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

[SSSPutnik]

Geez, 1150 parts! What's your frame rate, one every few seconds?

I was running at 2-3fps according to FRAPS... My initial departure burn took like 6+ hours realtime

i7 CPU with decent graphics card too..

[SSSPutnik]

SSSPutnik, Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 mission with an awesome Kethane Expedition!

It will look awesome when you will arrange the pictures by time! Well planned, I really liked all your ships: the miners, the bases, the rovers... nice and unique solutions. And that's a huge main ship!

And it worth to examine the design of the vehicles because there are some nice solutions like the rotating light on the rover, or the giant antenna on the main ship...!

Really awesome mission, well done!

Thanks Ziv. Yeah only Infernal Robotics seems pretty buggy.

On one of the rovers, after restoring a save, the rotating / tiltable spotlight was actually offset from the centre of the craft.

Also, the main antenna controls went nutso and I ended up with a jammed antenna I couldn't deploy again. I think that was a combo of RemoteTech and Infernal Robotics.

Anyway, it was pretty epic mission. I liked my lander and rovers, both operated REALLY well. Cheers. The main ship, well, yes it was big, but perhaps too big, I never got close to running out of fuel.

[NecroBones]

My Jool-5 has been underway for several days now. Tylo and Laythe, conquered. On to Vall next, I think. I'll make an Imgur album when it's done, but lots of progress pics are here:

http://ksp.necrobones.net/pics/pages/Ed_ksp_pics_paged_26.htm

And yep, the new 3.75m parts do make it fairly easy to take a crap-ton of fuel. I will definitely agree.

Mods are mostly informational displays, and visuals. The only "parts" mod I'm running is KAS, and I'm only using the struts.

Edited June 18, 2014 by NecroBones

[OgreMagi]

well I finally arrived in the jool system, sent 3 impact probes one had a kerbal malfunction, seems I put the stack decoupler on backwards and it detached from the ship but not the probes engine. I tried to burn it off, it took damamge but didn't break off so I had to terminate it. the remaing 2 probes functioned as expected. I had on set up with a drogue chute and one with winglets and tried out powered flight. Man on man I would love to try jet engine in jool atmosphere, maybe even an kethan turbin but next mission...

got the pics of my desent and will post it when I finish my mission. My only problem at the moment is fuel, I burned a lot using the auxillary aerospikes on the main bus, got bored of 2 m/s acceleration of the nukes. only have about 15 % of my fuel left but I think I can aerobrake and make my encounter with Val and have enough fuel to use the landers to refuel all the ships...

let ya know how it goes.

[Nephas]

After days of designing and engineering, I finally feel like I'm ready to enter this challenge and fail dramatically!

Paperworks first:

The Ksp Version is 23.5 - Sandbox Mode.

I'm using some mods that make life harder more interesting, the noteworthy are:

- FAR

- Deadly Reentry

- TAC Life Support (simplified somewhat by taking out the requirement for food)

- SpaceplanePlus (just some wings) and HabitatPack (inflatable crew centrifuge) by Porkjet

- and the obvious interface and information mods...

Now the mission plan:

I went for a pseudo-realistic approach and generally valued plausibility and aesthetics over efficiency.

I also didn't look through the previous posts, so any similarities are pure coincidence.

Three brave Kerbals will go on the voyage of their lives (that would be level 2 I guess?):

Jebediah , Bob and Gregmund (if you ask: WTF is Gregmund? I don't know either, Bill somehow got lost during preparations and tests...)

Core of the design is my mothership, the Hyperion which will serve as living space and fuel depot and carry the transfer engines.

To explore the moons, it will carry:

- the creatively named multipurpose non-atmospheric lander (MuNoL?). 3km/s dV, TWR ~2

- a dockable fuel package and crew compartment (FuPaCC?) to extend the lander's range. +3km/s dV

- and a spaceplane especially for landing at Laythe.

