dire

Screwdrivers and wrenches are from the kerbal attachment system mod and used to reattach parts. That's totally fine, I can wait til SLV-4.

@Death Engineering Am I allowed to bring a screwdriver into orbit on a crew transfer vehicle, as long as it never leaves LKO? Will need to launch a plentiful supply of screwdrivers, gadgets and miscellaneous parts on my next NPM anyhow, so this won't affect the timing or mass of my launches, it will just let me complete a near-Kerbin rescue of someone stuck in keosynchronous orbit with my prospector, which as it turns out (as it always turns out) doesn't have enough delta-V on board, so I need to strap on more tankage before its next mining run. The tankage is already in LKO and was part of that same launch -- I'm going to strap a pair of lifeboats to the sides, which will let me store both more food and more fuel per run.

@PlatinumBlast @eagle92lightning The Blunderbirds actually did a Minmus rescue. I think they've pretty much been everywhere. As far as me using an SSTO, my current save is doing the Duna Outpost Mission Architecture challenge (hence why the schoolbus on Minmus), and the rules of that mission would make an SSTO problematic as I only have a limited amount of mass that can leave LKO and I don't want to waste too much on things my Duna colony doesn't really need.

Am going to start merging screenshots to save on bandwidth. If anyone has a problem with that let me know and I can start posting links to the originals also. Y2 D37: Launched a Crew Transfer Vehicle up to the SLV-3 orbiting science lab. Seriously considered sending a screwdriver in the shuttle (which would not have left LKO) but decided to wait for SLV-4. Am really liking the new, upgraded engines on the RATO-19. A vehicle that previously could barely get into an LKO encounter now has 1200 dV to spare, and the only thing I changed was swapping panthers for whiplashes and sabers. And apparently I hate myself, because I picked the most torturous, laborious way to get Prospector back into orbit possible. I think this took about 3 hours, but it might've taken 4. Also sent up a crew transfer to bring the engineer from Prospector home and top off the snack tanks of the RATO-19. It's got about 20 people on board and they eat a lot of snacks (No snacks were transferred into NPM, only the shuttle).Will likely send up another snack shuttle before SLV-4 launches, and then I can hopefully start thinking about moving the entire SLV-3 payload over to Minmus to produce its own snacks with all 20 passengers aboard. Was hoping to do that after the Prospector did its run, but again, its low tankage means it just doesn't have the delta-V to do it. It just barely has enough delta-V to get itself back to Minmus at present.

Roved over to the lowlands to grab some more science...and forgot to take a "Before" screenshot until my science was half done....but it's fine. That lifeboat is not broken, it just didn't want to land on its wheels when I tried to detach it, so I'm reassembling it to decouple onto its wheels. Although flight tests are a little...disappointing...I think ultimately to get it into orbit I might have to stand it up on its tail. And two more probes have arrived, marking the expected arrival date of Aries Expedition and adding an Ike relay and a polar Duna relay to my comsat collection. When Cubesat 2 arrives the collection - and "Positive Uplink" - will be complete. So that's 582 extra science from lowlands and scanning and 5368 total.

I have unmanned probes but since the comm network comes out of my NPM its coverage is a bit...spotty at the moment. I pretty much plan to crew anything I can't afford to lose.

Year 02, day 7. Landed on Duna with 8 kolonists. Landing was a little rough but I think just moving some parachutes around will fix that for next time. Plan is to refuel, then leave the escape capsules and two kolonists on the ground and re-orbit with the rover, then meet with Ezekiel and the DSV, transfer two of the ground crew to the DSV and two of the DSV crew to the ground, and transfer science to the DSV, then land again with the rover and meet with the escape capsules. I seriously considered using one of the escape capsules to check off "Used contingency plan" but I'm honestly not confident that they can survive re-entry solo, and I need both capsules on the ground to keep my kolonists from becoming homesick. Deorbit shot shows 215 science (I not only unlocked some sweet tech nodes, I boldly downloaded entirely new mods which may show up in Launch 4!) Crew shot shows Y02 Day007 and 1444 science, so I can get a delta of 1229 science and a total of 2805. Mods installed were FTT, Malemute and DSEV, which are roverdude and snack-guy mods so I presume they're OK. They seem pretty balanced. Then headed to the midlands and collected some low-flying science as well as midlands science and surface samples. Additional science delta of 1981 and new science total of 4786 total science collected, and I still need to actually return 30+ experiments, so this should be good. That is biome number 2, giving me a good start on the "collect 6 surface samples" quest. Also discovered that this craft still does not fly especially well even after moving the parachutes around, but it should be enough to take off and land a couple of times until a beefier Duna Shuttle arrives. Year 2, day 26. Cubesat 2 "Hosea" enters the Duna system and enters a synchronous orbit to Ezekiel Station, trailing by about 800km. While I could send the cube sats on adventures for fun and profit, I think I'm better served at the moment by leaving them in orbit. Hosea has plenty of fuel left for stationkeeping and I might put it in a higher orbit just so it has better line of sight lines to the surface.

