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

[Laie]

I've got most of my gear sorted out by now.

The flyer comes at ~15t, including the fuel for all Laythe ops. Breathable atmosphere good!

The rover is a minor revision of a design that already served me well on Mun, Minmus & Duna. Getting it to Tylo won't be simple, but I rather like the vessel and don't want to deploy a dedicated Tylo lander.

Originally I posted some delta-V question -- that has been sorted out by now, I messed up my calculations.

Remains one other question: how strict are you about part clipping? If you look at that lander, you may see a girder coming out of the engine -- pretty much unavoidable if one wants to mount things at anything but a 90° angle. There's more of that sort all over the mission, but nothing worse. Acceptable?

Edited July 14, 2014 by Laie

[parzr]

That suckers nuts. I love it!

[Superfluous J]

Yikes. I disqualified myself because I sent up replacement ships with my first refueller to be more fuel efficient, and now I need a second refueller because I'm STILL too low to get to Pol (my last moon) and get home. Or do either by themselves.

[Ziv]

Jool 5 Level 2 Complete! (Mods are Mechjeb, FAR, and Stock Rebalance v2, restrictions are Single Launch, Single Lander, no Jets, no Ions, no parachutes, only Jeb can use Mechjeb, all moons and back.

http://imgur.com/a/A6SHX

http://imgur.com/a/s9Woz

http://imgur.com/a/PGJId

http://imgur.com/a/aZzdG

If I was to do this again, I think the biggest thing would be Action Groups. I was toggling engines and solar panels everywhere, and being able to do them all at once would have lowered my personal anxiety level.

Also, might as well have used Stock Rebalance v3- compared to V2, it nerfs reaction wheels but buffs RCS- I had plenty of RCS fuel and being able to use it for propulsion would have stretched my Dv a little furthur.

I enjoyed the challange and probably wont be touching KSP till .24 now.

Rakaydos: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Level 2!

HAHA, I really liked as you refueled after the Vall-Bop-Pol leg using the claw! And yeah, that was close... And wow, that's a huge ship again... these new parts made it very easy to build a heavy lifter rocket. Your lander is massive too, when I was watching the pictures I was thinking about that you should have used some nukes on it too beside the normal engines, so it would have been more fuel efficient in space. And you could change the engines with Action Groups. Yeah, I know you said it would be the biggest thing for the next mission...

Thank you for your participating! And have a nice time without KSP, I'm sure you will be back someday...

[Ziv]

Hats off to Ziv, for the challenge and for keeping it going. Many lessons learned that never would have been attempted

Asparagus staging and multiple periapsis burning is INCREDIBLY fuel efficient.

Don’t rush and think the whole thing through. By way of example my first and 4th substantive attempts had no panels on my fuel tug making docking after landing imposable and resulting in the disgusting need to scrub of the mission.

Also, as fun as it was it is a good lesson in the real world value of planing and engineering. it being truly cheeper to plan it ahead than to just try to get through on butte force. Checklists are vital IRL.

I took many user inputted Quicksaves so could backtrack if needed but my final attempt only required a few “simulations†due to mis-staging or lack of full preparation and being too lazy to re-dock. I also reverted to get a photo of Pol having forgotten to do so while there

My Kerbals, having never been outside the Kerbin SOI aren’t great with orbital mechanics or calculating Delta V. What to do, over build and hope.

- Which game versions did you use? .23.5

- What mods did you use, if any? MechJeb and TAC fuel.

- How many launches was needed to start your mission from Kerbal? Final was done with one VERY large launch, Over 9k Ton and 1400+ parts.  (Seven total attempts to get the kinks out, one of witch had a Docking/refueling before leaving Kerbin only to find it wouldn’t survive aero breaking at Laythe.)

- How many refueling did you do during the mission, how much and where? Only used what left with me from the launch pad. liberally.

- Did you bring a Living Quarter (Hitch-hiker's Storage) for the guys during the long journey? Yup

- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc? No.

