First time poster, but I wanted to share one of my more successful Duna missions. For reference I play without mods, and this mission was done in sandbox mode in vanilla version 0.9.0.705. So for a while I've been trying to send a manned return mission from Duna, to various amounts of success. My original attempts were based on the principle I use for munar missions, simply land everything you need to get off the planet on it's surface. Of course with Duna being decently large and rather far away this proved challenging. Though I did eventually succeed, the craft proved expensive and difficult to fly and land on Duna. With the money based career mode now ever present, this was now a greater concern than back when I started playing (this being done in sandbox was to figure out what I need when I get this far in the new career mode). So taking a queue from real life I decided to leave the main rockets in orbit around Duna, and only land what I needed. I present to you the Kira: At a fairly lithe 557 tonnes, 167 parts, and 306,000 dollars (?) this ship is reasonably achievable in career mode, and has proven easy to fly and efficient. The ship can be downloaded here. She's capable of taking a single astronaut to and from Duna, with fuel to spare. So here she is all ready to launch (decided to use a launch window planner and discovered day 233 to be the best day to start the mission): Magnificent isn't she. Well let's get this show on the road, LAUNCH!!!: Jebediah looks so happy. The outer four engines of this stage are asparagused in and were dropped at nearly 16,000m: The central engine is sufficient to put the whole ship into orbit and perform any adjustments. I put the ship into a circular equatorial orbit at 121,000m: Some maneuver planning later and I was ready to leave Kerbin. The main engine was dropped off pretty early into the burn, and the Rockomaxx "Skipper" took over the remainder of the burn: Of course that's not a great periapsis, but it a few small maneuvers gave me a nice close peri of 70 km. Once there it was a simple matter of putting myself into a nice equatorial orbit around Duna: Once in a circular equatorial orbit at 71,000 m, the Rockomaxx engine was abandoned, goodbye old friend you have served me well: Yes, I know it's dark, but I had a great landing spot coming up and had to ditch it. Anyway, with the extra weight gone, it was time to decouple, and leave my atomic engines in orbit under the control of a probe (for later tracking when I have to dock again: Yes, another dark picture, I am ashamed. But at least Jebediah is on his way to the surface. The beauty of this ship is it's light enough to land entirely under parachute, as seen below, thus saving on fuel: Well that was exciting! After 257 days, Jebediah is the first Kerbal to land on another planet (at least in my game). Doesn't he look so proud: At this point you can gather a bevy of scientific data form the planet from any of the full suite of instruments on the lander. After you've had your fill of Duna, it's time to plan the return trip. Firstly we have to get back into orbit, so once the engine probe in orbit is close to the lander I fired up the engine: Now that there is a lot of excess weight, why bother bringing it all back. Time to lose the science module's and legs: Much better, and now the ship is light enough that there is enough fuel in the tank to get back into orbit. The next challenge is to dock with the engine probe, but this isn't terribly difficult due to the small size of the craft. Coming in for the final docking: Once docked I found myself back in that circular equatorial orbit, which is so good for getting back to Kerbin: WOOOO! We did it. All right, at this point there are a few options for getting back to Kerbin A) The impatient method of leaving now, and setting myself up on a collision course with Kerbin. Waiting for an efficient launch window, and putting the ship back in orbit around Kerbin before landing. Well thanks to the magic of savegames I can try both. Firstly the collision course, which I imagine is much to Jebediah's liking, as he's been gone for hundreds of days and probably wants to get home and slam back a lot of alcohol as soon as possible: Now that's a big burn. Fortunately I have enough fuel to complete it. Well that little LV-909 is no longer useful, so it get's ditched around Duna, and I'm free to use the atomic engines for the return burn: I really love scenes like this in Kerbal. So the trip required a few course adjustments to get myself on a proper collision course, but after a couple hundred days of travel I was heading straight for the surface: I then used the remainder of my fuel to slow the craft down a bit before hitting the atmosphere: Holy, Jeb was coming in hot, but I was able to get the speed down a fair bit with the remaining fuel. After hitting the atmosphere, I undocked and used the remaining parachutes to pull the lander can away from the now spent atomic engines: A few minutes later and Jeb was safely landed at a nice tropical beach: Total trip time was 1 year and 65 days. And Jebediah can go home to his family whom I assumed he missed greatly. Well, what about our other option, the more elegant flight back into Kerbin orbit. Reloading back to when I was in orbit around Duna, I used a launch window planner to determine the best time to fly back was year 3 day 241. Well, looks like you're waiting in orbit for a while my little cosmonaut. However, waiting for this day allowed me to dip into a nice periapsis around Kerbin with a fairly short burn: After this nice easy burn, and some later flight adjustments, I was nice and close to my home planet with plenty of fuel to put myself in orbit: Even after my orbital burn, I still had a lot of fuel left over, suggesting a similar orbital drop in could be performed earlier than the optimal launch window: From here it was a simple matter of choosing a landing spot, firing the engines, and dropping the capsule in the atmosphere to land via parachute: So there you have it, a successful manned mission to Duna with return trip, done with a simple and relatively efficient ship. I'm pretty proud of the design, and hope you enjoyed my re-cap. Cheers, Tavarin
