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

[Space Viking]

I see there's been stuff going here. That's cool. And holy crap Ziv, a suborbital catch of a lander while having an atmosphere dragging!

I've refined my mission and redesigned the landers to better match what they are going to face. The spacecraft is now in orbit and ready for interplanetary transfer. This time I'm also using the mod UbioZur Welding Ltd. in order to lower the part count. It's not yet optimized for career mode though, so there are some inconveniences one need to deal with.

Anyway, most of the relevant things is in the image descriptions:

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[Ziv]

Space Viking: wow, what a space train you built! Hopefully you will have enough torque or RCS fuel! So you built a different lander for all the moons? I'm curious how they will work!

Yeah, the suborbital catch at Laythe was pretty annoying (I almost gave up) but not because of the atmosphere drag (it was not really felt that high) but finding the right timing when the Lander/Orbiter gets very close to each other at the same height... when I managed to put them at ~ 1km distance the Moon-orbiter was quickly there (turns very quickly with the large ASAS) and I had some minutes to do the dockings. It was exciting anyway!

[ATuinhek]

I will definitely give this one a go! I'm running an unmanned version now in career mode, but thats with some mods.

[dawg]

I've been working on an entry for this. Initially, I thought I'd need a separate lander can for each moon and wasted days building a complex ship that allowed storing one eva/surface sample in each can that stayed on the mothership (so landers had command chairs on them). Surprisingly, I had a similar transfer tug ship, reconfiguration tug, and science pods that could be attached to their respective lander cans...

This is, by far, the biggest single mission I've ever done. Usually my missions are one-way trips to establish a foothold on another planet or moon. I have Kerbals on almost every planet/moon in a space RV, so they're never expected to come home (though I've swapped them out from the Mun, Minmus, and Duna before). I realized that this would be distinctly easier if I could ship lander parts to orbits around the moons... Since I have to send a refuel trip anyhow, I decided that such a huge vessel was simply too unweildy, so I'm sending two ships far enough apart that I can pilot each through their aerobraking. The lead ship has Jeb in the pilot seat of the lander, the transfer tug behind that, and the hitchhiker housing behind that with all the science pods.

For the crew, we have: Jeb, Bill, and Bob being joined by a couple rookies named Will and Neilnard. The last 4 rode up in a shuttle and transferred after Jeb finished assembling the ship, but before I decided to launch another set of engines and split the ship apart (that was a bigger project than it sounds, since I had to yank the landers out from between the transfer tug and the crew quarters, which left 4-5 sections floating separately at some points). I sent up a bigger reconfiguration tug with the second engine so I don't end up with such messy reconfigurations...

I bound keys for:

• Turning the transfer tug's engines off, the nuclear engines on, or all four on.
  
• Quickly releasing the reconfig tug and turning on the headlights on it.
  
• Extending all ladders.
  
• Sensor operation for the Jool aerobrake.
  

I wish I could reprogram command buttons while on a mission...

The staging is an awful mess that I'll sort out for each lander as I do their missions, since it seems to merge them randomly when you dock.

Total part count is around 550-600.

Hopefully I get to do at least part of this trip tonight, considering how much time and preparation it took (literally days of assembly).

The plan:

1. Transfer to Jool, with an aerobrake in Jool's atmosphere with each ship.
   
   1. 
      
   2. If possible, aerobrake in Laythe's atmosphere and aim for an orbit between Laythe and Vall with the mothership.
      
   3. The lander/refuel mothership should end up somewhere between Laythe and Tylo.
      
      
   4. Laythe
      
      1. Transfer to an orbit around Laythe with the initial lander configuration.
         
      2. Drop the lander, find a good landing spot (Laythe is almost all liquid with small islands), then land using the chutes as much as possible to conserve fuel.
         
      3. Collect samples, readings, and explore.
         
      4. Return to orbit near the transfer tug. Pick the lander back up with the transfer tug and return to the mothership.
         
      5. Connect to the main mothership.
         

[*] Rendezvous with the lander/fuel ship, transfer fuel into the engines on the main ship, along with the lander stages, then leave it here if it has enough fuel to be worth visiting again, otherwise send it sub-orbital on a moon or Jool.