The nuclear main engines should have a dV budget of about 10 km/s, but that's hard to estimate as landers will be refueled from this pool and on the other hand some equipment will be dropped after use... does that sound reasonable?

Its first route will be Kerbin -> Jool transfer -> Jool aerobrake -> Laythe aerobrake to low Orbit.

Here the plane will descend and hopefully return to the ship.

Then the MuNoL with the FuPaCC will be sent to Vall to land there.

Meanwhile the Hyperion will do the direct transfer Laythe -> Tylo, where it will stay for the rest of the mission.

The MuNoL will separately transfer to Tylo, refuel, do the roundtrip Tylo -> Pol -> Bop -> Tylo.

Finally it will descend to Tylo... and return?

Hopefully this dV map makes it clear (landing dVs not included):

And if enough fuel and Kerbals are left, we can eject from Tylo orbit directly to Kerbin and aerobrake again.

What could possibly go wrong?

The following album shows the launch vehicles that are needed to assemble the mission: the Hyperion is delivered in three parts, the landers need another two launches and carry the crew members. So all in all five launches.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

The launches meanwhile happend, the assembling of the ship can be followed in the next album.

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And here he is, Hyperion in all his might and beauty. In the meantime, the crew decided to rename the unimaginatively descripted landers (seriously, the engineers must have been quite tired when coming up with these stupid acronyms). The lander shall be christianed "Selene" and the plane "Eos", after the children of the Titan Hyperion.

Note that all crewable parts have access to each other via tunnels, thanks to the Connected Living Spaces/Ship Manifest mods. The only situation that requires to go EVA is when boarding the spaceplane.

Another design feature I'm quite proud of are the breaking engines on the engine pods, for those situations where you don't have the time or where it's not feasible to turn the Ship around (e. g. during aerobreaking or gravity assists).

But now some rather unromantic technical data:

- total mass: 638 t

- dry mass: 190 t (still including payloads)

- part count: 224 (comfortable, isn't it?)

- Delta V: 9400 m/s (when using only the nukes)

- launch TWR: 0.115 (1.13 m/s²)

The first launch window will be on:

Year 2, day 255 at 5:13:12

1984 m/s

~30 min of burn time (oh yeaaaah...)

Now I'm waiting for your "go", Ziv. I hope I didn't violate any rules?

Edited June 21, 2014 by Nephas
Added dV Map

[NecroBones]

Ziv, here's my submission!

Mission description: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/83759-Jool-5-Mission-Report?p=1225009

Be forewarned. This album below has 321 images in it. I took pictures everywhere. I may try to make a second gallery with just the highlights.

View the thumbnails: http://imgur.com/a/nS4em/all

Gallery:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[kookoo_gr]

a couple of questions for the grand tour + jeb level. Do i need to go to all bodies in one ship or can i split the ship in parts? The whole ship will be assembled in Kerbin orbit but the Jool-5 mothership will remain in orbit and send landers to the other planets in order to avoid excessive lag, then when the other ships return i will go to Jool. Also if one Kerbal plants a flag in a planet can the same Kerbal plant another flag at another planet/biome?

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

a couple of questions for the grand tour + jeb level. Do i need to go to all bodies in one ship or can i split the ship in parts? The whole ship will be assembled in Kerbin orbit but the Jool-5 mothership will remain in orbit and send landers to the other planets in order to avoid excessive lag, then when the other ships return i will go to Jool. Also if one Kerbal plants a flag in a planet can the same Kerbal plant another flag at another planet/biome?

You seem to be able to do whatever you want during a grand tour, but to meet the requirements of the challenge your mothership and landers must go to the Jool System together... you can even ditch the landers once used, reducing the amount of mass you have to bring home, if the rest of your grand-tour will allow it...

[grockstar124]

I'll try this challange. This will be a hard one, but I think I can do it. I'll post pics along the way.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

UPDATE of update-y goodness; Laythe Conquered! Well... full amount of science gathered, but no flag due to odd glitch with some wings... ahem... I will update the log ASAP!

