Cmdr. Arn1e's Jool 5 Adventure 2 - 1st Contract Edition

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Right, so last try at this challenge showed me what I was up against - An oxygen rich moon that is easily done with a Spaceplane, an icy moon not too dissimilar to the Mun, a total pig of a Moon with all the gravity of Kerbin but with none of the Atmosphere, and a couple of small, easily landed and ascended from captured ateroids...

What could go wrong? Heh, lots!

So this time I'm going to plan much better, and hopefully get the Jebediah Level award this time!

First few steps of my plan:

1) Play .24 Career mode until I get the Contracts to go to Jool and some of the Moons. It is unlikely that I will be able to get all contracts for all moons at once, so the mission profile will be a little different this time; I plan to park my main Mothership (as yet un-named) at Tylo and have a Tug take the landers to the appropriate Moons.

2) Make sure to use Nukes for the main engines for many of my craft - I have these unlocked already, and have been doing some practice runs to Duna with an interplanetary engine I have just about perfected, so I will probably scale this up a lot for my main part of the new Mothership.

3) Ensure I take PLENTY of screenshots of all launches, rendezvous and docking, landings, transfers, and so on and so forth... One problem with my last go at this was not enough info to show that I wasn't using Hyperedit! (Which I don't... heh, I didn't even bother to work out KAS, even once I'd finished the last attempt!)

Hopefully, from experience from my last Career save that died, I should get 'Explore Jool' (Science from Orbit) first, then Bop and Pol... So I may be starting with the 2 easiest moons first!

Much more to come, but thought I would make a start now so I can plan for anything I may have forgotten... And to generally keep a log of what I'm doing so I don't forget anything again!

Edited August 18, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Jool has come up already in Contracts! I'm going to get the previous Contracts out of the way first, but it's looking like I will have a pretty big budget for the new Jool 5 Mission - I'm hovering at around the 2 Million Funds mark, and my current mission to Eve/Gilly should return a fair bit of both Science and Funds

Another stage of the plan:

4) Use Ion Engines (if possible) for the small moons/captured Asteroids Bop and Pol - last time, the TWR was rediculous using 2 48-7S's on each Lander, and I could leave the Landers in orbit for future use as well if there is enough dV left in the tanks...

5) Remember what I learnt from the last time I did this!

EDIT: Bop and Pol have now been added to the list of places to explore; there are a few more science nodes I want to unlock before I even start building anything though! I will start designing a few things in VAB, but won't be able to complete them without the right size docking ports etcetera...

Edited August 21, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

For reference, link to my previous attempt: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79319-Cmdr-Arn1e-s-Jool-Adventure-%28and-Jool-5-submission%29

My rules to follow, in proper order:

1) Play .24 Career mode until I get the Contracts to go to Jool and some of the Moons. It is unlikely that I will be able to get all contracts for all moons at once, so the mission profile will be a little different this time; I plan to park my main Mothership (as yet un-named) at Tylo and have a Tug take the landers to the appropriate Moons. - Pretty much there now

2)Remember what I learnt from the last time I did this! (Hence link at top of this post)

3) Make sure to use Nukes for the main engines for many of my craft - I have these unlocked already, and have been doing some practice runs to Duna with an interplanetary engine I have just about perfected, so I will probably scale this up a lot for my main part of the new Mothership.

4) Use Ion Engines for the small moons/captured Asteroids Bop and Pol - last time, the TWR was rediculous using 2 48-7S's on each Lander, and I could leave the Landers in orbit for future use as well if there is enough dV left in the tanks... - Ions now unlocked, experimenting with them on a Minmus Lander right now, mainly to gather enough science to finish unlocking what I need (Docking Port Snr.'s)

5)Ensure I take PLENTY of screenshots of all launches, rendezvous and docking, landings, transfers, and so on and so forth...

[Tweety]

Even though with noone responding this feels more like a notepad I' m definitely following since I keep toying with the idea of going for the Jool 5 challenge.

I also expect the obligatory notepad 'doodles'

-Tweety

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Even though with noone responding this feels more like a notepad I' m definitely following since I keep toying with the idea of going for the Jool 5 challenge.

I also expect the obligatory notepad 'doodles'

-Tweety

Thanks for following along! This could take some time, so apologies if I don't update for significant amounts of time...

I have hit a huge snag with Funding and design, Soooo... I'm doing the Career over, specifically to increase the amount of Funds I have available and so I can build up the Science Tree in a better way... There's even the possibility I will completely change my mind on various factors as I go along, so this could turn out to be a very long thread full of lots of pictures if I'm following my rules!

And there may be the odd doodle thrown in just for fun

Edited August 23, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Heh... I messed up already...

I was working towards this in my current Career mode save, but turned out I haven't got the hang of recovering my LV's enough to be swimming in funds... So when I built my first Mothership it turned out to cost over a million Funds... reducing what I had to spend on the fuel tanks and landers that needed to be attached to make it go anywhere!

Here's a pic to show you how baDass it was (is - still have the .craft saved):

It got to orbit with 50% fuel remaining in its tanks, but I can't even afford to send up the fuel tanker to top it back off... not a good start!

