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

[EdFred]

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

Heh.

When I started the challenge I was going to make all of my landers with 2 man lander cans, and crewed by two, but it got way, way, way too big.

[Oafman]

Heh.

When I started the challenge I was going to make all of my landers with 2 man lander cans, and crewed by two, but it got way, way, way too big.

I did that, and it ended up being 2000t in LKO before departure. It could have been way more efficient, but that would not be the kerbal way. I'll put up some pics when I get around to sorting through them.

[Gravaar]

Heh.

When I started the challenge I was going to make all of my landers with 2 man lander cans, and crewed by two, but it got way, way, way too big.

I did that, and it ended up being 2000t in LKO before departure. It could have been way more efficient, but that would not be the kerbal way. I'll put up some pics when I get around to sorting through them.

Yep 2000 tons sounds just about right to me Might be a little on the light side, you might need MOAR BOOSTERS or Nukes

But it is a fun challenge no matter how you do it

NOTE: TYLO is an evil place , My not very efficient method was to orbit it at 300 Km and use my tug to kill rotational velocity and let the lander descend straight down by suicide burn, while the tug re-established itself in orbit (I tend to do this on any airless moon). It requires less piloting skill and some of the needed Delta v is taken by the tug but it does waste Delta v for the tug (cancelling orbit then re-establishing orbit)

Edited October 16, 2014 by Gravaar

[EdFred]

Tylo needs to be approached just like an Apollo mission at the Mun, except your lander has ~7k dV

I had around half of that in 2 descent stages. They got let go on descent, and my ascent stage was enough to get me back to LTO with about 800dV remaining.

Establish LTO with the main ship. Detatch the lander, descend, plant flag, take a leak, ascend, rendezvous.

[stanz25]

Could I use this mod? Dream chaser

[davidparks21]

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

Tylo's where I started my design for a low mass contender too, you have to make some serious sacrifices to do it light, and will probably be cutting it pretty darn close. Striking a balance between the descent burn time (keep the burn time low, like a couple minutes, else you waste massive fuel against gravity), booster fuel efficiency, and weight is hard. Keep in mind that those LT-1 struts can take a pretty significant impact, I hit at over 20m/s on 4 of those on one attempt and actually bounced a good 5m high, dropped and still pegged the landing without breaking extended solar panels.

I designed for Tylo first, then Vall, then Kerbin & Laythe, and Bop/Pol were easy.

Make sure you're multi purposing every engine you send up.

That 2.5 tons sounds like a good start, if you can keep things around about 10 tons, a single get engine plus about 300 units of liquid fuel will be able to shoot you into orbit on both kerbin & laythe for less than 100dV to circularize it. Now... how you get that stuff to Jool without blowing your weight limits is the hard question...

[stanz25]

Im having trouble designing a good lander for Tylo. I'm trying to keep it small but very efficient. This lander will also land on Pol and Bop. I will then have a separate lander for Laythe. It's hard but real fun!

[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

davidparks21: Congratulation, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge!

Which category do you want, Level-1 or the Low-Mass?

Thank you for your clarification about the Tylo and Vall landings! At first I gave more percent that they are not possible than possible, so special congratulation on doing such hard solutions work!

And that was some pretty nice minimalistic design, and you were patient to go with a sole ion engine at the beginning. Nice Laythe landing too, to fly the whole ship down and back. That ladder solution was fun there! The ion lander is special too because of the vertical seating of the Kerbal!

Yeah, I didn't like the part clipping for the parachute but considering the quality of minimal planning and pulling such hard landings out I get over it for you.

Nice job, thank you for participating!

[Thunderous Echo]

I've found an fl-400 with a probe core and a seat attached make a good tylo SSTSTO (Single Stage To Surface to Orbit) without using your jetpack (meaning if you're like me, you'll need your jetpack). I didn't use this because I had a bigger muti-purpose lander that could do the job that I could use for other things.

I would also recommend a look at Ziv's own semi-ion Tylo lander, it's even lighter (but staged).

[davidparks21]

Im having trouble designing a good lander for Tylo. I'm trying to keep it small but very efficient. This lander will also land on Pol and Bop. I will then have a separate lander for Laythe. It's hard but real fun!

