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

[EdFred]

I am currently in the middle of this on Level 3 - but I'm doing it in a single launch. No docking in Kerbal Orbit. I was going to do it at Jeb's level version one, but the ship got too unwieldly. The craft file (along with the persistent and two quick saves mid mission) is here.

I launched from Kerbin, and after making a plane change to intercept the Jool system, I set up a Laythe encounter with the entire ship. Then transferred crew to the Laythe Lander, and detached it.

The remaining ship and landers then set up for a Jool aerobrake/Tylo intercept.

After the aerobrake the other 4 (yes, I had an extra lander/command sub-ship) command ship and landers detached and set up encounters for Vall, Pol, and Bop.

The main ship encountered Tylo, and the Tylo Lander was sent to the surface.

I've already landed on and ascended from Laythe and Tylo, and am currently waiting to intercept Vall, Bop, and Pol.

Edited October 13, 2014 by EdFred

[Ziv]

Hi all

This is my first challenge. I wanted to explore the Jool system more, and I figured this would be a good way to do it. It was very much 'seat of the pants' without any real testing before I set out.

So, here is my entry. I went with 'form over function' with the design and I wasn't concerned with efficiency as I had plenty of delta-v to spare. I also took the opportunity to land at Duna and Mun on the way home - both unplanned - but the aerobraking nodes I used made it too tempting not to try.

- Which game versions did you use? 24.2 64 bit

- What mods did you use, if any? KW and B9 (I think I only used a decoupler from KW, everything else was stock) and Mechjeb installed for information. Some other mods were already installed but not used (IR, TAC Fuel Balancer etc.)

- How many launches were needed to start your mission from Kerbal? One

- How many refueling did you do during the mission, how much and where? All fuel taken with the craft. Lander and transfer stage docked and transferred fuel three times (over Tylo before and after landing, and again after Pol landing).

- Did you bring a Living Quarter (Hitch-hiker's Storage) for the guys during the long journey? No. Jeb did it tough alone in his little tin can Mk1.

- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc? Two rovers to scout for a good landing spot. I only used one at Laythe

- Share the delta-V information too, if you tracked it! Lander had approx. 6100 delta-v and was re-fuelled three times. Not sure how much delta-v the transfer stage used.

Please note a couple of things:

1. I may have bent the rules slightly with the intakes. They slightly overlap (clip) with each other. There are two intakes each on 6 cubic struts: one intake fixed to the top node, and one intake rotated 180 degrees and fixed to the bottom node. As I said, I went with form over function and so bent the rules a touch here because they looked really good mounted that way.
   
2. The delta-v stats showing in Mechjeb at the start of the trip are not accurate because I had the engines on the lander pointing retrograde and Mechjeb counts those as pushing against the craft. Therefor the actual potential delta-v was much higher.
   
3. I had a game crash as I landed at Laythe and had to reload
   
4. And yes, I know how bad my manoeuvre nodes were. I wasn't trying to be efficient, I was just trying to prove the concept and the ability of the craft to make the trip
   

http://imgur.com/a/frKH4

So there you go. It was a fun trip and I think I will do it again with more planning and aim to complete it on 'Jeb' level.

Matt

Hi Exile/Matt, my questions: the lander went from Laythe ascent to Vall landing and then Tylo low orbit to meet the main ship? How much dV did your ship have?

Edited October 13, 2014 by Ziv

[Ziv]

My Great Jool journey:

Finally I did it, took a while. It would be easier if I just build a huge ship with plenty of fuel but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to keep the ship reasonable so the launching mass is 547 t. No jets, only rockets.

I wanted to use only one lander. I choose Rockomax 48-7s engines and I did use chair on the lander. Tylo was the hardest moon, so I left that to last one visited. Only there I decoupled the lander's empty tanks.

It was difficult to choose on which order should I visit moons. But I think Laythe should be visited first. Aerobraking is great to save fuel.

Between Kerbin and Jool a kerbal stays on pod but when visiting Bop and Pol he uses only chair. Is this within the rules?

