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

[Gravaar]

SNIP*

So I would like to ban everything bigger than the orange tank/mainsail and the new ion engine

That is going to make it SO hard to get 5000 tons into orbit on a single launch

Hmmmm... Maybe make a Jool ship that ONLY uses mainsails and/or ion engines

Zivs quote is a tiny part of his posting and does NOT say he is going to ban anything

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57197-The-Ultimate-Jool-5-Challenge-land-Kerbals-on-all-moons-and-return-in-one-big-mission?p=1492777&viewfull=1#post1492777

Edited October 21, 2014 by Gravaar

[Vaporo]

All right, here's my attempt.

One launch

No refuelings.

One Hitchhiker crew cabin.

Crew of six.

Mission done in 0.25, but most of assembly was done in 0.24.2

Mods used:FAR, B9, KW Rocketry, TAC Fuel Balancer, Better time warp, MechJeb.

1333 parts, the largest rocket I have ever built.

Sorry if some points, particularly orbital rendezvous, seem poorly documented. Imgur won't let me have more than 225 images, so I had to cut out a lot of pictures (in fact, the album is exactly 225 images long).

Also, I can redo the launch with the GUI on if you need it.

Imgur link in case the forum crops the album: http://imgur.com/a/PkWMj#16

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited October 21, 2014 by Vaporo

[hazard-ish]

Hey, I just completed the Jool 5 challenge, probably the second hardest things I've done in KSP, and was just wondering what would be the best way to show you my attempt. I recorded the whole thing with camtasia for a career mode series I am working on but I doubt you want to watch several hours of constant footage . I only took one single kerbal to the system and certainly didn't go for the low mass sub-challenge but could I still get the banner if I can prove it?

Thanks

[Thunderous Echo]

I could edit it down for you. How many hours of raw footage are we talking?

I'm thinking you upload to youtube, I download from youtube, edit, then upload (or the finished file might be smaller so I could just dropbox it), then you could download and upload.

[Ziv]

Hey, I just completed the Jool 5 challenge, probably the second hardest things I've done in KSP, and was just wondering what would be the best way to show you my attempt. I recorded the whole thing with camtasia for a career mode series I am working on but I doubt you want to watch several hours of constant footage . I only took one single kerbal to the system and certainly didn't go for the low mass sub-challenge but could I still get the banner if I can prove it?

Thanks

What was the hardest thing you did?

If the video has a time line and I can click on it anywhere then it may be okay.

I don't understand what you mean by the badge? If the mission is lightweight and you prefer the low-mass challenge then I can put it there and you can use that badge, yes.

[Ziv]

All right, here's my attempt.

One launch

No refuelings.

One Hitchhiker crew cabin.

Crew of six.

Mission done in 0.25, but most of assembly was done in 0.24.2

Mods used:FAR, B9, KW Rocketry, TAC Fuel Balancer, Better time warp, MechJeb.

1333 parts, the largest rocket I have ever built.

Sorry if some points, particularly orbital rendezvous, seem poorly documented. Imgur won't let me have more than 225 images, so I had to cut out a lot of pictures (in fact, the album is exactly 225 images long).

Also, I can redo the launch with the GUI on if you need it.

Imgur link in case the forum crops the album: http://imgur.com/a/PkWMj#16

http://imgur.com/a/PkWMj

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

OMG your launch rocket is crazy!! And I really like how your main ship looks with those millions of struts. I made a quick calculation and only the modular girder section must weight more than 40 tons...

The Laythe plane looks elegant. Did you bring 2 kerbals only in the Crew Tank? (By the way I hate those crew tanks, too little and lightweight for the amount of Kerbal it can hold... but I can't say you used that part to save weight! )

By the way it was a big fuel/weight waste that you went to low orbit around Vall with the main ship. If you stay on a highly eccentric orbit and go down with the lander is much more efficient. Or maybe you could let your main ship around Jool between too moons and the lander would still be capable to do the landing and return too. At Tylo and Laythe it makes sense if the landers can hardly return.