Test it at KSC whatever you do, it took me like 10 tries over a month to get something that worked. I made a bunch of trips making it all the way to Tylo only to realize some fatal flaw in my design. When I finally got it right I started with the tylo lander design, launched it 500m and landed it in the hills behind KSC, that helped get the wrinkles out. Pol and Bop are easy, Vall is tougher, and laythe is an easier version of Kerbin. If you're using a command seat make sure you test it with a kerbal in the seat, their weight can throw off the balance of light weight landers (as I found out much to my chagrin). Remember also that for every second of burn time you have on the descent (and ascent) you need to add ~7.8m/s of dV to your requirement... That one bit me early on too as I tried using uber light engines that took 5+ minutes to burn down, but that long burn was adding like 2,000 dV to my landing requirement. Ouchie!

[stanz25]

Awesome thanks!

Edit: Here are my main parts to my mission. Any suggestions??

And I was also wondering if mechjeb was ok. Its not on the list.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited October 16, 2014 by stanz25

[davidparks21]

davidparks21: Congratulation, you have finished the JOOL-5 Challenge!

Which category do you want, Level-1 or the Low-Mass?

Thank you for your clarification about the Tylo and Vall landings! At first I gave more percent that they are not possible than possible, so special congratulation on doing such hard solutions work!

And that was some pretty nice minimalistic design, and you were patient to go with a sole ion engine at the beginning. Nice Laythe landing too, to fly the whole ship down and back. That ladder solution was fun there! The ion lander is special too because of the vertical seating of the Kerbal!

Yeah, I didn't like the part clipping for the parachute but considering the quality of minimal planning and pulling such hard landings out I get over it for you.

Nice job, thank you for participating!

I was definitely pushing for the low mass, I think I'm claiming one of the lowest masses without the use of a jet pack. That was the idea from the beginning at least, no atmospheric command seat nor jet pack use (though I did particularly like your solution how you came and picked up your orbiting kerbal with the remote pod).

That ion lander was squirmish too, I tried everything to center the seat but couldn't get a design to work, as it only had a Probodobodyne OKTO2 for stability, the off-center weight of the kerbal made control problematic (though not impossible). The off center seat also threw the tylo lander way out of control (the little OKTO2 barely held the ion lander stable) until I added a full reaction wheel to the tylo lander.

[Ziv]

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:

http://imgur.com/a/pK2mK

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

Ravenchant: Congratulations, you have finished the JOOL-5 on Level 3!

I chose Level 3 for your mission because that is maybe more complex than level 2 and you definitely made a complex mission!

Your main ship layout and all of your landers and other stuff are very creative and unique, and they look amazing because of the new building ideas! This is what my initial intention was with this JOOL-5 challenge, to collect awesome ideas about how to build the ships and landers for this hard mission!

I really loved that sepraton boosted Laythe ascent stage, why did you use those? Did it have a low TWR at the beginning and to make it going?

And that's cool that you sent some habitat module and rovers too, that's rare in the JOOL-5 missions!

And yeah, you made some bad part clipping but I'll get over it for you because of the creativity, and you could easily make those parts without part clipping, and the aesthetics made it more heavy and bigger part count anyway.

It was a good idea to send the Vall lander forward to make the ship easier for the Tylo maneuvers.

Creative Tylo lander fuel tank distribution too! (I just forgot to keep in mind the no part clipping rule in those moments too)

Vall lander is also creative with the monopropellant only engines, and there's a cool minimalistic rover there too.

Bop and Pol lander also look awesome, and I appreciate the experiment pallet. If I would like to nitpicking I'd ask picture about your pallet change on the lander!

I also liked your MMU (Manned Maneuvering Unit), but maybe it could be smaller, don't you think?

Funny descriptions too!

So, it was an awesome and very creative mission, that's great! Thank you for participating!!

Edited October 17, 2014 by Ziv

[Thunderous Echo]

Ziv, have you considered just abolishing the part clipping rules?

[Ziv]

Could I use this mod? Dream chaser

Nope, sorry. It would make some things too easy.

[Ziv]

Awesome thanks!

Edit: Here are my main parts to my mission. Any suggestions??

And I was also wondering if mechjeb was ok. Its not on the list.

http://imgur.com/a/gJae8

MechJeb is okay, yes. It's in the rules that you can use any kind of informative mods too.

I think on your living quarter you will never use that much of monopropellant, but it's up to you.

I'm sure the Laythe Excursion and Observation ship won't have enough delta-V after you have to change from Air breathing to oxidizer. You will not need that much monopropellant, in fact you would be okay without RCS at all because the lander is small and the command pod has enough power to rotate it quickly. If you have only solar panels then you might run out of electricity during landing/ascending because they cannot be open during atmospheric flight.