I did it this way:

1. Launch.

2. Transfer to Jool.

3. Aerobraking on Jool's atmosphere, ap to Laythe's orbit.

4. Transfer to Laythe.

5. Aerobraking on Laythe's atmosphere. Kerbal moves to lander.

6. Undocking the lander.

7. Lander lands to Laythe.

8. Lander up to orbit.

9. Docking with the mothership.

10. Transfer to Vall.

11. Refueling the lander. Undocking.

12. Lander lands to Vall.

13. Lander up to orbit.

14. Docking with mothership.

15. Refueling the lander. Undocking.

16. Transferring the lander to Bop (the mothership stays on Vall's orbit).

17. Lander lands to Bop.

18. Lander up to orbit.

19. Transferring the lander to Pol.

20. Only kerbal lands to Pol with EVA. The lander waits on orbit.

21. Kerbal up to orbit and meet the lander.

22. Transfer to Tylo.

23. Transferring the mothership to Tylo.

24. Docking with the lander.

25. Refueling the lander. Undocking.

26. Lander lands to Tylo.

27. Lander up to orbit.

28. Docking with mothership.

29. Kerbal moves to mothership.

30. Leaving the lander on Tylo's orbit.

31. Transferring the mothership to Kerbin.

32. Landing to Kerbin.

- Which game versions did you use? ---24.2.559

- What mods did you use, if any?---Mechjeb was used.

- How many launches was needed to start your mission from Kerbal? ---one launch.

- How many refueling did you do during the mission, how much and where? ---no refueling.

- Did you bring a Living Quarter (Hitch-hiker's Storage) for the guys during the long journey? ---no.

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

- Share the delta-V informations too, if you tracked it! ---19123 m/s delta-v at the beginning.

It was fun and exhausting at the same time. Good luck to anyone who is trying this!

http://imgur.com/a/Rklnb

totalitor: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Level 1!

No worries about the chair orbital moves, you had a pod for the interplanetary journeys and that's enough.

Hmm, it's rare that the main ship is so staged, nice optimizing there. That was a unique solution too to use a staged lander everywhere and use the stages at last for Tylo. Maybe that's not the most optimized one but it has enough TWR at first anyway to depart from the surfaces where it's important. Maybe the parachutes could be decoupled on Laythe because you brought them around to all the moons which is a 0.3 tons plus weight.

Also I think your two big solar panels were unnecessary but they are good for visual.

Landing on Pol by EVA was nice and it helped you to be sure to get back to the mothership for sure.

Nice job, thank you for participating!

Edited October 13, 2014 by Ziv

[Gravaar]

Gravaar: Wow, that's a HUGE ship! Your space tug is huge too!

You gave me some hard time to understand your fuel flow as you didn't post pictures about the refuelings at the main ship around Jool! Can you please show me some and about how your fuel was drying out in the main ship? Because the bigger the ship the more usually it will face some fuel problem during the mission...

Also, can you please tell me how was you able to get back into the pod on Laythe and Tylo? Because this (and this) kind of ladder placement doesn't really work to climb on the top of the wider fuel tank .... or does it?

Basically every stage ONLY used its OWN fuel supply until I Parked my FUEL DEPOT in JOOL orbit ( The only times fuel was used from another "stage" was kerbin orbit used some fuel from JOOL transfer stage and Parking my FUEL DEPOT used fuel out of the tug which it then replaced after it was in a parking orbit)

then I would just ferry my little tug and the lander back to the depot to refuel and head off to the next moon

The "Main ship" in JOOL I call a Fuel Depot because it didn't move again after being placed in orbit

And yes the ladder works on TYLO and Lathe, Getting up is easy down requires a slight fall

Link to cut down version of Lander and the Fuel depot, Pretty much what you see in picture 5 https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bz_2bEy2buDwSHB4Vk5iVkRXSVE/

Will provide COMPLETE ship if required BE WARNED 2.5 minutes of lift off took an hour of real time

My method of madness

1. PANIC then put JEB in charge and all is well

2.Launch

3.dump launch stage

4.dump booster

5.transfer to JOOL and Aero brake

6.Park my FUEL DEPOT in a permanent JOOL circular orbit about 50 Mm out from JOOL. JEB gets out of Lander and ORSON gets in, MATGAS and CALSY get into the LAB

7.TUG plus TYLO specific landing stage leave the FUEL DEPOT and head to TYLO

8.Landed on TYLO , ORSON hopes he can leave

9.Leave TYLO and TYLO lander stage behind

10.Lander docks with TUG and heads back to FUEL DEPOT to refuel

11.Tando gets in the lander and heads to lathe

12 TUG separates from lander and remains in orbit

13.Landed on LATHE, TANDO overjoyed to touch down on solid ground

14.Left lathe dock with TUG for trip back to FUEL DEPOT

15.Refuelled and HANBY gets in the Lander

16.Landed on VALL

17.Leave VALL dock with TUG and you guessed it Back to FUEL Depot to refuel and change pilots again