Oh, and I would recommend using 4 lots of 4 nuclear engines, have reached Vall orbit, but totally out of fuel on the mothership again! good thing I have the fuel tanker worked out now... hoping to deliver more fuel this time, too, to cut down on fuel used by the mothership I will now be making use of a tug to get the landers in close enough to do their own de-orbit burns...

[Fendleton]

I'm working on assembling my first manned return mission to Jool in 0.23.5 right now. If it goes well I'll probably put it up for this challenge.

I lobbed a transfer stage up for what was originally going to be a "send a space station to Duna" mission. I think I'll repurpose it....if I replace some station modules with spare fuel tanks, it should work fine as a transfer stage.

(Note: That module attached to it is an orbital tug, designed to get it into position for docking)

....the only problem is that I've got to find a way to get something with the approximate TWR of a glacier into an escape trajectory. I might have to strap SRBs to one of the later modules.....even if it works, this will be an entertaining mission.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Currently uploading the 140+ screenshots from Fuel Transfer ops and Laythe visit, this could take a while!

in the meantime, here's Jeb making his way back to the Command Cupola... Boy, were the guys in the hitch hiker container glad to see him back in one piece!

EDIT: BOOM! done

Had some 'interesting' glitches with struts and external fuel lines not being where I put them, but it seemed to have no effect on the mission... One down, 4 to go! Having to send another fuel mission... annoying, but shouldn't cause the month-and-a-half delay this time as I now have the perfect fuel delivery vehicle, just need to get a little bit more fuel to Jool than last time, and I should be set

Edited June 22, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e

[Himynameisjake]

a couple of questions for the grand tour + jeb level. Do i need to go to all bodies in one ship or can i split the ship in parts? The whole ship will be assembled in Kerbin orbit but the Jool-5 mothership will remain in orbit and send landers to the other planets in order to avoid excessive lag, then when the other ships return i will go to Jool. Also if one Kerbal plants a flag in a planet can the same Kerbal plant another flag at another planet/biome?

The rules regarding kerbals only landing on one body each only applies inside the Joolian system. I landed jebediah on every single other body. As for the ship, you must fully assemble the ship before it leaves Kerbin. All kerbals launched must be returned as a one crew ship along with the science payload.

Once you are in the Joolian system, the rules of the challenge become much more stringent. Make a flight plan, make your ships, clear everything with Ziv before you leave Kerbin, as it is quite a feat, and you would hate to get halfway through and discover yourself disqualified.

Best of luck!

[hsteffano]

Hello everyone,

I have completed the mission and this is my entry for the challenge, I have done the mission in my carrer save, thus, my entry is for Jebediah level.

Building of the ship started in year 25. After 8 launches, KSS-09 was complete and fueled, the crew was aboard. It was now a matter of waiting for the transfer window that would come in the end of year 27.

However, after some standard steering and engines tests, the craft had proven to be extremely bendy and not powerful enough, mission control was now worried that mission success was at stake. It was decided that the ship needed redesign.

Construction of a new ship started, it would have three times more engines and would be more compact, with less parts. 3 more launches and the new ship, KSS-10, was docked to the old KSS-09 in orbit. After de-orbiting KSS-09, the mission of the "Venture Star" had begun.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Mission, despite dificulties, mainly fuel level(wich became an worry after Vall) was successful.

P.S.:At the time that I found out about this challenge Bob and Jeb were returning from a mission to Laythe, so they didn't participate on this mission.

P.P.S.: I didn't post the album for the first ship, but the album is here: http://imgur.com/a/sKEtJ#0

P.P.P.S.:Ziv, if I missed something, please let me know.

Edited June 22, 2014 by hsteffano

[Ziv]

After days of designing and engineering, I finally feel like I'm ready to enter this challenge and fail dramatically!

[...]

Three brave Kerbals will go on the voyage of their lives (that would be level 2 I guess?):

Jebediah , Bob and Gregmund (if you ask: WTF is Gregmund? I don't know either, Bill somehow got lost during preparations and tests...)