[*] Vall

1. Connect up the Vall lander stage below the lander and attach both to the front of the transfer ship.
   
2. Remainder is basically the same as Laythe, except I could land anywhere. I'll probably aim for the anomaly as I've never been there before.
   

[*] Move the mothership to an orbit between Tylo and Bop, with a gravity assist off Tylo, releasing the transfer ship and lander within Tylo's SOI.

[*] Let the mothership go into a higher Jool orbit as we bring the lander stage into orbit around Tylo.

[*] Tylo (crossing our fingers that we have enough fuel in the lander to get to the surface and back into orbit; it's the one I fear the most)

[*] Depending on the dV remaining for the mothership, we might start moving it into orbit around the remaining moons. We'll see.

[*] Bop

[*] Pol

[*] Depending on remaining dV, consider some sightseeing on the return trip.

In the end it should be nothing but the lander, hitchhikers, transfer ship, and engines. We may dump the transfer before the return, but we'll see. MechJeb claims I have 10k dV on the mothership and 9k dV on the lander/refuel ship... I'm roughly estimating that I'll be half-way through the second set of fuel tanks by the time I reach Jool on both ships... Should be plenty for the whole mission, but I'll still need to be careful since some of that is actually fuel in the lander stages.

Here's the whole, final, ship before I split it apart:

Here's the Mothership (I call it the lead ship):

This is the refuel/lander stage ship:

Here goes nothing...

Edited November 25, 2013 by dawg

[dawg]

Jeb is done with Laythe and it was far easier than expected. Between using almost no fuel coming in (parachutes) and the aerospikes, it wasn't challenging at all. By the time I was in orbit I still had about half my dV left (due to dropping the tanks I didn't need anymore)... Aim for just above the atmosphere, which is about 55km high. I did 58km and had plenty remaining to get to the transfer tug.

After making it back to the fuel ship for fuel and to the mothership for a kerbal and science pack, I found that my lander booster for Vall has a broken docking port on the bottom (in the last picture it is the third large docking port from the left). I spent over an hour trying to get it to dock, but it never would in spite of having been docked through the ship split and the trip over. I might have to attach a rearrangement tug to the science pod on top and the other side to the rear of the tug to get the lander into orbit. Very frustrating. I might not need the booster, either, if Laythe is any indication. But I really don't want to risk losing anyone or the lander can.

Before I left Kerbin I swapped out my reconfiguration tugs for even beefier ones with lights pointing both ways. The lander/fuel/propellant ship went first and arrived a little over 2 months before the team. In that time it established a circular orbit around Jool between Vall and Tylo outside their SOIs.

I'm getting better at reducing my consumption of fuel, but I may still need to send another ship from Kerbin to provide fuel and monopropellant (tentatively plan to use one of my standard heavy asparagus rockets with the center configured for traveling to Jool since fuel isn't my problem). Retrospectively, attaching monopropellant tanks to the tops of fuel tanks I planned to jettison wasn't a good idea. After Tylo, I'll be able to live with just enough for swapping science pods, though, so if I hadn't wasted so much on that broken docking port I would have had plenty to spare...

For some reason Jool's atmosphere didn't register as an atmosphere for the nose cone. I did, however, get some other readings during the aerobrake. When I send a fuel ship I may also send more science pods.

The trip has been fun so far, but building the ship was a big project. I guess I got a lot of good reusable parts out of it...

[Space Viking]

This sure was quite a ride and I won't probably do something on this scale for a while again. Tylo was harassing me with its gravity, which made me remember the overview on the SOI of the Joolian moons Ziv made. I can warmly recommend it for anyone who's navigating inside of the Joolian system.

During the Mission one fuel line had gone missing on the VTOL because subassemblies tent to not handle fuel lines and struts so well, so I had to repair it through save editing. I hope it's fair enough.

I also noticed the value of that Moon-orbit Module you utilized, Ziv. It's possible to save so much fuel by just leaving the mothership parked in an orbit next to escape velocity while a lighter reusable tug takes the landing craft into a low orbit and then back.

