(OLD) The Ultimate Jool-5 Challenge:land Kerbals on all moons and return in one big mission

[Kasuha]

Many hours of testing and fiddling with my design finally paid off and I have a spaceplane that can land horizontally on Tylo somewhat reliably and is not completely ugly. Honestly I was close to giving up because early stages were ugly, unstable, and crashing in 90% landing attempts.

Now I just need to give it some extra fuel for transfers, some engines and wings to get it off Kerbin and my "100% horizontal" Jool-5 mission may finally start

[SSSPutnik]

Looking forward to seeing it. Sneak peek?

[loch.ness]

Current concept build for the ICARUS III (Jool's Verne) is

The re-fiddle Tylo lander (no picture because still inprogress) actually has more Delta V at almost 90 tons less with a different engine config. It will require some interesting piloting but with feedback from Patpui I might be able to shrink it a bit more and make it a Tylo SSTO (which better fits the mission profile I'm building this ship for.

Mech-Jeb is refusing to read me any Delta V stats for the CSM/tug, but a similar setup has about 7.4k independant of the main ship's 11k+ (before adding landers) and I should have clearance to dock an interplanetary booster under the Tylo lander if my TWR and or Delta V is too low for the task at hand.

My ICARUS line mission profile is to serve as a transfer, hub, and fuel depot for long term explorations. I play with Custom Biomes (hence not doing Jeb's level since it would interfere) and I'm building the ship as a reusable command hub for multiple concurrent missions. As such, I'm hoping to send 2 space planes, 2 Vall landers and 4 outer moon landers (weight permitting) along with the single Tylo lander (but if it is a Tylo SSTO then I could refuel on future missions).

ICARUS III will have space for 8 crew in the comfy habitat rings, 3 in the command module, and 2 in the science lab (and the landers which I'm not considering for a multi year mission). I'm thinking an operational crew of 10 (2 for each moon if I can modify the Tylo lander the way I want) would make a mission - though I might just replace the second habitat ring with fuel as I think I'll need it.

Haven't started orbital construction of ICARUS III yet.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Upate time again; I have arrived!!!

Aerobraking in Jool's atmosphere was interesting with my design; top tip of the day, DO NOT Aerobrake at 4x physics warp! >.< (it was bad enough, still, when I turned it off...)

At 4x physics warp:

Without:

There might be a rename of the ship coming after this... maybe something like 'Krazy Skorpion' or something!

Edited May 20, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e

[SSSPutnik]

Well done. I've done Laythe and Vall now. Rovers are down except I lost solar panels on one when one of the crew did an over enthusiastic jump and hit one set, damaging another, so I knocked the rest off for aestethics. They still have enough OX-STATs for driving.

Both landers are back at the Osperus III. Might wander over to Bop and refuel, though I still have over 6000ms dV remaining.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Current mission is refuel; down to about 1000ms dV on the mothership; all landers still fully fueled, made sure of that before transferring all the fuel from the drop-tanks to the mothership then dropping them (on the way to Jool, so now they are in a strange eliptical formation orbit around Kerbol/Sun).

One thing I *might* have forgotten is a rocket-powered tug; would have been VERY useful for getting the landers in closer before doing de-orbit burns (or even doing the de-orbit burns for the landers then re-circularizing the tug to wait for the lander to return to orbit) but as it is I'm going to have to *very carefully* get the mothership into LO and hope

VERY glad I made sure the landers all had a *little* extra dV than needed... I had planned on using it for 'spot' deceleration when landing, but I think I might be cutting it fine...

Will update the Mission Report once I have managed to get a few things sorted... but knowing myself, that's probably not going to be today heh

[SSSPutnik]

Actually... I've got oodles of dV... If I dump landers and tugs I'm still way over 10000 lol.

Shame it accelerates like it has an ion engine...

