Jool-5 challenge: Go Big or go HOME (pix fixed)

[James_Eh]

This would be what I have spent my last ~2 months of free time on. Please bear with me because this is the first time I have ever tried to link an entire album with comments.

I was about to quit playing for lack of motivation (pre-23.5) when the Jool-5 challenge caught my eye. I have since blown up, redesigned, blown up, redesigned, and blown up more crafts than I would care to mention.

The challenge seemed to indicate that this was an all-or-nothing roll of the dice by the KSP, so we went with a 1033 tonne, 370 part monstrosity. (My poor computer!) I expect I will lose points for lack of finesse.

Here is the documentation that I kept as DAISY-B was assembled.

(F9 count : 1 - rendezvous disaster)

CHAPTER 1: Get the beastie put together

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Edited May 1, 2014 by James_Eh
Add F9 count

[James_Eh]

Chapter 2: Get to Jool

Now that DAISY-B was fully assembled, the crew began sending home complaints. They were expected to stay in their command pods until Jool arrival because the HH can was full of food. The burns were going to take forever. They were very nervous about the oft-observed phenomenon of tanks inexplicably falling off large ships en route to Jool. Jeb got to do 3 landings, Bill and Bob only got 2, and the trainees only got one landing each!

Mission Control told them to get over it - they should have listened during the mission briefings. So off they went.

A very nervous moment occurred when it came time to separate the 8 empty OTs. Jeb probably should have done it when the ship was under thrust, but they were right at the end of a burn and decided to finish that up first. Separation was... messy.

(Editor's note: the burn to Jool took almost 2 hours of real time thanks to the low acceleration and lag. MJ was useless for it, we tended to build up oscillations and thus it had to be done by hand. Luckily there was a baseball game on.)

(F9 count - still 1 - despite many many temptations)

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Edited May 1, 2014 by James_Eh

[James_Eh]

Chapter 3: Laythe Operations

Having set up the Laythe encounter, in we go. Tylo is a forgiving beast this time around, and stays out of the way. The direct Laythe aerobrake at something like 10.7 km was quite exciting from a flamey point of view, but alas was not properly recorded.

Upon emerging from the ionization field, it turned out that Mission Control had lost their minds and were insisting on telling the crew where Mun was. All crew involved felt that this was quite irrelevant.

More relevant, however, was the sudden sheepish message from Mission Control, explaining that maybe it didn't make too much sense to lug the weight of the fully-fuelled BVP lander around during the first couple of legs of this journey. Fortunately, the BVP lander had been equipped with an LV-N and a decoupler, which provided lots and lots of dV and allowed the trainees Lumy and Kenrie to fly it to Vall all by themselves to await the arrival of DAISY-B after the Laythe and Tylo missions.

Once that drama had unfolded, Jeb and Bill detached the Laythe lander from DAISY-B and headed down to a sand plain on an island a bit south of the equator where previous research had indicated that there was a nice wide landing area. It all went very very smoothly, except that they missed the target by a couple of km. Not to be denied, Jeb ran the 3+ km to the beach for a swim. Bill, having flown with Jeb before and being ready for such shenanigans, inspected the ship and was a little distraught when Jeb returned from his swim - some struts had sprung from the lander "legs". Without much further ado, they headed back to DAISY-B.

All went exactly as planned, and they were able to rejoin DAISY-B with fuel to spare! The core of the Laythe lander was destined to become one of the two potential rescue vehicles in case the BVP lander got into trouble.

Little did the crew know that this was the last routine moment that they would experience for a while...

(F9 count - still 1 ! - Laythe landing was first-time lucky!)

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Edited May 2, 2014 by James_Eh

[James_Eh]

Chapter 4: Why couldn't it have been the Jool-4 challenge?

This was... traumatic.