Unfortunately, there is no fancy overview of my ship, but here's how my mission went:

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[ttnarg]

Nicely done. I liked the Laythe jet and getting all the pods back as well is a nice touch.

I had lots of parachute on my kerbin lander but in the end if I used more then one at the start it would rip apart my lander as they fully opened. so I had to split them up into there own stages like you did and trigger 1 till below 500m to the ground. It looks like you had to do the same.

[dawg]

Well, that was ugly. I finally got down to Tylo last night on the 50th or so try, thanks to Ziv's great advice and after realizing that MechJeb was lying to me on my dV (I ran clean out of dV and still had a bunch of fuel; the calculation is completely screwed up after all of the rearranging of my ships) and that the poodles were a really bad idea (too heavy and too much thrust vectoring, so it was hard to do fine control). It's an ugly place with no redeeming qualities, except that it's massive and can help you get out of Jool's SOI. The trick was to not use my lower two engine stages and to eject them as they ran out of fuel, eventually landing with about half of the third stage's fuel burned (of the four in the attachment to the lander). Leaving was surprisingly easy, and probably easier than Laythe...

Heading in to Jool with both ships:

The landers aerobraking in Jool's atmosphere:

The crew ship in orbit around Jool just after releasing Jeb for the trip to Laythe:

Approaching Laythe with the transfer tug and the lander:

Parachute landing on Laythe:

Jeb on the ground in front of the lander with a flag placed:

Laythe really is a lovely place:

Sadly, this landing spot wasn't the best. It was neither high enough for a great view nor low enough to get to the liquid, so it's just grabbing samples, doing science, making reports, and returning to orbit...

Returning to orbit:

Rendezvous with the transfer tug:

I didn't take any shots of the swapping of parts and crew in preparation for Vall, nor any step before being on the surface. Suffice to say, it went flawlessly.

For Vall, we have Neilnard commanding the lander and a small booster that we use to help with the landing since there's no atmosphere. This was, as I mentioned, when I had all the problems with the docking port. I did, in fact, tug it over behind the transfer tug, with the bottom of the lander attached to the rear of the transfer tug... The return was smoother as I left the broken part on Vall (which I later terminated from the space center).

On the surface after landing:

A curious formation (the anomaly on Vall):

Planting a flag:

Back at the lander. Using the jetpack here was a joy, the gravity was perfect to not go shooting off uncontrollably, not high enough to crater hard, and if you didn't give it a little upward power you'd slowly return to the surface...

Before returning to orbit, Neilnard moved all the fuel from the booster pack into the main lander's tank, released the docking port, and returned with just the universal lander body. No problems at all.

Preparing to dock with the transfer tug after returning to orbit:

Orbiting before the return to the mothership:

Tylo was a hell. True hell. Bill was the poor schmuck that Jeb talked into flying this one. It was easier landing on Mun manually than landing here with MechJeb's assistance. As a result, after so many shots at it, I wasn't taking any screenshots at all, so all I've got is this picture after Bill was down, took a sample, did a report, and had planted a flag... Also, I just noticed when I looked at the picture that the landing site was in one of those 1m high areas that covers large low-lying sections of the moon.

The ascent was painless...

While waiting in orbit, the mothership moved from the 50Mm orbit around Jool to an 80Mm orbit and met up with the refuel ship that was sent with more monopropellant and fuel.

Next up is Bob and Bop. Jeb thought it'd be funny.

Just after decoupling from the mothership:

Landed near this mysterious glowing artifact in a northern crater, with the lights on. This is the first time the higher landing gear was actually used. It was on there to protect the engines and helped level the lander when here. The reaction wheels were more than enough to keep it standing on two legs or flipping it back up on Bop...

Scenery:

Little do most of you know, but back on Kerbin Bob owns Famous Bob's Meat Shack. He really wished he had brought his butcher knife.

Bob, would you stop poking the eyeball?

Posing for one of those big game hunter type photographs:

The return was so effortless that Bob wasted fuel on the return to the mothership by using all the engines...

