That orbit intersects with Jool’s third moon Tylo (which is highlighted in a peach color). In the map screenshot above there’s a maneuver node at the top left of the blue orbit which creates the new dotted orange orbit. Jool has three decent sized moons with nearly Kerbin levels of gravity, which makes them excellent candidates for this. Instead of using atmosphere, it’s possible to use gravity. In previous versions of KSP, the easiest way to get into orbit of Jool was called aerobraking, and involved dipping into the upper layer of Jool’s atmosphere and using that to slow down. In the current version that just causes you ship to overheat and explode. Not only that, but the ship would have picked up a little velocity because of how it was passing Jool. In the above picture the solid blue line shows the trajectory of the JE1 coming into the Jool system and then escaping. You also have to slow down somehow to get into orbit. Getting to your destination is only half of the challenge for interplanetary travel. In this case I had an alarm set to remind me when the JE1 was getting close to Jool’s gravity well. I can set alarms for various events like a ship is coming up on a sphere of influence change or a maneuver node. It does just what it sounds like it does. Either way, I can send Jeb down to the surface as planned and then leave the lander at the refinery.Ĭontinuing my extended weekend in KSP, I left off yesterday with the crew of the Jool Explorer 1 starting their two year journey to the outer edges of the Kerbol system. I time warped the game through most of that journey, slowing down to complete a few research missions and check in on a science lab in orbit around Kerbin’s second moon, Minmus. I use a mod called Kerbal Alarm Clock which is invaluable when running multiple missions at once. I’m leaning to cutting things short and coming back to Jool with a redesigned Explorer with better TWR. So now that the Explorer is docked at the refinery I have to make a decision about whether to cut the mission short and return to Kerbin or continue on to Pol, Laythe, and Vall. The next mission should easily be able to get away with half the number of supply containers or more. Three years into the mission, and the crew still has a full set of supplies. Or really I under estimated how well the hydroponics modules would do at recycling waste. Speaking of mass, I drastically overestimated the amount of supplies I would need for the crew. The ship is smaller because nuclear engines run on liquid fuel not hydrogen which takes more volume, and there’s no nuclear reactor required which saves a lot of mass as well. It has better TWR and roughly the same deltaV. Instead, I’ve started looking at a new version of the Explorer that uses nuclear engines. I tried an alternate design in the VAB with two reactors and engines which did help with the TWR of the craft but not enough to offset the hit to the available deltaV. Overall I’m pretty disappointed with the VASIMR engine on the ship. Docking turned out to be easier than I expected but was quite slow. A 10 minute burn to leave Tylo, a 6 minute burn to match inclination with Bop’s orbit and get an intercept, and a final 6 minute burn to get into orbit around Bop. It took about two hours of real time and required three burns. Over the weekend I returned to my Jool exploration mission and got the Explorer transferred from Tylo to Bop.
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