Flight of the Raven (Since everyone else is going to Jool...)

[JayKay]

I thought I would spare you all the screen shots of my test flights and the 20 or so flights it took to get my ship into orbit, fully fueled and equipped. Suffice it to say, it took a while. I called my ship the Raven since I had taken to naming all my ships in the .23 career mode save after various birds. Since it's mostly white, I came to think my choice of bird could have been better...

Here's the ship almost ready for departure:

Almost 620 tonnes (at this point) and just over 900 parts. Surprisingly, the lag wasn't that bad, thanks to some of the .23 improvements.

I made liberal use of the ARM parts to help reduce part count and ease construction. The main ship was launched almost in one piece, other than having to change out the 3 KR-2L engines for pods of 4 LV/N engines once in orbit. There were three Sr. docking ports arranged around the central crew modules at the nose of the ship, and the main landers were docked on two of them and a "care package" of various tugs and hab lander modules was docked at the third. The two main landers were meant for Tylo and Laythe, with the Laythe ship's ascent stage intended to be separated on arrival at Jool for use as a single stage lander for the three smaller moons before being redocked with the ship for the Laythe landing. The care package and two landers were designed to be almost identical mass so the center of mass would be balanced.

The Raven made its first test flight transferring to a higher orbit over Kerbin. She flew straight and true. Below you can see how the three assemblies were clustered around the command hub. It was a very tight fit:

I had a thought that a cupola module would be nice to have attached to the nose of the command ship, to give a better interior view, so I built a small craft to dock onto the command module. The extra fuel in its tank wouldn't hurt, either, I figured. It was delicately slid into place between the payloads:

I was juggling a bunch of different missions at the same time as I built this ship. I was trying to take advantage of all the transfer windows which were coming up before the Jool window came up. With a flight to Duna, and another on its way back from there, plus a return from Moho and a Dres ship departing, it was a little nuts for a while. In the midst of it all, the Jool window arrived, and I fired up the engines for real:

Almost 2 years later, the target came into sight for the first time:

I'll break this up into several posts just to keep things manageable.

JK

Edited August 2, 2014 by JayKay

[JayKay]

This was actually my third attempt to make it to Jool. I had built a couple other behemoths to accomplish the same mission. The first was rather wobbly, so I decided a better design was needed. The second was solid enough, but the lag was crippling, so I abandoned it with my sandbox save when I started over in career mode for version .23. A lot of the same design philosophy went into this ship, though I did simplify a lot of things to save parts.

Anyway, this was certainly closer to the goal than I had ever come before. The ship was intended to visit all 5 moons with two-kerbal crews, plus send probes to various locations along the way. The first probe was launched shortly after entering Jool SOI, and was an atmospheric probe intended to mine Jool itself for some science:

I found that the solar panels weren't as effective as I had hoped. Even though I had all sides covered, the landing was on the noon side of Jool, so once the parachute opened, the craft ended up pointing straight up towards the sun with almost no light hitting the panels. I used the reaction wheel to try to turn one side up towards the light more. The batteries were quickly spent and it took forever to transmit the observations. Fortunately, the probe was well ahead of the mother ship, so I had time to mess with it for a long as it took.

Jool is a dazzling sight, and the cupola module was a good place to see it from. It was worth adding the thing onto the ship:

While the ship was approaching Jool for aerobraking, I moved some crewmen around. I decided that Jeb, Bill and Bob needed to be on this mission, so I rescued them from rotting on my space station in Kerbin orbit for this flight. There are four others along as well, two manning the science module, one in the cupola module so I can use that view and another as copilot on one of the landers (with the big three manning the other three pilot seats in the two landers.) Here we have the Big Guy himself, Jebediah, enjoying the view as he makes his way to one of the command pods on the Tylo lander. You can see one of the Mech-Jeb probes docked to a Jr port in front of him. I brought 3 of those along to see what I could do with them. The other 6 probes were stock mini-probes; 3 were parachute probes while the other 3 were orbital.

After aerobraking I made a couple course corrections to make for an aerocapture around Laythe. I had originally intended to bring the Raven into Tylo orbit and send the landers out from there, but changed my mind and headed for Laythe instead. My reasoning for making Tylo my base was concern about the fuel needed for landing and ascent from there--a concern that was well founded, as it turned out, but we will get to that later...

