Big, Big plans!

[Killerdude8]

So, As none of you may know, I Don't assemble interplanetary craft in LKO, Infact, I don't assemble ships anywhere. Everything I launch is purpose built to get me to a specific location and back in a single launch.

So, Today, I have decided I am going to assemble a nice large Interplanetary Ship to tour the Joolian system, Landing(maybe not returning) on all bodies! Maybe I'll toss a Probe with like 15 parachutes into Jool, See if it floats..

But yes, Onto buisness, Any ideas for Modules I should toss up?

Already have a few basic ideas running through my head atm, Habitation, Landers, Engines and Probes.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

Fuel, habitation, power, !SCIENCE! And maybe a probe docking array

[Richy teh space man]

Power, space for crew, engines, fuel and RCS are the staples of any large ship.

Science pods, Kethane and map sats make good additions too.

Edit: One thing that will help is modular construction, meaning that you can switch out or add components. My grand tour ships can vary between carrying probes, landers, air ships or space planes. (They probably could do all of those at the same time but frame rate drops to a slideshow). That gives them a reuseable element.

Edited November 16, 2013 by Richy teh space man

[Dun Kirk]

"not necessarily returning" Ah I see what you did there...

a place holder for the "coming soon" mining rigs?

[Killerdude8]

"not necessarily returning" Ah I see what you did there...

a place holder for the "coming soon" mining rigs?

Quite possibly, I think if I'm gonna build my first ever interplanetary Mothership, Might as well build my first off-Kerbin Base.

[FlamedSteak]

You don't really need RCS unless you need to dock; a couple of rotation wheels in the right spots will do the trick and save you some weight and one less resource you need to manage. A little more patience is necessary too.

[bsalis]

My 2c...

- Test all the components before embarking on yo mission.

- It doesn't take many crafts brought together to make your Big Big Plans having Big Big Lag... so economise on parts as best as you can

[UnthinkableThinker]

15 parachutes on Jool? The atmosphere is so thick you got plenty of room to stop your ship, unless it's a 500t one .

[SRV Ron]

15 parachutes on Jool? The atmosphere is so thick you got plenty of room to stop your ship, unless it's a 500t one .

The atmosphere is so thick on Jool you don't need them. Near the surface, thrusters and most engines are useless, Once you drop below the so called surface, POOF!

[sporkafife]

I may have just misread your post, but do you want 1 ship that can get to Jool and land on every moon with 1 ship? If you want to land on all he bodies in the Joolian system, it would be approximately 10^26 times easier to send down small disposable landers to each planet and then leave them. Building one ship with enough fuel/power to get there, and land on every body with a crew is very difficult.

[OneEyedShark]

The atmosphere is so thick on Jool you don't need them. Near the surface, thrusters and most engines are useless, Once you drop below the so called surface, POOF!

It has a surface !?

[magnemoe]

I may have just misread your post, but do you want 1 ship that can get to Jool and land on every moon with 1 ship? If you want to land on all he bodies in the Joolian system, it would be approximately 10^26 times easier to send down small disposable landers to each planet and then leave them. Building one ship with enough fuel/power to get there, and land on every body with a crew is very difficult.

Jool science explorer.

Launched as one ship, however it was refueled in orbit and the optional Laythe rover was added during refueling.

The Laythe and Tylo lander was disposable, both used rover seat on top of docking port. Kerbal left seat who was decopled and the science module was docked to mothership.

Vall, Pol and Bop was visited by an reuseable lander, pointing towards the camera, it had two spare science modules who was docked and used vising Pol and Bop.

Reuseable lander was of this design, here on Gilly.

I also carried two probes who was dropped into Jool.

[Killerdude8]

15 parachutes on Jool? The atmosphere is so thick you got plenty of room to stop your ship, unless it's a 500t one .

I know, But I want to make the probe float, Literally Float, Hoping enough parachutes will stop my fall completely!

I may have just misread your post, but do you want 1 ship that can get to Jool and land on every moon with 1 ship? If you want to land on all he bodies in the Joolian system, it would be approximately 10^26 times easier to send down small disposable landers to each planet and then leave them. Building one ship with enough fuel/power to get there, and land on every body with a crew is very difficult.

Building a Mothership, to bring various smaller craft to do the landing and what have you, I just docked my Engines with the core.

[magnemoe]

I know, But I want to make the probe float, Literally Float, Hoping enough parachutes will stop my fall completely!

You can do this however it require hooliganlab's balloons, with them you can make an probe who floats, parachutes will only slow you down.

In KSP 0.18 and 0.19 you could "land" on Jool using balloons and the balloons and the airship anchor from KAS, Jeb visited the surface back in 0.19 lowered down with an cable from an balloon, he was unable to plant the flag and I reported it as an bug, in 0.20 they took away the surface, now you get destroyed at -250 meter I think and anchors don't work so you can not save or switch to other ships.

[Arsonik]

You can do this however it require hooliganlab's balloons, with them you can make an probe who floats, parachutes will only slow you down.

In KSP 0.18 and 0.19 you could "land" on Jool using balloons and the balloons and the airship anchor from KAS, Jeb visited the surface back in 0.19 lowered down with an cable from an balloon, he was unable to plant the flag and I reported it as an bug, in 0.20 they took away the surface, now you get destroyed at -250 meter I think and anchors don't work so you can not save or switch to other ships.

Booooooo that sucks. I tried landing on Jool once, when I first started playing in .18. I didn't use wiki's or any guides at the time, I explored everything for myself before I allowed myself to look at the forums even. Never again

[Epthelyn]

I may have just misread your post, but do you want 1 ship that can get to Jool and land on every moon with 1 ship? If you want to land on all he bodies in the Joolian system, it would be approximately 10^26 times easier to send down small disposable landers to each planet and then leave them. Building one ship with enough fuel/power to get there, and land on every body with a crew is very difficult.

Provided the mothership has enough fuel and a lander is taken to Jool which is capable of landing on Tylo, then it's probably easier to keep using the same lander, not to mention more of a 'grand tour' type thing (which makes it much more satisfying IMO). That's based on my assumption that Tylo is the body that requires the most dV to ground and back from orbit (Pretty sure it's true, but I'm not sure how much impact Laythe's atmosphere has on dV).

At that point it's worth mentioning that if a lander is taken to Jool which has enough dV to get from orbit around Tylo, land on Tylo and then return to orbit and dock, then, provided enough fuel is available, that lander could quite easily get back to Kerbin and land without parachutes.

If you're going for that approach, then just bring along 1 or 3 (depending on the lander) Kerbals and when you're done leave the mothership as a permanent base in Jool orbit and send the lander home by itself.

Edited November 16, 2013 by Epthelyn

[Killerdude8]

Welll, This mission was a Success all the way up to the landing, In which case, My powered descent was too fast and we crashed and exploded, Killing everyone.

Sexy Pics.

http://imgur.com/a/nCEkN