After the successful Laythe mission, the intrepid crew of 4 (other 2 awaited patiently at Vall) headed out for Tylo, where Jeb and Bob were scheduled to take the second lander down. Nobody noticed that the trainee Rodtop was becoming more and more sombre, as his frantic messages back to Mission Control with requests for more data went unnoticed due to the apres-Laythe party that was going on.

(edit - forgot the other trauma!) DAISY-B was re-assembled as designed, and boosted for Tylo. Turned out that the gridwork which was OK to hold a smaller lander could not hold a larger vessel, as the ship nearly bent in half. Not a mission killer. The Tylo lander was sent out on its own to get to Tylo. Ah, well, some fuel expended... DAISY-B followed. Crew spirits were still high, until: (end edit)

Rodtop finally had to gather the crew and disclose his findings. Mission Control, conveniently, were on lunch break.

Based upon the behaviour of the Laythe lander, Rodtop had calculated that there was very close to zero chance of the (identical) Tylo lander safely landing. The dV was there, yes - but in an unusable fashion. Some idiot had run the fuel lines backwards. So the secondary engines were going to run out of fuel and be dead weight for the landing because the secondary TANKS had pulled all fuel from them. But that was what the dV calcs were based upon!

Jeb nonchalantly suggested that the empty tanks be jettisoned during the landing. Sounded good, that was also what the dV calcs were based upon. Except - that was where the landing legs were!!!

Finally communications with Mission Control were re-established. They were unconcerned. "Meh, so we ran a few pipes backwards. Just manually transfer fuel. Use MJ."

The crew completed the required EVA shuffles. Jeb and Bob in the lander. Bill and Rodtop in the HH can in orbit, thanking their lucky stars that this was not their pigeon. (Secretly Jeb had been running *cough* simulations. MJ seemed unable to comprehend that the smaller engines would run out of fuel before touchdown, and numerous simulations smeared the ship across the Tylo landscape at 100-200 m/s.)

Jeb sent the results of the sims to Mission Control. They suggested that maybe it was a timing issue. If the descent started from well under 250 KM, maybe there would be time to get the fuel transfers done while in free fall between burns, counteracting the mis-installed fuel lines.

The Laythe lander core was pressed into action. Fuelled from DAISY-B to about half full, it docked to the Tylo lander and guided it down to a 50 KM orbit. From there, it was detached and Jeb began running <cough> sims again.

Finally, a sequence of events was discovered whereby the lander got to Tylo just as the fuel to the two secondary engines ran out, but leaving enough fuel in the secondary tanks for re-ascent. To safely leave Tylo, as soon as they cleared its surface they would blow off the two tanks which held the secondary engines (erm, and the landing legs aka girders...). Then, at about 1 KM, the strap-on tanks would be blown off, leaving the core (with skipper) to head up to orbit. Jeb turned to Bob and tried to give him a high-five for good luck. Bob wanted nothing to do with it. Jeb had only been given one job during the Jool-5 design phase, and the Tylo lander testing was it. Bob fulminated, but what could he do?

Down they went. Frantically killing thrust and pumping fuel (painfully slowly!) between 6 tanks, they managed to get to within 100m of Tylo before the tanks which supplied the two secondary engines ran dry. With the Skipper running full tilt, they careened into the surface at 20 m/s... and BOUNCED. Frenzied corrections followed, and they landed in one piece. The struts stayed in place, as opposed to what happened with the gentle Laythe landing. Obviously 20-30 m/s is the optimum landing speed.

Alas much of the photo record of this foolishness was lost in the data surge that accompanied the BOUNCE, but here is what they recovered:

(Editor's note: I honestly thought the challenge was dead at this point. Watching lander after lander careen into Tylo was not fun. I ultimately learned how to time it manually, ironically, by watching MJ fail. And anybody who wants to complain that I didn't get screen shots of the BOUNCE can go away - I had fallen off of my chair trying to use body language to gain that last 20 m/s.)

