Jool 5 - Kethane Expedition Version - Osperus III

[SSSPutnik]

Hello all. I've done a few Jool 5 missions so far. This is the most ambitious yet.

It's also the largest launches and ship I've ever built.

The Challenge

You can find the Jool 5 Kethane Expedition thread and rules here.

(I highly recommend any of the Jool 5 mission variants. Ziv posted the challenges and they are well thought out, with great attention to detail.

I commend Ziv for the amount of time and effort he has spent maintaining the challenge.

The challenge is time consuming but very rewarding. Some of the entries are marvels to behold, (especially some of the low mass ones, who would think a 31 ton launch weight craft could do this!?))

Basically, you must depart Kerbin with one ship, get to Jool and then land on all 5 moons and return back to Kerbin. This is the Kethane Expedition variant.

I am using the following mods. (Thanks for all the great work modders!) Apologies if I miss any.

RemoteTech2 (I want to establish a comms network).

Kethane (Need this for the challenge).

KAS (For fuel transfer and winch on sky cranes).

Infernal Robotics (Nice movable radiation shields, antenna and rover spotlights).

KW Rocketry (Used extensively for launches).

LLL (Really like the look of LLL parts and they are great for building large structures).

MechJeb (Makes life so much easier).

B9 (Some cargo bay parts).

Kerbal Alarm Clock.

Chatterer.

FAR (Makes flying more interesting, makes aero braking more alarming).

The Ship

My main craft is the Osperus III. It is the fifth ship I have made for the challenge and the third to be submitted officially. (I hope!)

(The first, tanks kept falling off and was aborted, the fourth had major design issues, specifically a tendency to ostrich into the ground when landing and too low a TWR).

The ship consists of:

2 x Large Kethane mining rovers.

2 x Large skycrane/tanker/landers.

4 x Mini bases with room for 5 Kerbals each.

2 x RCS tugs.

4 x Communications satellites and Kethane scanners.

2 x Jool science penetrator probes.

1 x Communications dish to talk back to Kerbal.

1 x 5 man ion powered return craft. (With a small Kethane store to carry a sample of this new substance back to Kerbin).

Crew capacity total is 83, however for comfort on this long mission, we are carrying a crew of only 42. The total count includes landers and bases.

Some other stats:

Starting wet mass: 1360t

Cost: Around 900M$ (Not including fuel launches or assembly launches).

Part count: 1115

Jebediah Kerman is in overall command.

Engines

Main thrust is provided by 2 x LLL NE-800 Open-Cycle Nuclear Engines. (Thrust at max temperature is 234kN each, ISP is 800).

These give off a LOT of radiation, so crew are shielded by three methods.

Physical separation, fuel tanks and four movable radiation shields, (which also host solar panels for extra power).

"This engine achieves it's raw power via lax nuclear reactor shielding laws and an open-cycle engine, meaning that it's legal to pump propellant through the middle of a nuclear reactor. This has a minor and harmless side-effect, the blasting of chunks of the reactor and fuel rods out of the back. It may also be worth noting that opening up the throttle too much can over-load the cooling system, this may lead to a slight 'nuclear meltdown' effect."

One nice bonus, it has always on power generation. (1.5 units)

Due to the mass of the entire ship, my initial TWR was 0.02 ! Some long burns ahead.

I did consider increasing thrust, however they would have added either more mass, or more parts.

I also think a ship like this, it is more realistic for burns to take hours, if not days. I am willing to live with it. One burn I estimate will take around 9 hours real time.

More to come.

[Last updated 14-May-2014]

Edited May 14, 2014 by SSSPutnik

[Speeding Mullet]

This ship is a monster and I am waiting with baited breath for the report to follow, the ship looks awesomely skifi and has lots of bits and bobs waiting to be deployed. Have you calculated your potential points, or are you waiting to see at the end?

Couple more questions on your choice of mods if you don't mind:

RemoteTech2: Is it a natural progression in terms of adding challenge to the game from using regular part mods and kethane?

B9 and KW: I haven't been able to get these mods working together and couldn't find a solution. Did you have any issues?

Infernal robotics: I'm looking at a long term mission at the moment, would you recommend for bases?

I can see now why your burn is taking a while. I had no less than 16 LV-N's powering the main ship along. I was going to use the gigantic waste spraying monsters on my ship but I couldn't get used to the time the engines took to cycle down, it kept on messing up my orbital maneuvers.

