Tylo is arguably the hardest body to land on in KSP 1 and 2, in this guide I will attempt to help you land on tylo and get back to kerbin, I have suffered so you don’t have too.
About Tylo
Tylo is the third moon of Jool, Tylo has a sphere of influence has a radius of 14,758 kilometres and 0.8 G’s of acceleration, making it have slightly less gravity relative to Kerbin, along with this Tylo has no atmosphere. Due to Tylo orbiting around jool (which is far away) and the factors previously stated, it is difficult to land on Tylo and get back.
Tech tree requirments
For the tech tree I recommend you have All of Tier 2 unlocked, especially Nuclear Propulsion. For tier three I recommend you unlock “Heavy rocketry”, “Heavy Launchers”, “Heavy Orbital Operations”, “Deep Space Probes” (Not very useful but needed to progress), “Enlarged Power Systems”, “Long Range Power Generation” and “Radiation Science” If you can afford it.
Stages and modules
You are going to need a accent module (get to Kerbin orbit), transfer module (get to Jool and back), Lander module (Land on Tylo then get to tylo orbit). I over packed my accent stage and saved on fuel for the transfer module, I probably wouldn’t be able to make it if I didn’t have the accent module as a extra booster.
Tylo lander
-How to build a Tylo Lander
You will need thrusters for Tylo decent and accent, this module has to have stages, mine had three. According to the built in trip planner you need about 5,500 M/s of DeltaV, My module had 5,600. 5,600 was barely enough to make it, I had to leave my vehicle and use my Kerbals RCS pack to make it the rest of the way to orbit and the transfer module. I wasn’t very efficient with the landing and accent so you should be able to Do this without using your Kerbal.
Different stages of a Tylo lander,
-Slowing down, I had a separable stage on my lander that I used solely to slow down to a more reasonable velocity. Tylo Orbit is 2,200 M/s, By the time my stage was spent I was going at around 300-400 M/s and about 2,000-5,000 meters above the surface. This stage had 1,900 M/s of DeltaV, I used 1 FL-T200 fuel tank and 4 FL-T400 fuel tanks for this stage, The engines I used were 1 LV-909 “Terrier” and 4 48-7S “spark” thrusters. Since these are not very powerful thrusters you will need to manage how far before your target do you start the decent burn. (This stage had a TWR of 0.8 So you cant land on it)
-Lander/Accent, I used this stage for final landing and part of the accent. The thrusters it used were 1 LV-909 “Terrier” and 2 48-7S “spark” thrusters. The fuel tanks I used were 4 FL-T100, 1 FL-T200 and 4 R-11 “Baguette”. This left me with 2,300 M/s of DeltaV
-Orbit to Transfer Module, This final module had only 1 R-12 “doughnut” Fuel tank and Two LV-1 “Ant thrusters. Along with that it was just 1 MK-1 “Explorer” Crew capsule, 1 Kelus Long “Telescopic Mobility Enhancer”, 1 Science Jr. Jr experiment module and 1 Clamp-O-Tron docking port. Of course I had solar panels and a antenna but its effect on the DeltaV is minuscule.
If you can manage to make a lander without the Orbit to Transfer module that would be great, I only decided to make this 3 stages, you could easily make it only 2 stages (You would need to edit the spacecraft design of course
Tylo lander Photos, (with sections)
Decent Stage, Lander Module
Landing-Accent Stage, Lander Module
Orbit-(Transfer module) stage, Lander module
All together now
Other modules/stages
I wont go much into much depth on this section because odds are you already know or can easily figure out Kerbin accent and Jool transfer modules.
Accent Stage, You need enough DeltaV to get into orbit (Duh) I recommend packing extra fuel so you can eat into your accent stage as part of your transfer stage
Transfer Module, This will get you from Kerbin to Jool and back. You need to use Nuclear thrusters because of its very high efficiency. You need to calculate your transfer modules DeltaV while carrying the Landing module and how much fuel that will use and how much DeltaV you will have after leaving your Decent Module on Tylo. For this the Trip Planner will be your friend, Use it to find out needed DeltaV so you can calculate. I recommend you use Desmos Scientific Calculator, its literally the best.
Extra notes
If you need to test your vehicle but you don’t wanna go all the way to Jool just use the cheat menu, the key bind is Alt F8. You can teleport to the surface or orbit to test your vehicle, I have provided picture of the lander module I used, I only could fir the Science Jr. Jr. on it. I am open to ideas, if I did something wrong or you think something should be changed please let me know!