- Share the delta-V informations too, if you tracked it! I’m not good enough to keep that, though this journey brought home its value to me.

http://i.imgur.com/vusMApJ.png Oh yes, its BIG!

http://i.imgur.com/A64qLsW.pngabout one Frame Per Second and 1 Kerbin second for every 10 of mine.

http://i.imgur.com/CTtatgp.pngcircularizing was a cut of main engines and a lot of patience to conserve fuel using the LVNs that won't hit the lower stage tanks.

http://i.imgur.com/LR5g7G3.pngperiapsis burning x4, this was a power issue but ended up saving over 100 ms if my envelope math is right. with a craft of this size that's MAJOR.

http://i.imgur.com/i5K3XCL.pngFinal burn to leave Kerbin SOI. dropped enough launch engines to use all 36 LVNs for a whole .15 T:W.

http://i.imgur.com/zA0J12v.pngLaythe aero breaking. I didn't screen shot my burring ship, though the G- forces didn't redline. Jeb smiled the whole way of course.

http://i.imgur.com/wbE8exR.pngReady to land at Laythe, both orange tanks are jettisoned on the way down.

http://i.imgur.com/7vXgPhV.pngLanded at Laythe. All fuel from final stage gets transferred down before launch.

http://i.imgur.com/tAlT4nl.pngJeb gets dibs on first landing.

http://i.imgur.com/nWWXX3Q.pngI got 3 surface samples from each moon but refused to run to the water 3x. 1 was enough.

http://i.imgur.com/kNs6YGD.pngbefore curculaizing, made it back to the fuel barge easily.

http://i.imgur.com/eFUABsq.pngFuel barge ready to head to Tylo feeling good now.

http://i.imgur.com/lzXCSWT.pngready for Tylo,

http://i.imgur.com/kDE505n.pngJust a tad worried, I see why Ziv is playing with Tylo just for the challenge.

http://i.imgur.com/IpS7tSc.pngfeeling good now. After Orbit, this is easy sauce.

http://i.imgur.com/B6mds2I.pngWOW that was close. the craft is so light and nimble now.

http://i.imgur.com/GvQ7Kjv.pngLOL, plenty for the rest of the trip.

http://i.imgur.com/yHfLH8d.pngVall took more fuel than expected, never having landed on it before; but after Tylo, big deal.

http://i.imgur.com/F8B85bG.pngPol took Far more fuel to fly to and get stable around than expected. By this stage in the trip I'm down to 300 and conserving RCS for docking but the craft even with my 1 fuel tank is nimble enough.

http://i.imgur.com/zfwHIJu.pngPol is so cute.

http://i.imgur.com/a5CN5Lf.pngBop. Lets go home.

http://i.imgur.com/R91Wg99.pngReturning with far less fuel than expected.

http://i.imgur.com/3aIsa8w.pngBeyond happy to be home with no worries. had to jettison the tank.

http://i.imgur.com/qNE0uer.pngHome with our trophy (many science)

http://i.imgur.com/c9kGX5t.pngmore than 20k ... WOW!

Hi, I suggest you to link only the imgur album here. It's like [ imgur]ABCDE#0[ /imgur] where ABCDE#0 is the imgur URL part of your album. So if I would like to link this album: http://imgur.com/a/1EWoP#0 then it would be 1EWoP#0. That way you can upload much more pictures and you will not flood the challenge. I also ask you to upload some more pics because some of your mission is not clear for me from these pictures. Otherwise looks good and HUGE, I'm looking forward to see your mission in more details in an album!

[parzr]

Thanks Ziv. sorry, Ill try to figure that out. Ill dump most of whats up here now and the rest once I do link to the album.

[Rakaydos]

Rakaydos: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Level 2!

HAHA, I really liked as you refueled after the Vall-Bop-Pol leg using the claw! And yeah, that was close... And wow, that's a huge ship again... these new parts made it very easy to build a heavy lifter rocket. Your lander is massive too, when I was watching the pictures I was thinking about that you should have used some nukes on it too beside the normal engines, so it would have been more fuel efficient in space. And you could change the engines with Action Groups. Yeah, I know you said it would be the biggest thing for the next mission...

