Tylo... We all know it's there, But few have conquered it

[Frank_G]

Getting back from Tylo isnt really hard, as long as you have 3.1k of delta V and a decent engine. Landing however is nerveripping and requires exact timing, if you want to land without wasting precious resources or suffer from rapidly incoming planetary surface features.

Efficient Tylo landers with return capability can actually be constructed very compact and lightweight. I have never landed on Tylo during a Grand Tour mission though, but i am currently designing a lander that can travel with a larger craft without costing too much delta V during transport.

[Richy teh space man]

Been there and done that. Mining Kethane on the surface is a great way to keep the size of the lander down.

But Tylo does feel kind of unfinished as a planet though atm. Personally I'd like to see it developed a bit more in the following updates, maybe to add some kind of atmosphere to it like Titan.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Pic-o-proof

I am still very proud of landing 3 Kerbals + all Science Instruments needed on the Surface.

But the Craft I used was somewhat Overkill with all These Nukes. I bet there is a better way.

[Hannu]

It needs just power and fuel. I avoid using nuclear engines on landers, so I need separate descent and ascent stages. If you use LV-N:s, it is possible to make single stage orbit -> surface -> orbit -lander. I do not have pictures now, but typical mass for lander with 2 man pod and necessary science stuff is couple of tens of tons before braking burn on Tylo's orbit.

I made it twice by hand, once with one way probe and once with manned craft. Both cases took several attempts and were hard way I do not like (I hate "guess and try" games). In that case you should take about 4000 m/s or even more, Mechjeb or trained pilot can handle it with 3500-3600 m/s from 160 km orbit.

[EdFred]

Yes, even with a 2 man lander can. See signature.

(Tylo segment of the JoolFive slideshow starts at picture 155)

Edited January 8, 2015 by EdFred

[Daid]

But Tylo does feel kind of unfinished as a planet though atm. Personally I'd like to see it developed a bit more in the following updates, maybe to add some kind of atmosphere to it like Titan.

I think the lack of atmosphere is exactly the point for Tylo. As that's what makes it a challenge. Just like the heavy atmosphere of Eve is a challenge.

[Whovian]

Does Hyperediting into orbit and then landing on it count?

[LordFjord]

One day Tylo, one day... *shakes fist*

Only one serious attempt so far but it didn't go very well ... at all. Suicide burn is meant literally on that evil place.

[Guz]

succesfully deployed my Tylo-craft at Pol today. gonna hava a ride with it on my next grand tour.

[n.b.z.]

A while ago, I had shown my Tylo landing - 3 Kerbals plus two rovers, stock sandbox, after playing KSP for only 2 months - in the You-know-you-play-too-much-KSP thread.

Back then, the Kerbonauts were still there and had not come back to Kerbin. I took them back a week or so after the landing.

Only now did I get to finish Part 2 of the image gallery, as there's always getting something in the way of my plans - such as a sudden urge to learn building space planes, or the release of 0.90, etc...

My mission was mainly characterized by profound newbie-ism. Ineffective trajectories, a desire to always carry a large margin of delta-V to make up for bad flying and large blunders, and a weird refusal to install any mods (including engineering mods) led to the most straightforward way a relative beginner could pull off Tylo with this payload: by throwing an almost whackjobian mountain of hardware against the problem. No less than 100 Mainsails were running at liftoff of the large stack, and I still needed another launch to get everything on the way.

It was the biggest, most time-consuming single effort I have undertaken so far, and it taught me a lot of new stuff. It was also the most satisfying one, as I "needed" to solve Tylo, so it would not always remain the place where everyone died (like on the first, very naive attempt). This time, the landing worked on the first attempt without resorting to one of the many quicksaves, while taking screenshots like a tourist. And it was the first destination where I saw no way around having to learn docking. Duna, Vall etc. worked with a multi-stage lander large enough for the last stage to reach Kerbin.

I will probably - hopefully - not build such a part count monstrosity ever again.

My KSP skill isn't at a level where I should be handing out advice; but for anyone relatively new to KSP, my tip for Tylo would be that you probably want to have an engineering mod. Tylo isn't a friendly place when you haven't the faintest clue about the capabilities of your hardware, and without some delta-V numbers at hand you will probably end up building something as silly as i did.

My understanding of this thread is to be a Tylo showcase thing; I had already shown the first part elsewhere, but now that the gallery is complete, it is repeated here for completeness.

Three Kerbals on Tylo - Part 1

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Three Kerbals on Tylo - Part 2

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[Frank_G]

I have just finished my smallest Tylo lander yet. 6.9k of delta V and a TWR on Tylo between 1.00 - 2.36 (landing stage) and up to 7.09 on the ascend stage. Works like a charm. But i think i can probably get it even smaller... we will see.

Complete lander and ascend stage.

The ascend stage and Jeb Kerman. The landing legs need to be placed a bit better though.

[alexman142]

I am planning a mission to Jool sometime. With my warp drive it won't take too long

[redsh]

48-7S... answer to many KSP questions.

[SmartS=true]

I did a flyby in Career mode once.

[cheeseit]

Honestly it wasn't really that hard. I just did a smallish asparagus lander using the 48-7S. Clusters of 5 on the bottom FL T400 tanks made it pretty easy. Once your landed safely it's super easy to get back into orbit.

[ArmchairGravy]

I've landed a probe there, but haven't risked a Kerbal.

[Renegrade]

Honestly it wasn't really that hard.

Yeah, it isn't that hard. The whole trip is like getting to Kerbin orbit with stock air once.

If people want to practice high-G landings, they should just make a lander for Kerbin, and practice hovering and landing around the launchpad. That's what I did before my first Mun landing -- works even better for Tylo.

[NecroBones]

I've been to Tylo a few times. Below are some image galleries. First, is my Tylo-specific mission that was my first landing there. The second is my entire Jool-5 mission, which of course hits all of the moons there (with Tylo causing a lot of the engineering challenge, since you need to haul around a pretty robust lander).

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[AbacusWizard]

A while back I took a tour of Duna, Ike, Dres, and all the moons of Jool with the Phoenix III, a big interplanetary atomic drive carrying a lab, a one-kerbal lander, and three probe landers. Generally I sent a probe down to each world first; if it had enough ∆v to get to the surface and back safely, I sent down a kerbal as well. This is the Phoenix III itself, back in Kerbin orbit after the long trip was over:

The probe sent down to Tylo ran out of fuel five or ten meters above the surface, and successfully lithobraked to complete the landing. I left it there as a research base--not much else to do with no fuel!