There was almost no flame effect coming around Jool, but the arrival at Laythe more than made up for it:

The Raven had arrived at Laythe at last. It was now time to get busy preparing for the point of the exercise.

I started rearranging the modules to get at the parts needed for the Vall mission. In preparation for that, I launched a Mech-Jeb probe to act as a scout craft for the manned mission:

The two lateral ports quickly hosted all the mission payloads for the 5 landings while I dug out the science module and a transfer tug for the Vall mission.

Here she is, a little ungainly-looking, but it had everything it needed for a short hop over to Vall:

...to be continued, probably in a day or two.

JK

Edited July 30, 2014 by JayKay

[JayKay]

There's a couple things worth mentioning about the lander above. As I mentioned, the lander itself is the ascent stage from the Laythe lander. It had a docking port installed top and bottom and landing gear added. The crew section is two single-kerbal lander cans connected by bi-couplers top and bottom. This setup is considerably lighter than a two-kerbal lander can. The two of the four engine pods are designed to separate during lift-off from Laythe, leaving an odd-looking two engine ship to reach orbit. To prevent the staging when using it as a separate lander, I only used the permanent engines for lift-off on Vall, Bop and Pol. The Tylo lander's ascent stage is identical except it has no landing gear and a stack separator connected it to the landing stage instead of a docking port. Oh, and I didn't bother to put any experiment packages on the Tylo lander since the hab module lander would have them--a tactical error, as it turned out.

The other thing is the fuel stage. It was a bit of an afterthought and was intended to be used from Tylo orbit. The engines were only to allow me to use it as a tug if necessary, but they are too small for a real orbital transfer, I think. The huge mono propellant tank was also tacked on at the last minute when I worried there might not be enough RCS fuel storage on the ship. There wasn't, so it was a good call, but not having it incorporated into the main ship meant it had to be hauled around in cases like this, which did waste some fuel which might have allowed me to avoid some later problems. Next time, I will do it better.

So I ended up not using the tug's engines at all, and just used the lander's instead. Shooting over to Vall was no problem at all.

The previously launched Mech-Jeb probe got to Vall first and I just let it autopilot itself to a clear landing spot on the light side.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who finds that eye staring back at you creepy...

The lander burned to a circular orbit and detached the fuel stage.

While the ship was still in orbit, I took some readings and then sent Bill out to make an EVA report and collect the data so that the experiment could be reused on the surface:

One of the advantages of having two command pods on the ship is that you can have multiple examples of the same experiment stored that way. I've gotten that "You cannot store 3 of the data items, discard them?" message a few times with only a single pod. This allows duplicates to be stored.

The ladders took a little engineering, but worked out great. When the kerbonaut leaves the pod, he immediately appears sideways to the door holding onto the ladder rungs. When he moves forward/upward and reaches the crosswise ladder, you can turn him either way. When the ladder is extended, he just goes down the ladder, no problem. Coming up the ladder, when he gets to the platform he stops and you can turn him right or left to move to the door of either pod.

Finding a landing spot was no problem. The crew only poked around for a short while, took the experiment readings and samples and of course planted the flag:

I then timed the launch to coincide with the next orbit of the fuel tug so I could rendezvous with it and haul it back to Laythe for reuse.

By the time I was lining up the aerocapture, I started to get worried about fuel. It was nice to have an atmosphere to aerobrake into, since there wouldn't have been enough fuel to make Laythe orbit. It ended up in an inclined orbit which could not intersect the mother ship's orbit. I had a second transfer stage with a double fuel tank, so I sent it resupply the lander so it could get back to the Raven:

I guess I never took any shots of the lander at the mothership again, but it just docked, unloaded all its science, refueled and then headed back out with both the fuel stages this time. It had to get to Pol, which took a bunch more fuel than Vall. This time the transfer stage's poodle was used for propulsion.

Pol is small. And distant. I didn't see it until I was right on top of it, and even then I was on the dark side at first and only got a look at it when I swung around to the light side.

Again the fuel stages were left in orbit while the lander went down to make history.

The surface didn't look very inviting. I just picked someplace on the light side and hoped for the best.

The ship came to rest on a 30 degree slope. It teetered a bit when the engine shut down, but the SAS kept it from tipping, and it settled down on its legs. There's probably virtually no level ground on this moon, so it was as good as I could hope for.

Again the intrepid crew deployed experiments and unfurled the flag. Again, there was little do do after that. Other than...