Thank you for your participating! And have a nice time without KSP, I'm sure you will be back someday...

The problem with putting nukes on the lander is that it was designed as a single stage Tylo lander. After I proved it could get back into tylo orbit and refueled, however, I looked at what else I could do with 6km of D/v. adding nukes would have given it even more space D/v, and made it harder to land and return from Tylo and laythe.

With the stock rebalance mod, the new parts are heavier and not as efficent as they are in stock... but they get even more thrust to make up for it. And the Mk 55 I used on the lander got buffed, while the rocomax 48 got nerfed. It also adds fuel to nose cones, making aerodynamic parts useful beyond FAR.

(also, as for the "mixed engines", the KL2 never got used at all- I probably should turn it into an extra fuel tank, butI had stares in my eyes about the possibility of aa powered landing on kerbin with the hitchhiker capsule. That didnt pan out.)

Edited July 15, 2014 by Rakaydos

[parzr]

very Cool video Sheiss. hope ur mission goes well and there's more to see

[Ziv]

Thanks Ziv. sorry, Ill try to figure that out. Ill dump most of whats up here now and the rest once I do link to the album.

np. I saw you linked an album there, does it have all the pictures of the mission, so can I check it?

[Ziv]

The problem with putting nukes on the lander is that it was designed as a single stage Tylo lander. After I proved it could get back into tylo orbit and refueled, however, I looked at what else I could do with 6km of D/v. adding nukes would have given it even more space D/v, and made it harder to land and return from Tylo and laythe.

With the stock rebalance mod, the new parts are heavier and not as efficent as they are in stock... but they get even more thrust to make up for it. And the Mk 55 I used on the lander got buffed, while the rocomax 48 got nerfed. It also adds fuel to nose cones, making aerodynamic parts useful beyond FAR.

(also, as for the "mixed engines", the KL2 never got used at all- I probably should turn it into an extra fuel tank, butI had stares in my eyes about the possibility of aa powered landing on kerbin with the hitchhiker capsule. That didnt pan out.)

Yeah, clear thing. By the way you should have asked me about the stock rebalance mod because it changes the stock parts and sometimes I have to disqualify some entries because of not permitted mods used. But this time I find this one balanced so it was okay.

[parzr]

Yeah, that's all I took during the mission that I know came from that mission. After 7 attempts, I've a lot of extra screen shots.

I took a large number of user inputed quicksaves though so could revert for some deliberate retrieval of data. The closest thing to a flight recorder I've got

I'm also on a Mac who's screen capture command involves using shift so there are times I have to chose do I engage autopilot, warp or just allow my craft to throttle up while I screen shot. Aerobreaking laythe is one of those. I wanted a shot of my burning ship but because it was forced physics warp I would have had to throttle up or have autopilot try to spin me for the next node.

Edited July 15, 2014 by parzr

[Ziv]

Hats off to Ziv, for the challenge and for keeping it going. Many lessons learned that never would have been attempted

Asparagus staging and multiple periapsis burning is INCREDIBLY fuel efficient.

Don’t rush and think the whole thing through. By way of example my first and 4th substantive attempts had no panels on my fuel tug making docking after landing imposable and resulting in the disgusting need to scrub of the mission.

Also, as fun as it was it is a good lesson in the real world value of planing and engineering. it being truly cheeper to plan it ahead than to just try to get through on butte force. Checklists are vital IRL.

I took many user inputted Quicksaves so could backtrack if needed but my final attempt only required a few “simulations†due to mis-staging or lack of full preparation and being too lazy to re-dock. I also reverted to get a photo of Pol having forgotten to do so while there

My Kerbals, having never been outside the Kerbin SOI aren’t great with orbital mechanics or calculating Delta V. What to do, over build and hope.

