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

[SSSPutnik]

@McFarnsworth, that's a nice looking ship. Does it have dV for Tylo?

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Sorry I've not been about much; tanker problems caused me to at first start playing around with another challenge for a bit (my own) then all of a sudden I had a Dead Island Epidemic Beta key to use... so been on that a lot!

I have had to restart assembly on my mega-tanker due to the problems experienced earlier, I'm hoping I can put it together right this time >.<

[McFarnsworth]

@McFarnsworth, that's a nice looking ship. Does it have dV for Tylo?

Like I said, haven't tested anything yet. In theory it has enough dV, but the TWR is pretty low for a Tylo landing (<1 for a lot of the descent) so it might take 37 attempts to get the timing and the amount of fuel I take down with me right. The original plan was to not leave any parts behind so the entire ship can be parked back in Kerbin orbit, refuelled and used again. But I had to make use of a droptank for the Tylo part of the mission. Since the Tylo lander makes use of the ship's main engines I really need to get those back into orbit.

I'm also not sure about the dV of the mothership. I just guessed that 2 large tanks should do it, but it might not be enough or way too much. I want to do this in a single launch, so no refueling during the mission.

I also noticed I haven't included any ladders yet on the Tylo lander.

[Himynameisjake]

I know he doesn't like clipping.

I know he doesn't, but you saw my zephyrus ship, it was ugly as sin lol. I can go ugly again, but I figure if I'm going to spend that long looking at it, I just want it to look pretty.

- - - Updated - - -

Like I said, haven't tested anything yet. In theory it has enough dV, but the TWR is pretty low for a Tylo landing (<1 for a lot of the descent) so it might take 37 attempts to get the timing and the amount of fuel I take down with me right.

37 huh? that's an oddly specific number

[McFarnsworth]

37 huh? that's an oddly specific number

Give or take a few dozen

[Himynameisjake]

Give or take a few dozen

That's how many tries it took to land my screwed up lander on Tylo lol

[OgreMagi]

https://imgur.com/a/p6TtP

there are the pics to my Laythe SSTO space plane it took a while but I am now working on the landers and main ship. that should go much easier.

but here is my post

Unshamming BLOG of advertismant for the ......

Presenting the Hermes A4 SSTO, Pride of the JunkWorks Space plane demolition and assembly

yard.

The Hermes basically a modded Areas A4, with Kethan parts, a single turbo jet, and 2 Kommit

Nuclenics LtBY 12k nuclear engine with a lot of capability built into the craft.

It is capable of SSTO from sea level, able to search, mine, store and process Kethan, make standard

landings, parachute landings and conduct operations on water.

YES it is capable of Floating/Landing and Take Off from sea level, the reversed radial intakes make

great floats and since they are mounted in reverse they provide air intake with zero Drag. Notice that

the landing gear is mounted low, on octaginal struts , for clearance when landing on water.

Supplementing the radial intakes are 4 Ram intakes which left off until high in the atmosphere.

Aircraft like cars are dependant on fuel to move, like the saying about old cars they can pass

anything on the road but a gas station. However the Hermes isnt dependant on a mother ship to

refuel. The Hermes can self refuel as long as there is a kethane field within its flight range.

With its kethane equipment added, the small kethane detector, standard small drill, small processor,

and 2 small kethan storage tanks the Heremes can refuel itself in a few hours.

In addition it mounts a kethan power generator which adds the supplemental power needed to run

the drill and processor without having to add a ton or more of solar panels.

In flight the Hermes is stable and resistive to roll but sensative enought to make water landings when

needed. Take off from the runway is easy and the craft lefts at 60 m/s with lift arround 75 m/s. Flight

testing of the Hermes demonstrated it can move at 70 m/s on water, making it as capable as a hover

craft over short distances. If there is not enought level ground to pit down on the Hermes carries a

parachute landing system however parachute landings on water will damage the aircraft and shoudl

only be attempted in the most dire circumstances.

Water landing do require a gentle touch as the plane is tail heavy and too fast decent will cause

damage to the engines and drilling probe.

Dont have a pilot, not a problem the Hermes carries the state of the art in electronics with hardwired

Probodobodyne OKTO2 linked to the cockpit capable or remote piloting of the craft and with the

advance communication gear, the communitron 88-88 and COMMS DTS-M1 ensure solid carrier

signals from ground, orbit and interplanetary.

