Jool 5 tour

[technion]

Hey guys,

This is a log for my visit to all five Jool moons. It took a tonne of planning, I'm amazed it went through as well as it did. It was done in .23 career mode.

This is the main command module. You can see on each side going up with it, the small landers for Bop and Vall, each fitted with a materials bay and science instruments.

Launch

Parked in a high orbit for dockings.

Next in orbit is the Laythe lander. It's a demonstration of the new RAPIER engine.

Docking really was painful, because I had that bug where the nav ball targets don't line up. Once docked, I transferred the lander, and filled up on fuel.

The tylo lander launched next. This asparagus staged unit had a heck of a lot more dv than flight engineer knows about.

Docked on the other side of the Laythe lander. Now the counterweight tanks on the Laythe lander make sense.

The assembled rocket with most of the landers.

[technion]

Now comes the transport. It's the largest transport I've ever launched into orbit, and naturally required the largest lifter I've ever build. It also has two more landers tag along.

Seriously powerful takeoff.

With all the lifter gone, this is the transport stage. It still has a lot of work to circularise.

Just look at the length of that burn. The dilemma: By the time we create the node, we're a minute late on the burn. It's not because I sat around waiting, it's because we've just dropped the mainsails. You can still manage orbit but it takes some work.

The mothership dropping the small transport it's been using so far, which will deorbit.

Successful docking. Putting two senior docking ports together when they align the ship is soooo much easier than standard docking ports radially attached.

The final launch: A fuel top up.

Transferring fuel across. It's ridiculous how much the transport burnt while circularising and rendezvousing.

Separation of the final product!

[technion]

The burn to Jool was long.. now you see why I packed so many nukes.

Transfer windows? Who's ever heard of such a thing?

After enough burning, the side tanks drop. Being asparagus staged, this works very well to provide a large dv.

Aerobraking over Jool always looks amazing.

High over Jool.

The first EVA of the mission, heading into the Tylo lander.

[technion]

Heading to Tylo first was strategic.. even if it wasn't the first place we landed. Here we are separating our Pol lander, designed to get to Pol and back under its own power from Tylo orbit.

This was supposed to be ion powered. But even on Pol, I couldn't build an ion unit with a TWR > 1 carrying a materials bay. So the first stages are liquid fuelled, with ion engines for use for the trip back from Pol.

Yo Pol!

Samples. Samples everywhere.

Time to leave.

Laythe! Where'd you.... Turns out the > 3000 dv in ion engines weren't even needed, even to get into a Laythe orbit.

[technion]

There's another lander destined to leave from this Tylo orbit, an unmanned probe heading to Jool.

It feels so wrong plotting courses to just fly right into a planet.

Science!

Aerobraking into the planet.

Doing ALLL the science.

The chutes aren't to allow any form of landing, but to give all the science the time to transmit before we hit the bottom. Hard to see, but there are RTG's topping it up while everything transmits.

[technion]

Back to the mothership.. looking considerably smaller already.

Tylo really is a pain. There are a lot of contradictory guides around, and that's what I expected. You need to find what works for your rocket and its TWR. I couldn't land if my pe was > 100km. It was a suicide burn from about 60km.

One stage in, dropped four tanks with LN-909s.

This landing was awful. I must have made 10+ attempts to get it to not either burn too much fuel, or crash into the planet. Then I had to deal with a tendency to flip this lander, probably another 10+ tries.

Having come down with nine tanks, I'm down to three, and two of them are nearly empty. dv planning is weird.

Welcome to my failure! Despite having tested - extensively I might add - that the ladder allows a kerbal to drop a flag and return, I did not place the appropriate ladders to allow all the science instruments to be gathered. Hence, somehow we managed to reach the materials bay, but the rest of those instruments were just wasted. We fire that section away to make the reorbit lighter.

Away we go.

The standard rockomax needed a bit extra to get a TWR > 1 on Tylo, so you can see some radials around this section. I was VERY worried about whether it was going to pull this off.

Turns out the final stage had plenty of fuel left!

Enough to manage the rendezvous even.

[technion]

Only Bill doesn't go to the mothership. He heads to his next lander.

Draining fuel from those counterweights.

Relocating to the front of the rocket, ensuring we stay symmetrical.

Blowing those empty tanks.

Put back together.

[Speeding Mullet]

Elegant design it's rather well thought out, I think I could take a leaf out of your book on my entry.

[technion]

Laythe presented its own challenges.

I had a very difficult time landing anywhere but the ocean. Then I thought.. I have a jet.

Making a flight where I want to land. After dealing with rockets all this time, it's amazing what I can do with a jet.

Whoohooo!

Bringing it down.

Parachutes deployed quite low.

Success!

[technion]

We went for a sprint to the ocean. It was boring.. but it was another whole surface sample.

Climbing back in.

You'll note the same mistake as the tylo lander. I couldn't retrieve the science. Fortunately, with this rocket, I could bring all the experiments into orbit and grab them there. Note the downward facing intakes were dropped.

For some reason (but I'm guessing) I never saw any exhaust this launch.

Grabbing the data.

Finally blowing the science like we were meant to on the ground.

Recovered!

[technion]

Let's not forget Jeb -he's been in Laythe orbit since visiting Pol. Time for him to rendezvous.

Moar recovery!

[technion]

By this time I was starting to worry about fuel, so we carefully planned the Vall intercept. Went very well.

Lander heading down.

I underestimated what it takes to land on Vall, this was very close to insufficient.

Grabbing all the science.

Like I meant to elsewhere, blowing the science bay before launch.

Nail biting moment.

Turns out we did OK.

Doing even moar science while we're here in orbit. We didn't bother with this for any other moon.

[technion]

Capture time at Bop. The inclination here really blow a lot of fuel.

Landing however is very easy.

Touchdown.

Launch, science module blown.

Very simple rendezvous.

[technion]

Finally ditching that big heavy transport and preparing the command module to fly home.

Fairly good looking intercept.

If there's one thing I hate, it's the anticlimax of landing a mission like this on the dark side of Kerbin. I aerobroke too high and, whilst I could have hit F9 and gone lower, I decided to use what we had.

More aerobraking.

This large capture is a great excuse to use my auxiliary stage. Ever since an early mission only just ran out of fuel before returning, I've bee packing these. It weighs so little there's very little cost, but it's highly effective at adding just that needed bit of dv.

[Technical Ben]

Love it. Reminds me of my automated probes I first sent to Duna/Eve. Plus a much bigger, more elaborate version of the manned one I sent to Duna.

Love it that others also like multi purpose designs.

[technion]

Putting it down.

Science recovered: 8067, plus the extra that was transmitted from Jool.

[Scotius]

So, how much science did you got after recovering the ship? Well thought out and succesful mission. Congrats