Played a little bit with aerobraking on Duna with Ezekiel station, burned a few hundred meters per second off my orbit but still had to spend quite a lot of fuel to enter an orbit. Lost comm signal while burning and wound up spending all my LFO and electric charge doing a full burn with a dead probe, but luckily I lost power before I had burned all my lithium. Once Ezekiel came back into the sunlight and re-established connection to Kerbin, I was able to circularize, but I still have about a 3 degree eccentricity on a 200km / 300 km orbit. That should be fine for now. I think I actually wound up spending more dV from the aerocapture than I would have spent without it. Aries Expedition is more or less refueled and I plan to dock the DSV back to Ezekiel while the rover makes landfall, but that's a project for another day. Cubesat 2 arrives at Duna in 19 days, so Aries will likely already be on the surface by then. The Prospector from SLV-3 is refueling incredibly slowly on Minmus. It's going to be there a while, but it has time to burn. It has three static seats, plus two 'emergency habs' that are rated for two kerbals each, so in theory it can seat up to seven but it's going to look a little silly flying those big orange tents around. I am tinkering with the idea of using the emergency habs as deployable auxiliary living quarters on Duna, which would give me a lot of leeway to have heavy habs on my deep space vessels that recycle soil for efficient long-term transport, and the deploy these lightweight habs on Duna where I can mine ore and turn it into potatoes, where snack capacity and soil recycling isn't an issue. That's potentially a lot more efficient in the long term, but actually I don't know that I have so many launch windows that doing that would be worth it.

OK, successful landing on Ike and docked on the surface for final refueling. I just now realized I don't have a food processor on the deep space vessel, but it won't be a problem in the immediate future. Recording a starting science of 592 and an ending science of 2015 on Ike, which doesn't count things like high Duna and high Ike discovery, but I didn't think to grab the science screen just prior to entering Duna. So that's 1423 science plus the 153 solar science for 1574 total science at the moment. Not counting my Minmus and Munar science which the rover did that came out to about 3600 just because I don't think I have screen shots of before and after. And after... Could go roving for fun and profit, but I'm not going to risk the rover at this point. There's loads of time for that later. Next up, topping up the food tanks and then Ezekiel, the probes and Aries landing, although the exact timing will depend on how fast I can fill my tanks. Probably Aries landing first, then Ezekiel and then the probes.

Testing shows that my 31-day nominal snack load lasted about 15 days, which means snacks is running food twice per meal, more than likely. Turned meals per day down from 3 to 2, which means Kerbals should now eat 4 snacks per day, still more than the 3 they are supposed to but now falling within the contingencies I set up. Just prior to the Aries Ike-fall (hopefully a very slow, very graceful fall), SLV-3 launches with its 30.986 ton payload mass! Half of this NPM is going to stay in orbit for a bit, and the other half is going to Minmus for some extra fuel and snacks. SLV-3 was recovered 710.7 miles west of the KSC, with 64.8% of its dry value less two airbrakes that burned off during plasma blackout. It recovered 55,126 funds which helps offset some of the fines Val's been accruing for not feeding her kolonists. I do have "Kerbals die after missed meals" enabled, which is currently set to 30, but I'm not sure if lowering that to 20 will kill my kerbals after 5 days or 10 days because Snacks is broken, so I'm going to leave it there. If I have a kerbal starve to death, we'll find out then, I suppose. A few days later and in high orbit over another planet, it's become clear that Val's desperate mid-course correction and her draconian measures limiting the kerbals to only 4 meals a day have saved the expedition, as even with those measures in place the kerbals consumed about 2200 out of their 2600 available supplies during the shortened remainder of the trip to Duna, leaving less than two weeks of supplies left that would have had to last them for an additional 40 to 50 days, had Val not acted. I am burning early to the node because the way the plasma engines work, I spend most of my time at about 20% power on long burns and I'd rather have more control coming into my periapsis rather than trying to play catch up after losing power and shooting past both Duna and Ike at high speed.