18.Bob gets in lander and heads of to BOP

19. NOPE nothing to see BOB wonders why he even landed here?

20.BOB leaves BOP gets into orbit and docks with TUG for a fun filled trip to the........FUEL DEPOT

21.BILL gets in the lander and heads off to POL

22.BILL cant be bothered with all that docking and undocking so he just lands the Lander AND TUG as a single ship on POL

23.BILL leaves POL and heads back to FUEL DEPOT

24. JEB Gets in lander secures all the science reconfigures the TUG and lander to carry the hitch-hikers and lab home to Kerbin, FUEL DEPOT remains behind in JOOL orbit

25.Landing on Kerbin requires using the NUKES to assist with slowing down and then dumping them before the parachutes fully open (That's why I NEEDED JEB piloting)

26. HOME safe and sound

TLDR: I placed 750 tons of fuel in orbit around JOOL and just kept going back to it to top up my lander, So fuel usage in the depot didn't matter because it never moved again

I must have been the only person who didn't care about wasting Delta v because I had SO much to waste *GRIN*

Edited October 15, 2014 by Gravaar
Deleted picture album

[SuperSecret]

I was thinking about that you could skip the Vall lander as it is almost the same as the remaining of the Tylo lander, but maybe your ship would be unbalanced with the non-symmetrical placement of the docking port.

I didn't reuse the remaining of the Tylo lander because it didn't have enough fuel to get back to the main ship after getting into orbit, and getting the ship to the lander was not convenient.

How did you dock with that small lander by the way? Wasn't the Kerbal's head in the way?

The lander was controlled by a probe while docking/undocking.

[The Hawk]

Hiya Ziv -- long-time reader, first-time poster. Thanks for running this fabulous challenge that makes for some great solutions and stories.

I'm gearing up to do my third Jool-5 attempt soon (first was a miserable failure and stranded two Kerbals on Tylo, second was on track to succeed but got nixed by the release of 0.24). I hadn't checked the first post in the thread in a while and so hadn't seen the list of approved and unapproved mods, or, at least, hadn't since I started using mods.

That brings me to my question. I see that DMagic's Orbital Science is on the prohibited list. This makes me sad, as I greatly enjoy the doing of science and the mod scratches that itch. Would you still have an objection to the inclusion of DMagic's science parts on a Jool-5 mission if the science they generate is listed separately from the science from stock instruments (as appears to be the case with ScanSat)?

Thanks!

[Ziv]

Did someone say big?

- Which game versions did you use? 24.2 64 bit

- What mods did you use, if any? mechjeb only

- How many launches was needed to start your mission from Kerbal? ONE !!!

- How many refueling did you do during the mission, how much and where? Heaps but I took my own fuel tank so NONE

- Did you bring a Living Quarter (Hitch-hiker's Storage) for the guys during the long journey? yes 2 hitch-hiker storage

- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc? Fuel Depot

- Share the delta-V informations too, if you tracked it! will work it out later

Mass on launch pad :- 25978.700 TONS

Crew capacity :-11

Crew count :-8

Part count :-1112

http://imgur.com/a/JLsQ0

Jeb drove there and back

Orson done TYLO

Tando done LATHE

Hanby done VALL

Bob done BOP

Bill done POL

Matgas and Calsy were in the LAB

Left in JOOL orbit Fuel Farm with :- LF 12088 units

:- OX 14774 units

:-MONO 2058 units

Gravaar: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Jebeidah's Level!

Thank you for the clarification. Yeah, sorry for nitpicking but big ships can be tricky and are not always so much on dV because of the weight. Yeah, I see your fuel depo solution now and adding together all the refueling was far from drying it out so yeah, nice solution! Maybe you should allow other users to refuel from it too.

And OMG, your ship was HUGE! GIANT! I don't know the right English word here. I was joking with prohibiting launch rockets bigger than the launch pad some weeks ago, hehe (but I wasn't).

But 25978 tons, OMG... yeah, the true Kerbal way! And you jettisoned the first stage on 95 km!!! O.O

Hmm, and I guess your tug and Tylo lander was the biggest so far. Yeah, that's for sure.

Good job with the Easter egg landings and for the Pol landing with the tug, on the nuke engines!

