Porcine Avionics' Jool Expedition

[ArmchairGravy]

This is Porcine Avionics' first manned return mission to Jool. Advances in technology and pilot skills, especially the success of our Duna mission, have allowed us to gain the confidence to undertake this bold adventure.

Mission Statement: Perform drone reconnaissance and manned landings on all 5 of Jool's moons. Return crew and data from manned landings to Kerbin.

Based upon the mission statement, Porcine Avionics decided to tackle Jool with 3 craft: a manned mothership, a drone mothership, and a heavy lander for Tylo.

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Construction of the motherhsip proceeded smoothly, and all 3 ships are currently inserted into Jool aerobraking trajectories.

Probotron 2084 will shed its drone payload once a stable orbit is achieved, and drone reconnaissance will locate landing sites.

The plan for the manned missions is to undock Snowball and Squealer from Napoleon once the Jool system is reached, aerobrake them separately, and establish orbits around Val, Layethe and Jool respectively. The landers' ascent stages will function as landers for Bop and Pol. The imaginatively named Tylo Lander will only be used for landing on Tylo. The Old Major tug will remain attached to Napoleon station until departure, and will be the fuel dump. Napoleon station will be the return craft.

We at Porcine Avionics are fairly confident in the success of this mission. More to come as this historic mission unfolds.

Update 1:

We have successfully aerobraked Napoleon, Snowball, and Squealer. Snowball was the lead ship, and got a lucky break: it was able to come out of the aerobrake on Jool straight into a Layethe intercept, which was parleyed into a Layethe aerobrake. Snowball is currently in orbit around Layethe. Napoleon and Squealer had successful Jool aerobrakes, and are waiting for their Layethe intercepts. Once all 3 are in orbit around Layethe, we'll dock everything back together and top off the landers' fuel tanks.

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We then switched to Probotron 2084, as by this time it had intercepted Jool, and was heading down Jool's gravity well. Unfortunately, the Hell Kraken devoured the ship as soon as we switched over to it, and the vessel was lost. While we at Porcine Avionics are saddened by the loss of this vessel, we are relieved that it was unmanned. So far no kerbals have been harmed in our attempt to explore the Jool system.

Tylo Lander is still coasting toward Jool intercept.

Lesson learned so far: It would have been easier to use just one heavy lander glommed onto the top of Napoleon station instead of trying to manage a small fleet of separate ships. The original plan was to have the landers pursue their missions independently, but I don't think is is feasible given the landers delta v.

Edited December 26, 2013 by ArmchairGravy