[...]

- the creatively named multipurpose non-atmospheric lander (MuNoL?). 3km/s dV, TWR ~2

- a dockable fuel package and crew compartment (FuPaCC?) to extend the lander's range. +3km/s dV

- and a spaceplane especially for landing at Laythe.

[...]

Finally it will descend to Tylo... and return?

[...]

Now I'm waiting for your "go", Ziv. I hope I didn't violate any rules?

Yeah, sounds good, and nice visuals!

or Level 2 you have to land at least two Kerbals on all the moons. If you land only one Kerbal on any of the moons then it will be a Level 1.

For Tylo, I wouldn't take the whole main ship into low orbit, so you should stay in a highly eccentric orbit. This way your main ship stays around Tylo (easier to redock after the landing) but takes only a little (~100m/s) dV to leave Tylo. But you may need a tug to push down to low Tylo orbit (~12km) and pull the lander back to the main ship, this will take around 2x1000 m/s. Otherwise you will spend ~2000 m/s from your main fuel tanks (the bigger the weight the more fuel needed).

Tylo landing needs between 3000+3500 and 2500+2200 from a 12-15 km low orbit (depending on your skill).

And I strongly suggest to avoid refueling missions: it's like the mission has failed but I didn't want to make people feel disappointed after a lot of effort so they have the opportunity to finish it...

[grockstar124]

Here at KASA, we are looking at spacecraft designs from people that have done the challange. This is my plan so far:

1: Launch bits and pieces of the ship (1 life support section, 4 SOI engines (used to push ship out of Kerbins SOI, and into Jools, and back again), 10 Jool SOI (used for moving inside Jools SOI to get in landing positions for the moons, can double as SOI engines), 5 L/R (2 landers, (incase 1 breaks in some way) 3 "Lifeboat" ships), 1 command module (a mk 1-2 pod), 3 power modules (with solar panels attached), and a shuttle that ferrys up crew members and brings them back to kerbin, 3 fueling stations, and finally, a Joolieo probe.(to be dropped into Jool, in fact, I have called the whole mission project Joolieo, after the inventor of the telescope, Gaileo).

2: After the ship has been assembled, the crew will be ferryed up via spaceplane (I am doing level 2, with 3 (classified as of now) crew members that will land on the moons, and 2 or 3 that will keep the ship running.)

3: Once everything is ready, the ship will depart Kerbin, and after 1 or 2 years, arrive at Jool.

4: The Joolieo probe will be launched, orbit Jool for 5 orbits, then will be sent into Jool's atmosphere, transmitting data, before being ripped apart by Jool's gravity/ high winds.

5: The landing crew will land on a moon.

6: They will plant flags, do some experiments, take a soil/rock sample, then come back on the lander to the ship.

7: Repeat 5 and 6 for all moons.

8: Once the mission is finished, the ship will leave Jool's SOI, and after another 1 or 2 years, the ship will return to Kerbin.

9: A shuttle will meet the crew at the space station, and return them to Kerbin. It will take 2 flights, as there are 2 too many crew members to fit on 1 shuttle. In the event of a shuttle crash, the remaining crew will return on a Lifeboat vessel attached to the ship.

10: The ship's fate will be decided by the top government officals.

11: If the government vote to destroy the ship, It will undock into 3 main pieces and each will be deorbited with the remaining fuel.

12: If the government votes to keep the ship in Kerbin orbit, 3 things could happen:

> The ship could be left intact until it's orbit decays and it reenters the atmosphere.

> The could be refitted as a space station.

> The ship could be refitted as a fueling vessel.

13: THE CHALLENGE IS COMPLETE, AND KASA SPACE PROGRAM IS SAVED! YAY!!!!

[grockstar124]

Ziv, tell me if I break any rules. Then the plan has to be changed.

[Ziv]

Ziv, here's my submission!