And congratulations on getting back to KSC and lithobrake with a bunch on Nuke engines!! But I don't mind this and there's no rule about it so that's not a problem. For me. But ask the support crew Kerbals at KSC!

Huge...I mean good job, thank you for participating!

Edited October 13, 2014 by Ziv

[Ziv]

Hiya Ziv -- long-time reader, first-time poster. Thanks for running this fabulous challenge that makes for some great solutions and stories.

I'm gearing up to do my third Jool-5 attempt soon (first was a miserable failure and stranded two Kerbals on Tylo, second was on track to succeed but got nixed by the release of 0.24). I hadn't checked the first post in the thread in a while and so hadn't seen the list of approved and unapproved mods, or, at least, hadn't since I started using mods.

That brings me to my question. I see that DMagic's Orbital Science is on the prohibited list. This makes me sad, as I greatly enjoy the doing of science and the mod scratches that itch. Would you still have an objection to the inclusion of DMagic's science parts on a Jool-5 mission if the science they generate is listed separately from the science from stock instruments (as appears to be the case with ScanSat)?

Thanks!

Hey! Yeah, I love DMagic's science pack too but it alters the science points which makes Jeb's level's science points incomparable. But you can use it if you don't mind the, otherwise absolutely not official, science points "race". It makes the mission more complex anyway.

Have a nice journey, and good looking science packs!

[davidparks21]

​Before we begin, let us take a moment of silence in memory of all the brave kerbonauts who lost their lives in the pursuit of this challenge, their sacrifices did not go in vain.

At a mass of 13,565kg, The Jool-10 plane and landing system (that's 10 attempts, not 10 moons!) made the journey to all 5 moons of Jool, and to the delight (and surprise) of Lambree Kerman, returned him and his science data safely to the surface of Kerbin.

Highlights:

- No EVA landings

- All atmospheric maneuvers performed safely within the Mk1 Lander Can, no command seat in-atmosphere

- 100% manual control (making for hellishly hard landings at Tylo and Vall)

The breakdown:

- Kerbin: Horizontal takeoff and ejection on jet engines, easy circularized on Ion Engines (200 units liquid fuel)

- Kerbin/Jool Transfer: Ion engines with a lot of disposable tanks, direct entry to Laythe

- Laythe: Horizontal landing and takeoff, same takeoff as Kerbin on jets (100 units liquid fuel)

- Tylo: Jump up to Tylo from Laythe (for reasons of fuel weight), dump the jet, wings, and liquid tanks, land on a staged LV-909 engine, take off with ~1500 dv on the LV-909 and circularize (just barely) on Ion

- Vall: We've now dumped everything but an Ion lander and lander can. Drop down to vall and squeak out a landing/redock on Ion engines using one 700 unit Xeon tank, redock with ~30 dv to spare.

- Bop/Pol: Easily landed with the Ion lander and return to kerbin on Ion engins with plenty of dv to spare

The short and sweet album:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

The full album:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Exile]

Hi Exile/Matt, my questions: the lander went from Laythe ascent to Vall landing and then Tylo low orbit to meet the main ship? How much dV did your ship have?

Hi Ziv

More than enough. You can see in one of the screenshots that lifting off from Laythe flying at 3,000m I still had 4300 atmo and over 10,000 vac delta-v. The lander (minus the jet section) had just over 6100 delta-v to get from Laythe orbit to Vall and then to Tylo. I had 3100 delta-v remaining at Vall and 2100 delta-v transferring from Vall to Tylo.

I'm happy to send you the .craft file if you want to check it.

Matt

Edited October 14, 2014 by Exile

[totalitor]

About my journey...."Maybe the parachutes could be decoupled on Laythe because you brought them around to all the moons which is a 0.3 tons plus weight."

Yes I was thinking about that, but how to do that? Which key should I press?

[Superfluous J]

About my journey...."Maybe the parachutes could be decoupled on Laythe because you brought them around to all the moons which is a 0.3 tons plus weight."

Yes I was thinking about that, but how to do that? Which key should I press?

The spacebar, most likely. It would activate the decoupler that would then disconnect the thing you had the parachutes on from the rest of your ship.

That would have required you to have planned to do that back on Kerbin, but that's a (massive) part of the challenge.

[Ziv]

About my journey...."Maybe the parachutes could be decoupled on Laythe because you brought them around to all the moons which is a 0.3 tons plus weight."

Yes I was thinking about that, but how to do that? Which key should I press?

