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

[Norcurion]

Nice, very clean design. Does it wobble badly under thrust?

Update:

After the full Jool injection burn:

Yes it does wobble, painting big O's in the sky like this:

(with about 0.5 - 1 Hz)

It was not that bad, there was never any fault in the construction. And it wobbled fine around the node marker and the burn was pretty exact (for that amount of circling)

Never the less i did tree Burn brakes so that the ship could rest, because i thought that the oscillation grew stronger over time.

After ditching the rearmost engine segment it flew perfectly

[Jasonden]

(don't use MechJeb, that kills the fun of it!)

MechJeb kept crashing me when I tried it -- so in some cases at least, MechJeb isn't even an option.

[Ziv]

I prefer going without testing, so I suggest the same if you want to have the thrill when seeing the moons for the first time.

Before my first ever mission to any of the moons I was collecting informations from the net and planning the mission on paper for days. And then it was a great excitement to see them for the first time!

(by the way I'm planning my ship for the LEVEL 1 SUB-CHALLENGE mission on paper right now and I will not test my lander/ship before launch...)

Edited January 23, 2014 by Ziv

[Mobjack]

If you're not sure, test it. Hyperedit the lander in Tylo orbit or get it there with infinite fuel and test whether you'll be able to land it and return.

You can do that? That makes things so much easier.

I remember making a huge mission just to test my Tylo lander, only for it to crash because I was lazy with the warp and I forgot to quicksave.

[Mobjack]

Thank you, I'm happy that this challenge became a good one! I was afraid that it could be too hard like my Rescue mission from Eve and so there won't happen to much here neither...

I think the problem with the Eve mission was not that it was too hard, but it required downloading a save file and installing a mod. This creates a barrier of entry which prevents more people from attempting it. I never used the Kethane mod so I don't know where to begin with planning a mission.

[Kasuha]

I think the problem with the Eve mission was not that it was too hard, but it required downloading a save file and installing a mod. This creates a barrier of entry which prevents more people from attempting it. I never used the Kethane mod so I don't know where to begin with planning a mission.

I have no problems with downloading a save file - after all, the first challenge I participated in involved exactly that. But mods are a big no for me.

[FormulaRedline]

Before I had read the forum or knew this challenge existed, I attempted this mission. I launched a massive mothership to carry 8 Kerbals to Jool and land all the moons. The mothership contained a MK2 Capsule, a habitat, and a science module. It was joined by Jebediah flying up a SSTO space place (that was refueled in Kerbin orbit) and a more traditional lander. However, as it ended up, the lander did not have enough delta-V to accomplish the Tylo landing (on paper yes, in practice no). So despite the mothership returning with fuel to spare, I only got science from low orbit in Tylo.

I'll have to send a return mission that can also hit Tylo and do this mission proper. Since the first mission mostly collected science and then transmitted back after processing (the space plane and lander each returned to Kerbal's surface, but that only gave me 2 sets of instruments), I should still have some collecting to do at the other moons as well!

[Epthelyn]

Since I have now successfully landed on all of the Joolian moons that are of any significance (basically Laythe, Tylo and Vall, the first two making all the other 3 seem easy) I'll start on this challenge either tomorrow or over the weekend; I've seen this many times and always wanted to try, but knew that Tylo would just make everything fall apart.

One thing I do have to say is that landing on Tylo efficiently is probably one of the scariest things I have ever done in KSP. Skimming less than a kilometre above the ground whilst travelling at over 2km/s (at 4x warp, so effectively 8km/s), although knowing I wouldn't actually crash, was terrifying. Looking out of the pod window made it worse

Of course, it's one thing to actually land on all 5 moons separately, but another to land on them all in one mission, but that should be fine. I'll just put out of my mind the fact that my yay-I-got-to-Tylo-mission actually used infinite fuel to circularise to LTO on the inbound journey because then nuke ran out. Oh, and I lithobraked the landing engines off instead of staging...

EDIT: Seeing the questions on the previous page, here are the figures I just got, the number on the right being the total available in the respective stage.

dV to Land: 2943/3070

dV to takeoff: 3104/3524 (300x50 orbit)

Landing took 5 attempts with various methods, and liftoff took a single attempt.

Stage 2 (Land): 4x FL-T400 + 4x LV-909

Stage 1 (Lift): 1x FL-T400 + 1x LV-909

Pod: Mk1 Lander Can

Edited January 23, 2014 by Epthelyn

[Mr.Rocket]

Would this work for Tylo? I added another stage. Also, i still need/want your opinions on the other landers, i am not completely comfortable with the jool system. I don't want to test the lander on Tylo, not because it will ruin the fun (i've done a flyby of it before) but because i have a self made rule never to use infinite fuel to land anywhere I haven't landed on without.

Here is the lander:

[Mobjack]

Would this work for Tylo? I added another stage. Also, i still need/want your opinions on the other landers, i am not completely comfortable with the jool system. I don't want to test the lander on Tylo, not because it will ruin the fun (i've done a flyby of it before) but because i have a self made rule never to use infinite fuel to land anywhere I haven't landed on without.

Your staging looks fine, but I would change some of the engines.