Mothership docked with the refuel ship that also brought out some more science equipment. With one, I got some readings of the area high above Jool.

The last moon, and the last kerbal that hasn't been to a moon, is Will. He's going to land on Pol...

So, this was actually a little hard in a completely different way from Tylo. You see, the lander had too much thrust. Even a tiny amounts were enough to cause wild launches. The lander fell over and ended up rolling around on the ground. Like Bop, you could flip it over using the reaction wheels, so I did just that to get it sitting upright.

Standing up...

Look at me! You call this gravity?

Will, you need help:

Returning to the mothership:

Here is a look at all the flags (Bill needs caps lock)...

Now to return, hopefully with all the science equipment and the lander in the same vehicle. There's probably enough fuel with the lighter vessel to make it to Dres, Duna, and Ike, but those might have to wait for after the space program is saved...

The ship now has dropped one of the part moving tugs and the refuel ship in preparation to use Tylo to get out of Jool's SOI.

[Ziv]

Space Viking: Congratulations, nice job!

Sure, the in-flight fuel line repair was executed by your Kerbals on an EVA, so that's not a problem. Nice assists at Duna, and I liked your lander solution for Laythe! And your Mk1 lander can with engines is also a pretty elegant solution. And it's good to see as somebody was going with different landers to different moons. Good job, you are in the Hall of Fame too!

[Ziv]

dawg: Congratulations to you too, nice job!

I like your landing gear solutions... That's fun to see how many solutions we found for landing there (and getting away). Yeah, I think leaving Laythe is harder than Tylo. On Tylo you can turn almost immediately after ascent and so you don't have to fight it's gravity for so much time, but in Laythe you have to go against gravity+atmosphere. Yeah, I landed "close" to the water but it was too far away for me too.

Yeah, I missed the Vall anomaly on my mission. (Maybe next time! )

Hm, which parts of your ship landed on Tylo? That's not really clear... did you stage anything for braking from orbit to landing and at return?

Yeah, I don't wonder it was too strong for Pol with TWR 38+...

Good job you too, you are in the Hall of Fame from now!

[Ziv]

When I started the mission I have decided to make a statistic about my fuel and Delta-V consumption, but I forgot them at some points and with undocumented refueling I've lost my track at fuel, but from the screenshots I was able to write down most of the Delta-Vs. They are not always the optimal ones but what I experienced in my mission... (from Kerbin orbit): around 25660 m/s.

by ship type:

RED: Mothership movements: 4500 m/s (for one launch but I used multiple launches) + 6030 m/s

BLUE: Moon-orbit Module + Lander together: 7330 m/s (max. 2140 m/s at Laythe)

GREEN: Lander: 12'300 m/s (max. 5500 m/s at Tylo)

in details:

1. Kerbin launch to 100km orbit: ~4500 m/s

2. Jool intercept + corrections to put Mothership into orbit between Laythe and Vall: 2530 m/s

3. from Mothership to Laythe intercept: 250 m/s

4. Laythe 60km orbit: 940 m/s

5. Laythe landing: 800 m/s (from orbit to a landing path, then parachutes + braking)

6. Laythe ascent back to 60km orbit: not sure (I think at least 3000 m/s)

7. Laythe orbit to Mothership: ~950 m/s

8. from Mothership to Vall intercept: 240 m/s

9. Vall 74 km orbit: ~500 m/s

10. Vall landing: 1100 m/s

11. Vall ascent back to 74 km orbit: 1100 m/s

12. Vall orbit to Mothership: ~400 m/s

13. Mothership to Tylo high eccentric orbit for easy escape: ~400 m/s

14. from Mothership (high ecc. orbit) to low Tylo orbit (45km): 750 m/s

15. Tylo landing: 3100+ m/s (maybe 3300 is closer to reality)

16. Tylo ascent back to 45 km orbit (turning immediately): 2400 m/s

17. Tylo orbit to high eccentric orbit (to Mothership): 800 m/s

18. Mothership moving out of Tylo to a little higher Jool orbit: 100 m/s

(the orbit around Tylo was highly eccentric so at the Apoapsis this was enough to leave Tylo orbit )