There are several possible solution:

1. You can right-click on the decoupler and decouple.

2. You can assign a hotkey (0-9) in the Action Groups in the VAB, click this icon to do that, select the 0-9 group, click on the part and add the function you want

3. if it's the next stage then press space bar. You can change the order of the stages on the left side by dragging them

[Ziv]

Hi all

This is my first challenge. I wanted to explore the Jool system more, and I figured this would be a good way to do it. It was very much 'seat of the pants' without any real testing before I set out.

So, here is my entry. I went with 'form over function' with the design and I wasn't concerned with efficiency as I had plenty of delta-v to spare. I also took the opportunity to land at Duna and Mun on the way home - both unplanned - but the aerobraking nodes I used made it too tempting not to try.

- Which game versions did you use? 24.2 64 bit

- What mods did you use, if any? KW and B9 (I think I only used a decoupler from KW, everything else was stock) and Mechjeb installed for information. Some other mods were already installed but not used (IR, TAC Fuel Balancer etc.)

- How many launches were needed to start your mission from Kerbal? One

- How many refueling did you do during the mission, how much and where? All fuel taken with the craft. Lander and transfer stage docked and transferred fuel three times (over Tylo before and after landing, and again after Pol landing).

- Did you bring a Living Quarter (Hitch-hiker's Storage) for the guys during the long journey? No. Jeb did it tough alone in his little tin can Mk1.

- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc? Two rovers to scout for a good landing spot. I only used one at Laythe

- Share the delta-V information too, if you tracked it! Lander had approx. 6100 delta-v and was re-fuelled three times. Not sure how much delta-v the transfer stage used.

Please note a couple of things:

1. I may have bent the rules slightly with the intakes. They slightly overlap (clip) with each other. There are two intakes each on 6 cubic struts: one intake fixed to the top node, and one intake rotated 180 degrees and fixed to the bottom node. As I said, I went with form over function and so bent the rules a touch here because they looked really good mounted that way.
   
2. The delta-v stats showing in Mechjeb at the start of the trip are not accurate because I had the engines on the lander pointing retrograde and Mechjeb counts those as pushing against the craft. Therefor the actual potential delta-v was much higher.
   
3. I had a game crash as I landed at Laythe and had to reload
   
4. And yes, I know how bad my manoeuvre nodes were. I wasn't trying to be efficient, I was just trying to prove the concept and the ability of the craft to make the trip
   

http://imgur.com/a/frKH4

So there you go. It was a fun trip and I think I will do it again with more planning and aim to complete it on 'Jeb' level.

Matt

Exile: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge on Level 1!

I like the blue lights, it makes the craft look very sci-fi! The intakes clipping is not so bad so it's okay. Btw I think they are less effective if they don't point right to the direction of flying, it's the same as with rocket engines. That was an interesting solution that you went from Laythe to Vall landing and then to Tylo with the lander and followed with the main/fuel tank ship later.

And I guess you had some hard time at Tylo because of the high lander. Or didn't you?

Nice job with the EVA landing at Bop, I tried it only once but without success.

Also nice Duna/Mun landings too. I guess you used the parachutes there too. Good job, thank you for participation!

[Ziv]

​Before we begin, let us take a moment of silence in memory of all the brave kerbonauts who lost their lives in the pursuit of this challenge, their sacrifices did not go in vain.

At a mass of 13,565kg, The Jool-10 plane and landing system (that's 10 attempts, not 10 moons!) made the journey to all 5 moons of Jool, and to the delight (and surprise) of Lambree Kerman, returned him and his science data safely to the surface of Kerbin.

Highlights:

- No EVA landings

- All atmospheric maneuvers performed safely within the Mk1 Lander Can, no command seat in-atmosphere

- 100% manual control (making for hellishly hard landings at Tylo and Vall)

The breakdown:

- Kerbin: Horizontal takeoff and ejection on jet engines, easy circularized on Ion Engines (200 units liquid fuel)

- Kerbin/Jool Transfer: Ion engines with a lot of disposable tanks, direct entry to Laythe

- Laythe: Horizontal landing and takeoff, same takeoff as Kerbin on jets (100 units liquid fuel)

- Tylo: Jump up to Tylo from Laythe (for reasons of fuel weight), dump the jet, wings, and liquid tanks, land on a staged LV-909 engine, take off with ~1500 dv on the LV-909 and circularize (just barely) on Ion

- Vall: We've now dumped everything but an Ion lander and lander can. Drop down to vall and squeak out a landing/redock on Ion engines using one 700 unit Xeon tank, redock with ~30 dv to spare.