Mission description: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/83759-Jool-5-Mission-Report?p=1225009

Be forewarned. This album below has 321 images in it. I took pictures everywhere. I may try to make a second gallery with just the highlights.

View the thumbnails: http://imgur.com/a/nS4em/all

Gallery:

http://imgur.com/a/nS4em

NecroBones: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Level 1! Wow, that was a really huge rocket on the launch pad at the second launch! I don't like that you used KAS struts because it's easier to build huge rockets that way but I will not disqualify you because of this. Otherwise nice looking ship (like a Corelian Corvette ), and I also liked as you have visited your old landing sites on Pol and Bop. Those pictures had a cool feeling!

Nice job, thank you for participating!

[Ziv]

a couple of questions for the grand tour + jeb level. Do i need to go to all bodies in one ship or can i split the ship in parts? The whole ship will be assembled in Kerbin orbit but the Jool-5 mothership will remain in orbit and send landers to the other planets in order to avoid excessive lag, then when the other ships return i will go to Jool. Also if one Kerbal plants a flag in a planet can the same Kerbal plant another flag at another planet/biome?

Hi kookoo_gr, thanks for the questions! Answers:

- You have to follow the rules for the JOOL-5 only, all the other landings happens as you want. So: you have to go from Kerbin to Jool with one ship only for all the landings in the Joolian system.

- For Jebediah's Level, you have to bring 5 Kerbals and each of them are trained to pilot only landing one moon there (you can have passengers, of course).

- For Jeb's Level, you also have to bring Five Science Package and bring them back, or at least one and a Lab, which has to be brought back to Kerbin surface.

One additional thing: if you start multiple mission to multiple bodies from Kerbin orbit that's hardly a Grand Tour. In my opinion that's like multiple separate missions. Even if you put them together into orbit and then they go on separate ways in the Kerbol System...

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

I'm hoping my multiple fuel trips won't disqualify me; I installed KAS mid-mission as I thought it would be a way round my huuuge fuel tankers wobbling about so much, but then saw that KAS usually results in an entry to the guest list, and found a way to make my craft more rigid in stock! (being able to dock multiple docking connectors at once is SO handy!)... so have refused to use any of the KAS stuff for the rest of the mission too, in the hope that I reach Jeb-Level (otherwise, why drag all those little landers along? heh!)

My log is now up to date, as I said before I think, been a long day!

[Ziv]

Hello everyone,

I have completed the mission and this is my entry for the challenge, I have done the mission in my carrer save, thus, my entry is for Jebediah level.

Building of the ship started in year 25. After 8 launches, KSS-09 was complete and fueled, the crew was aboard. It was now a matter of waiting for the transfer window that would come in the end of year 27.

However, after some standard steering and engines tests, the craft had proven to be extremely bendy and not powerful enough, mission control was now worried that mission success was at stake. It was decided that the ship needed redesign.

Construction of a new ship started, it would have three times more engines and would be more compact, with less parts. 3 more launches and the new ship, KSS-10, was docked to the old KSS-09 in orbit. After de-orbiting KSS-09, the mission of the "Venture Star" had begun.

http://imgur.com/a/rCa8f

Mission, despite dificulties, mainly fuel level(wich became an worry after Vall) was successful.

P.S.:At the time that I found out about this challenge Bob and Jeb were returning from a mission to Laythe, so they didn't participate on this mission.

P.P.S.: I didn't post the album for the first ship, but the album is here: http://imgur.com/a/sKEtJ#0

P.P.P.S.:Ziv, if I missed something, please let me know.

hsteffano: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Jebediah's Level! Wow, you did not use any mods, not even MechJeb or KER?

I liked that you have landed on the South Pole on Laythe but it takes more fuel to get back to the main ship, ain't it? The refueling at Duna from the abandoned ship was funny. That's a luck there and a creative solution.

Nice one, thank you for participating!

