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

[Ziv]

Oh. So, let's see... my stats:

Mothership + Engines: 163 part, 210t

Moon-orbit Module: 26 parts, 12t

Lander: 59 parts, 21t

All together: 248 parts and 243t! Wohoo, my "lowest number of possible parts optimalization" worked very well, as it turns out! That's why I enjoy full framerate at dockings!

[mcirish3]

So, I have gone to Jool, and made my first landing on Laythe. Experiences:

1, I put my Mothership into a parking orbit between Laythe and Vall, and used a Moon-orbit Module to bring the Landing Module down to orbit and back to the Mothership.

Changing orbit for Laythe intercept is about 300m/s, braking to orbit and getting back to the Mothership is 2 x 500m/s, landing is very cheap (parachutes), getting back works with jets and after 7100m with rockets, but you need a bigger rocket this way too. About +1500-2000m/s back to orbit! And it's better to go straight up with the Jets because the atmosphere will brake you back soon under ~10000 m.

My rocket fuel was not enough for orbit so I almost gave up the mission here. The most what I was able to achieve is a long falling-back path with apoapsis at around 56'000m. But after a lot of reloading and learning the right timing, I brought my Moon-orbital Module into a 50'000 m (falling-down) path, I quickly catch the Lander Module and went back into orbit... it was VERY, VERY HARD! Took me a lot of time to save Jebediah and the mission!

2, the Jet engines was a good idea, they gave me +330 m/s until 7100m. But you need to cut them and separate before that or they will spin you at 7300m+! And before launch you have to assign the Jet engines and the main rocket engines to Action Groups and so you can turn on/off them quickly and at the same time.

3, The Moon-orbit Module is very useful and uses Nuclear Engines and an ASAS what gives it a lot of torque, so RCS can be held for dockings only. This way you don't have to move the whole Mothership to orbit and back to other moons and can save you a lot of fuel/weight.

4, Changing the Mothership layout with the little Space Tug is big fun because this main ship doesn't have so much parts (about 300-350) and there's no lag! But docking with huge orange tanks is a slow and painful thing. I realized that I prefer smaller ships and parts...

This is very impressive I wish I had thought of the moon shuttle it definatly would have saved on parts. Also Could have Gone with one less medium lander. But such is life.

[mcirish3]

Oh. So, let's see... my stats:

Mothership + Engines: 163 part, 210t

Moon-orbit Module: 26 parts, 12t

Lander: 59 parts, 21t

All together: 248 parts and 243t! Wohoo, my "lowest number of possible parts optimalization" worked very well, as it turns out! That's why I enjoy full framerate at dockings!

Nice I have gone with a maximalist ship and you with a minimalist one hmm I wonder how your new build will fair.

[Ziv]

I have finished my Vall landing too! I added them to my JOOL-5 Grand Tour album:

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Edited November 16, 2013 by Ziv

[mcirish3]

It is going to take forever to get to Jool, still at 1075 parts and have only finished matching orbital planes. will share pics once I finally get there. congratz on the Vall landing.

[mcirish3]

Well Looks like its over. I just dont have enough hours in the day to get the jool burn done, and then a time warp tore the ship apart. Me and my stupid overengineering. Not sure I have the heart to try again. at least not right now. There are so many new mods that I want to test and other challenges too. But this was fun trying I think I know what to do for the next time I try this. Thanks for letting me try.

[burnoutforzai]

Might give this a shot. Would love to see videos if anybody does it.

I'm going to do a vid... no comentry though.

Anyway i've got one of my radial engines attached on the core and 3 more coming up. Using a habitat module and one of the basic comand pods. One lander. Four engines. More shenanigans. And a hell load of docking... LET'S DO THIS!!

Edited November 17, 2013 by burnoutforzai

[Highlad]

I seem to have overdone my mission a bit... I wanted to dock two landers onto my 'mothership' but my fps drops like a rock. Im going to have to redesign a little...