(F9 count: 15 : 6 from 250 KM Tylo orbit, 8 from 50 KM Tylo orbit, 1 from rendezvous disaster)

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Edited May 5, 2014 by James_Eh
Forgot the near disater when I triedto boost with the Tylo lander at front and center

[James_Eh]

Chapter 5: On to the easy parts!

Bob and Jeb headed back to rendezvous with DAISY-B. With the two landings universally regarded as by far the toughest under their belt, they anticipated a huge party followed by a series of sedate visits to the smaller 3 moons. The Laythe lander core would ride on one side of Daisy with the Tylo core on the other - providing a pair of possible rescue ships for the BVP lander in case something went awry.

But as they neared DAISY-B they couldn't help but notice a glint from an object floating near her. Visual observations revealed that one of the two sideboard docking parts had simply taken it upon itself to fall off. Panic ensued.

Ultimately it was decided that this was not a mission killer. The two lander cores were drained of fuel and left behind at Tylo. Jeb and Bob EVA'd to the HH can and a smaller-than-planned ship headed to Vall to reunite with Lumy and Kenrie. The party, however, was very subdued. Now the BVP lander had to perform 3 landings with no possible backup. (Jeb pointed out that it was possible to land DAISY-B herself on Bop and Pol at least. Bill and Bob took him into the back to explain why this was a poor idea.)

They headed to Vall for the reunion. All went smoothly despite the computers insisting on displaying a red obstacle on the map view. The BVP lander was safely docked to DAISY-B and the usual crew shuffle began, as Jeb and Kenlie had to trade spots since Jeb and Lumy were scheduled to head down to Vall as part of Lumy's training. Jeb and Kendry had some problems trying to jockey for position on the same ladder which resulted in Jeb being thrown far away from the ship, but being an experienced EVA'er he recovered in no time.

At this point Mission Control chimed in, wondering why they hadn't brought one of the two lander cores from Tylo in the center docking position - at least they could have had a rescue ship at Vall. The crew looked at one another... and turned off the radio in embarrassment.

Lumy had a brief moment of panic when the computer removed Jeb from sections of the crew manifest, but all turned out fine and down they headed with Lumy at the controls. The LV-N and small fuel tank were used to deorbit and then decoupled, to smash into the surface out of the way somewhere. A textbook manual landing turned into a fiasco 50m above the surface when Lumy attempted a slight course correction and wound up (after much flailing in circles) headed back up to a 4 km altitude. Jeb was tired and felt that Lumy had learned enough for one day, and engaged MJ to "Get us the H*** down". Luckily, since this was a training mission the lander had been supplied with lots of extra dV.

One final ignominity remained for Lumy as he was dressed down by Jeb for fooling around on the top of the lander. However ultimately they decided that Vall was not too different from Minmus, kind of dull really, and Lumy took them back up, only missing the intended orbit inclination by 6 degrees. Jeb signed him off as fully trained.

(Editor's note - I so very much wanted to F9 after the docking port fell off, but realized that the last F5 had been BEFORE the Tylo landing. So that was right out as an option. Anyway it didn't represent sure death for the challenge, so things were allowed to continue. Also, that was one of my worst landing attempts EVER. I still don't know how it all got away from me.)

(F9 count: Still 15 : 6 from 250 KM Tylo orbit, 8 from 50 KM Tylo orbit, 1 from rendezvous disaster)

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Edited May 2, 2014 by James_Eh

[James_Eh]

Chapter 6: Easy Times in the outer Jool system

With the BVP lander reunited with DAISY-B and all of the crew back together, they headed out to Pol. (Bop was being left for last, to burn as little fuel as possible dealing with the inclination.) A straightforward encounter was followed by a circulization burn and the EVA shuffle began again, resulting in Bill and Kenlie being all set to head down to the surface.