And I see you used a tug-ship with two little landers for Bop and Pol, that's better optimized. But this is still rare, especially because you could easily refuel your lander from the tug-ship.

That's also strange that you brought the used landers with you to the next destinations and then back home but they were dead weight already (the Kerbals would have had enough room in the Hitch-hiker storage) but later I read you wanted the main ship as a station back at Kerbin so it makes sense.

I liked your Tylo lander too, as you placed two nukes for the last stage - and again, very wasteful on weight and nukes, but I guess you didn't care about it too much. Staging nukes at landers is not a common solution. I also liked the last stage of it, rare reversed solution!

Nice job, thank you for participating!

[Thunderous Echo]

...and again, very wasteful on weight and nukes..

*cough cough* I have 28 nukes *cough cough*

[Ziv]

*cough cough* I have 28 nukes *cough cough*

Maybe that's why you are coughing! Be careful with those!

[Ziv]

.

I was unfair to EdFred with my first review so I rewrote it: click here

Edited October 22, 2014 by Ziv

[Vaporo]

The Laythe plane looks elegant. Did you bring 2 kerbals only in the Crew Tank?

Thank you. I only used the crew tanks during the landings on Laythe and Kerbin. All seats in the plane were full for the Kerbin landing, and the cockpit stored two of the three Kerbals for the Laythe landing. Otherwise, Kerbals were stored in the cockpit and Hitchhiker can on the mothership (I liked to pretend they were on shifts. Four at a time slept or relaxed while the other two were on cockpit duty).

And I see you used a tug-ship with two little landers for Bop and Pol, that's better optimized.

What is... "optimize"

Seriously, doing that wasn't so much a matter of optimization as "Ok, as much as I like big ships, I am still not flying the Lagtron 4000 to two extra moons when I can do it in this thing."

Edited October 22, 2014 by Vaporo

[Gravaar]

*cough cough* I have 28 nukes *cough cough*

IIRC mine had over 50

I needed to get 1200 tons of dead weight into JOOL SOI

Edited October 22, 2014 by Gravaar

[EdFred]

Thanks for the re-review. I get spoiled with a fast connection and didn't take that into account when making the page. I had actually done the Jool-5 Challenge months ago with a single lander that went to all the moons, but what a pain the tookus that was to land, ascend, refuel, change moons, repeat 4 times. Also, I didn't document it. So I wanted to go completely different for my submission. and no refueling needed. I started it building it for a Jebediah level, but decided to stop at level 3 because I would have had to hack a career mode to get all the parts for the challenge.

And holy cow 28 and 50 nukes?!?! I only had 8, and that was including each of the 4 mini-tugs.

[Thunderous Echo]

Actually, I forgot to count the Cthulu and my landers. Really, it was somewhere around 42.

[hazard-ish]

I could edit it down for you. How many hours of raw footage are we talking?

I'm thinking you upload to youtube, I download from youtube, edit, then upload (or the finished file might be smaller so I could just dropbox it), then you could download and upload.

Hey, I really appreciate the offer, but for my videos I will have to edit it down quite a bit anyway. I did the mission without using quicksaves so it didn't take too long, about 3 hours. (Still a long time though!). My main issue is that I don't know what parts I shouldn't edit out. I wouldn't want to remove something that Ziv can use to gauge whether I wasn't cheating.

[hazard-ish]

What was the hardest thing you did?

If the video has a time line and I can click on it anywhere then it may be okay.

I don't understand what you mean by the badge? If the mission is lightweight and you prefer the low-mass challenge then I can put it there and you can use that badge, yes.

The hardest thing that I did was visiting Dres, Eeloo and Moho in one launch without refuelling using stock parts and without quicksaves. I had never even visited Moho before and had only docked once before the mission where I ended up docking 3 times (and I forgot RCS!).

The video does have a timeline, it is about 3 hours long though so you may not want to look at the raw footage.