19. from Mothership to Bop intercept: 200 m/s

20. Bop 30 km orbit: 600 m/s

21. Bop landing: 300 m/s

22. Bop ascent back to 30 km orbit: 180 m/s

23. Bop orbit to Mothership: 1100 m/s (braking at high speed meeting)

24. Mothership - Pol intercept: 150 m/s

25. Pol 18 km orbit: 150 m/s

26. Pol landing: 180 m/s

27. Pol ascent back to km 18 orbit: 150 m/s

28. Pol orbit to Mothership: 300 m/s

29. Mothership (without the large tanks) from Jool to Kerbin with Laythe assist and with bad maneuvering at Kerbin: ~ 3000 m/s

I hope this will help when planning a huge mission like landing a Kerbal on all the moons of Jool and return in one mission!

Edited January 25, 2014 by Ziv

[Ziv]

Hi all,

I have designed a badge which can be added to your Profile Signature at the bottom if you want:

to do this: go to the Settings (upper right) then Edit Signature (left menu, under My Profile), and add this image: http://i.imgur.com/Z5hSyCv.png

Edited December 3, 2013 by Ziv

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Mother of God....and I can barely go to Duna and back...

...

...

*eyes get wider and redder*

SUICIDAL CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

EDIT: It's impossible to do this challenge because the dV decreases as your TWR gets higher, and vice versa. That, and it's impossible to calculate the required dV for the landers, etc.

Edited December 3, 2013 by Commissioner Tadpole

[Ziv]

EDIT: It's impossible to do this challenge because the dV decreases as your TWR gets higher, and vice versa. That, and it's impossible to calculate the required dV for the landers, etc.

Why should the dV decrease as your TWR gets higher? That just means that you get more thrust as your fuel takes less mass...

And we have already done this mission so this is definetely possible! And I have just finished it second time, this time with only one launch and no refueling during the mission... (I will post the pictures soon!)

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Why should the dV decrease as your TWR gets higher? That just means that you get more thrust as your fuel takes less mass...

And we have already done this mission so this is definetely possible! And I have just finished it second time, this time with only one launch and no refueling during the mission... (I will post the pictures soon!)

To get a higher Thrust, you need to either remove weight, which coincidentally usually removes fuel tanks, decreasing dV, or to add in a better engine, which eats through fuel more quickly, which decreases dV.

Also, I alterady began the challenge with the shorter end of the stick;

[Vaebn]

I will be doing this. I won't be doing the science bits, because I don't want to modify my ships too much and because I am a lazybutt. Instead, I claim points for simplicity and elegance :]

Specifically. Here's a SSTO, Nuclear Only, "Universal", lander:

This is pretty much 90% of the design. The Lander represents a very carefully sculpted ratio of delta-v / TWR, rated for a 75km -> Tylo surface -> 75km landing. On top of that:

It carries a SR.Docking port, "useless" (for Tylo) parachutes, and the extremely heavy MK-II landercan, down for a roundtrip inside Tylo's gravity well, and it does so on nothing but LV-N's!

The rest of 10% of the design is this configuration:

Rather than having some sort of mothership carrying a lander at it's tip, configuration, it is the lander instead that carries it's mothership.

Said "mothership", is essentially nothing but a big honking external fuel tank + hitchiker modules.

Which for some reason I refer to as, "saucer section".

This means, that the ship saves any delta-v related to carrying around "useless" lander chemical engines around and not using them for most of the trip.

The LV-N's are precisely the number needed for the lander to be able to do the Tylo thing, and when in space are a very reasonable propulsive section for the entire ship.

(I did allow 2x rockomax 24-77 engines in the external tank for emergency purposes. Those are all the chemical engines the ship has)

The result of all that is that said ship is not only able to go to any planet in the system, but it does so in a fully resuable, round-trip way. The starting and end point being a Kerbin 120km orbit.

Aka a true, "ship style" style, atomic engine powered, spaceship!