Disaster is looming large over the expedition. After tinkering with the lifeboats to ensure optimal placement on the rover to survive descent, Bill and Val ran a routine diagnosis of their Snack supplies. The result: 2635 snacks remain out of 8000 snack capacity, meaning the kerbals have eaten 5365 snacks with still about half the voyage ahead of them! The snacks computer insists that there are - barely - enough snacks remaining to reach the Duna SOI, with 110 days of snacks left and 109 days to the outer bounds of Duna. It's then going to be a long, hungry drop to Ike, however, and that's only if the Kerbals manage to curb their appetites and ration the remaining third of their cookies. While discussing how a) the Ezekiel departed with almost 1600 snacks still remaining in its cabins and b) how it totally was not Bill's fault that the processor turned all their ore reserves into Lithium instead of potatoes, Val realized that the only solution would be to perform a high delta-V maneuver - not to reach the Ezekiel and loot its snacks, as Bill had suggested, but rather to reach Ike well ahead of schedule so they could mine more ore. Val also made a note to tell Mission Control to add space rock tracking to future expeditions. It'd be very handy to be able to harvest a nearby asteroid for potatoes right about now. In order to lighten the load as much as possible, Bill hand-launches a relay satellite and a resource scanning satellite; they can make their own way to Duna and will enter their orbits after the expedition's food supply is out of danger. And then we begin the long, slow burn at 1.00 meters per second squared. Concerned about what other systems might not be reporting accurately, Val aborted her burn early. Despite only burning about 500 delta-V, her computer now estimated she had only 4972 delta-V, down from 7381 previously. Jeb from the Aries rover reminded her that it only reported engines that were active; she had switched off the rover's LFO engine midway through the burn to power up her plasma thrusters. Regardless, she still had a 163-dV correction and then would blaze through the Duna system in only a few hours, in just under 65 days. They'd have a 1684 dV braking burn to enter orbit low over Ike, and then touch down on Ike to resupply. Val also implemented what was perhaps the most desperate measure she, as commander of the expedition, could do: She measured out 31 nominal days of food, and then locked the rest with her personal password. If the food survived at least 24 days to D375, she could unlock the rest of the food early, but if it survived less than 24 days she'd have to ration out the remainder, flirting with mutiny by starving her loyal expedition a day at a time. By transferring food out only every other day, she hoped to give the reprocessors time to produce more Snacks from the recycled soil; every soil container was full and more was being produced that had to be jettisoned, so every bit of soil that could be recycled meant a better chance of the expedition surviving. @sturmhauke Not sure if that disqualifies my DRO, but if my Kerbals all starve to death (my snacks settings make them starve after missing 30 meals, which should be about 10 days) then that is mission failure. In fact, if at least 5 of my kerbals starve I more or less fail the DOMA challenge :p Otherwise I could just jettison a couple of kolonists and have everyone else eat their food. The Ezekiel does not have enough for a matching burn; it has 2200 dV, which is enough to reach Duna orbit without burning off anything sensitive in the atmosphere; every dV I spend to shorten my travel time is a dV I have to spend again when I am slowing down as my craft are generally not aerobraking. @Death Engineering If I alternate starving and feeding my Kerbals, will that cause any problems with the DOMA challenge? I can probably get by with starving them for less than ten days total (ideally, I don't have to starve them at all, but Snacks is acting weird). I did bring enough, my Kerbals are just eating too much :p