[Ziv]

Well Looks like its over. I just dont have enough hours in the day to get the jool burn done, and then a time warp tore the ship apart. Me and my stupid overengineering. Not sure I have the heart to try again. at least not right now. There are so many new mods that I want to test and other challenges too. But this was fun trying I think I know what to do for the next time I try this. Thanks for letting me try.

mcirish3: Ahh, I'm sorry to hear you quit now. I hope you will try it again other time! BTW the KSP's code should be optimized because 1000 parts should not be a problem on these computers! Hope to see you again soon!

[mcirish3]

I Had to quit. It was actually getting boring to work with so much lag. Your right it should not be that laggy with only 1000 parts. It is my understanding that the Game is being fully optimized in the 0.23 release as the quote from Harvester below indicates.

* All-Around Optimizations

We’re going through each line of game code and making sure things are getting done as efficiently as possible. We’re also optimizing the asset loaders to reduce loading times, and upgrading to the latest version of Unity, to take advantage of all its new tweaks and fixes.

I will try again but not for two or three weeks at least. There have been so many new mods that came out or had dramatic upgrades after the 0.22 release and may of them are very good so I want try many of them out.

Edited November 18, 2013 by mcirish3

[ttnarg]

I would of posted my solution to this challange today but I had a bit of a problem on my way back to Kerbin. The problem being after spotting how much spare fuel we have Jeb is claiming that eeloo and dres and ike are also moons of Jool and we should stop at them. Will post soon.

(note: I had it easy on this as, unlike people like Ziv, I'm not carrying a load of science stuff around which makes it easyer for me.)

P.S. my 'moon shuttle' or 'large space tug' as I called it was also my unplan star of this mission.

Edited November 18, 2013 by ttnarg

[Ziv]

I have made it! I LANDED ON TYLO!!!

I had to make an other refueling mission sent from Kerbin but there's plenty of fuel on the Mothership now, hopefully for all the remaining misison!

Experiences:

1, get to as low orbit as possible (around 45km) with the Moon-orbit Module (using such a thing makes a successful landing more possible)

2, don't brake too big at high altitude and land vertically... you would spend many times more fuel fighting the huge gravity during descent. Just make a little de-orbit burn and brake long on low altitude. Don't worry, there's no atmosphere so you always will follow the path. Always be sure that your "you are going this direction" sign on your navigation ball is slightly above the ground. If your surface speed closes to zero at about 100m altitude then you are good for a landing!

3, use a stage just to deorbit and for braking and low altitude

4, make sure you have some strong rocket for starting back from the ground

5, you don't need to go up high and turn into orbit, in fact, it's better if you start rolling to East (gravity roll) immediately after starting from the surface. Just be sure you are always slightly going up, too.

6, Tiny, light ascent stage with little engines but lot of fuel will do all the way back the orbit

here are the pictures: http://imgur.com/a/ZCaAu#66

I think after achieving this key landing, this mission can be a success!

[Ziv]

I Had to quit. It was actually getting boring to work with so much lag. Your right it should not be that laggy with only 1000 parts. It is my understanding that the Game is being fully optimized in the 0.23 release as the quote from Harvester below indicates.

Yeah, hopefully they will make a big optimalisation so huge interplanetary ships won't be a problem anymore!

[Highlad]

Yeah, hopefully they will make a big optimalisation so huge interplanetary ships won't be a problem anymore!

The sarcasm... I can taste it... It tastes like... Chicken

[Ziv]

I have managed the Bop landing too. On the way back to orbit I noticed something strange in the dark...

Pictures: http://imgur.com/a/ZCaAu#96

[Highlad]

Ziv, I think I might nick your idea of launching up a heck of orange tanks... I have my own little twist though.

[Ziv]

Highlad: yeah, feel free to steal any idea from my design... (except the Laythe Lander: it's not capable of getting back to full orbit )

I'm curious what kind of twist do you mean!