As per standard training protocol, Bill turned off MJ during the descent and made Kenlie do it by hand. Kenlie came through with shining colours, far outperforming the mess that Lumy had made of Vall. Bill felt he could have found a slightly less tilted landing zone, but kept his concerns to himself. As they explored the little moon, Jeb got on the radio with Bill and dared him to do a jetpack orbit. Bill regretfully declined - he had responsibilities to Kenlie. Instead he tried to teach the rookie how to use the jetpack to have fun in microgravity, but Kenlie turned out to be afraid of heights...

Kenlie made an excellent ascent, but had so much trouble docking the craft that Bill ultimately let him off the hook and engaged MJ. Despite the minor issues, Bill signed Kenlie off as fully trained.

At this point the crew were beginning to be a bit concerned about fuel levels. Most of what had seemed to be an overabundance of fuel at the start of the mission had been burnt away, and not always in the most efficient manner. The mission plan called for a brute force approach to Bop - escape Pol to Jool orbit, do the plane change to match Bop, then transfer. It was decided to scrap this plan and be smarter about it. The crew waited in low orbit around Pol until they could generate an encounter with Bop as it dove through the ecliptic. This turned out to mean 30+ days in orbit around Pol. However the new plan succeeded wildly, and eventually Bop orbit was achieved for a fraction of what the original plan would have cost.

Bob and Rodtop headed down to the surface. Rodtop was chomping at the bit - this was his first landing of the entire mission. With Bob's coaching he performed nearly flawlessly, missing the landing target by a few km but still finding a suitable spot to put it down. Great rejoicing could be heard over the radio - the BVP lander had survived all 3 landings! By now everybody was beginning to get antsy about heading home, so Bob and Rodtop kept the Bop visit to a relatively short one and Rodtop piloted them back to the DAISY-B without incident. Bob signed him off with top marks, even granting him bonus points for having wanted to (but not being allowed to) make the ascent from Bop at full power.

Fuel was pumped out of the BVP lander for the last time, rebalanced among the 4 OT's, and everybody heaved a sigh of relief. 4000 m/s was far more than enough to get home. The adventure was almost over!

(F9 count: Still 15 : 6 from 250 KM Tylo orbit, 8 from 50 KM Tylo orbit, 1 from rendezvous disaster)

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Edited May 3, 2014 by James_Eh

[James_Eh]

Chapter 7: Going HOME !!!!!

The crew worked to find the perfect departure from Bop and were thrilled to find an el-cheapo maneuver which would put them back into the ecliptic and make the voyage home a walk in the park. They reflected sadly upon the fact that if they had been this meticulous with all burns leading up to this point, they could have had 10,000 m/s or so of dV left and paid some other targets visits on the way home.

Waiting through the 60+ days until they could finally be free of the Jool SOI was tough on the crew. Jeb started having nightmares about previous missions. Kenlie blew a gasket at one point about how his name had been spelled wrong at least a dozen times here and there in various mission reports. The fact that there were only 6 seats for 6 spacers (2 in BVP lander can, 4 in HH) was starting to chafe with everybody. Bob's suggestion that they go back and get one of the lander cores left at Tylo was thoroughly shot down.

Crew morale was vastly improved when, approaching the orbit of Dres, they played a game of "Who can plot a better encounter? Kerbals or MJ?" and were only beaten by 3 m/s by the computer. The correction was made, and they were committed.

The first views of Kerbin brought smiles to all. After 6 plus years, they were HOME! Mission Control wanted them to check this and that, seems they were worried about the whole hurtling-through-the-atmosphere thing, but our intrepid 6 had achieved Nirvana. The first aerobrake was a flamey, shaky affair - but they remained smiling. A second, more gentle aerobrake to set AP to 120 KM went unnoticed, and the circularization burn was handled completely by computer because the crew were all shaking off the effects of the return party. The planet rejoiced below them, massive $$$ were allocated to a new improved space program, and the crew went on to bigger and better things. (Except Kenphy. His fear of heights, plus the cumulative impact of seeing his name spelled wrong so many times during the 6 year mission, led him to persue a career in... sigh... politics.)

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