Well, I am playing Kerbal Complicated Bookkeeping Program And here is Expedition Aries, the crew-bearing portion of our armada, just after its mid-course correction showing its low flyby of Ike and a gain of 153 science from high solar orbit. I'm going to be spending about 550 of that on new toys for Wave 2, although I'm not sure yet what I'm going to get. Probably nuclear engines for a better interplanetary transit system, these lithium engines are just a huge hassle. They're basically giant ion engines, but on full power my main engines draw 2000 energy per second. I have my eye on something called a Trinity engine which can run on explodium that incurs negative rep penalties if I use it anywhere near Kerbin, which sounds like just what the doctor ordered xD And yes, KER does say we have over 7000 dV in our tanks, more than the 6000 we had when we started our interplanetary transit burn. This is because we've lost a lot of weight by shedding the DRO and the two cubesats, which are primarily LFO-powered and thus have much lower dV potential. We are down from 90 tons to 64. Dubbed the cube sats Cube Sat 1 "Nehemiah" and Cube Sat 2 "Hosea"

Still Day 249. Upgraded my Astronaut Complex to level 3 and hired 36 applicants, including 3 each scientist, engineer and pilot. I was hoping scouts could do basic piloting, but apparently the only thing they do is "tough it out" better than other Kerbals. Not sure what they're actually good for beside that. Anyway, I eventually hope to have a ship class that fits 36 colonists into a single NPM, and launch at least 2 or 3 of those for Wave 2, but my next launch is going to be an all-in-one kind of vessel to do my near-Kerbin missions that aren't in LKO. Hiring all those people and upgrading my complex dropped me about 1.4 million credits. My starting science for Insight is 531 and I'll keep track of my mission gains separately from the Duna gains. @sturmhauke Does solar science count for the Insight challenge? Or only Duna SOI?

I'm working on it, be patient! Did insertion burn for my entire fleet of ships today, tomorrow I'll do mid-course corrections and start thinking about circularizing on Duna. Some time before the fleet lands on Duna I'm supposed to design and launch my third Standard Launch Vehicle, which is the first ship of the second wave, which will be 2.5x bigger than the first wave! I'll probably actually land on Duna some time next week.

I don't think this is even a gravity assist question, I think it's an Oberth Effect question. By doing "solar skimming" you're borrowing kinetic energy from the star in order to try to raise your apoapsis until it intersects some other body. In effect, solar skimming is identical to using Oberth Effect on Kerbin to help transfer to Duna: the two bodies you are transferring between are stars and the body they are orbiting is the galactic center. In short, the reason you would do solar skimming is not to save time on a transfer, and in general any time you spend within a solar sphere of influence is going to be insignificant compared to your interstellar transfer time for any realistic transfer system. The reason you would do solar skimming is to save on delta-V and enable an efficient Hohman transfer between the two stars while allowing you to bring less fuel mass.

Y1 D249: Alright, did a final ejection burn around Kerbin which was 450 m/s or so, but after Minmal orbital costs and everything else I think I maybe spent 850 or 950 total on ejection. Was worried that the cube sats would impact something if I used their decouplers, so I got Bill out on EVA and he detached the by hand. Cubesat 2 still shot into the DSV primary reactor pretty hard, so I'm glad I didn't use the decoupler. Everything detached OK and I now have a fleet of four ships en route to Duna. The Duna Orbital Station / DRO has been renamed the Ezekiel Duna Recon Orbiter and will enter Duna's SOI in about 180 days, after a 250 m/s mid-course correction. Cubesat 1 will enter the Duna SOI in about 202 days. Expedition Aries contains the lander, all 11 crew and the deep space vehicle, and will enter the Duna SOI in about 212 days. I lost about 1300 food when I detached Ezekiel but we still have over 300 days of life support, so we should still be fine. It turns out I didn't fill up my ore tanks (or my 30 monoprop units) on Minmus so I've only got about 130 ore of reserves instead of 1300 ore of reserves, but I also have about 5000 nominal delta-V and 50% more food than I need, so I really shouldn't need to turn my ore into potatoes or gas. Finally, Cubesat 2 will enter the Duna SOI in about 252 days. When Aries arrives, it'll capture and then land on Ike to restock food and the rover's LFO. The rover has a few parachutes and can in theory take a 50 m/s fall if it doesn't roll over, but it doesn't have a ton of delta-V for landing maneuvers on Duna. I can probably just drop it straight from low orbit to surface, but I'd rather not be proven wrong and have to save scum this. I've actually never landed anything on Duna before so I'd rather have more delta-V than I need rather than run out halfway down and see whether my parachutes slow me down enough for a dead stick landing. Also, although I did transfer a large radiator panel from the DSV to act as a heat shield for my long Buffalo cabin, the buffalo parts in particular can't take reentry heating at all. If they've got a Karibou part in front they are usually OK, but if I go belly-to at all, I don't want the rover to burn in half. That would not be a good day. Attached the escape pods to the rover and discovered that I forgot to turn my ISRU off when I left Minmus! It's been burning my ore this entire time and now I have no ore left. However, I do have quite a lot of Lithium.