- Which game versions did you use? .23.5

- What mods did you use, if any? MechJeb and TAC fuel.

- How many launches was needed to start your mission from Kerbal? Final was done with one VERY large launch, Over 9k Ton and 1400+ parts.  (Seven total attempts to get the kinks out, one of witch had a Docking/refueling before leaving Kerbin only to find it wouldn’t survive aero breaking at Laythe.)

- How many refueling did you do during the mission, how much and where? Only used what left with me from the launch pad. liberally.

- Did you bring a Living Quarter (Hitch-hiker's Storage) for the guys during the long journey? Yup

- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc? No.

- Share the delta-V informations too, if you tracked it! I’m not good enough to keep that, though this journey brought home its value to me.

Oh yes, its BIG! http://imgur.com/a/DVwPV#2

parzr: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Jebediah's Level, with distinction because of landing 6 Kerbals on all the moons!

I really liked your solution to land the Hitch-Hiker's Unit and the Science Lab with 6 Kerbals everywhere. At first, on the launch pad, this mission looked like a nowadays popular "go big and something will happen anyway"-style one but I quickly realized that this is different. I was surprised to see SRBs on the lander but that was a unique idea to lift your very heavy lander from Laythe, and later on Tylo you dropped the heavy fuel tanks/engines too and went on Vall and the little ones with a more proper sized lander to the size of the HH Unit + the Lab. I liked this idea!

Only thing what was confusing me is the engines left in space between Laythe and Tylo, it was not clear at first what you dropped and what you used to push the lander forward... once you have only two orange tanks and later more then two... but I realized that you used one of the tanks as an "orbital tug" and then dropped.

Landing back at the launch pad is also a nice achievement.

That was a really good job and a well-planned mission, thank you for participating!

Edited July 15, 2014 by Ziv

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

parzr: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Jebediah's Level, with distinction because of landing 6 Kerbals on all the moons!

I really liked your solution to land the Hitch-Hiker's Unit and the Science Lab with 6 Kerbals everywhere. At first, on the launch pad, this mission looked like a nowadays popular "go big and something will happen anyway"-style one but I quickly realized that this is different. I was surprised to see SRBs on the lander but that was a unique idea to lift your very heavy lander from Laythe, and later on Tylo you dropped the heavy fuel tanks/engines too and went on Vall and the little ones with a more proper sized lander to the size of the HH Unit + the Lab. I liked this idea!

Only thing what was confusing me is the engines left in space between Laythe and Tylo, it was not clear at first what you dropped and what you used to push the lander forward... once you have only two orange tanks and later more then two... but I realized that you used one of the tanks as an "orbital tug" and then dropped.

Landing back at the launch pad is also a nice achievement.

That was a really good job and a well-planned mission, thank you for participating!

Sorry, just me nitpicking a little, but doesn't the Jebediah level require 5 different landers?

From the rules on page 1:

JEBEDIAH'S LEVEL: (be careful, works with Career Mode only!)

To make this mission the most useful the Kerbals want to collect as much science as possible. There are two ways for this:

- version 1: bringing five Science Package for each moon and bring them back to Kerbin surface. They must contain at least one Mistery Goo, SC-9001 material lab, Double-C seismic accelerometer, GRAVMAX, 2HOT Thermometer... and PresMat Barometer and the Sensor Array Nose Cone for Laythe.

- version 2: The same Science Package is required (with the PresMat + SensorArray for Laythe too), but they can be reused and a Mobile Lab will be used for collecting and processing the results. The Mobile Lab should contain all the science made and has to be brought back to Kerbin's surface.

- Only those Science points counts which are from the Jool System. You con go to other worlds too but those will be divided.

- Only those Science Points count which are from landed back at Kerbin. No transmitting!

- There's not enough time left for training one crew for all the moon landings, so (at least) five Kerbonauts are needed for the mission and each are trained to land on one moon. There can be more Kerbals as passengers, of course.

- All Kerbals have to come back to Kerbin alive and happy.

