My first Jool mission! Multiship w/ 6 probes [pics]

[thereaverofdarkness]

I forgot to take pics of liftoff, or perhaps I didn't think I would be successful. My hard work did pay off, however, and it allowed me to take a grand tour of the Joolian system!

Here is the spacecraft arriving at Pol, and the little pink diamond is the first probe, sent to explore Pol:

The Pol probe was, unfortunately, unable to land. It, like most of these, was ion-powered and the solar photovoltaic panels were insufficient to power the engine at a high enough thrust to overcome the gravity and make a gentle landing. So I took it back into a safe orbit. Oh well

This is the Pol probe:

So after that, I took the mothership out of Pol orbit and sent it to bring my Tylo lander in for a nice close approach. I was trying to bring the Tylo periapsis down from the original burn point near Pol, but it wouldn't respond. It wasn't until after I started time acceleration that I realized it was because I was looking at the maneuver node's periapsis. I delete the node and see that the periapsis is....gone! I thought oh no prob, we're just on the edge of Tylo orbit, we got plenty of time to get a periapsis!

Right?

Yeah well try as I might, I couldn't bring the periapsis up. Every time I had to shut the engines off and let the batteries charge again, the planet moon grew significantly closer. I was in danger of losing the whole mission, save for the Pol and maybe Tylo probe!

But at the last minute, I finally came up with an idea. If I detach both the Tylo and Vall probes, I'll drop a lot of weight. Maybe I'd finally be able to get a periapsis! Well, it barely worked! Unfortunately I didn't take any pics during that crisis. (Every entry seemed to happen at night anyway, so wouldn't have looked like much.) I docked my Vall and Tylo lander with each other, and used some of the Vall lander's fuel to bring both into a stable orbit low over Tylo. My original plan was to dock both together and use some of the Vall lander's fuel to assist the Tylo lander, then have the Vall lander fly to Vall under its own power and land. This was to work because both landers were the same design for balance reasons, while Vall has far less gravity than Tylo. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough delta-v for both missions, but I was able to use the Vall lander's remaining fuel to assist the Tylo lander's descent, so at least I got the hardest part out of the way!

Tylo lander, with a tiny bit of fuel left:

Don't use this design!! It needs about 50-75% more delta-v.

Here's the mothership shortly after averting that disaster:

This was taken from medium orbit around Tylo (or rather, medium altitude in a highly eccentric orbit), and you can see Laythe next to Jool. Vall had just hidden itself behind Laythe on the right side--it might still be visible in fact. I saw a dot by Laythe and checked the map to make sure it was Vall, but didn't snap the pic in time before it went away to hide.

Well after a short break, it was time to take the probe off to bigger and better things. (A big green thing! And a better, blue thing that isn't actually bigger!) I decided to take advantage of the Oberth effect and increase my fuel efficiency. Or maybe I just wanted to be a badass. For whichever reason, I brought the Tylo periapsis down to 10km, and made an exit burn at periapsis:

You can see the mothership's four engines lit in the center, with the three remaining ion probes' engines around the side. I would have brought the periapsis down further, but I didn't know how high the mountains were and couldn't check on the KSP wiki as I had no internet at the time. Oh well, maybe later I'll get a surface-scraping shot.

Next up, I took the mothership to Jool apoapsis and lowered the periapsis really low. I got a Laythe intersect. I launched the Laythe probe, then continued lowering periapsis until I got a Jool intersect, at which point I launched the Jool probe. Here's the two probes in space, and I'm not sure how I got an image with both of them together *scratches head*

(edit) obviously, because that's the Jool probe and the Mothership - the Laythe probe isn't in the image!

Anyway, I got the Jool probe into an aerobraking maneuver which looked pretty cool:

And coming up the other side, I get a beautiful sunrise:

As I am posting this, I am thinking to myself that I may have forgotten the Laythe probe for too long and lost it during time acceleration, so I'm going to have to go back and check. But I think worst-case scenario I can take the Jool probe to Laythe instead--or maybe I should take a plane to Laythe? If the research tree ever gets any bigger, I'm sure the points from a mission like that would pay off!

Well that's all I have for now! I may or may not finish updating this.

Edited November 29, 2013 by thereaverofdarkness