I'll leave you with this: Great ship, great challenge, best of luck with your mission I'll be following, and I cannot wait to see that thing aerobrake at Jool!

[SSSPutnik]

Some initial pictures. This will be cleaned up later.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[SSSPutnik]

Assembly.

The main ship was launched in a single go. Tanks were empty otherwise in would have required an even more massive launcher. This included all probes and satellites. Many of the crew accompanied this launch.

Initial orbit was circular, 73km altitude.

Next to launch were the sky crane/landers with accompanying rovers.

These required disposable boosters to reach rendezvous. (They are intended to land rovers, not orbit them).

Two of these were docked and orientated in opposite direction in order to balance mass.

Next up, refueling. This was a problem given the massive amounts of fuel required. (Talking around 1000 tons!)

I built a custom fuel truck and sent four launches to refuel the entire ship.

Lastly - two launches, each carrying two mini bases with RCS tugs. These were split up and docked into place.

Remaining crew were sent up with the sky crane and base launches.

At this point we were ready to go.

EVA

Just before plane change correction in mid journey, mission control detected three errors.

Plane change burn was done. Remaining deltaV is now approximately 10000ms.

Detected faults:

1) Pipe connectors - mini bases - incorrect type.

2) ALARM FAULT AE35 unit - reported by MechJeb - RCS tug 2.

3) RemoteTech local command module MISSING.

Thomrey Kerbin was assigned to try and fix the first two issues since the third could not be corrected without sending a ship with the part included for attachment to the main craft.

Deep in space Thomrey first inspected the faulty AE35 unit but could find no fault in the unit.

Thomrey then headed to one of the rovers in order to remove a pipe attachment and manually attach it to one of the mini landers. He removed it nice and easily and then attached it to mini lander 4. All in all a success. Mission control wrote off fault 2 as a false alarm. Thomrey reboarded at lander 4.

Edited May 14, 2014 by SSSPutnik

[SSSPutnik]

This ship is a monster and I am waiting with baited breath for the report to follow, the ship looks awesomely skifi and has lots of bits and bobs waiting to be deployed. Have you calculated your potential points, or are you waiting to see at the end?

I'll add up at the end, who knows, it could still all go terribly wrong

Couple more questions on your choice of mods if you don't mind:

RemoteTech2: Is it a natural progression in terms of adding challenge to the game from using regular part mods and kethane?

B9 and KW: I haven't been able to get these mods working together and couldn't find a solution. Did you have any issues?

Infernal robotics: I'm looking at a long term mission at the moment, would you recommend for bases?

Questions are great!

I am using RemoteTech 2 for a number of reasons.

I find it an interesting mod, it adds to the realism of the game! I will probably NOT be controlling any craft via it, though I could if I wanted to if all goes to plan.

Realistically any mission such as this would require communications back to Kerbin. I have satellites in Kerbin orbit that can relay to mission control. Once at Jool I should be able to put in Jool relay satellites and get coverage over the Jool system.

Antenna were designed with the range to do this.

B9+KW = Lot of memory use. I used Active Memory Reduction to reduce usage and seemed to work OK, I also installed community mod fix for B9 in order to fix minor glitches. Before I tried B9 and it just crashed KSP.

Infernal Robotics is pretty awesome for adding realism, not to mention function, you can turn antenna but also engines! Would be great for assisting with docking modules etc. It is limited in some ways, but still fun to play with.

I can see now why your burn is taking a while. I had no less than 16 LV-N's powering the main ship along. I was going to use the gigantic waste spraying monsters on my ship but I couldn't get used to the time the engines took to cycle down, it kept on messing up my orbital maneuvers.

The LLL nukes are more realistic in this respect, running a nuke at max, then instant shutoff would cause massive issues. Landers using these engines with MJ are almost impossible to land, ( the dwindling thrust causes em to flip usually). On manual its not so bad.

With my craft, the low TWR means its kind of insignificant.

I'll leave you with this: Great ship, great challenge, best of luck with your mission I'll be following, and I cannot wait to see that thing aerobrake at Jool!

Aww shucks. Bit scared of the aerobrake. I'm trying with FAR and worried Important Bits[TM] may fall off. If they so I will reload and dump FAR.

Edited May 13, 2014 by SSSPutnik