[Ziv]

Here at KASA, we are looking at spacecraft designs from people that have done the challange. This is my plan so far:

1: Launch bits and pieces of the ship (1 life support section, 4 SOI engines (used to push ship out of Kerbins SOI, and into Jools, and back again), 10 Jool SOI (used for moving inside Jools SOI to get in landing positions for the moons, can double as SOI engines), 5 L/R (2 landers, (incase 1 breaks in some way) 3 "Lifeboat" ships), 1 command module (a mk 1-2 pod), 3 power modules (with solar panels attached), and a shuttle that ferrys up crew members and brings them back to kerbin, 3 fueling stations, and finally, a Joolieo probe.(to be dropped into Jool, in fact, I have called the whole mission project Joolieo, after the inventor of the telescope, Gaileo).

2: After the ship has been assembled, the crew will be ferryed up via spaceplane (I am doing level 2, with 3 (classified as of now) crew members that will land on the moons, and 2 or 3 that will keep the ship running.)

3: Once everything is ready, the ship will depart Kerbin, and after 1 or 2 years, arrive at Jool.

4: The Joolieo probe will be launched, orbit Jool for 5 orbits, then will be sent into Jool's atmosphere, transmitting data, before being ripped apart by Jool's gravity/ high winds.

5: The landing crew will land on a moon.

6: They will plant flags, do some experiments, take a soil/rock sample, then come back on the lander to the ship.

7: Repeat 5 and 6 for all moons.

8: Once the mission is finished, the ship will leave Jool's SOI, and after another 1 or 2 years, the ship will return to Kerbin.

9: A shuttle will meet the crew at the space station, and return them to Kerbin. It will take 2 flights, as there are 2 too many crew members to fit on 1 shuttle. In the event of a shuttle crash, the remaining crew will return on a Lifeboat vessel attached to the ship.

10: The ship's fate will be decided by the top government officals.

11: If the government vote to destroy the ship, It will undock into 3 main pieces and each will be deorbited with the remaining fuel.

12: If the government votes to keep the ship in Kerbin orbit, 3 things could happen:

> The ship could be left intact until it's orbit decays and it reenters the atmosphere.

> The could be refitted as a space station.

> The ship could be refitted as a fueling vessel.

13: THE CHALLENGE IS COMPLETE, AND KASA SPACE PROGRAM IS SAVED! YAY!!!!

For Level 2, this all sounds fine, but I think you are overplanning it...

[Ziv]

I'm hoping my multiple fuel trips won't disqualify me; I installed KAS mid-mission as I thought it would be a way round my huuuge fuel tankers wobbling about so much, but then saw that KAS usually results in an entry to the guest list, and found a way to make my craft more rigid in stock! (being able to dock multiple docking connectors at once is SO handy!)... so have refused to use any of the KAS stuff for the rest of the mission too, in the hope that I reach Jeb-Level (otherwise, why drag all those little landers along? heh!)

My log is now up to date, as I said before I think, been a long day!

No worries mate, it's all right like that too... I'm happy that you have found an other way than to use KAS' unreal struts!

[hsteffano]

Thanks a lot, Ziv.

Didn't use any mods except for the visual ones, (Distant Objects and Better Atmospheres).

Yes, it takes more fuel to take-off from the pole mainly because it is at such a low altitude, (also, it wasn't exactly in my path so I spent a bit more fuel getting to it), but the only other island in my orbit trajectory was basically a mountain, so it would be a lot more dificult to land on it.

P.S.: The icon you see in some pictures is to update Toolbar, sorry about that.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

To be brutally honest, I have no idea how to use them yet! I seem to be missing something... probably the instructions haha!

From what I can make out though, KAS isn't all plain easy sailing... I'm under the impression that you can attach some bits and pieces in VAB/SPH, but to connect them together (in orbit) you need to send the parts pack up so a kerbal on EVA can actually 'tie' things together... which makes it semi-realistic IMO, but as I said, I haven't really played with it much so far!

And I hope I have been pointing people in the right direction when either you or SSSputnik have not been around