(bold and highlighting by me)

Ziv has final say, of course, but I don't feel this meets the highlighted rule, as a single lander was used repeatedly, and unless there is proof that he switched pilots for each landing it should be classed at another level...

Sorry, I always feel bad when bringing things like this up, especially as a lot of work went into it and it is an awe-inspiring achievement!

[Ziv]

Sorry, just me nitpicking a little, but doesn't the Jebediah level require 5 different landers?

From the rules on page 1:

- There's not enough time left for training one crew for all the moon landings, so (at least) five Kerbonauts are needed for the mission and each are trained to land on one moon. There can be more Kerbals as passengers, of course.

(bold and highlighting by me)

Ziv has final say, of course, but I don't feel this meets the highlighted rule, as a single lander was used repeatedly, and unless there is proof that he switched pilots for each landing it should be classed at another level...

Sorry, I always feel bad when bringing things like this up, especially as a lot of work went into it and it is an awe-inspiring achievement!

Hm, it looks like this rule needs some more defining. I meant that at least 5 Kerbals has to go on the mission and each of them are trained for landing and doing science on his specified moon. But they can use the same lander, even the same science package if they have a Mobile Lab which will be landed back at Kerbin.

So, I'm going to rewrite the rule like this:

- There's not enough time left for training one Kerbal for all the moon landings, so (at least) five Kerbonauts are needed for the mission because each of them are trained for piloting and doing science on his specified moon. They can use the same lander at every moon. There can be more Kerbals during the landing as passengers, of course.

Is it more clear like this?

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Hm, it looks like this rule needs some more defining. I meant that at least 5 Kerbals has to go on the mission and each of them are trained for landing and doing science on his specified moon. But they can use the same lander, even the same science package if they have a Mobile Lab which will be landed back at Kerbin.

So, I'm going to rewrite the rule like this:

- There's not enough time left for training one Kerbal for all the moon landings, so (at least) five Kerbonauts are needed for the mission because each of them are trained for piloting and doing science on his specified moon. They can use the same lander at every moon. There can be more Kerbals during the landing as passengers, of course.

Is it more clear like this?

It is, thank you for clarifying

[parzr]

parzr: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Jebediah's Level, with distinction because of landing 6 Kerbals on all the moons!

I really liked your solution to land the Hitch-Hiker's Unit and the Science Lab with 6 Kerbals everywhere. At first, on the launch pad, this mission looked like a nowadays popular "go big and something will happen anyway"-style one but I quickly realized that this is different. I was surprised to see SRBs on the lander but that was a unique idea to lift your very heavy lander from Laythe, and later on Tylo you dropped the heavy fuel tanks/engines too and went on Vall and the little ones with a more proper sized lander to the size of the HH Unit + the Lab. I liked this idea!

Only thing what was confusing me is the engines left in space between Laythe and Tylo, it was not clear at first what you dropped and what you used to push the lander forward... once you have only two orange tanks and later more then two... but I realized that you used one of the tanks as an "orbital tug" and then dropped.

Landing back at the launch pad is also a nice achievement.

That was a really good job and a well-planned mission, thank you for participating!

Thanks Ziv. For the challenge and the encouragement. It was fun and your upkeep of it keeps us trying.

Yeah, I think I left for Tylo full of fuel with at least 5 tanks, 4 of witch had 4 LVNS each.

Thanks for adjusting the verbiage of the rules too. I was ready to cry out that my kerbals switched seats to pilot their moon, I just "forgot" to capture it on film.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Thanks Ziv. For the challenge and the encouragement. It was fun and your upkeep of it keeps us trying.

Yeah, I think I left for Tylo full of fuel with at least 5 tanks, 4 of witch had 4 LVNS each.

Thanks for adjusting the verbiage of the rules too. I was ready to cry out that my kerbals switched seats to pilot their moon, I just "forgot" to capture it on film.