By the way I just put together one+six orange tanks without any decoupling or struds because I wanted to lower the part number as much as possible. But this way when the refueling arrived to Jool three of the tanks were already empty. But the Mothership doesn't really move (only some hundred m/s for orbit-changings between the moons), and I think I can bring home the Living Section+Science Units on the Moon-orbit Module alone so I don't need to bring the orange tanks back. So they really act like a refueling station only.

[Ziv]

...and I have finished the last landing too! Now I only have to rearrange the ship, leave every unnecessary stuff behind and come home!

here are the pictures: http://imgur.com/a/ZCaAu#119

[ttnarg]

I did the same thing, 7 red tanks, but I added radial decouplers. Added 6 part count so I could ditch a 2 ton empty tanks seemed like a good trade to me. I finished this challange will post pics this lunch time (GMT).

[ttnarg]

This is my challange attemped. Single Launch. No need to send out any fuel trucks from kerbin.

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Ribbons for this mission:

If I where to do this again the things I would change are:

Use the Mk1 Lander Can instead of the Mk1 command pod so that I can use the normal size docking ported every instead of the small ones to cut down on wobble.

Ditch the RCS I no longer need it for docking.

Jeb is already planing his next trip. Might need 14 Kerbals next time.

[Ziv]

Wow, ttnarg, very impressive design! And your additional landings on Eeloo, Dres and Ike are just unbelievable! o.O

ttnarg, Congratulation, you have accomplished the JOOL-5 Grand Tour, with additional achievements, too!

Question: did you go into orbit around Eeloo, Dres, Ike, or just landed with the help of the Space Tug and catched up with the Mothership?

Hm, 14 Kerbals for the next mission? Let me count the bodies in the system... (make a challenge around it and invite me too! )

Edited November 19, 2013 by Ziv

[Ziv]

I have finished my JOOL-5 mission, too!

Experiences:

1, the Lander Body was weak at returning orbit from Laythe. Big issue, almost ruined the mission!

2, Landing on Tylo is hard, but a little ascent ship with a lot of deltaV (3100+) can make it back to orbit easily.

3, Moon-orbit Module for bringing the lander from the Mothersip to orbit-deorbit was a No1 idea and worked pretty well, even for pushing the Main Section back to Kerbin. With the large ASAS it is VERY agile and with two nuclear engines it is very fuel efficient! RCS was used only for docking 2x150 was too much to bring...

4, For the Main Engines I used 7 orange tanks but there was no chance to decouple (for making as little part count as possible) ... next time it would be better if the empty tanks can be dropped away...

5, this mission was a huge challenge and needs previous experiences!

...and I have gained 8684 science points for this mission!

pictures about getting home: http://imgur.com/a/ZCaAu#134

picture about my ship:

...

...

and all the pictures about this huge mission:

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Edited November 19, 2013 by Ziv

[ttnarg]

Question: did you go into orbit around Eeloo, Dres, Ike, or just landed with the help of the Space Tug and catched up with the Mothership?

Yes I took my mother ship to all those places and got into a high orbit and used the tug to get to a low orbit. Would of been better to do a fly by with the mother ship but didn't think of it. I didn't get into orbit with Ike but did with duna.

well done on doing it too. A larger lander would of made it a lot harder for you. So congratulations.

[Semmel]

Hi there, Semmel here!

I am doing a similar mission, with slightly different set of goals. Thanks to Ziv, I am aware of the challenge, so feel free to pop over and follow my progress. It will take some time to finish the mission though, I dont have time to play endless hours and I am far to inexperienced for this kind of mission. So perfect conditions for the Kerbal way of doing science! Ill post the results once, I finished (or failed) my mission.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55737-Vanilla-All-Moons-of-Jool-and-return

Also, I have no idea about the delta-V.. seeing ttnags landing on Tylo makes me think I might not be able to do it. Lets see if we need a rescue mission!

Try first and fail later .. also .. what could possibly go wrong!?

Cheers,

Semmel

[Highlad]

Got myself on a transfer to jool. I shall attempt a laythe landing later today