Which is harder, Eve land and return, or Jool-5?

[Norpo]

Title says it all, i'm wondering what the general community opinion is (As I haven't done either).

To avoid ambiguity, let's define an Eve return as "land on eve with a kerbal and bring him back to Kerbin"

and a Jool-5 as "Land on every moon with a Kerbal and return him to Kerbin"

Discuss!

EDIT: Dear people of the future using Google to get here. The version this was posted in is 0.25, with 0.90 (beta) on the way.

The general consensus among posters has been "eve is hard" and "jool-5 is a bunch of semi-hard tasks into one".

That being said, I like red iron crown's post the most, sums up all the other posts nicely.

Eve is primarily a design challenge, in that you need to make a lander with a pile of dV and a high TWR. Once that is done, the mission itself is not overly challenging as the transfers are easy ones, the landing is trivial if you use chutes, and the ascent is not overly difficult once you figure out it's best to go straight vertical until 30km or so.

Jool-5 is more of a design, planning, and piloting challenge. You must create a mission profile and dV budget, then design your landers and mothership within those constraints. There are more transfers to complete successfully, mess one up and you might not have enough fuel to finish. A Tylo landing is one of the game's big piloting challenges, involving a white-knuckle high-G suicide burn if you do it efficiently. There are just many more opportunities to fail a Jool-5, IMO.

That said, both are big accomplishments of which any player should be proud.

Edited December 13, 2014 by Norpo
Summary for people of the future using google. (Anyone who uses Stack Overflow knows why i'm doing this.)

[turkwinif]

I'd have to say that a Jool-5 mission is a lot more difficult than an Eve and back mission. A Jool-5 mission is restricted to one massive mission with a mothership and smaller ships attached to it (correct me if I'm wrong) that have to land and return from 5 separate moons. Eve, however, is just one big purple fluff, and it's easier to make a there-and-back ship since it's not as far away and that it's just one body to land and return from, not five.

[Guest]

I think Eve is harder. The Athmosphere is so thick, you have to bring a giant lander. For Jool-5 you just need one small for Pol/Bop/Vall a big for Tylo and an very small airbreathing for Laythe.

Your payload is lower, so its easier.

[Pecan]

I with turkwinif - Eve's a pig, but it's only one challenge. Jool-5 has a number of 'interesting' issues such as Tylo's gravity with no atmosphere, Bop's odd orbit, etc.

[NecroBones]

For me? Jool-5 was a lot harder, a lot more time-consuming, required more planning, had more (often conflicting) design requirements, and a lot-more of everything else. I didn't even attempt it until I had been to Eve a few times.

[justidutch]

I have managed to do a Jool-5, but not yet return a soul from Eve. Haven't tried too hard yet, but...

[Rakaydos]

Eve is a single massive challange, Jool 5 is a few smaller ones chained together. I've done the Jool 5 using a single lander- a Tylo single stage lander, that refuels and gets a boost to Val intercept fro the tanker, then procedes to land on Val, Bop and Pol without refueling before dropping periapse to aerobreak at Laythe (to meet the tanker that simply slingshotted Val to Layth, instead of landing.) Then the same lander proved it could single stage Laythe as well, without jet engines or parachues, though the aerodynamics were a bit tricky. Then it did a powered landing on Kerbin.

All I needed was a superlander with enough DV for tylo, and a tanker that could take it out to low-tylo, transfer to Laythe via Val slingshot, and still refuel the superlander 3 times. (Tylo, 1st laythe, 2nd laythe)

"ALL" I would need for an Eve mision is a ship with enough atmo DV, and to land it on a mountian, and to carry it to Eve without using any of it's fuel. While it can be staged, all the ones I've seen make the tylo lander I build look like a small toy.

Jool 5 is bigger, but Eve is harder.

[Stratzenblitz75]

I'd say that the Eve landing is more difficult. With Eve, you have to make a lander that can safety land on Eve and ascend from the high gravity, and thick soup of atmosphere. Because of this, your lander has to be adapt a specialized staging and engine layout if you want the lander to be reasonably sized. And that's for an 8000 M above sea-level launch. Its even more difficult if you want to do from sea-level.

The error margins for an Eve launch are very small. You either have to do everything almost perfectly or bring a much more massive lander.

No doubt you are going to go though a lot of potential Eve landers before you make one that can do the job.

The payload for a Jool-5 challenge is much smaller and easier to design. Air breather for Laythe, disposable lander for Tylo, reusable lander for Vall, Bop, Pol and a mother-ship to carry them. There is a much larger error margin here. Even Tylo, the largest body in Jool system, has a decent error margin. You can take an inefficient profile on Tylo (Deorbit burn at 30 KM, spend a bunch of fuel fighting gravity) and succeed, you cannot easily say the same for Eve.