Minmal ejection burn. My map won't actually tell me what my interplanetary trajectory looks like yet, so I'll have to make some adjustments when I leave Minmus SOI, but I'll be going in more or less the right direction at roughly the right speed. Should be able to save "a bit" of delta-V compared to a simple LKO burn, but more importantly, once fully fueled my two 31-ton launch vehicles weigh about 90 tons, in other words I basically got an entire free launch of fuel and food by launching with mostly-empty tanks and filling up on Minmus. About 6000 nominal dV and snacks for between 274 and 394 days according to my snack tray. 11 crew launching with 9100 snacks should eat 33 snacks per day roughly, so unless I accidentally brought Schlock the Mercenary on board I should be ok for any reasonable transfer. My ejection burn will take at least a week, meaning instead of leaving on day 240 I'm leaving on more like day 250, but in theory I have so much delta-V that shouldn't matter. I'll set a nice fast trip and then decouple the DRO and some cube sats who will go even faster.

Day 228. Realized I was spending so much time and effort trying to make a spaceplane tug and get it to encounter SLV-1 that I could use the exact same technique and effort with SLV-2 and save myself a trip. SLV-2 launched with what I expect to be a surplus of delta-V; it must first encounter SLV-1 then tug the rover to Minmus for final refueling and snack resupply before hitting the D240 Duna window (with a lot of leeway because really, if fuel were the limiting factor I could just head to Jool and visit all the muns). Snacks! says that with 11 crew on board I have enough snacks at 20% capacity (mostly all from the snacks the rover had previously mined) for about 80 days, which means this setup should, in theory, have 400 days of snacks for the 11 kerbals on full tanks, which is promising because for my second flight I can probably bring on the order of 30 or 40 kerbals over. I expect an empty NPM of about one ton per kerbal, roughly, if I only consider snacks, which with other considers means I should be able to bring at least 20 kerbals per launch. At 5 launches per window, my next flight should probably house on the order of 100 kerbals. First though, I have to get Expedition Aries safely to Duna's surface, with separate flights for the main deep space vehicle tugging the rover, a separate flight for the orbital station which will serve as my primary relay point to Kerbin and act as a Duna Recon Orbiter, and one additional flight for each of two cube satellites, which if I don't mess anything up will turn into part of my relay network. Or if I do mess something up, they will fly by and I'll probably have to cobble together a probe out of spare parts in situ. SLV-2 launched beautifully with the exception of two medium thermal systems which were outside the main fairing and were destroyed. I had thought I moved those, but apparently not. While unfortunate, this will only limit the maximum reactor and conversion load of the DSV while not coupled to the rover. It won't completely cripple the DSV on solo refuel runs because it still has small thermal systems and radiator panels, but it will limit the reactor quite a bit. I was able to time the launch to coincide with the rover's orbit passing over KSC, and when I decoupled the launch vehicle I only needed a bare whisper of fuel to complete the encounter, which made me very happy as the rover is on a 10-degree inclined orbit and my initial simulation runs met with dismal failure. Nevertheless, the expedition accomplished its first docking successfully and must now proceed to Minmus. The launch vehicle experienced an anomaly on reentry, with a maximum G-force loading of 191 G's (that's almost two hundred) and was destroyed. Mission control is calling this a Kraken sighting about two hundred KM southeast of the space center. Recovery of scrap is to be determined. Telemetry indicates the SLV was about 50 meters over the surface and parachutes had been successfully deployed, but now tracks debris on a solar escape trajectory. Day 235: Second touchdown on Minmus. I am continually amazed and concerned at how a 950 dV transfer, a 150 dV correction and a 300-dV landing seem to translate into about 2800 dV of Lithium burned. The stuff is amazing on paper but between the fantastic power requirements and the fact that it never seems to perform up to snuff, I think it's best as a secondary propulsion unit for my main ships. Even with 31000 electric charge and an additional 86000 capacitance (click the capacitors or use an action group to discharge them quickly, and then they charge slowly over time) AND with 500 charge per second between two nuclear plants and a really big solar array, my deep space vessel only gets about 200 meters per second of full thrust and then it has to throttle down to 20% power output. Which I suspect the low-power mode must be less efficient but the ISP numbers are the same, so I don't know what's going on. Regardless, I was able to deorbit over minmus, detach the rover over the surface at 2 meters per second, and touchdown, then reassemble them into a temporary mining base. All is well and refueling is going as planned. And yes, those fuel gauges DO read about 2% fuel remaining. Why do you ask?