Like I said, I feel bad for bringing it up, I'm glad Ziv was about to clarify the rules before you took it the wrong way, all I was after was a clarification rather than try to rob you of the achievement you worked so hard for

Thank you for being such a great challenge Admin, Ziv

[parzr]

For a quick imaginary example, think about only the lander: it weights X tons and needs 0.7 X tons of refueling for each moon, so X + 5*0.7X = 4.5 X tons will be needed carrying to Jool. To bring X tons to Jool needs 5X tons of fuel. To bring X tons from launch pad to Kerbin orbit needs 9 X tons of fuel. So, it's like this:

Total Weight = 9 * (5 * 4.5 X) = 202,5 X

So if the lander (X) is 10 tons then the ship on the launch pad would be 2025 tons. But if the lander is 30 tons then the ship would be 6075 tons...

Just looking through the rest of the thread and found this. Ur math is predictive of my craft on its enormous scale, cool

Edited July 16, 2014 by parzr
to test my badge :)

[parzr]

perhaps my signature was not properly installed. nvm

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

I'm so close to completion I can taste it... Last rendezvous at Tylo to pick up the Pol Lander, and all my boys should be heading home to cash in on all the SCIENCE!

EDIT: I am using my backed-up .23.5 save to complete the mission, to avoid the problems I have heard about .24 merged saves! Well, not going to be jumping through hoops just to launch anything else that may be needed for the safe return of my gallant crew!

Then I'm going to build up a new Career mode and do it all again... maybe setting up to complete my new challenge and hopefully inspire more people to try it! heh...

Edited July 19, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e

[Superfluous J]

I think my entry doesn't count because on my first refueling mission I sent a new mothership return vessel and a new tug/orbiter.

But I did land one Kerbal on each moon and even got Jool atmo science. And it was 16 videos and it was a lot of work

[parzr]

I'm so close to completion I can taste it... Last rendezvous at Tylo to pick up the Pol Lander, and all my boys should be heading home to cash in on all the SCIENCE!

EDIT: I am using my backed-up .23.5 save to complete the mission, to avoid the problems I have heard about .24 merged saves! Well, not going to be jumping through hoops just to launch anything else that may be needed for the safe return of my gallant crew!

Then I'm going to build up a new Career mode and do it all again... maybe setting up to complete my new challenge and hopefully inspire more people to try it! heh...

No link to ur spoilers?

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

No link to ur spoilers?

Just updated my mission report, link in my signature

[bobcook]

I've been playing 0.24 now and really like the new career mode with contracts and funds. Nice addition to the game. This made me start to think about doing another Jool-5 challenge in my new career. There is a lot of incentive for both the Jedediah level and the Kethane variant to use career mode with science, but this mission is going to cost a lot of funds to launch. In the spirit of the new contracts system, treating this challenge as a contract, how much of an advance of funds do you guys (especially Ziv, its his challenge after all) think is fair?

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

I've been playing 0.24 now and really like the new career mode with contracts and funds. Nice addition to the game. This made me start to think about doing another Jool-5 challenge in my new career. There is a lot of incentive for both the Jedediah level and the Kethane variant to use career mode with science, but this mission is going to cost a lot of funds to launch. In the spirit of the new contracts system, treating this challenge as a contract, how much of an advance of funds do you guys (especially Ziv, its his challenge after all) think is fair?

It's entirely up to Ziv, of course, but to make it fair this would have to turn into a download challenge... which I think should be avoided, as it adds an extra (complication) step... or we have to use the Dev console to cheat the funds... either way could be open to abuse!

I think maybe let any stragglers finish, then re-start the challenge, with the added dimention for some sort of contract or funds allowance... not sure how to implement this myself, so I'm gonna wait to see what Ziv comes up with! (Also adds the chance for a hard-mode with no refuelling and other limitations, though... maybe a complete overhaul of the challenge level system?)

EDIT: And now I've found out how to make my current 23.5 save into a .24 science-only save (from here) I might continue it on there instead of from my backed-up 23.5...

Edited July 19, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e