...go jetpacking in crazy-low gravity!

Well, anyway, there was only so much to do and more places to go, so off they went and collected the fuel stages again:

This time there was enough fuel to get the ship back to the Raven safe and sound:

Edited July 31, 2014 by JayKay

[JayKay]

Again the lander refueled and again took both fuel stages.

Then it was off to Bop.

I found getting to Bop rather difficult, probably because it was harder to get a good intercept with its inclination. Part of the problem was that my orbit around Laythe was so low that I couldn't get a decent fast time going, so I had to pick a flag on Vall so that I could speed things up enough for it not to take forever. Switching back and forth between the lander and the flag got irritating after a while. Eventually I did get a decent intercept.

I came up on Bop on the dark side as well. Once I could see what was what, I dropped the fuel stages again and headed in for a landing.

The problem with Bop is kind of like Ike; it's lumpy with vast sloping sections. I did find a pretty smooth and level looking spot in my flightpath, though, so I picked the flattest area and set down there.

It was a pretty decent spot. The guys got out and did their science and flag routine, and had a chance to catch some air (vacuum?) with their jetpacks again.

Here you can see what you're up against on Bop:

The landing spot is at the top of the "hill," but the hill is a third the size of the moon, so everything is sloping away on all sides for many kilometers.

With their work done, Bill and Bob launched again and collected their fuel stage before plotting a course back to Laythe.

The return flight was interesting because it kissed Tylo's SOI a bit, giving me a first look at my eventual nemesis.

This was the end of the shallow end of Jool's pool; now we were heading for the high diving board.

I detached the Tylo lander from the Raven for the first time. The ship for Tylo would require three additional units.

It took some shuffling to get everything into the right place.

And this is the result. From left to right there was the ascent stage and descent stage of the manned lander, then a hab lander with drop fuel tank, and then the small and large fuel stages. I figured that oughta do it...

I was wrong.

Once I arrived at Tylo I was alarmed at how much deltaV would be required to achieve orbit. Once the ship was in high orbit, I took stock of what I had left. I found the lander still was fully fueled, but both the fuel stages were dry. More disappointingly, I found that the burn had mostly drained the hab lander's fuel tank, leaving not enough to land the thing. And the ship was way too high to land. I decided to dump the fuel stages, they were just dead weight at this point. The hab lander still had some fuel, so I set up a burn to create an elliptical orbit which came down to within 20 km of the surface. There was fuel enough for that, but no way I could circularize. I was perturbed.

I left the game for a bit, disconcerted at my predicament. It looked like Tylo would defeat the Raven expedition. Eventually, I decided to just see what I could salvage. The hab lander was abandoned.

Here's where things got messy. The ship was coming in on the dark side of Tylo and would just get to the light side at closest approach, which is highest speed. All I had for fuel was what the ship was carrying, and it had to have enough left after launch to get back to Laythe, or I would have to use the Laythe lander to come rescue these guys.

I attempted a manual landing. Twice. Pancaked at high speed. Twice.

OK, let's see what Mech-Jeb can do.

MJ nailed the landing on the first try. Very nice. Well, nailed it as in ended up standing upright in spite of doing a little hop before setting down and teetering badly before coming to rest.

My ship was designed to drain fuel from the upper stage first. I figured it was better the rob the upper stage of some fuel than to horde it and run out of lander fuel at 50 meters. It turned out that I had more than enough in the lower stage to refuel the upper, so I started transferring fuel back up so the ship would be ready for liftoff again. I did not hit F5 before doing this. Just as I was filling the last tank, I noticed the ship started to shift a little... It had landed on a slight slope and moving the fuel up top had changed its center of gravity. And over it went, landing like turtle on its back. Dang it.

OK, no problem, let's just do it again. I set up about the same landing on MJ and let it go. It came down, hovered 2 meters above the ground and started moving sideways before dropping, and then tipped over. Nuts. Ok, let's try again. Same thing again. And again, and again, and again. Sigh.

I started messing with some settings. I turned off the lander's thrusters and left the one on the ascent stage working. Almost worked, but only almost. Ok, what about the landing speed? Change from .5 m/s to 5 m/s; it probably needs more vertical speed so it doesn't go side ways. Plunked right down. And broke two legs. And over it went, again. Bugger.