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

That is the one good thing about my design... as I said before, trials with the Nuclear Engines had Kerbin escape burns in over an hour, using Skipper Engines reduced that downto about 10 minutes

Things are going slowly today... so much to do, so little time...

[Kasuha]

Looking forward to seeing it. Sneak peek?

Except it won't go to orbit at present. More testing and tweaking to do yet.

[dbmorpher]

This is my design so far. I have 4 landers on top. Right now I'm testing my landers on the Mun. I already noticed a design flaw with the docking which I will fix. Any suggestions though?

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[Patupi]

Next installment.

The Interplanetary Refueler got sent out to rendezvous with the mothership at Laythe orbit. Note it was leaving Kerbin orbit where the engines exploded due to over heating and I had to reload. Very odd. Most of the time I can run them at full thrust with no trouble, but a bit of wobble and they over heat. To play it safe I'm sticking with them at 99% from now on. On the mothership too. Four way adapters and nukes don't mix

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[Whovian]

As I can't seem to manage a proper aerobrake otherwise (even those 6.25m heatshields aren't big enough!) I'll also need to use Procedural Parts for the heatshields. Is this okay?

[loch.ness]

Started a mission report with my progress so far, still in RnD and early engineering stages currently. First report can be found here

[SSSPutnik]

@Ziv

Ziv - Disaster on my Kethane mission. I had to cheat to continue. (Or severely limit rest of mission).

After landing both rovers on two moons, I went to grab a base craft to land and realised on the lander was a junior docking port. I needed a standard clamp-o-tron.

To minimise damage caused by cheat I did the following.

Emptied fuel from ONE lander to main ship, transferred crew to main ship, decoupled it.

Got an identical lander at KSC VAB, changed docking port, emptied it of fuel and launched it to pad. Then hyper edited it to rendezvous with the other lander. Destroyed old lander. Redocked.

So, fuel, crew and ship capabilities not changed. Just the wrong port exchanged.

I am leaving the other lander as-is.

The rover landings would not have been impacted by the port change.

Stupid mistake on my part.

I hope this is OK since I have spent weeks on this...

Edited May 21, 2014 by SSSPutnik

[Ziv]

@Ziv

Ziv - Disaster on my Kethane mission. I had to cheat to continue. (Or severely limit rest of mission).

After landing both rovers on two moons, I went to grab a base craft to land and realised on the lander was a junior docking port. I needed a standard clamp-o-tron.

To minimise damage caused by cheat I did the following.

Emptied fuel from ONE lander to main ship, transferred crew to main ship, decoupled it.

Got an identical lander at KSC VAB, changed docking port, emptied it of fuel and launched it to pad. Then hyper edited it to rendezvous with the other lander. Destroyed old lander. Redocked.

So, fuel, crew and ship capabilities not changed. Just the wrong port exchanged.

I am leaving the other lander as-is.

The rover landings would not have been impacted by the port change.

Stupid mistake on my part.

I hope this is OK since I have spent weeks on this...

I'm sorry but there's no hyperedit in real life! When you launched something into space then it's there... you can send a rescue/repair/replace mission but not just changing it without any work...

Edited May 21, 2014 by Ziv

[Ziv]

As I can't seem to manage a proper aerobrake otherwise (even those 6.25m heatshields aren't big enough!) I'll also need to use Procedural Parts for the heatshields. Is this okay?

What kind of parts would you use? As heatshields are additional stuff to the stock and it makes the mission more complicated if you will use the parts only for strengthening the heatshield then it is okay.

[SSSPutnik]

So it would be acceptable to launch a replacement shuttle?

Sigh, one part out of 1100...

[Ziv]

So it would be acceptable to launch a replacement shuttle?

Yes. It would be something like refueling in the normal JOOL-5 missions...

[SSSPutnik]

OK, I can do that no problem.

Hypereditting wasn't that easy given the lag on the main ship

I'll send one replacement lander. Destroy the hyper edited one. I don't need fuel so can do a fast burn.

