Jool-5 Mission report.

[Patupi]

Jool-5 Cluster Helix Mission

OK, despite various computer problems I decided to have a go at the Jool-5 Challenge. My first Attempt was with a traditional mothership + tons of landers. Basically smaller landers are more efficient on fuel for landing on small bodies. However my computer is rather low end for KSP now so as I was part way through doing it like that (Tylo lander + Mothership + Two orbital tugs + Laythe jet SSTO + 1 of 3 boosters) and it was already getting to be too big... I gave up and redesigned things.

This is my first effort, the Snowflake Mothership, before I went back to the drawing board.

So, I tried again and decided to do something special. A complete no staged effort! Great, land with ONE lander to cut down on parts that could do any moon of Jool with no staging. Even Tylo! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Well, I got the ship designed, but the mothership had to be split into two launches as on the ground the part count with the launcher was just extreme! Still, two mothership parts and one lander still worked out pretty good at a hair under 500 parts which my machine just was able to handle without too much slow down (probably five frames a second at a guess)

Half way through launching it I was a little worried about the dV of the mothership, so I boosted the fuel on the second part of the mothership, the booster section. Later on I found it was no where near enough. My lander was just so huge to carry four Kerbals and a science package down to Tylo and back that I ran out of fuel too early on! So, no 'Do mission without refueling' here unfortunately.

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Once up then it was the trek of sending the ship to Jool, and then into orbit of the first target: Tylo. I figured I'd get the worst fuel hog out of the way quickly, then Laythe, then Vall, and finally Bop and Pol. Once I got to Tylo orbit however and found fuel at low levels I re-arranged my schedule, deciding to go for Pol after Tylo, just to have a moon I could land on with minimal fuel before the refueling vessel arrived. Anyway, first a series of pics of the arrival at Tylo.

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Now a landing attempt. I'm using a generic Planesciprobe (Planetary Science Probe) that docks with the lander for each moon, then will be de-orbited back and Kerbin separately. So, dock the probe, burn for de-orbit and... well, it worked... though I had a teeny bit of trouble on getting back to orbit. I got it right, except for right at the end of the orbit when I didn't pull down closer to the horizon soon enough and my orbit got too high and too ballistic. The mothership had to pull off an intercept rescue! Did it though, and not too bad at that.

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Now, on to Pol! Yeah, once I'd decided to launch a refueling mission this seemed the best. I might even have managed to do Bop too before refueling, but decided against it. I'm going to head to Laythe after this so the refueler can aeobrake directly at Laythe to rendezvous with the mothership.

The Pol landing went pretty much textbook. I allowed 500 dV on the lander, though technically I should have only needed about 300. I just wanted to make sure. For some reason the RCS ports on the ship failed on the way to orbit and wouldn't do anything, though those on the planesciprobe did. Weird. I kept on to orbit, and once safe went to the Space Center and back, and the ports worked again. Don't know what happened there.

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That's as far as I've got in the mission at the moment. I'll update as I get further. Next up the refueling mission, then on to a Laythe landing.

Edited May 19, 2014 by Patupi

[Speeding Mullet]

Good to see you having a crack at this challenge Patupi, amazing rescue by the mothership around Tylo. I thought I would have to do that on Laythe but luckily managed to obtain orbit after a few million F9s.

I didn't manage the standard Jool5 challenge without a refueling mission, looking forward to seeing the rest of the mission!

[Patupi]

I haven't had to save/reload much in this one so far. A couple of times from silly booster designs at Kerbin getting things off the ground and once at Tylo for a silly mistake. Wat no ScIenCe? Plus the whole 'Go back to the drawing board' thing I did at the start

(EDIT: Spoke too soon. Apparently the way I've stacked nuke engines on 4x adapters they are too close together. Most of the time it's fine, though in the high red on temp. If they wobble just a bit however they get too close together, temp goes up.... BOOM. Lost engines. Reload time! *sigh* Need better engine allocation next time.)

Edited May 20, 2014 by Patupi

[Patupi]

Next installment.

