Jool Aerocapture

[nobbers12345]

What would be a general range for aerobraking at Jool? It's the first time Ive gone there.

[SpenSpaceCorp]

Try by trial and error, but as a general guideline, stay above 100 km. My range generally is around 108km-120km I believe. It varies depending on your speed and what final orbit you wish to achieve.

[Taki117]

Click here and Enjoy Assuming you are using Stock Aerodynamics then it will allow you to find the proper aerocapture altitude for your desired orbit.

[makinyashikino]

115-120ish. I remember my first aerobrake at Jool. I thought it was like Eve, and stopped at around 80ish. How wrong I was.

[Vanamonde]

I usually use 118kms when I'm aiming to end up on an orbit among its moons.

[RocketPilot573]

I use 118-125 Km when going to Jools moons, 118 for Laythe, and 125 for Tylo, Bob, and Pol.

[zerotwo]

In my experience, 119.5km is the perfect zone to leave you in a very oblong orbit. Can make it easier to access other moons in the system.

[godefroi]

I've attempted two aerobrakes at Jool. Both times, I entered Jool's SOI at a speed of 1701m/s. The first attempt was at 135km ap, which resulted in no capture. The second attempt was at 127km ap, which resulted in a capture with an apoapsis of 210mkm (million km).

[Kasuha]

I know I'm not answering the question here but the safest way to park in Jool system is to use gravity slingshot off Tylo or Laythe to slow down. Unlike aerobraking it can be planned in detail long ahead as the patched conics system allows you to see you're going to have Laythe/Tylo encounter all the way from LKO and allows you to set up the slingshot accurately as soon as you enter Jool SOI at the latest. Also unlike aerocapture, you can use the slingshot to fix your inclination.

[bsalis]

If you have MechJeb, it has a realtime aerobrake calculator that you can use.

Also, if your target is Laythe, you can aerocapture there directly. Though for your first time, maybe stick with Jool.

[MrPopcup]

in my opinion, no need for trial and error, or even mechjeb, just ask the awesome community, that's why it's made!

to topic, I usually Aerobrake at 118km to get to laythe, anything above ( until 125km ) will get you further away until Pol,

Have fun and be sure to make a topic showing us your success!

[Zad Fnark]

I had relied on the wiki to determine braking heights, but I'm now wary of those. Last night, I set a ship to hit Duna at 12,500 m, and I came a hair's breadth of re-entering the entire rig. I wound up burning a ton of delta-v to get a passable orbit going again.

I suppose you can't use a single altitude, since your angle of approach may vary.

ZF-

[Kasuha]

The matter is, there is no single braking height. The faster you move, the deeper you need to go to enter the same result orbit. Recommended depths usually work "more or less well" for reasonable range of SOI entering speeds. But accidental Tylo slingshot on the way may throw whole handful of sand into the works, not just by changing your direction, but also your speed.

[Precambrianmollusc]

But accidental Tylo slingshot on the way may throw whole handful of sand into the works, not just by changing your direction, but also your speed.

Accidental, nothing accidental about it, Tylo does it deliberately, or seams to every time I go there. That moon is a bad one.

[Tokay Gris]

What would be a general range for aerobraking at Jool? It's the first time Ive gone there.

It has already been said, but it bears to be said again.

Since the landing autopilot from MechJeb includes a usable aerobraking calculator, it makes it really easy.

And since almost everybody seems to be using MechJeb these days (I am pretty certain that in the not to far future something like it will be included into the vanilla game), why not use it?

A while back I did a huge mission to Jool (could be somewhere around in the "Mission reports" still) with countless aerobrakes and the calculator came in really handy.

(I did copy my story and posted it into a wordpress page.... minionsinspace.wordpress.com ... maybe there is some information there you can use)