I don't think I even know what I meant by the badge either;I wrote that post last thing before bed so it doesn't make much sense. My mission isn't low weight at all so I am just wondering if there is a weight limit for the first level of this challenge.

[hazard-ish]

Also, I forgot to mention this earlier but do I actually need to land a lander/rocket on all the moons. I ran out of fuel for my nuclear engines sooner than I would have liked so landed /planted flags on Bop and Pol and then rendezvoused with the ship using only the eva pack. Is that allowed?

[Ziv]

Also, I forgot to mention this earlier but do I actually need to land a lander/rocket on all the moons. I ran out of fuel for my nuclear engines sooner than I would have liked so landed /planted flags on Bop and Pol and then rendezvoused with the ship using only the eva pack. Is that allowed?

Yes, if you really did it. Bop is very hard on EVA so I will need information about your starting/landing/return positions and EVA fuels. If you made a video that's perfect. If I can click on the timeline of the video and quickly jump to any part of the mission then I don't mind if it's long, I can review it quicker.

[hazard-ish]

Yes, if you really did it. Bop is very hard on EVA so I will need information about your starting/landing/return positions and EVA fuels. If you made a video that's perfect. If I can click on the timeline of the video and quickly jump to any part of the mission then I don't mind if it's long, I can review it quicker.

Thanks for the reply, how should I send you the footage? I haven't really done anything like this before.

About the eva on Bop, in the mission I had actually planned to land the whole rocket on them as I did with Vall (inefficient I know but I couldn't be bothered to clutter up my staging with more landers ). I hadn't planned to eva and had never attempted a manoeuvre like this previously so I just hoped it would work. I ended up running out of eva fuel at the last second after rendezvousing with the lander but eventually got him in the ship. A very stressful moment!

[Ziv]

Just upload it to any public video sharing site and link it to here.

[hazard-ish]

Just upload it to any public video sharing site and link it to here.

The video is taking a very long time to produce. Are you sure you want to view it in video form? I could just take screenshots throughout in order to save time.

[kookoo_gr]

I can't believe it my Tylo lander saved the whole Jool-5 mission by pulling a deep dive under 10k on Laythe's atmosphere. Now all i need to do dock it to the main ship and head for Vall. Oh BTW Dres, Eve and Gilly have fallen, now i only need to finish the Jool-5 and Eeloo. with a wait time of 28 years to open a window form Jool to Eeeloo.

[Ziv]

The video is taking a very long time to produce. Are you sure you want to view it in video form? I could just take screenshots throughout in order to save time.

Yeah, pictures are good too, if they are in a convenient handling album with thumbnails. I suggest using imgur (it's free for the first 225 pictures).

[VincentS]

I finally made a video for my Jool 5 mission. I complemented the video that made it through the "disk full" problem with a few screenshots, but I don't think that there is enough material to warrant an award (I was proud of my landing, but sadly none made it to the video…)

Points of note :
- no mod. Ever.
- no dv calculus. Not waiting for window.
- 0.25 carrier mode : no XL tank or engine available, no big docking port, mission on a budget etc…
- only 4 launches from Kerbin : two landers (without launcher -- they are both capable to reach orbit and rendezvous by themselves), one mothership and one fuel tank (each one with its own launcher). Each launch bring a part of the ship (no refuel, not even on LKO)

The assembly
=========


The first ship in orbit was the mothership, designed for science (lab) and rest (hitchhiker), featuring a nice place to contemplate the cosmos (canopy). The first stage was also equipped with 3 poodle engines and a bit of fuel and chutes for the return trip to Kerbin. Second stage had 9 nuclear engines (3x3 radial clusters). The 3 kerbal passengers had an uneventful launch and orbit.

The second ship was a big robotic tanker. It docked behind the mothership quite easily using RCS and a fraction of its abundant monopropellant fuel.