@Death Engineering OK, new question, are we able to replace pieces of our NPM that broke during Kerbin ascent? I could've sworn I put my medium thermal control systems under a fairing, but apparently the monkeys with the wrenches didn't get the memo and that revision never went live. It's actually not mission-critical hardware as my radiator panels and small thermal systems survived, but it's a nuisance to be flying around with broken panels. And at this point I've spent three hours performing the encounter between SLV-1 and SLV-2 and getting them docked, I'm not reverting the flight regardless even if they have to cool the main reactor by dumping used beer on it xD Edit: Also, is there any reason for me to keep the Duna Space Station manned on a continuous basis? Is that part of an achievement of any sort? Am planning to use it as an unmanned Duna Recon Orbiter by sending it in advance of my fleet, and I don't think it has enough life support to keep two kerbals happy for six or eight months.

Day 200 - Made a spaceplane sandwich with four tourists on board. Contract was to "Tour the Captain's Gig" and I'm not sure if they wanted to actually tour the previous resupply ship, or tour the rover. So they get to tour both. It turns out the original model of the Captain's Gig did in fact launch with three wheels, but Captain's Gig 2 has 4 wheels and Captain's Gig 3 also has an additional docking port (I had to undock the rover, dock the new ship to the resupply ship, then flip the mated spaceplanes around to dock the rover on the back). Day 212 - Recovered Captain's Gig #2 with four happy tourists and Val with no damage. Val chose an extremely aggressive deorbit profile, dropping almost straight down from 150 km to a periapsis of zero just past the KSC rather than waiting an extra orbit for a more gentle insertion. The spaceplane was able to handle it nicely, however, and although her orbit took her well north of the KSC she was able to turn south, land on the runway and grab her first star. She'll get about a two week leave of absence before personally taking command of SLV 2 aboard the deep space vessel. Day 228. Decided I need to send a space tug to normalize the rover's orbit before I send Val up in SLV 2 to encounter, dock and head to Minmus. Therefore I need Nelby to come back in CG-3 because having a CG docked to the rover is just going to get in the way of this operation. Nelby doesn't quite have Val's touch when it comes to reentry maneuvers, though, and he splashed down in the grasslands 102 km from the KSC after running out of fuel. Still a 93% recovery and he was able to get 17 grasslands science from it.

And I thought I had a lot of mods Thanks!

OK, I'm thinking the Duna Space Station is an excellent candidate for a DRO, but it needs more tankage and a much beefier relay dish if it's going to be arriving separate from the rest of the fleet. Also some science. Right now it's only got about 700 dv, really only there for orbital encounters and stationkeeping. Time for more tinkering!