- Bop/Pol: Easily landed with the Ion lander and return to kerbin on Ion engins with plenty of dv to spare

The short and sweet album:

http://imgur.com/a/FAkCm

The full album:

http://imgur.com/a/rKImB

Wow, what a nice minimalistic design! And pushing such a "big" ship on a sole ion engine... you are patient! But that's good that it was only until Laythe...

That's funny how you solved the "ladder-problem" on both Laythe and Tylo! And very creative ways for the landings with wings and the additional module for the lander at Tylo... and the little ion lander looks fun!

By the way I would be happy to see more pictures from ascending Tylo with the ion only at the end... about how you managed it! If you really had enough time before falling back to Tylo.

And I would like to see more pictures about your Vall landing too... because landing and getting back on Vall with a high TWR lander takes about 1000-1000 m/s. With a very low TWR it takes much-much more, and your two informative picture about the landing (pic 1, pic 2) are not really good (on the second picture you have more dV than on the first one!) and on the second picture it seems like you want to fall down onto the surface from a high above altitude with a TWR 1.1-1.04, and you were falling with 109 m/s... and on the ground you have 1553 m/s which means it was only 1000 (or 500?) to land, which feels impossible with such a low TWR. It is not impossible to land with a TWR lower than 1.1 but it requires much more dV than the average and requires a very good descending path planning. So please tell me more about how you did it.

And also I'm not really happy with the part clipping what you did with the parachute. I'm still thinking if I will get over it if you show me how you managed to circulize at Tylo with ions and how you landed on Vall with 1.08 TWR.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Ziv

[Thunderous Echo]

Turns out that landing on the wrong mountain means more gravity, meaning your testing is inaccurate, meaning you have to pre-burn some of the lander's fuel in order to have enough thrust to take off, meaning you have less fuel, meaning it's a good thing kerbals have jet packs.

I'm so professional.

[Ravenchant]

Hey, people!

Okay, my entry is done and flown- now I can uninstall 0.24.2 and proceed with the new version

Prior to this challenge, I've only ever been to Jool with tiny unmanned probes, and never even thought of returning. So planning kinda took a long time =p But I'm not sure whether I qualify for level 2 or 3- the crew consisted of six Kerbals, but all landings had either three (Laythe, Tylo) or two astronauts. I'd be happy with either one

- Which game versions did you use? 0.24.2

- What mods did you use, if any? None during the actual mission; KER and Hyperedit in the design phase

- How many launches was needed to start your mission from Kerbal? Oh boy. 4 for Cor Serpentis (the mothership) + landers, 4 refueling missions, then I had to exchange the Tylo lander due to lack of ladders, and finally 2 crew launches. In total: 11

- How many refueling did you do during the mission, how much and where? None, unless refueling of the landers from the mothership counts

- Did you bring a Living Quarter (Hitch-hiker's Storage) for the guys during the long journey? Yep, one per 2 Kerbals

- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc? A habitat module&rover for Laythe, a small rover for Vall (but it was part of the main lander) and two experiment pallets for Bop/Pol. Part count was the biggest limitation...

- Share the delta-V informations too, if you tracked it! Cor Serpentis itself had 10500 m/s without payload, 6100 m/s fully loaded. Don't know about the rest

Order of the moons was: Laythe, Tylo, Vall, Pol, Bop. Before heading to Tylo, I undocked the Vall lander which went directly to Vall unmanned, then refueled upon returning the mothership from Tylo.

- all landers were pressurized

- space for 13 Kerbals, not counting the mobile lab

- 2 MMUs on the mothership

- turning the damn thing took way too long. I should have put more reaction wheels on it.

Here's the mission album:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

And here you can download most ships used in the challenge.

Thank you for the challenge, Ziv! I hope this qualifies. If you need more proof, just ask

EDIT: the album pics seem to be cropped for some reason? It's better to view it on imgur.

EDIT #2: I just noticed that the Laythe lander could be considered to break the no part clipping rule. Alt+F12 wasn't used during construction though, and the adapter is hollow anyway. So...make what you want of that

Edited October 15, 2014 by Ravenchant

[Ziv]

Ravenchant: cool, I will review your mission soon when I have some time!

When embedding imgur album use only the code of the album without the picture number and so the viewing window will be bigger!