When I was designing landers for my grand tours, the Eve lander was the most difficult, time consuming thing to design. And it was only a asparagus powered chair launched from 8000 m above sea level.

Edited December 12, 2014 by Stratzenblitz75

[FleetAdmiralJ]

I find Eve to be harder b/c I find it much more difficult to build a single ship that has the dV necessary to reliably get off of Eve. The Jool 5 mission is, relatively, elementary except for perhaps Tylo, but it's still not hard compared to Eve

[Joonatan1998]

I have returned from eve, but never have done a Jool 5 mission or returned from Tylo (I have landed probes/rovers there, and built an large space station on Laythe low orbit.)

I think that which one is harder depends on what you want to do at the target and if you use quicksave/load.

On Eve you can land on a mountain or return from the sea level, use an lander can or an chair, at Jool You can get science from all moons, drop an probe at Jool...

In a Jool mission there are many things that can go wrong with your flying, if you don't use quicksaves it is much harder than an EVE mission where the design is the most important thing, the only really risky part is when landing to not land on a slope or land lower than your lander can return from.

In a Jool mission there are lots of very dangerous things.

-Aerobraking at Jool, hard to estimate without mods.

-Tylo landing, I used lots of quickloads to land my probe.

-Vall landing, easier than the Tylo landing but can still fail.

-Even just arriving to Jool can fail if you arrive to the orbit in the wrong direction.

[Xavven]

I haven't done a Jool-5 yet, so I'm not really qualified to compare, but when I looked at the Jool-5 challenge I saw different "levels" of it. The "easy" levels allow you to send orbital refuel stations in advance of the mothership. I estimate (but cannot say from experience) that this would make that particular version of the Jool-5 very, very easy compared to a manned Eve return.

The hard version of Jool-5 where you don't get to send tankers, must bring a crew of 3, and must do science at each moon, sounds like it could compare to Eve or exceed it in challenge. I don't recall if the hardest level requires science jr. and goo, which increases the payload enough to be a very serious game changer. In fact, it's one of the few cases where a Mobile Science Lab could actually improve delta-v over the disposables method, but I'd have to run the numbers.

[theend3r]

Eve's harder. For Jool-5 you basically build an oversized tug with a Tylo lander plus one/two others as you can land on Bop and Pol with anything (probably even you mothership).

If you can do Tylo you can do Jool-5. If you can ascend from Eve you can do Eve. In terms of difficulty: Eve > Tylo. FAR could probably change that though.

I always overengineer my stuff though so basically all my Jool expeditions could do at least Jool-4 (Tylo really needs some preparations).

Edited December 12, 2014 by theend3r

[Stratzenblitz75]

Eve > Tylo. FAR could probably change that though.

With aerodynamic failures enabled? Nah.

In my experience FAR makes an Eve landing MORE difficult since you can't build an asparagus staged pancake and expect it to stay in one piece. You have to build more vertically, and as we all know, vertical things have a tendency to fall over.

Also you have to keep it pointed the right way as it enters the upper atmosphere.

Add KIDS and DRE if you feel like torturing yourself.

[SkyRex94]

I have done both of them succesfully (still waiting for Laie to see through my entry), And here some opinion:

Eve Rocks Challenge:

The Challenge here is to design the Lander, getting to Eve is easy, getting back home too, landing is even easier(maybe requires a few tries until you hit where you want to land).

But the Launch from Eve is really difficult, in terms of craft design. You have to develop it smart OR suffer the consequences of carriing a super heavy lander to Eve. But the actual flying of it is not soo difficult (if you designed it could).

But it definitely is the most difficult 'Launch' possible in stock KSP.

Jool-5 Challenge:

The Jool 5 requires even more planning, here the sheer complexity is a challenge of its own. The requirement to go as one ship, makes it really complex to design, you have to test a lot more different aspects of your craft especially if you plan to reuse some parts. The single units to do a single landing may be not as hard to design as Eve-Lander but fitting and designing them together in a complex ship makes the engineering even more difficult than Eve-Launch.

And here you'll have to deal with a lot of different flying challenges too:

-Aerobraking at Jool and Laythe

-Tylo Landing: The most difficult 'Landing' in KSP

-Laythe: hitting an Island or build a floating lander.

-Orbital mechanics: to move between the moons without spending too much fuel.

-(optional, but i've done it) A suborbital flight in Jools Atmosphere, very difficult.