Redesigned my Deep Space vessel again, by the time I actually launch it I'm probably going to be up to about iteration 9 (or so). The reason for that is because I'd really like my original 8 kerbals to stay down for more or less the entire duration (and not be so stressed out that they resign, so their score counts), and therefore I need to score "Contingency Plans" on my first run, which is my lightest run and doesn't have any infrastructure in place (like a handy Deep Space Vessel to shuttle it around). "Contingency Plans": Complete achievements "Backup plan", "Duna Space Station", "Duna Space Bus", and "Positive uplink". Note that the spacecraft for each achievement must be unique, or for modular designs must remain viable, at all times. This means that, to score Contingency plan on my first launch, I need the following: * An orbital space station capable of keeping three kerbals comfortable. Not sure whether it's required that this be manned to score other achievements, will have to ask. This can also be life support tankage on its maiden voyage, and it needs room to eventually include a science lab. My initial station will be very, very humble, providing little more than a bus stop for kolonists waiting for the bus down to the surface. * Duna Space Bus - A reusable vessel capable of lifting off from Duna and landing on Ike with four passengers, then refueling and landing back on Duna. My primary rover should be able to fill this role handily. * Backup Plan - Additional vehicles capable of returning all Duna colonists to orbit around Duna. I've actually specially created some "life boat" style ships that should handily fulfil this function. Since I hate wasting tonnage, they'll also act as soil recyclers and life support tankage on the trip over, allowing me to potentially ferry another pair of kerbals on my first mission. However, I only have life boats for eight kerbals, so my initial colony size is still limited to eight. * Positive Uplink - Four relay probes, including one around Ike and one in a polar orbit around Duna. This also requires probe communications enabled in the difficulty settings, which I have. The rover already launched with four probes, but dropped one as a relay around Minmus. In addition, SLV 2 is going to launch with a pair of cubesat relay probes which will be fueled on Minmus, then stay for the initial transfer burn to Duna before separating and making their own way. Hopefully at least one of them will be able to capture, otherwise I'll have to try and direct the Minmus probe to capture on Duna, and I'm not sure it's able to do that. It has 1600 dV and is already Minmus orbit, so we'll see, I guess. I have a hunch it'll be a pain to try to synchronize Minmus into a Duna launch window. Regardless, if the cube sats make it to Duna in time for the rover to relay through them, that should satisfy the requirements of Tier 2 of the Duna Insight Challenge. @sturmhauke Not sure if the deep space vessel satisfies your definition of a Duna Recon Satellite; although it is capable of being a relay point. I could try to separate the rover from the DSV after the initial transfer burn and adjust the DSV to arrive first. They both should have enough dV to circularize, I would imagine. Current nominal payload mass for SLV 2 is sitting at 30.989 (I have a couple of really tiny lithium tanks which let me adjust in 20-kilo increments, although I should probably stuff a couple of snacks on board just in case Jeb stows away during launch).

That is a really good-looking base. Do you recall what mods you used for it @Simog?

Day 80 - Recovered the tourist crew transfer vehicle, but realized that the new, larger crew for the rover are going to potentially eat all their snacks before SLV 2 launches and they can refuel on Minmus. So I sent another tourist bus up. Only two tourists, but it also has a whole heap of snacks to keep them happy until it's time to rock. Day 133 - Sent a rescue vehicle into orbit to rescue Lanson Kerman, a level 0 engineer. It took some time to find a spaceplane configuration that I liked; I eventually re-used the big orange tank design I put on the tourist bus just to give it enough drop tankage to get to orbit and encounter. Turns out I gave it a little too much delta-V for its mission, but too much is much better than not enough, and I think I'll be using the Captain's Gig again Recovered it on the runway but lost a wheel somewhere along the way. I don't actually know where the wheel went but I'm reasonably sure I started with 4 rear wheels, not 3. Recovered 68k credits from craft and I now have 7.98 million. Had to try re-entry twice because for some reason, SAS remains on during plasma blackout, which drained all my batteries because it was fighting the air brakes. On the second round I turned SAS off before plasma blackout and the air brakes actually did a good job of directing my nose off of prograde and keeping my nose (relatively) cool. SLV 2 (31 ton NPM) will launch on day 226 (SLV 1 launched on day 40, plus 186 days for turnaround). Day 147 - Rotating out the shuttle providing food to the rover. as the shuttle's food is depleted. Rover has a skeleton crew eating their their NPM food from day 139 to day 147, but that shold be fine. Tourists return home. Funds go to 8.1 million as the shuttle is recovered on the runway with no damage. Airbrakes are definitely a "get out of jail free" card for re-entry to Kerbin and I'm starting to consider them essential for any spaceplane. Am thinking that in the future, two 2.5 meter hab modules or even three Mk 2 crew cabins will be a superior pick to the Karibou 10-man crew cabin, simply because the Karibou doesn't do soil recycling which the stock parts do, and I'm starting to consider snacks to likely be the limiting factor to how many kerbals I can transport to Duna.