I would remove the radial engines from the lander. They have low ISP and will take away some of your efficiency. I bet you can get away with using the for LV45s for the first stage. The first 1500 m/s dV or so doesn't need to be that high of a thrust. It is the next 1500 m/s dv that you really need the thrust for.

Also for your final stage, instead of using the small radial engines, use 4 Rockomax 48/7S engines as they are more efficient.

[Giggleplex777]

I'm going to this a try.

So far, I've completed the landing vehicles:

Multipurpose Lander:

This also functions as the main engines on the mothership. Used for landing on Tylo, Vall, Bop, and Pol.

Laythe SSTO:

This will be left in orbit after it is used and may be reused for future missions.

Both landers seat two.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Giggleplex777

[Mr.Rocket]

If that Tylo lander works, it's the smallest i've ever seen. Mine is almost 55 tons!

[Giggleplex777]

If that Tylo lander works, it's the smallest i've ever seen. Mine is almost 55 tons!

It should work. I've used a very similar design before and it worked.

The Laythe SSTO can land and takeoff twice.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Giggleplex777

[jacobgong]

Never use the radial engines, they are worthless. If you can't do without them then change your design. Using them automatically make your design overweight.

[Ziv]

I'm going to this a try.

So far, I've completed the landing vehicles:

Multipurpose Lander:

http://i.imgur.com/Kew4Mw8.png

Both landers seat two.

Hi, welcome to the Challenge! Wow, that's a nice lander design with the one nuke only and two seat! Will it really work? If yes, that's a really creative design!!

[Giggleplex777]

Hi, welcome to the Challenge! Wow, that's a nice lander design with the one nuke only and two seat! Will it really work? If yes, that's a really creative design!!

It's not very creative, I just stole it off Scott Manley.

[Ziv]

lol, then good job, Scott Manley!

[zeppelinmage]

Following my successful Tylo lander redesign, I applied what I learned to my Laythe lander.

Brought the DV up to 5500, and the mass down to 26t. After all this mass shedding, I think I'm going to take a final look at my mothership.

5500 seems a little excessive, but it'll allow me to park my mothership in Tylo orbit and let all my landers go there.

[SSSPutnik]

By the way, the stock LV-N *does* have thrust vectoring. (0.5 deg) (As of version 0.23 anyway).

[Ziv]

Hm, I'm working on my version of the nuke lander!

Edited January 24, 2014 by Ziv

[Ziv]

I have made my version of the Single Nuclear Engine Lander

Delta-V = 6425 m/s

TWR = 0.76 - 1.72 (maybe Tylo compatible too in one stage!?)

Weight = 8.1 tons

41 Parts

With ASAS for better maneuverability (without ASAS it goes straight only ). Seats are on the ground level so no need for ladder or jumping. The bottom of the ship is made by octagonal struts (which holds the seats) so if the legs are pressed in the engine does not blow up. Oh, I've just noticed that one of the fuel line isn't straight. Argh, so this is just ALMOST a perfect photo this way.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Ziv

[SSSPutnik]

Nice Ziv. Better them than me though!

8.1 tons is amazing for a two seater if you can land it on Tylo. Tried a few drop tests?

Edited January 24, 2014 by SSSPutnik

[Mobjack]

I finally completed the Jool 5 Challenge on Jebediah Level

Mods: Kerbal Engineer Redux and Alarm Clock.

Science Retrieved: 8800

I managed to get one Kerbal on each moon at the same time.

I used multiple launches and a hitchhiker container, but one unlucky Kerbal had to be left out alone in their lander.

My strategy involved using one lander for each moon. My thinking was instead of lugging around one big ship from moon to moon, I can just send out lots of smaller landers that will burn less fuel. Why carry fuel around to each moon if you aren't going to use it to land?

In hindsight, I don't know if it really was more efficient, but it definitely made it more complicated. Halfway through the mission, I made a goal of getting a Kerbal on each moon all at once which destroyed any efficiency advantages I would have gained.

My initial ship was clunky as hell. If I had to do it again, I would definitely balance it out better but after spending hours docking 7 launches together, I decided just to deal with it and push ahead. As I started shedding landers later, the ship became stable and it actually ended up working well.

I noticed some weird bug with the fuel lines on my smaller landers. Instead of the engine consuming all the tanks evenly, it decided to to it one at a time which caused so severe balancing issues. Once I ejected my first stage, the fuel tanks behaved normally.

I have many pictures and want to break up in multiple albums. Here is how the first half of my mission was like. I will posts the rest tomorrow.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited January 24, 2014 by Mobjack

[kookoo_gr]

This is my ship for the Jool 5. Its handling is like $%&*(Y&* i had to cut the engines every minute move the ship to the target, time warp on - time warp off and engage the engines. It wobbles like a spring BUT it made it in one piece after two aerobrakes at Laythe, the scariest one was at Laythe since i forgot and physics time warped at the atmosphere of Laythe. I have 3/4 of an orange tank of fuel and am getting ready to land on Laythe. On a side note all of my Kerbals, Bill, Bob, Jeb, Gilley and Jeddos (Jeb's cousin) are happy like they are on a joy ride, they just can't stop themselves laughing like crazy.

My ship

Don't try this at home

[SSSPutnik]

OMGZ, look at that bending! You're lucky!