So insted of "pK2mK#0" use only "pK2mK"!

[stanz25]

Ive been dreading this moment for a while, but I am finally going to take on this challenge!

Edit: I cant figure out how to upload an album if any one can help with that

Edited October 15, 2014 by stanz25

[davidparks21]

Wow, what a nice minimalistic design! And pushing such a "big" ship on a sole ion engine... you are patient! But that's good that it was only until Laythe...

That's funny how you solved the "ladder-problem" on both Laythe and Tylo! And very creative ways for the landings with wings and the additional module for the lander at Tylo... and the little ion lander looks fun!

By the way I would be happy to see more pictures from ascending Tylo with the ion only at the end... about how you managed it! If you really had enough time before falling back to Tylo.

And I would like to see more pictures about your Vall landing too... because landing and getting back on Vall with a high TWR lander takes about 1000-1000 m/s. With a very low TWR it takes much-much more, and your two informative picture about the landing (pic 1, pic 2) are not really good (on the second picture you have more dV than on the first one!) and on the second picture it seems like you want to fall down onto the surface from a high above altitude with a TWR 1.1-1.04, and you were falling with 109 m/s... and on the ground you have 1553 m/s which means it was only 1000 (or 500?) to land, which feels impossible with such a low TWR. It is not impossible to land with a TWR lower than 1.1 but it requires much more dV than the average and requires a very good descending path planning. So please tell me more about how you did it.

And also I'm not really happy with the part clipping what you did with the parachute. I'm still thinking if I will get over it if you show me how you managed to circulize at Tylo with ions and how you landed on Vall with 1.08 TWR.

I'll do an album for Tylo and Vall again, honestly both were insanely hard and took numerous attempts, so I might have made a mistake and mixed in a shot from something other than the final successful attempt. On Tylo I had to land perfectly, I ended with about 1500 dv on the LV-909 (that took a number of tries, I landed it earlier with 1200 dv and couldn't get up), and barely skimmed the surface nearing the dark side at that. A 45 degree thrust on the LV-909 put me up to about 70,000 apoapis which just gave the Ions enough time to circularize (that lander is small so it picks up speed reasonably quickly on Ions).

Vall was hard, but not quite as tough as tylo, trick was to land at 3000 meters, down at "sea level" the TWR is only ~1.01, landable, but uses the full 3100 dv available to the Ion lander. After a number of attempts I managed a hardish landing with a good 1500 dv to take off on, which was doable, but with like 80 dv to spare after rendevous.

Tylo and Vall were where the patience really was tested. But 10 trips from Kerbin to Laythe were tedious (it took 10 designs to get something that worked).

As for the parachute part clipping, I hear you, that was cutting it close, but in my defense there is actually an attachment point on the top of that parachute, I didn't use any mods or debug menu to pull it off, it was only what was possible in the stock builder (only mod I used in builder was the one that lets you change root nodes). On earlier designs I used two parachutes, but really couldn't afford the weight. I should have put it on the other side where I just decoupled staging portions.

Additional details:

Tylo Landing:

- Landed with 1423 dV left in the thrusters, that was about 10 units of liquid fuel in the two side tanks and the center tank full.

- I must admit that I'm missing many screen shots of the successful landing, what you're seeing for dV and tanks is the landing before the actual successful one, this one had 5 units of liquid fuel left in the two two side tanks, I did it again slightly more efficiently landing with 10 units, this was a critical difference. I thought I took screen shots of that one, but can't find them.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Tylo Ascent:

- The ascent was particularly hard on Tylo, probably the hardest of all maneuvers, the dV on the LV-909 was never enough, but it finally made due, pegging the thruster-ascent at 45 degrees gives the best tradeoff between lift (e.g. time for the Ion drive to do its work) and building horizontal velocity. The successful attempt had me just barely circularizing @ about 14,000m with about -140m/s drop rate and as I dropped into darkness.