Oh, and your engine won't work in jet mode without Air intakes!

I'm not sure about your Tylo lander, it might have enough dV. Check it with Mechjeb! You will need about 6000+ from a low orbit (10-20 km) to land and back to LTO (Low Tylo Orbit).

[Ziv]

I was definitely pushing for the low mass, I think I'm claiming one of the lowest masses without the use of a jet pack. That was the idea from the beginning at least, no atmospheric command seat nor jet pack use (though I did particularly like your solution how you came and picked up your orbiting kerbal with the remote pod).

That ion lander was squirmish too, I tried everything to center the seat but couldn't get a design to work, as it only had a Probodobodyne OKTO2 for stability, the off-center weight of the kerbal made control problematic (though not impossible). The off center seat also threw the tylo lander way out of control (the little OKTO2 barely held the ion lander stable) until I added a full reaction wheel to the tylo lander.

All right, I put it into the low-mass category! I wrote version 0.25, if it was different then let me know.

Yeah, I was thinking about if the ion lander had some unbalance but I was thinking the low thrust is not stronger than the tiny probe core. But it seems like it counted a lot. Yeah, low mass counts too in these cases.

[stanz25]

Awesome. My lander for Tylo has about 4000 dV. My lander for Laythe has 14594 dV in the atmosphere. I'm shooting for a Level 1 and I can't wait to get started.

[Ziv]

Ziv, have you considered just abolishing the part clipping rules?

No, because I don't want clipped solutions. for example putting a nuke through a command pod + a fuel tank makes it convenient and efficient, but I consider that as cheating. Also, putting a lot of tanks into a little space with heavy overlapping can give a lot of advantage so I don't allow them.

In rare cases I accept some part clipping (these last two were the rare cases ), especially when it's about aesthetics and otherwise makes the ship heavier and more complex. So what is important to me is not to use part clipping for gaining advantage.

[Ziv]

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.)

Can you please upload all of your pictures? From launching to Kerbin to all the maneuver nodes, getting into/out of orbit of the moons, the landers getting back to the main ship, Kerbals getting back to the main ship after landing, and that you sent five different Kerbal to the different moons, etc... because from these few pictures I can't check a lot of things!

For example, how did you get your Laythe lander on Laythe? How much fuel did you use from the lander before landing? And where did you rendezvous with the main ship then? And the same questions for all the landings...!

[EdFred]

That's all the pictures I have. It started out as a test run to see what sort of dV I would have with the big question being Tylo. I had already made all my encounters before taking any screen shots.

If you d/l the craft file, you will see the 4 (nearly) identical transfer ships radially mounted to the main ship - the Laythe one obviously being the one with parachutes. To answer your questions, I aerobraked around Laythe in about a 75km orbit, and used probably little more than 50dV, to hit my landing spot. The main ship and all the other transfer ships rendezvoused at Laythe for departure to Kerbin in the main ship.

I suppose I can re-enact the first part of the mission, and take screen shots

[stanz25]

I recreated my Tylo lander and packed it with 6158 dV. Its going to be a pain to get it into orbit from Kerbin but unforgiving when I ditch it. My Laythe lander now has a lot more dV and can enter Laythe orbit easily.

And this is the beast that will launch everything into orbit around Kerbin. The Leviathan Titan.

[davidparks21]

All right, I put it into the low-mass category! I wrote version 0.25, if it was different then let me know.

Yeah, I was thinking about if the ion lander had some unbalance but I was thinking the low thrust is not stronger than the tiny probe core. But it seems like it counted a lot. Yeah, low mass counts too in these cases.

What?!! 0.25 is out?? Where have I been??? Oh, yeah, the moons of Jool... It was on 0.24.2.

[Thunderous Echo]

Stanz, if you think that's a "beast" and is a "leviathan titan", you haven't been playing KSP for long enough.

Allow me to re-post the payload of my tour:

Relatively, this is quite small.

[kookoo_gr]

Hey Ziv one more question. I started my Jool-5/Grand tour mission. Right now i am visiting the other planets but my Jool-5 ship/landers are at Kerbin orbit. The bad thing is that i noticed a major design flaw at my Laythe lander and a tug that i have that will make completion of the mission impossible (forgot a ladder). Can i change the lander and tug with a new one? I will have fixed the design flaw and the design of these 2 units will be almost the same. The balance of this change is that it will make the drive unit and trip to Jool more unstable since the replacement will remove some struts that i have placed for stability