Ok, this is rapidly reducing the fun factor here. All right, I'm going to do another run, reduce landing speed to 3 m/s and then quicksave a minute before landing, so that I don't have to go way back up to orbit again every time. It's all or nothing.

On this run it landed perfectly.

OK! Hit F5 already!!!

It was on a slight slope again, so I locked the downslope legs so it wouldn't tip that way, and I refilled the tanks. Worked like a charm.

Bill and Bob got out and did their thing. There was no jetpacking this time, though... There was also no science to be had, as the lander had no instruments (remember the tactical error?) They were still in orbit with the abandoned hab lander. Oh well, at least we got a surface sample and EVA report.

Time to get off this cursed rock.

This time the staging of the ascent stage was allowed to proceed.

And this is what we were left with to get back to Laythe.

Fortunately, the stripped down ship had plenty of deltaV left and could make it back to Laythe without difficulty.

Here we are back at the mothership after the ordeal. Tylo's reputation for being an evil SOB is still quite intact.

JK

Edited August 2, 2014 by JayKay

[JayKay]

OK, so Tylo was a nasty son-of-a-gun. There's still Laythe to visit, and it has a nicer reputation. Best of all, it's right below us, so we won't need transfer stages to land there.

This time Jeb was at the helm and he collected the Laythe hab lander and strapped it to the bottom of the manned lander. I also had most of its fuel transfered to the Raven since it would not need much to de-orbit.

I had several ideas on how I would work this part of the project. The intention was to land a permanent 4 man hab module and have the manned ship land nearby. The crew would use the manned lander to reach the surface and take off again. The hab lander had its own deorbit engines and a small amount of fuel, so I thought about having it land first and then land the return ship nearby. The Tylo mission was supposed to work similarly, but the fuel problems forced that part of the mission to be scrapped.

The difficulty of getting the ship to land close enough, plus the fact that I intended to land near water made me leery of that plan on Laythe, however. It would be too easy to land too far away or in the drink. So, instead I decided to let the lander take the hab module down with it, and have them separate just before main chute deployment and land separately but at the same time. The chutes on the lander were set to deploy 100m before the hab module's.

I let MechJeb guide the landing because of the precision needed. I picked a spot just off an inlet into an island near the equator. I dubbed the inlet Brotoro Bay ()

The landing spot was right on the edge of the water on a relatively level coastal plain.

At this point I was getting nervous. The "X" marking the landing spot covered a pretty large area on the map, so I wasn't completely confident Jeb wouldn't get his feet wet. The trajectory seemed to be heading out into the bay...

The chute partially deployed and the ship started to heel over more steeply. Maybe this would work.

I decoupled the Sr port at about 1000m, but the two units stayed together anyway until the lander's chute fully deployed. The hab lander dropped away and then its chute opened the rest of the way too.

The heavier lander descended faster than the hab module and started to catch up. They were separated by mere meters.

The lander's engines kicked in to soften the landing, which occurred almost simultaneously with the hab module's touchdown.

I can't imagine a better landing.

Jeb was proud as a peacock and figured it was all due to his fine piloting, of course.

After the debacle on Tylo, this was a sweet victory. The guys planted the flag and deployed the hab module's experiments. But in spite of the homey accommodations, they didn't stay long. They wanted to rendezvous with the Raven quickly before its inclined orbit took it too far away for easy linkup.

Jeb trotted off in a hurry to get back to the lander...and forgot the surface samples in the hab module. Oh well; that just gives him an excuse to come back someday.

The trusty ascent stage made its 4th and final liftoff from a Joolian moon. This time all its staging tricks would be needed to reach orbit.

The lightweight remnants of the ship climbed easily into orbit.

The last rendezvous of the mission was moments away.

And with the crew reunited, the last science data was moved to the science lab and the remaining fuel returned to the mother ship's tanks.

Edited August 2, 2014 by JayKay
can't spell or proofread worth a darn...

[JayKay]

Speaking of the mother ship's tanks... the ship had less than 1/6 of its original main tank fuel supply left. The dV calculator nevertheless indicated over 3000 dV left. In preparation for the return journey, all remaining surplus modules had to be jettisoned. That included both the landers' ascent modules, the portable science module and the cupola section. The three units drifted slowly away as final preparations for departure were made.

I waited until Laythe was closest to the sun for setting up the return trajectory. A little over 1200 dV was needed for a Kerbin intercept. A short burn later, the ship was beginning its long descent into Kerbol's gravity well.