- Decoupling and switching to ion quickly was critical

- Between the thrusters and Ion drive, pre-apoapis, (@45 degree angle on both) we made it to 90,000m, Giving somewhere on the order of 6 minutes of burn time to the Ion thrusters.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Vall Landing:

- DV after landing: 1533dv

- Altitude at landing site: 3290 (1.076 TWR) (this was critical, I missed the mountain range a number of times, I could land it, but not with enough dV to take off again)

- Notes: A key thing to note here is that the TWR changes significantly as you approach the surface, ranging from ~1.3 down to just over 1. Doing about 60m/s at 10,000 ft over terrain is approximately the optimal approach speed. My approach burned off the horizontal dv at about 30,000 m, turning nearly perpendicular to the surface at about -170 m/s vertical speed. Touch down at around 15-20 m/s. TWR at 10,000ft is more like 1.15, it's really finicky to find the perfect approach with the changing TWR.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Vall Ascent:

- The ascent was simple, straight up to about 15 m/s then crank it over as far and fast as you can without hitting the surface, I skimmed the mountain tops at just a few hundred meters (and on some attempts the mountain tops skimmed me).

- Orbit made with 199 dV to spare for docking

- Docking was a pain as all the maneuvers were near or on the dark side of the moon.

- Docked with just over 80 dV to spare

- You can see in the shots that the TWR at just 5000m (2000m over landing) is already a much more workable 1.1.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Parachute part clipping:

When I set it up I saw the connection point on top of the parachute, now that I look at it again I'm wondering if it's just letting me link to the lander can. In any case I could reorient the parachute to the other side which would actually improve the overall design a bit and wouldn't really affect the outcome of the mission (e.g. I could do it again with the minor modification, but that would be painful). Also it was nothing outside of what's doable with the stock system, which is what I generally consider fair game, so hopefully I can sway you on this point.

Edited October 15, 2014 by davidparks21

[Ziv]

Ive been dreading this moment for a while, but I am finally going to take on this challenge!

Edit: I cant figure out how to upload an album if any one can help with that

Cool, welcome to the JOOL-5 Challenge! I hope you will be a member of the JOOL-5 elite team!

If you would like to use imgur.com then register there and create an album.

Your album will have an url like this: http://imgur.com/a/1EWoP#0 (at the end the #number means the number of the picture in the album)

You can put the album here between the tags [ imgur] 1EWoP [ /imgur] (without the spaces). That's all.

[stanz25]

Awesome thanks!

[EdFred]

I have finished (finally!)

- Which game versions did you use? 0.25

- What mods did you use, if any? Kerbal Alarm Clock, Kerbal Engineer, MechJeb

- How many launches was needed to start your mission from Kerbal? One Launch

- How many refueling did you do during the mission, how much and where? No refueling, no docking of any sorts

- Did you bring a Living Quarter (Hitch-hiker's Storage) for the guys during the long journey? 2 of them

- Did you bring additional stuff like satellites, rovers, etc? Transfer stages remain in orbit around Laythe

- Share the delta-V informations too, if you tracked it! It is in the craft file here:

Ultimate Jool-5 Challenge

The mission went thusly:

Launch from Kerbin - of course - on Kerbal year 1 Day 184 and obtain LKO at 80km. I let MechJeb do the ascent.

Immediately head for Jool - manual node creation, let MJ handle the burn

At the AN/DN (I forget which) a plane change was set up - and a Laythe encounter was planned.

After the encounter was set up and while still at the plane change node 4 Kerbals transferred to their assigned command ships and were detached from the main ship. 2 remaining Kerbals stayed with the main ship - which also contained the Tylo lander.

Each ship including the main ship was then given it's own preferred Jool aerobraking burn to encounter each moon, except for the Laythe ship. That remained with the initial trajectory to intercept Laythe.

The main ship was set up to encounter Tylo.

Laythe was the first to be landed upon, then Vall, then Bop, then Pol.

Tylo should have been third, but KAC and KSP botched the calculations on the Tylo intercept and that ship was 3/4 of the way through Tylo's SOI when it jumped to the ship. So a second Tylo encounter had to be set up. Luckily it didn't fling me out of the Jool system, but I was quite a ways past Pol.

All ships then met up at Laythe, and Kerbals boarded the HH pod ship back to Kerbin.

Parachutes were forgotten on the HH ship, and the only time I had to reload a quicksave the whole mission was when MJ botched the powered landing. (And I messed up my first two manual attempts, as well.)

Edited October 16, 2014 by EdFred
clarifications

[stanz25]

I have been working on a name, a fricken NAME, for a while now. My mission name will be Leviathan.

Can't wait to get started in the morning!

[Gravaar]

I just can't do it

I tried to make a low mass Jool 5 contender

I made a lander that can descend and make it back to orbit on TYLO with ease (6500 Delta v) and weighs 2.5 tons

BUT my inner Kerbal keeps just adding MOAR BOOSTERS

I guess I don't do tiny