The Interplanetary Refueler got sent out to rendezvous with the mothership at Laythe orbit. Note it was leaving Kerbin orbit where the engines exploded due to over heating and I had to reload. Very odd. Most of the time I can run them at full thrust with no trouble, but a bit of wobble and they over heat. To play it safe I'm sticking with them at 99% from now on. On the mothership too.

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[Patupi]

OK, I had a bit of trouble... OK, a lot of trouble! My record of very little quickloading? Completely out the window! I've done Laythe a lot, but generally with specialized Laythe landers with built in parachutes and jet engines. Thus I never remembered what the dV for launching from Laythe's surface was. I looked it up, but just idly. I really didn't think much of this as I've done Laythe tons of times before.

Big mistake!

I allowed 3500 dV in the ship. Basically because I nearly ran out before I wanted to save as much fuel as possible. I thought it was 3000 dV to launch from Laythe's surface, and the landing wasn't as efficient as I'd hoped. I ended up with a little over 3200 dV on landing. Yeah, well, 200 dV spare? Yeah, that'll be fine. So I did my science, got things ready, then launched... and didn't get close. What was worse was I had quicksaved on the ground, just to be safe... and now I was stuck with too little fuel in my ship! When I rechecked fuel to reach Laythe orbit it was... yup, 3200. I had to make a PERFECT launch to reach orbit. Well, I didn't make it. I redid it and redid it, and eventually got a ballistic arc that was close enough for the MS to do yet another rescue, but with the added thrill of very little time to rendezvous outside the atmosphere. I got down to 40km, 15km inside the atmosphere, before I stabilized the orbit. Not fun!

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Well, just Vall and Bop left to go now. Hopefully no more nasty surprises, and I'm not going to be stingy on the fuel on them! I'm pretty sure I've got way enough fuel to do those landings and get back to Kerbin.

[Patupi]

Well, Vall went pretty well. No surprises and still got over 2500 dV left in the ship for the trip to Bop. Still, that doesn't leave too much for Bop arrival, landing, and then return to Kerbin!

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[Concentric]

What was worse was I had quicksaved on the ground, just to be safe... and now I was stuck with too little fuel in my ship!

An important note: Alt-F5 and Alt-F9 allow multiple named quicksaves and quickloads. You know, for the next time you think that you might want to revert to the state previous to your previous state. Give it a meaningful name and embed the date so that you know which quicksave it is ("LaytheOrbit"? Which one? "20140524Jool-5LaytheOrbit" on the other hand is utterly unambiguous.)

Otherwise, this seems very interesting. Must have been quite the engineering challenge. Are you taking the science and dropping the science probes now that you have more than one used and can redistribute them to retain balance?

[Patupi]

Dang! Is that new on a recent version of KSP? I never knew it had that! The few times I've thought about it in the past I have gone into the files and backed up the quicksave file. Then you can copy it back in and hit F9 in game, but that's a rather involved solution. Alt+F9 is much easier! I'll hav eto look into this.

The probes aren't 'dropped' right now. They originally were intended to be returned to Kerbin on their own. They have chutes that let them land at about 6m/s. However I am considering shunting all the science into the main crew areas and dumping the actual probes. So far I'm leaving them in, but I could retain just two of them (for balance) say and dump the rest.

True, engineering this was interesting, but most of the time was spent getting the main lander working. I really should have spent more planning time on the mothership. Even after refueling it's running low again! True, I don't think my computer could have handled a mothership big enough to have had the fuel to travel this whole mission without refueling, but it would have been nice to know that from the start and send the refueling tankers ahead to arrive with the mothership. Oh well, next time.

I do intend to do this again later, perhaps not Jebidiah level though. I'm thinking without the excess weight of the science I could cut the size of the Tylo lander way down, and this time I won't try to do the whole mission with just one lander. It was fun to prove it can be done, but it's a bit inefficient.

[Speeding Mullet]

Another epic rescue mission around Laythe!!

[Patupi]

Yeah, I really hope I don't need any more 'epicness' or I'll likely pull my hair out! Plain old boring landings will do fine thankyou

[Patupi]

OK, last landing, and the trip home.