And here's the Jool-5 version:

Now, I admit that 9 orange tanks worth of fuel is nothing to sniff at. Therefore, in order to make up for that i claim:

- That not only I will do the Jool-5 challenge, landing the same lander on all 5 moons, succesfully cross-contaminating the place with all of Laythe's bacterial life.

- Not only I will be bringing and setting the entire mothership in orbit around every moon, so the Kerbals can admire the view of each one from their personal Hitchiker modules (one per Kerbal of cource)

- But I will do the entire thing as a round trip, meaning that the entire ship will depart Kerbin 120km orbit, and return to it, having done no staging or lost any parts, other than fuel! >:]

Edited December 4, 2013 by Vaebn

[Vaebn]

For now, heres how that external tank gets to orbit

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Edited December 4, 2013 by Vaebn

[dawg]

dawg: Congratulations to you too, nice job!

Thank you, sir. :-)

I like your landing gear solutions...

Heh, retrospectively, it was a bit of a waste of weight. It was specifically designed to help the lander survive crappy landings by protecting the built-in engines and allowing it to land if I broke a leg or four off. The funniest part (which I haven't posted pictures for) is that the landing on Kerbin was also pretty ugly. The lander made a free fall from quite a height and everything except the can itself and a few structural pieces were destroyed. Priceless.

That's fun to see how many solutions we found for landing there (and getting away). Yeah, I think leaving Laythe is harder than Tylo. On Tylo you can turn almost immediately after ascent and so you don't have to fight it's gravity for so much time, but in Laythe you have to go against gravity+atmosphere. Yeah, I landed "close" to the water but it was too far away for me too.

The bonus to Laythe for me was that I went there first, so I could bring a lot of fuel and parachutes for it. The atmosphere isn't as dense as that of Kerbin and it's not as tall, either, so you only need to get above 56km to get out of it. In that picture where I had just dropped my fuel tanks I was doing a circularizing burn.

Yeah, I missed the Vall anomaly on my mission. (Maybe next time! )

I'm fond of Vall. It's worth a visit. ;-)

Hm, which parts of your ship landed on Tylo? That's not really clear... did you stage anything for braking from orbit to landing and at return?

The booster section was 4 stages. Stage 1 had an extra-large tank and 4 aerospikes, 2 had 4 poodles (terrible choice on my part), 3 had 4 aerospikes, and 4 had 4 48-7Ss. I had to start from a relatively high orbit, then burned retro (slowly; if I were to do it again I wouldn't use those awful poodles which are way too heavy) slightly above the horizon (as you described) until I was low and slow enough to land, by which point I had dropped stages 1 and 2 (the heavy one), and I landed with stage 3 nearly empty. Lifted off with 3, dropped it after it ran out, then returned to orbit with a pack almost exactly like yours, which I dropped before I made it back to the tug. I had some concerns that I wouldn't get off Tylo with what I had left, but the lack of atmosphere really helped.

Yeah, I don't wonder it was too strong for Pol with TWR 38+...

I think you could enter Pol orbit in my lander with RCS alone.

Good job you too, you are in the Hall of Fame from now!

Thanks. :-)

Also, for the record, I used the nuclear engines on the tug when the entire ship was under way.

Thank you for the awesome badge for my signature, too! I'll wear it with pride.

Edited December 4, 2013 by dawg

[Ziv]

Vaebn: I like your idea to use Nuclear Engines, I was doing so too but later changed my mind. I also like a lot of stuff like using the lander engines only, or you won't stage or leave anything behind (except fuel;)), etc.

But I want to argue some about the weight stuff: to land such a superheavy lander on Laythe and Tylo will use much more fuel mass than some "used only once" lander engines or other parts. I guess.

And will you leave your fuel tanks in orbit around Jool or go into orbit? Because huge mass to orbit -> huge fuel consumption.

But I think you will have to put it into orbit around Tylo at least because if you have 6587 m/s in your lander then it's just enough for the landing and getting back to orbit. I feel like the 0.82 TWR is low for Tylo, okay, you will use up about 60-70% of the fuel for landing so it will be more light and the TWR will be higher... but if you ascent with a high TWR then you will need around 2400 m/s to 45km orbit. But if you have low TWR, just above 1, then it can be 4000+ m/s too...

so I hope you will get 3.0+ and then you will be good for back to orbit!