I had designed it and made the whole ship (with additional fuel tanks, MPL, Tug, but without landers) in VAB, and it had over 10km of dV... PLENTY for everything I wanted it to do, including be refuel depot for the Tug once it's parked in Tylo Orbit...

Still, now I am aware of my shortcomings, I will be carrying out not one, but TWO Jool-5 Missions - one in the current Save, and another specifically made for the challenge (Which will concentrate on unlocking Science and spaceship parts, to see if I can make my program more profitable, and therefore the Jool-5 Mission more Spectacular )

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

I've been working on the project in the current save, and am pleased to report that I have, with a fair bit of redesign, managed to make it much more cost efficient as well as (hopefully) having enough dV for everything... if not, then I'm hoping it will take only a single fuel run to get my boys home, as opposed to the rediculous amount I ended up doing on the last Mission!

Doodle!

I have so far managed to design the Mothership, external dropable fuel tanks to provide most of the fuel for dV, and possibly even be used in conjunction with the Tug, which has also been designed and built, the Bop and Pol landers are done and have dV to spare, both using Ions, Laythe Plane 2 (wacky new design!) that carries a standard cargo of a small science and comms satellite, which I have designed to be interchangable with the Science Package, which is also now designed and built, stored currently as a Sub-Assembly...

The Laythe 2 is radically diferent from most of my previous designs as it is the first of my spaceplanes to have any sort of cargo capacity... I'm hoping I have got the designing just right and it doesn't fall apart once the cargo is released! (As I write this, just hit 10k metres on the first test run, and have realised I have forgotten the PresMat Barometers >.<)

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Stil figuring out SP+ - as it's going to beincluded in future .25 update, Ziv has allowed its use

So testing, testing, testing... will upload a screenshot of the Mothership later (still tryin to work on a good name for it!)

EDIT: Getting there... currently playing about with a crew transfer Spaceplane, I think once I've got this working I will have a batter idea on how to do the new Laythe Plane

Edited September 2, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Woo! Huge advancement in the spaceplane department... messed around with a crew transport/transfer plane last night, and ended up building the new Laythe II

So now I have also been able to put together a mock-up of all my tried and tested parts (some more in theory than practice, but from previous experience should be more than capable of the task assigned to them ) so to finally add a bit more interest to this so - far notepad like thread, I finally give you: The HMS Fearless Kraken!!

Top section with fuel tanks:

Bottom Section with fuel tanks:

Whole thing with fuel tanks removed so you can all the landers, tugs, adapters and other goings-on:

Top again, clearly showing Bop and Pol Landers, main Ship, Tug, adapter drone, Tylo Lander:

Bottom again, showing bottom of Tylo lander, Vall Lander, 'spacer' drone, and the Laythe II:

more Close-Up view of the connections between Laythe II, spacer drone, Vall Lander and Tylo Lander:

Close-Up of Vall and Tylo Landers:

Detail on the Tug and Docking Size Adapter/drone:

Detail on the Main part, Bop and Pol landers:

Of course, nothing is ever perfect...:

Clearance issues are making me think I might need to use more than one spacer drone... but they are super-cheap compared to the rest of it, so tally-ho! onwards, upwards, and I'm sure I'll cross these bridges when I come to them

About to Launch the main part of the Kraken, expect another update sooner than usual for me

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

After showing you the whole idea behind the ship, I now get to show the individual parts before sending them up and docking together in LKO...

(think I'm doing o.k with my rules so far! let me know what you think...)

So, here we have the main part of the HMS Fearless Kraken (Without LV):

With LV:

Close up of the strutwork that was required to ensure it made it to LKO without anything falling off(!):

On the Launchpad (I have to admit using MJ Ascent guidance a lot...):

LIFTOFF!

Still going strong at 12,000 meters:

Start of the Gravity Turn:

Circularizing:

Dropping the side-tanks:

Nearly there:

Typically, MJ was a little out:

112 x 49 Km Orbit... better sort that out! did it manually at first:

130 x 70 Km seemed much better:

So out come the solar panels:

And time for the last staging event; decoupling the LV:

Then de-orbiting began:

And ended with me recovering the last of the LV in 3 bits... more practice needed! sure there's plenty to come...

Once Everything was stable, all that was left to do was tidy up orbit:

And in a comfortable 99 x 99 Km Orbit (Sorry for dark pics!):

Next up will be the Tug with Adapter Drone

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrghhhh! Bloody game just glitched... and allowed meto recover the whole assemblage so far as though it were splashed down!!!! so...FAIL AGAIN

now only have 398305 Funds available... gah, this couldn't get any worse

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Ziv has allowed use of F12 to add Funds... So I'm back on track!

To make it fair, I only allowed myself the million I had lost, so with a few completed contracts I have 1.5 Million to spend on the project... Main part and tug back in orbit docked together, currently launching the Tylo and Vall Landers to dock... And I will post those screenshots asap!

Edited September 13, 2014 by Cmdr. Arn1e

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

And... I've totally lost interest in KSP for some reason... maybe playing it exclusively for about 9 months! >.<

I'm having a bit of a break and playing Dark Souls... Will most likely be getting back on the Jool-5 case once I have worked out what I can do in .25