I was also short of hose connectors but fixed that by spacewalk and stealing them off other craft attached and swapping them around using EVA.

[Rakaydos]

I need to build a laythe lander that doubles as an RCS tug with a crew capacity of 2. My Tylo lander can easilly manage the other worlds, but I can land and return from Laythe AND val AND return to earth with the fuel in the mothership.

[Whovian]

What kind of parts would you use? As heatshields are additional stuff to the stock and it makes the mission more complicated if you will use the parts only for strengthening the heatshield then it is okay.

I'll just be using the huge procedural heatshields b/c things seem to be sticking out over the edge otherwise. I have another idea; I might try it so I can pull it off with the "stock" DRE 6.25m heatshield.

EDIT: I am such a fool. I just remembered I have Kerbal Joint Reinforcement primarily to prevent things like Krakens. I'll uninstall it.

Edited May 21, 2014 by Whovian

[Patupi]

OK, I had a bit of trouble... OK, a lot of trouble! My record of very little quickloading? Completely out the window! I've done Laythe a lot, but generally with specialized Laythe landers with built in parachutes and jet engines. Thus I never remembered what the dV for launching from Laythe's surface was. I looked it up, but just idly. I really didn't think much of this as I've done Laythe tons of times before.

Big mistake!

I allowed 3500 dV in the ship. Basically because I nearly ran out before I wanted to save as much fuel as possible. I thought it was 3000 dV to launch from Laythe's surface, and the landing wasn't as efficient as I'd hoped. I ended up with a little over 3200 dV on landing. Yeah, well, 200 dV spare? Yeah, that'll be fine. So I did my science, got things ready, then launched... and didn't get close. What was worse was I had quicksaved on the ground, just to be safe... and now I was stuck with too little fuel in my ship! When I rechecked fuel to reach Laythe orbit it was... yup, 3200. I had to make a PERFECT launch to reach orbit. Well, I didn't make it. I redid it and redid it, and eventually got a ballistic arc that was close enough for the MS to do yet another rescue, but with the added thrill of very little time to rendezvous outside the atmosphere. I got down to 40km, 15km inside the atmosphere, before I stabilized the orbit. Not fun!

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Well, just Vall and Bop left to go now. Hopefully no more nasty surprises, and I'm not going to be stingy on the fuel on them! I'm pretty sure I've got way enough fuel to do those landings and get back to Kerbin.

[Whovian]

Well, I have got something which will probably work built, though I have yet to run the entire mission. I did use HyperEdit a lot for testing the landers, but that shouldn't be much of a problem, right? I'm a little worried about the landing on Laythe, given my only landing gear is heat shields with 9 m/s of crash tolerance, but I figure I'll just tack on a couple more chutes. As I suck at aerobrakes, I'll probably quickload a lot during the Jool aerobrake and the Laythe landing. Plus, I have to be even more careful during the Jool aerobrake than usual because the heatshield side pointing forward isn't aerodynamically stable.

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The only non-stock parts used were DRE heatshields, KSPI radiators, and life support containers from TAC; I managed to get rid of the Novapunch structural parts. Fingers crossed.

I'll be very busy this weekend, but I'm planning to do the mission afterwards.

[SSSPutnik]

Launching my replacement shuttle craft. Added a few hose ends too to save extra EVA work. Getting better at this game, Jool trips becoming trivially easy.

Some more pics.

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Edited May 23, 2014 by SSSPutnik

[Patupi]

That's a nice looking ship SSSPutnik. I always did like the look of LLL's stuff, and it offers so many opportunities for creative construction! The problem I always had was memory when using LLL and other big mods at the same time. Now that texture compression is so good it's no longer an issue... and I don't think my comp can handle it any more. Well, I don't think texture is an issue with mine right now, it's just speed in total. I used to be able to fly 1000part ships with at least a passable frame rate. Now with 400 I get about five frames a sec How are you doing with that ship of yours? It looks intense.