch the actual burning part, its too far away from the station, but it surely must have looked great with binoculars, which we dont have at the Green Moskito. Finally, the remaining fueltank from the connector stage is docked on the side of the connector port. That was kind of an issue because the Green Moskito wiggled and wobbled as soon as SAS was activated and it rotated if it was not. How can you build a giant station-space-ship if things dont work as intended?? Well.. we will have to deal with that.

Next will be the Jool atmospheric probe and maybe one of the landers. Lets see. how it goes.

[Semmel]

Ok, docking the atmospheric probe that goes into Jool was quite difficult. Due to the wired physics near large contraptions, the docking procedure became quite challenging. Especially because I build the lifting stage wrong! I forgot that the atmospheric probe is going to sit with its engine nosels towards the green moskito, so I should have mounted it upside down on the lifting stage. However, I didnt, and so in orbit, I had to perform two docking maneuvers, one for the atmospheric probe itself, and one for the tank. It had quite some RCS fuel with it, so I transfered that before deorbiting the rocket. There was not much real fuel left, so that wasnt really worth the trouble, but I didnt want to waste the RCS fuel. And because the solar panels had to line up perfactly, I had to dock the atmospheric probe twice! In my first atampt, I got impatient and turned the probe too far just a second before docking, which made it impossible to recover. What a nerve wracking procedure. Here the green moskito with the lifting stage still attached. I used a smaller one, since the probe was way lighter.

What a wonderful sight the Green Moskito is!

After the lifting stage was de-orbited, Jebediah and I decided to dock the first lander. This was going to be exciting, because it meant we are finally close to finishing the spaceship! I thought however, that Jebediah might have some mad plan in Mind, so I checked the lander before lifting it. And sure enough, he hid in the space-suit cupboard in the landing capsule! But this time, I was smarter than him. He got a special mission for the remaining lift-offs: clean the heli-pad of the vertical assembly building. And I hid a tracking device on his jetpack, so I can check where he goes. Hope that teaches him. I have my doubts though.

After docking, we again transfered the RCS fuel and ditched the lifting stage into the atmosphere. Hopefully it does not fall on anybodies head. Now, we have a beautiful space ship, and only 5 landers missing. Thats a piece of cake! But before we lift them, I guess, we have to build a space station to have some place for all the fuel in orbit. Maybe at 100 km, so we can make use of the left-over fuel.

[Ziv]

There's a Challenge on this kind of mission, check that out! ->

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57197-THE-ULTIMATE-JOOL-5-CHALLENGE-land-Kerbals-on-all-moons-and-return-in-one-big-misson

[Marten2Productions]

1000?! Holy Kerbal! WERNER! look what all that hate of waiting is getting you!

Good luck trying to steer the monstership: it might kill your computer. I have landed on all 5 moons too, but with a simple lander with Jebedaiah only and with infinite fuel cheat (who cares? it was creative mode and I don't like losing men in space!). Sadly, my tylo flag and pol probe suddenly dissapeared. I am sure that tylo flag was there, since the landing broke one of my landing gear. Hopefully such things won't happen to you.

Good luck!