The crew had a couple years to kill, and spent it analyzing samples and data and enthusiastically discussing the mission's highlights. Here Bill and Bob are reminiscing about their perfect landings (but curiously Tylo never comes up in the conversation...)

Just over 3 and a half years after departure, Kerbin and the Mun loom into view once again.

I had failed to check on the intercept more closely until the ship was only a couple weeks out, and discovered that the ship would swing far to the shadow side of Kerbin, and some serious maneuvering would be needed to target for an aerocapture. Fortunately, there was still over 1500 dV left to work with. After an aggressive course change the Raven soon plowed into Kerbin's upper atmosphere and put on a blazing show easily seen from the ground.

Climbing out of the atmosphere again, the Raven was greeted by its first Kerbin sunrise in 3 and a half years.

After kicking into orbit and then descending to a 150 km orbit and circularizing there was a total of 267 units of fuel left in the 29,160 unit tanks the ship departed with. I love it when a plan comes together.

JK

[JayKay]

I consider the flight a success, in spite of the problems at Tylo. Seven kerbals left and 7 returned, two of them landed on each of Jool's moons, and no resupply was needed along the way.

After settling into orbit, I sent my space bus to pick up 5 of the crew members. The remaining 2 will be caretakers for now. The ship is still fully intact and could be resupplied for another mission if I choose.

The bus consists of two hitchhiker modules and a 3 man pod. This was a good thing, because the 57 science data items would not go into one pod, and some had to be put in each of the crew modules. I took the crew members and data back to my space station (the Bird's Nest, to keep with the avian theme...) At the station, I had a spare science lab docked, and I was able to move all the data into that lab. Jeb Bill and Bob climbed into one of my Vega ships and grabbed the lab and performed a deorbit burn:

Initially I intended to ditch the service module and hope that the parachutes on the capsule could handle the weight of the pod and the lab, but then I thought, what the heck; let's see if I can land this puppy. I targeted the Kerbal Space Center and popped the chutes. The center of mass was low enough that it descended properly:

Alarmingly, the ship was heading straight for the pad, which still had leftover launch clamps from a previous mission standing around (we really got to talk to the pad maintenance crew...) The ship ended up landing on the slope of the crawlerway, but stayed upright. Not a bad landing.

So, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I didn't think to take screen shots of the all the science points. The fact is, I had no Jool points before the mission, and now I have 8371.67. There is some data left on Laythe because Jeb was a lunkhead. Curiously, there are also some data items missing from other places, and I'm not sure where they went astray. Oh well, I guess there will have to be a follow-up mission.

The other thing is I did clip a couple things on the ship. I clipped the Science Jrs halfway into the tank on the Tylo hab lander, just because it looked better than having them sticking out like dumbo ears. I also clipped some mono propellant tanks inside the LV/N engine fairings. I figured that was fair game because the space inside was empty and NASA would have used it for something useful, too. Again, I could have strapped them to the outsides of the fairings, but that would have looked dumb.

Oh yeah, I took a hab module and science lab plus a 3 man pod as the main crew section for the 7 kerbal crew. Additionally, there was that cupola module tacked on the front. There were two additional hab modules taken to be left on Tylo and Laythe, but only the Laythe module arrived properly. The landing stages of the Tylo and Laythe landers remain on their respective moons, and the ascent modules and cupola module are still in orbit around Laythe. One parachute probe was crushed in the Joolian atmosphere, one is floating in Laythe's ocean and the third is landed near the manned landing site on Laythe. Two MJ probes are landed on Pol and Vall, and another was left in Joolian orbit. The three other orbital probes are also orbiting still.

Ooo; had to edit this in. Mods: I only used MechJeb, Kerbal Alarm Clock and Precise Node on this version; which started out as .23 and was upgraded to .23.5. I still haven't installed .24 yet; maybe this weekend. I'm not sure if I would start over or just carry on at this point.

I have a lot more screen shots, but this thing is pretty picture-heavy already. Hope it was interesting.

JK

Edited August 2, 2014 by JayKay
forgot mods

[James_Eh]

Great fun! I love gigantic Jool-5 ships. (None of this 9 ton Grand Tour nonsense.)

I feel your Tylo pain. I truly do.