Rational of design.

Yea i tried to build it all in one package, took a bit but it can do most of everything i want it too.

Took a while to get it working but I spent way too much time trying to build larger complicated planes

with little success. Had too many roll over crashes and uncontrolables until i remember an article

about military aircraft. short version the military modded many of thier best designs simple because

it was easier to work with a stable, reliable aircraft. so that got me thinking i should use a stock craft

and simply modify it .

Specs ...

Max take off weight is 24.46 t with the kethan tanks and all standard tanks full but i fly it with less

than the max fuel load ( 18.62 t take off wieght) to keep the mass down. Note that the center tanks

feed the jet engine and the outer tanks feed the LVN 14Kn.

Typical fuel load for SSTO 100km orbit arround kerbin is to load the forward center tank FL-t800

with 252 fuel and no oxidizer, the rear center jet fuel tank with 90 units of fuel, the outer 2 FL -T400

tanks half load ( 90/110) and the 2 FL-T200 tanks full (90/110). you burn 3/4 of the center tanks to

get to orbit and not much of the outer tanks and easily enough left over to fly to the mun and back

and make a powered landing.

If you need more space Delta V you can load the forward center tank with oxidizer and fill the outer

tanks this gives you 4700 Delta v over an HOUR of thrust more than enough to move between the

moons of Jool .

Handling is easy, some slight instability issues when between 12, 000 and 25, 000 Meters but x3

physics while climbing is easily done. Turning is slow but not hard but its not a aerobatic flyer stick

to basic manuvering and you wont have too many problems.

As mentioned water landings are difficult you have to desend slowly and be careful of landing at too

high of angle as it will tear off the drill assembly ( if your lucky and the engines if your not). This is

why the landing gears are mounted so low, and the radial air intake mounted to the landing gear. One

side benefit from them is mounted in reverse the do make intake air but for zero drag.

Once landed on water takeoff is easy nose up at 50m/s and air born by 70m/s. But for the simplest

landings use the chutes. Parachuts landings are the easiest way to land and the chutes are placed in

order to make level landing easier.

I also wanted a plane that wasnt tied to a mothership so i added the kethan parts to it, the kethan

generator was a nice wieght saving addition, since it would take 3 to 4 Large solar arrays to power

the processor and the drill and each XL solar array weighs 0.35 t , the Kethan power generator only

wieghs 0.3 t.

so what ya think. Ill try to post more pics once I figure out how to place them on the page but just check out my imgur picts

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

I think its

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Heh, first go! way I did it was to put {imgur}p6TtP{/imgur} (with square brackets instead of the ones I used there)

Edited June 8, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e

[OgreMagi]

thank for the info I will try that and for my next submission and that is right now since I have completed the main bus vehicle for the Jool mission

I give you the Kerbal Atomic Ascension Bus zero zero Mod or the K.A.A.B 00 M and the Laythe Base lander

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Took a lot of work to balance out the ship and add what I wanted, seems like I went though a hundred variations until I got this one but it covers all the bases. I will launch it with mostly empty tanks ( probably 1/3 in the main orange tank) should make orbit...... Well I plan to try to keep the large SRB's to help with the boost for Jool but If I am short of orbit I can use them to boost myself up have to see how it goes........

Planned dockings

2 Tylo capable landers one on each side using the triple docking clusters, the plan is to use the two Tylo landers to provide additional thrust when boosting/orbiting for Jool and they will detach when they arrive.

2 Hermes A4 SSTO Sea planes for exploring Laythe and the Jool system.

and one Laythe Base lander to remain on Laythe

Other features....

THe KAAB 00 M has several mounted vehicles to help it accomplish it mission,

1. The nose mounted ship, the Jool mini, will be used as a system explorer and a emergency return craft if we lose all other vehicles but if it is not needed for the return to Kerbin then the Jool mini will stay in system orbiting Val or Laythe.

2. The 3 probe cluster on the left consists of 3 Jool impactor probes , 1 with a drogue chute, 1 with a standard chute and one with Wings.

3. the 5 Probe cluster on the Right are heavy duty ComSats that will be deployed in system to monitor Jool and its moons and provide extra comms for the mission.