- several Rondeveus and dockings, maybe rearranging modules ( compared to only one docking(at most) at Eve)

So flying is definitly more difficult in Jool-5 than Eve Landing.

Engineering is due to the sheer complexity also a lot more difficult than Eve Landing.

My Jool-5 required a week of planning, engineering and testing, before i was ready to go.

Eve Landing required just a day of engineering the Lander, and the flying was also waay shorter.

So under the line Jool-5 wins by far.

only thing more difficult in stock, would be a grand tour.

but Eve Landing comes directly behind, although with a huge gap in between.

(Of course if you compare Tylo-Landing versus Eve, Eve wins, but the question was for the Jool-5 as a hole, and not the hardest Landing of it, the complexity plays in huge here)

Don't really understand how so many people voted for Eve. I hope all of the Voters have actually done BOTH of these Missions!

P.S; might be important, to judge my opinion in comparison:

Eve Rocks: Level 3 , landed under 100m, report from oceans

Jool-5: Jebediahs Level, 7 Kerbals, current Science Record holder.

Edited December 12, 2014 by SkyRex94

[Bill Phil]

Jool-5 is harder, but the total Dv required for Eve round trip is probably higher. Jool-5 requires you to land on 5 moons, and plus you may use gravity assists and other fancy maneuvers which take a lot of skill to perform.

[Superfluous J]

Eve is harder to plan for. Jool 5 is harder to execute, especially if you discover midway through that you forgot something, or something works differently than you expect. If that happens on Eve, you wasted an hour at most. Jool 5, you could have wasted several hardcore play hours.

Also, once you get an Eve lander you can redo the mission over and over with few problems. A Jool-5 mission is not something you undertake on a whim, no matter how many times you've done it.

So I voted "other"

[Norcalplanner]

I've done Jool-5 twice, and made it to Eve and back four times. I found Jool-5 slightly more difficult. Tylo plays a big part, of course, but I think it has to do more with the number of opportunities for catastrophe due to all the maneuvering. It's possible to do Eve without docking a single time. Or to use a racing analogy, I find Eve to be more like a drag race - it's more about the design of the vehicle, then executing well after launch. Jool-5 is more like a lap around the Nurburgring, with many more decision points and critical maneuvers.

Edited December 13, 2014 by Norcalplanner
stupid autocorrect

[timsfitz]

I returned a guy from Eve. It was difficult, and the first two attempts failed. I have attempted the Jool 5 once and I failed at Tylo. I've returned from Tylo once before in a single mission for that purpose, but doing all 5 was much harder in one mission.

[lajoswinkler]

Jool-5 is absolutely a lot harder thing to do. It requires a versatile lander or several landers on a powerful tug to carry all that so far away. Even if you take into account delta v only, you can see Jool-5 challenge is a lot harder.

Eve is a straightforward mission. You go there, you aerobrake, you land, you ascent and then come back. I did it with Deadly Reentry so I had to carry a big ass shield. It is very hard, but really not harder than what Jool-5 requires you to do.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Eve is an overly attached girlfriend.

If you get to close to her, she will embrace you.

Refusing to ever let you go again

Edited December 13, 2014 by MalfunctionM1Ke

[TheBrisbyMouse]

Screw landing and returning from Eve, land and return from Jool. It needs something like 33km/s to reach low orbit.

But it can still be done

[KevinW42]

Well, I've managed to successfully take off from Eve (once, unmanned, with a tiny payload), but my Jool 5 attempt broke apart before leaving LKO. Make of that what you will.

[cantab]

Don't really understand how so many people voted for Eve. I hope all of the Voters have actually done BOTH of these Missions!

Well, I've done neither.

But I expect the Jool-5 will be harder, mainly because it's just a lot more. You've got an atmo landing (which might be a spaceplane or a jet rocket if you choose), various vacuum landings including the game's toughest, numerous transfers around the Joolian system which is basically the same as a whole bunch of interplanetary transfers. An Eve ascent is difficult but it's just one difficult thing. Well, two if you count landing on target on high ground.

[Jouni]

Neither Eve nor Jool-5 is hard, once you've achieved a basic level of competence in most aspects of the game. Both of them are tedious to plan and execute. I have returned from Eve a couple of times, but I've never finished a Jool-5 ship to the point I would have wanted to fly it, so Jool-5 is probably the more tedious and less fun of the two.

[Superfluous J]

Eve is like rolling a boulder up a hill.

Jool 5 is like breaking that boulder up into chunks and wheelbarrowing them up the hill in multiple loads.