The landing on Bop went pretty well. I thought I was rather low on fuel, looked into having the four Kerbals EVA down to the surface (which was actually doable), and sending a probe down on it's RCS jets (which wasn't. Didn't have enough Monopropellant for the trip back up). I did ponder whether to send them down like that anyway and pull the science from the probe and bring it up, but in the end I went with the lander anyway. It left me close to the line on fuel, but seemed to be OK.

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Then the trip home. Had some difficulty getting a good transit path from Bop orbit back to Kerbin, and ended up looping around the sun yet again, right out to Jool orbit before returning and getting an intercept with Kerbin. Once home, since I'd dumped the lander, I had to send up a ship to bring the science back... oh yeah, and the crew too

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And 10189 science? Better than I expected!

So, mods used:Alarm clock, MechJeb, Ship Manifest, Action Group Manager, TAC Fuel Balancer, and Editor Extensions.

Sending four Kerbals to each moon, including Tylo. Full science from the surface (except crew report. No capsule!), though missing some from orbit (I was lazy), and not doing much in Jool orbit at all.

Mothership:

At launch=1062tons, 402parts

In orbit=203tons, 288parts

Univeral Lander:

At launch=1062tons(?!? the same? Wierd!), 169parts

In orbit=233tons, 108parts

Interplanetary Booster:

At launch=2016tons, 128parts

In orbit=624, 56parts

Interplanetary Refueler:

At launch=2552tons, 263parts

In orbit=534tons, 54parts

Went to all Moons, did science on all of them (ALL OF THEM!) and managed to get home. Did need a ship to get the crew and the science back. If needed I can dump the actual science probes back to the surface too, just didn't want to go through that six times for every landing!

Total time for the mission: 12 years 221 days! Yikes! Long trip

Edited May 25, 2014 by Patupi
missed a bit of data

[Patupi]

Here's a image summary of the mission highlights:

IMGUR is giving me problems accessing some of the older files from the mission (without paying for Pro Imgur anyway) so I'll do this oldschool:

Mothership on pad:

Assembled ship in orbit with booster:

First science on Tylo:

The crew all on Tylo:

Science on Pol:

The crew all on Pol:

Interplanetary Refueling ship docking with mothership over Laythe:

Science on Laythe:

The crew all on Laythe:

Science on Val:

The crew on Val:

Science on... damn, forgot to take a shot of science on Bop! Well, here's the plaque anyway:

The crew on Bop:

Ditching the lander in orbit around Bop:

Aerobraking back at Kerbin:

100km orbit:

Shuttle to retrieve science and crew:

Landing shuttle:

SCIENCE!:

[SSSPutnik]

Nice, not how did you make orbit at Tylo with only 2264ms dV remaining?

[Patupi]

Answer is... I didn't. I went ballistic and the mothership had to pick me up... very very quickly! Had to burn hard on target, then reverse thrust to catch. Not fun. I also used all the RCS to build up velocity on the lander while the last bit of fuel was being used up. Similar thing on Laythe, though there I was using the RCS to while away the time in atmo before the arc took me out into space. Despite all the changes in current KSP versions you still can't switch ships when in atmosphere unless you're within 2.3km! Annoying for low intercepts!

(EDIT: I just checked on the 'dv to launch from moons' page, and theoretically I could have got to orbit with that dV. It'd have been close though. If I'd done a perfect launch, wasting nothing and skimming across the landscape I'd have needed less than 2200 with the high TWR I had. As it was to get the mothership to intercept I had to arc high and waste some fuel as I thought I didn't have the dv to reach orbit as is... based on the fact I failed to get to orbit a few times at first. Still it worked out in the end)

Edited June 1, 2014 by Patupi

[Patupi]

OK, Ziv said I really should land the science pods... so I did. And silly me forgot to repack the chutes on one pod where I used them to slow the Laythe landing!... and the 'no-chute pod' actually bounced! At over 180m/s! Destroyed the docking port and detached a goo canister, but it survived intact otherwise. I think it was just the low mass of the craft with no fuel aboard that saved it. If need be I have a save before then to retry that (and send a Kerbal up to repack the chutes!) but the rest of the recovery went fine.

Here's the report, boring and repetitive though it is.

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