Main Bus Mission

Once stripped of its docked craft the KAAB 00 M will be used as a mobile base with the landing craft to ferry samples and Fuel to it, While it should have enough thrust to land on Bop and Pol and perhaps even Val its primary mission is as a return vehicle to Kerbin. However is something is discovered, alien ruins , elvis ect ect then It can be landed to be used as a ground base .

Rational and shaky logic

Yea I know I built it waaaayy to big, the atomic engines are a mod , Kommet_Nucleonics , but I decided to use the smaller less efficient varients to perhaps get around the -100 point penality.

The main thrust comes from 2 clusters of Four FTmN 40 Nuclear rockets, stats are Isp 770 in vac, mass 1.52 so they arnt as efficient as a LVN rocket so maybe ....... Who knows I plan to try it again using standard rockets but I wanted to try this out first.

One thing was that all my craft have kethan mining/processing/storage equipment on them, part of it was simple redundancy. If I lose one craft I have others but another reason was a simple fix the the atmosphere requirments of the Kerbals. since we currently don't account for it I added the kethan processors as a combination processor/atmosphere scrubber. the extra weight of the kethan equipment I feel would simulate the mass of atmosphere processing equipment.

Long post but I am taking my time to explain some of the reasons why I am building it this way.

Edited June 10, 2014 by OgreMagi

[Oafman]

Looking good Ogre. Keep us informed.

I'm also making progress. The decision to get 2 kerbals on each moon simultaneously has ended up meaning I'm having to take 5 landers, each with a MK2 lander can (2.5t mass? seriously?). So everything has accordingly just got bigger and bigger.

But I got the mothership in LKO. Eventually. Ended up having to burn the nuke engines on the pad to use up about half the fuel, making the ship light enough for the 1st stage to get it to the point where the nuke engines were enough to circularise. Took a few goes but we got there in the end. But this is going to need a LOT of LKO refueling now....

The habitat/return module (crew capacity 12) will sit in the central atrium of the mothership. Then the Laythe, Pol, Bop & Val landers will sit on the sides, and the big Tylo lander will go on the front. All except the Laythe lander will have tugs attached. A few shoddy calculations have suggested the mothership should still have around >3000m/s dv when fully loaded, so we should be good for a one-way trip, with some aerobraking on arrival. Though TWR is gonna be low, so with whatever stupidly slow fps rate I get, burns are going to be painful. We'll see how bad it is when we get to that point.

Another thing I learned is that those big RCS thrusters guzzle monopropellant at an extraordinary rate. I need to keep my eye on that.

I'm reasonably confident that my landers should work. The Pol/Bop/Val landers are overkill, and should have no problems. Assuming jets are not too much less efficient in Laythe atmos I should have no problems getting off the surface.

My only real concern is the Tylo lander. I will have about 4.5km/s dv once the tug puts it in low Tylo orbit. Does this sound sufficient?

Edited June 10, 2014 by Oafman

[Ziv]

Hi Everybody, I'm back from a long holiday and a hard working week, sorry for the long delay! I will check everything and answer or update the leaderboard now.

[Ziv]

I just completed my second run at this. Full report here.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/81046-Jool-5-mission

I played with DRE which really increased the total mothership size.

technion: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 mission on Level 3! Yeah, it doesn't count as a Jebediah's level because you didn't bring a proper Science Package and a Lab neither, but it's okay for a Level 3 one. Nice one with the DRE and skipping the aerobraking phases!

To be honest I wanted to disapprove this mission at first because you didn't have pictures about some landings on the ground. Remember: no picture and it didn't happen! But I saw it is possible with the given ship so I accept it for now, but this is the last time.

[Ziv]

OK, last landing, and the trip home. Basically, MISSION ACHIEVED! YAY!

Nice one, can you please collect all your pictures/information into one post?

EDIT: I saw you made it later, thank you.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Ziv

[Ziv]

Images from my Level-1 Jool-5 mission using spaceplane as a plane

http://imgur.com/a/YG4iW

Kasuha: OMG, this was an absolutely epic mission! Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Level 1 WITH A SPACEPLANE!

I really liked when the fuel tanks were dropped by using a sepratron. I also liked your way to get onto and back from the ground! Running 300 m/s on the surface of Tylo is crazy, and nice job with the little engines to keep it just off the ground while accelerating into orbital speed (and avoid the mountains). And it looks like you used your last drops of fuel to get back to the spare fuels in orbit. Only one "anomaly" found: when getting back into orbit from Vall your fuel is about 20% then later it jumps back about 60%. What happened there?