[JayKay]

Thanks, James. I know what you mean about the lightweight challenge. You have to respect what they accomplish with so little, but it's beyond preposterous what they come up with, especially relying on zero mass parts as much as they have to. I like the game as a simulation, not as a math puzzle. More power to em though; I'm sure someone will come up with a way to fly Jeb around the whole solar system with only a jetpack...

And as for Tylo, well, yeah, it's a nasty piece of work. Coming up with something I could land manually there would be a special challenge. Honestly, though I don't have any misgivings about using MechJeb; I think it's a logical addition to the game. There's sometimes just not enough information to do things manually, and MechJeb has access to all the information it needs to do things realistically most of the time. If it's good enough for NASA, I think I can live with it, too. Besides, I only use the autopilot when I really have to, or to avoid wasting my time with mundane things. I'm better at setting up intercepts, rendezvous and docking than MJ anyway.

I think there are some improvements to be made to my Tylo lander, though, and if I went back, it would look considerably different.

JK

[James_Eh]

Hoo, boy - I hope you don't think I was criticizing about the use of MJ. You'll note that I let MJ try Tylo something like 20 times before I gave up and did it myself, having learned from MJ. Best of luck on your improvements, my only meaningful advice is STAY AWAY FROM THE DEMON TYLO. (Oh, and bring some boosters along.)

And as far as the crazy skillz that some folks have... well, yah. I have been trying to learn how to drop to Eve as a starting point to go everywhere. That's what all the cool guys do. Thus far I have demonstrated fairly conclusively that if you DON'T know what you are doing, you can go somewhere that you don't want to REALLY FAST...

[JayKay]

I submitted this mission to Ziv for consideration for the Jool-5 challenge, and my documentation appears to have been lacking. Thus, I am adding this addendum with some better dV and fuel documentation.

This is the VAB shot of the Tylo lander. I designed it to produce over 3000 dV on Kerbin so that it could be tested there. I disregarded the lesser gravity of Tylo, which means it had almost 5000 dV there. This is why it was able to make a successful landing in spite of having to land on an eccentric orbit coming in at over 2400 m/s.

This is the ascent module. It still had 1700 dV left once it reached a 20 km orbit on Tylo.

I was consciously trying to avoid taking screen shots with the hud displayed because numerous people on the forum complained about the photos being cluttered up with MJ windows. I had to cull through my screen shots to find those which I took anyway, or accidentally by forgetting to hit F2 before hitting F1. The photo above is just before aerobraking at Jool. That's Jeb out there. Wave to the nice people, Jeb.

This is an additional shot of the aerobrake node at Laythe. I had to do 3 burns to get an acceptable orbit.

This is the Raven approaching Laythe before aerobraking.

This is the Raven's orbit after the aerocapture. It still needed to kick, increase perapsis to 95 km and circularize. (It was a circular orbit, more or less, though it eventually was about 94x98 for some reason.)

I'm not sure the photo above is of any use. It shows stats for the care package, which includes a variety of unrelated stages which were simply launched together on one rocket on Kerbin and stowed on the third docking port on the Raven. The parts include the large tug and both the Tylo and Laythe hab landers. The small tug had been detached and was docked with the Laythe ascent module by this time. In you remove the mass of the Laythe hab lander (a hitchhiker module with a few parts attached) and the very small amount of fuel it was carrying (4 micro tanks) you might be able to work out part of the fuel capacity for the Tylo transfer ship. It's just missing the partially filled large RCS tank and one singe Rockomax tank from the small tug.

It turns out I had pretty good documentation for the Vall mission. This is the ship almost ready for departure. It just needed to pick up the science package consisting of a Science Jr, 2 goo containers and docking ports.

This is the lander just before its descent burn on Vall.

This is the state of the Raven while the Vall mission was taking place.

This is the return intercept for the Vall mission. Just to be clear, the eccentric orbit around Laythe is a probe; the Raven has the circular track.

This the Vall ship's aerobraking maneuver. It ended up able to circularize but didn't have enough for the plane change, so the second tug was sent out to help it get home.

This is the Pol ship's transfer. I had to make a course correction partway there.

Don't get all excited! This is the orbit insertion of a MechJeb probe that was sent to Pol at the same time as the lander. Yeah, TWR 134.13, really.

The Pol lander is looking for a landing spot.

I didn't take anymore hud shots till the next mission was arriving at Bop. The ship is about to drop the transfer stages.