I'm curious how it will go! Good luck and keep us updated!

[Ziv]

dawg: after this long mission, arriving back to Kerbin in a big explosion without damaging the can is the real Kerbal way!

[dawg]

My total science at the end was 9609.1...

Sadly, it was dark. In the foreground you see the remains of the lander and in the background the hitchhikers and the science modules. Jeb is such a lunatic.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

I'm still in the drawing board, unable to make the main rocket exceed 9800dV to go to Jool and back.

Seriously, seeing you all getting there and doing it makes me feel bad.

[Mesklin]

I also decided to make this challenge and designed reconfigurable universal lander for landing on all Joolian satellites with two crewman on board and totally 10 kerbonauts will go to the Jool and back (I hope )

I am planning to scan each moon with special satellites for anomalies (with new mod SCANsat) and only after finish scanning process visit to founded anomalies.

Here details about expedition ship "Odyssey"

At this time I assembled ship on low Kerbin orbit and very soon 10 brave kerbonauts will go in a big and long journey.

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[Ziv]

I'm still in the drawing board, unable to make the main rocket exceed 9800dV to go to Jool and back.

Seriously, seeing you all getting there and doing it makes me feel bad.

Don't worry, I was playing KSP for months before this challenge. I think everybody needs to have some experience to do this huge mission. And I was planning this mission and my ship for about a week with a lot of testing around Kerbin, and one Proof-of-concept mission to Minmus and Mun. I enjoyed this too. You have to think in advance to prepare for everything!

For the dV, remember that as you drop the Laythe/Tylo helping stages your ship will become more easy with more dV for the same fuel amount/engine layout. And you can send a refuel mission too. And try to go small: small lander, one Kerbal, no science. It will be a very serious mission that way too. And you might want to use the NovaPunch mod for bigger and more stable launch rockets.

Laythe return and Tylo landing/ascent are the key parts of the mission. Other thing that you don't have to launch the mission in one! I used 3-4 launches and put the ship together in Kerbin orbit. And let me help you with my check-list: before final launch I checked all the modules on the ship by this list:

- Control (cans and command seats can control only with a Kerbal)

- Fuel

- Engine

- Fuel ducts, proper fuel routes

- Enough S.A.S./Torque

- RCS (only for parts that will move while docking, otherwise I don't like to use RCS because it is usually unnecessary if you have enough S.A.S./Torque and gives much to the weight/parts number)

- Electricity (generators are for sure without light too and good for lowwer part number. Be careful with Solar panels, without electricity they cannot be opened)

- additional parts for Mods: MechJeb, Protractor, MapSat or anything else what needs to be on your ship

- Docking ports (they can be put on the ship backway too and this way you will not be able to use it in space so check all of them twice before launch!)

- Ladder on the lander (very important to test at Kerbin because at Laythe and Tylo you cannot use your jetpack and if you cannot go back into your ship then the mission is over!)

- Landing gears (strong enough?)

- Crew check before launch (the Hitchiker's Storage stays empty if you don't fill them before launch!)

Optional stuff:

- Lights (optional, I usually skipped it for saving part numbers)

- Science modules

- Communications stuff if you want to send science

- Living Quarter, Hitchhiker's Storage

Edited January 16, 2014 by Ziv

[Ziv]

Mesklin: Nice stuff, looking good! But what will push your ship to Jool? The lander's two nuclear engines? If so, it will take a while... and you will need to do 2-3 orbits between the initial burn. And I guess you will need refueling missions too.

And I'm worried about your lander's capability for landing/ascent at Tylo. Will you use some additonal fuel pack for the deorbit burn? (it can be about ~800 m/s) And for a good ascent you should have at least 2.0 TWR...! But the smaller the lander's TWR the slower the ascent from Tylo's surface and so much more fuel/dV is burnt, so that way it's not 2400 m/s but can be 4000 m/s too!