Thanks for sharing this mission, this was really something!

[Ziv]

I don't want to fill this thread up with a massive post so here's a link to a brief pic summary of my mission:

Jool-5 Summary

Patupi: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Level 3! If you wanted to go for Jebediah's Level then you should have landed all the Science Package back at Kerbin. You can still do that, I guess...

Your ship is really huge, and to put your whole ship into low Tylo orbit was a huge waste on fuel, this is not too elegant in space where every gramm counts! So I was sure that you will need a refuel mission. The refuel mission was well done. The Tylo and Laythe rescue missions also shows that this mission would have needed some more plan at the beginning, but I don't say anything else because at my first mission I had a rescue docking above Laythe too. (it was nerve racking)... There were some funny comments under the pictures!

Do you want me to wait for the Jebediah's Level pictures or is it good for Level 3?

[Ziv]

Hello, I'd like to enter my Kerbol system grand tour for this challenge: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/81429-Sigma-Mission-Kerbol-System-Grand-Tour%21

Game version is 0.23.5

It was done in sandbox in one launch and with no refueling.

No additional equipment was carried along, just Jeb and his flags.

Only 1 mod was used: Kerbal engineer, otherwise it is completely stock.

Stratzenblitz75: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Level 1 with an "additional" Grand Tour!

I guess you just posted this mission here as it meets all the criteria for the JOOL-5 Challenge too. Epic minimalistic mission and awesome mission planning. I really liked your Eve lander. Nice job, thank you for sharing it here too!

[Stratzenblitz75]

Thank you for the kind words! Your Jool-5 challenge is what inspired me to even do a grand tour in the first place so to have you recognize my mission means a lot to me.

That being said, the Sigma Mission will not be my last entry to this challenge. I am currently working on another grand tour but this time I will gather science along the way. When its finished, I hope to enter it as a Jebediah's level entry. If anyone's interested, you can read about it here.

[Patupi]

Patupi: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Level 3! If you wanted to go for Jebediah's Level then you should have landed all the Science Package back at Kerbin. You can still do that, I guess...

Your ship is really huge, and to put your whole ship into low Tylo orbit was a huge waste on fuel, this is not too elegant in space where every gramm counts! So I was sure that you will need a refuel mission. The refuel mission was well done. The Tylo and Laythe rescue missions also shows that this mission would have needed some more plan at the beginning, but I don't say anything else because at my first mission I had a rescue docking above Laythe too. (it was nerve racking)... There were some funny comments under the pictures!

Do you want me to wait for the Jebediah's Level pictures or is it good for Level 3?

Well, I still have the save, so yes I can drop those science pods... that are now empty since I stripped the since out of ... back to Kerbin. As to mission efficiency... Yeah, not really efficient at all. I originally planned for it to be a totally reusable, with one lander for everything. Well, one out of two isn't bad But I really should have added some light landers for the smaller moons. Taking that beast of a lander down to everything was just silly. But it was a challenge, and I did manage to do it with only one refuel from Kerbin. Which is something I guess.

I did plan out the whole thing, including the landing dV... but I didn't test them out. Going by the pure maths they work just fine, and for Tylo was on the bare minimum of what was required to do it. Laythe was just my own stupid fault. I could have done that easily, but I reduced the fuel in the lander to save on gas. Dumb move! The reason Tylo was so hard was I think down to my skill with a lander not being quite as good as I thought.

Anyway, thanks for the note, and yes I'll do some quick shots showing the science pods coming down. Do you need shots of all six pods? I have science from the five landings and a teeny bit from Jool orbit. Science also could have been done better, and also I should probably have done two versions of the pods. One for atmosphere and one for vacuum moons. *shrugs*

Edited June 13, 2014 by Patupi

[Patupi]

OK, I did the science pod recovery. Was going to just do a couple to show things until I got an answer from you Ziv, but then had an interesting affair with the first pod... I forgot to repack the chutes on that one pod where they were used!... and the pod bounced on touchdown at over 180m/s. After that I thought I'd better land them all anyway, just to be sure.

Here's the report: Last mission report

[Ziv]

Well, I still have the save, so yes I can drop those science pods... [...]

