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Apollo-style Duna mission


livefree75

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I've been determined to master interplanetary travel and so decided to go to Duna again (the only planet I've successfully returned from). I set it up Apollo-style. Everything went relatively smoothly until I got into Dunatian orbit and started to worry about my fuel. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to get back, but I continued with the mission anyway. After being amazed at the power of the new 10m heat shield, I performed a suicide burn a little too late and hit the ground at 8 m/s. Not a perfect landing, but it worked. 

Spoiler

This is all actually my second try. On my first attempt, I forgot to add a decoupler between the transfer stage and the heat shield, rendering the entire mission useless.

After the flag-planting/waiting-for-launch-window routine, I took off from Duna and rendezvoused rather inefficiently with the mother ship. Transferring some remaining fuel from the lander into the service module got me some extra delta-V, but I was still worried about not having enough.

Long story short, I ended up with about 300 m/s left after the trans-Kerbin injection, and realized just how much I overpower my rockets! I forgot to add a heat shield to the command module, so Jeb, Bob and Bill very nearly became fried during reentry. In the end though, they were recovered safely.

I really need to start taking screenshots! :)

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