Then came the Laythe plane. Unlike the two other ships, it launched itself from the runway -- and without launcher. Docking was performed without RCS, those being replaced by vernor engines under the plane belly, designed to produced some emergency lift (the lander is actually VTOL capable, even though I didn't used the feature because of oxidizer budget. It could however be useful in order to get away from some bad landing spot)

The typo lander was last. It was a multi staged lander but orbit capable without discarding any stage. First stage is built around a single nuclear engine, second stage features 3-fold symmetric fuel tank legs ending with aerospike and landing leg. The third stage hold only additional fuel tanks. Once again, it docked with using only the main engine, beside the space plane on the mothership rear.

En route to Jool
==========

Even with 9 nuclear engines, Kerbin ejection burn required many orbits. The 4-sections ship was wobbly, but not uncontrollably so -- thanks to the design putting the engine on front, and balancing the landers. Kerbals aboard opened - and finished - the snacks once crossing Jool orbit, and had to make due without for the rest of the multi-year flight before actual Jool intercept… (Yeahh, I didn't use windows !)

The original plan was to aerobrake using Jool, and visit Laythe, Tylo and the other moons thereafter. Everything changed when the pilot managed a Laythe intercept. It turned into a cheap - although retrograde - Laythe orbit. The plane was dispatched for landing (and science !), and had some trouble finding some land. The landing itself was skillfully managed on an island steep slope. But one big problem became apparent after take-off : chasing for an island had taken the plane south, and it was not possible to make an equatorial orbit. The rendez-vous with the mothership was compromised !

The Laythe mistake…
==============

However our courageous Kerbin tried to match orbit to the last oxidizer drop and got an intercept -- but docking with the plane was not possible, and docking with mothership would have been cumbersome and costly (in fuel budget). So our proud Kerbal had to jump ships in EVA. The mothership discarded the empty fuel tank, and the Tylo lander undocked the tank and docked again in its place. This maneuver was possible because there was only one lander left : the fuel tank was used as a double symmetric (and balanced) docking port for landers.

Tylo
===

Tylo had been designed as the next stop. The mothership would sit in low orbit (55km) while various Kerbals would use the Tylo lander in turns to farm science in the system, beginning -- of course -- with Tylo. After refueling and separating the lander, it performed its landing uneventfully. The fuel tanks were dropped before landing, and the aerospike stage shortly after take-off. Even though the remaining lander was low on TWR, the initial push from the second stage was enough to make it to orbit and circulize. There was more than enough fuel to rendez-vous with the mothership, drop the science, refuel, change pilot and go for the another moon.

Moons
====

The now light lander was successfully used for landing and bring science from the other moon, although there has been some short calls. Fuel was usually very low on lander when burning for intercept and docking on mothership back at Tylo orbit (less than a few units in some cases). However, fuel on the mothership was high enough to go for one last daring move…


Back to Laythe
=========

The Laythe near total failure had lead to an EVA last minute ship jump. And the Kerbal had saved itself, but forgot to bring the science results… So one last mission was launched to recover the lost science. It was a bit tricky to get to the ship (in retrograde oblique orbit…) and back with enough fuel to dock, but the science was saved !

Back to earth
========

Their mission duly completed, our Kerbals headed back toward Kerbin. After the ejection burn, it was obvious that the fuel was still plentiful, and Kerbin intercept was achieved without using the first stage fuel and engines… The nuclear engine stage was dropped only for not adding strain to the chutes, and the landing was uneventful.

[Himynameisjake]

Finally got around to a bit of updating, and came to find out that BoatParts isn't supported for .25 yet, so, I'm locked out of my Anemoi project for a while

Oh well, time to be a productive student!

[sdj64]

With .25 and all the other things I'm working on both in real life and KSP, it took a while but I finally rebuilt my Jool-5 ship that I posted when I asked about SXT and Tantares. Now it's all stock parts! (except for Kerbal Engineer) The plan is to do a level 2 + 3, so two kerbals on each moon, 10 kerbals in total, but no science.