Patupi: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 mission on Jebediah's Level!

Yeah, the unpacked chutes shows why I want the mission to be done from alpha to omega... because in reality space exploration depends on both perfect planning and perfect mission executing.

One thing you forget and your mission is ruined! I know it is easy with hyperedit and F5/F9 but that steals the real joy and excitement of space exploration!

It may have sounded bad that you should finish the mission by the rules but it necessary to gain the Jebediah's Level Hall of Fame place. Yes, it is definitely something to make a JOOL-5 mission, but it became much more easier with the lot of sample missions, with the science transfer and with the new, huge and strong rocket part. And I want to maintain the original level of difficulty so the Science Stuff has to come back to the surface in the scientific equipment or in a lab...

Edited June 14, 2014 by Ziv

[Ziv]

.

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because of the growing number of sample missions in the Hall of Fame, and the science collection have got easier (0.23) and because of the big rocket parts and the stronger ion in 0.23.5

I'm considering to ban refueling missions for the 1-2-3-Jeb levels. Missions with refueling would go to the Mixed Solutions category. What do you think guys?

Edited June 14, 2014 by Ziv

[Superfluous J]

I have no idea in which level this would go, but I just uploaded the first of what is proving to be at least a dozen (or two!) episodes of Joolpollo, which just so happens to be a Jool 5 mission. My goal is to - along with getting tons of science - return a capsule from being landed on all 5 moons and another from being in orbit around all 5 moons, and then 2 more from orbiting Jool and flying at Jool. Also I'm hoping it'll all be one self-contained mission with no refueling and nothing that wasn't launched on the original (400+ part) ship. Not sure I'll make it but it's looking hopeful!

So far in this video, I got the ship lifted off Kerbin and to Jool, and I'm prepping my first excursion, into Jool's atmosphere.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

because of the growing number of sample missions in the Hall of Fame, and the science collection have got easier (0.23) and because of the big rocket parts and the stronger ion in 0.23.5

I'm considering to ban refueling missions for the 1-2-3-Jeb levels. Missions with refueling would go to the Mixed Solutions category. What do you think guys?

But... the hardest part of my mission so far has been trying to design a fuel tanker that will take enough fuel to complete the mission... so far this has taken me longer than the initial planning and execution to get the mothership to Jool in the first place! Okay, maybe my own fault for not looking at any of the sample missions, and for using reasonably big, powerful and above all inefficient engines on my mothership...

Please, feel free to check out the mission so far, I just updated to include current status...

[Kasuha]

.

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because of the growing number of sample missions in the Hall of Fame, and the science collection have got easier (0.23) and because of the big rocket parts and the stronger ion in 0.23.5

I'm considering to ban refueling missions for the 1-2-3-Jeb levels. Missions with refueling would go to the Mixed Solutions category. What do you think guys?

The reason why I value this challenge so high is that it is relatively forgiving to failures and does not come (at least in original categories) with ordering entries by some kind of points. You get an epic task, you're allowed multiple launches and all that matters is that you finish the task. Whatever way you do it, it takes a lot of effort. Each refueling or repair mission is even more effort, you get to design another ship and perform transfer, rendezvous and all necessary actions depending on the nature of the mission, all on top of the original program. So I believe it is a punishment on its own and there is no need to punish participants further by moving them to another category.

I agree it got easier with 0.23 science collection and with 0.23.5 rocket parts and tweaks. That's why I think entries could be separated to groups by release in which they were done. Something similar to how the K-prize used to do it.

[Patupi]

Quick query Ziv. I'm considering doing another attempt at this with an Ion drive as the main ship, but the prototype I have up as over 380parts and is slugging my machine down a lot, and that's without the launch booster! I'm assuming a modded fuel tank to hold Xenon rather than tons of the tiny Xenon tanks is OK as long as the proportions of the fuel is right relative to stock? If so I'll either mod an existing stock tank to hold Xenon or pinch a fuel tank from another mod that does Ion engines (as long as the proportions of fuel to mass are the same as stock).

(EDIT: Looking at the Near Future Technologies Mod right now, maybe just getting a slightly larger Ion engine and a large Xenon fuel tank to cut back on parts... Further EDIT: Looks like NFT is close, but exactly stockalike. I remember another ion stockalike pack somewhere. Gonna search that up.)

Edited June 15, 2014 by Patupi