Operation Marcx

WillThe84th · August 25, 2016

I watched The Martian for the second time yesterday, so I decided to do this.

The plan is to send a bunch of missions to Marcx (a modified version of Duna from my mod Realistic Remodel) and eventually end up with a colony on the planet. Everything is stock, except for a few utility mods, such as Trajectories.

Part I: Intelligence Lander

Spoiler

The launcher isn't that impressive, but I spent a lot of the time on the payload, and I hope it makes up for it.

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Liftoff!

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Second stage ignition.

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Spacecraft is in orbit.

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Second stage starts the trans-Marcx injection burn.

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Transfer stage completes the rest of the burn.

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I really like how this transfer stage turned out.

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The optimal transfer to Marcx at this time is weird, the ejection angle is about 45 degrees inward to Kerbin prograde.

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After doing so course corrections we arrive at Marcx.

But there's a problem, I didn't pack enough fuel to get into a stable orbit, and I want to land where there is ore. So I decouple the transfer stage and use some of the payload's fuel to correct my trajectory to aerobrake and land where I want to. (The Trajectories mod is great for this)

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The payload enters the atmosphere.

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There's another problem, Marcx's atmosphere is very thin, about 10 times thinner than Duna's, so to aerobrake from an escape trajectory to a landing trajectory you have to go low. Extremely low.

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