The lander is about to touch down on Bop.

And now we get to the Tylo expedition. This is a shot from the first attempt to land.

And this is the first attempt to land with MechJeb, which did succeed.

...and this is how it looked 2 minutes later after the weight shifted when I transfered fuel to the upper stage.

I do have a hud shot of the successful attempt trying to take off, but like a newb I didn't activate the ascent stage's engines, so it shows dV of zero and all the thrusters firing in a futile attempt to leave the ground...

This is the successful launch after I found my brain.

Here's the ship after staging about to make orbit.

And this is the ship in a 20km orbit over Tylo. 1746 m/s of dV left.

[edit: I just noticed that the dV data seemed to be stuck for the first part of the flight. Looks like it took off with 1746 and it never updated. Probably didn't like my staging arrangement...]

Here the ship is approaching Laythe. Lots of fuel left. (Hmm; that's interesting; I didn't recall Jeb on this flight; I thought it was Bill and Bob; I really need to document these things better.)

Now unfortunately, I never took any more hud shots of the Raven herself until the mission was approaching Kerbin. This is the shot before the course correction before Kerbin SOI:

The last shot including all the stats of the Raven before that is this one:

It shows the preparations for the Tylo flight.

Well, hopefully that will be satisfactory. The tanks were almost dry by the time the ship got home, but it was far tighter than I would have expected. I figured on a total crash and burn, or having way too much fuel along. As it is, it almost looked like I knew what I was doing. Don't be ridiculous.

JK

Edited August 4, 2014 by JayKay

[JayKay]

I originally promised I would spare everyone the launch shots of the various ships which put the Raven together, but as part of the special features package on the Collectors Edition, here they are!

The Raven was planned as a modular ship with docking ports holding the assemblies together. In spite of that, when it came time to launch, I thought I would try leaving the bulk of the ship assembled and launch it as one unit. One change I had to make was to replace the clusters of LV/N engines with 3 KR-2Ls. My first trial indicated I needed more dV, so I added S3-7200 tanks as part of the engine package, along with some stablizers. It turns out I never took a screen shot of the final design on the pad, so through the magic of CGI (), here is a recreation:

The communication pylon threw off the balance a little, so the ship walked slightly southward off the pad:

It got into space all right though (this is an actual shot of the ship coasting to apoapsis):

After achieving orbit, the engine pods were ejected to allow the real engines to be mounted. This is the design used to get them into space:

Here's the craft in orbit, having arrived at the rendezvous:

The engine pods were made autonomous so that they could be flown over and docked with the Raven:

After this, I started getting fuel up to the ship. It would take 8 refueling fights to refill the Raven's tanks, not counting the unsuccessful test fights of previous designs.

Initally I designed the refuelers to dock with the Jr ports on the side of the ship's main tanks, but that proved to be an incredible pain in the rump. The loaded fuel ship was anything but agile, so took a tonne of mono propellant to get docked:

As part of the refuelers, I attached an RCS tug to the back end. It was intended to collect the discarded engine pods which launched the Raven so that they could be de-orbited:

Here's one of the pods on its way to a fiery end:

At this point the first crew members arrived:

The last engine pod mission was in daylight, so the screen shots of that one are nice and clear:

..and the last pod was moved into position.

It turns out I never bothered to record any of the test flights of the landers, but they pretty much worked first time. They were a modification of a design I had worked on for a previous mission, so there wasn't much guesswork involved. The only tweaking I had to do was adding a couple of mini tanks to the top of the drop tanks on the ascent stages to give them a little extra dV to make Kerbin orbit. They weren't really needed for Laythe or Tylo, but every little bit helps. This is the launch of one of the landers:

One of the landers is docked and the second one is being carefully eased onto the second docking pad. The other ship docked on a lateral port had just arrived from my space station with Jeb, Bill and Bob aboard to take over command of the ship.

Here's the "care package" on the pad. This is the assembly of mission modules and tugs I was taking along to Jool. It included two tugs and two hab landers:

It was at this point that I made a design change to the Laythe lander and had to discard the first one. This is a shot of the replacement arriving at the Raven:

The last addition to the ship was the cupola module already shown in the original post:

So that's how I got the Raven into orbit and ready for its epic mission. And here are a few more random bonus shots of the ship at Jool and various landings:

Thanks, and hope you enjoyed.

JK

Edited August 4, 2014 by JayKay