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KSP Challenge: " Visiting Duna and Ike"


Darth Badie

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On 12/2/2017 at 2:57 AM, *MajorTom* said:

3. rover must be manned ?

On 12/2/2017 at 4:54 AM, cratercracker said:

Yes

Well drat.

I have pictures of Val at Ike and Duna's north poles but the rover(still mounted on the ship) is a remote control unit(with an ion-powered relay dropped in Duna polar orbit) and does not have so much as a command seat on it.

Unfortunately, the wheels of the rover are pointing towards the ship, so I can't even lay the whole thing on it's side.

Would it count if I take a picture of a kerbal standing on the rover and perhaps drive it around a little?

(no way I can get 5km like that, I would lose my solar panels, and probably the antenna too) 

 

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26 minutes ago, Terwin said:

 

Well drat.

I have pictures of Val at Ike and Duna's north poles but the rover(still mounted on the ship) is a remote control unit(with an ion-powered relay dropped in Duna polar orbit) and does not have so much as a command seat on it.

Unfortunately, the wheels of the rover are pointing towards the ship, so I can't even lay the whole thing on it's side.

Would it count if I take a picture of a kerbal standing on the rover and perhaps drive it around a little?

(no way I can get 5km like that, I would lose my solar panels, and probably the antenna too) 

 

Yes, but at least do 100 meters on the rover. :)

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3 minutes ago, cratercracker said:

Yes, but at least do 100 meters on the rover. :)

Sounds like Val gets to do some Rover-surfing tonight while Bill mans the drills.

I hope she lets him win at cards or something on the way home, because she has been flying around in the coupla, planting flags and climbing mountains while he has been stuck in a hitchhiker module babysitting drills the whole time.

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1 hour ago, Terwin said:

Sounds like Val gets to do some Rover-surfing tonight while Bill mans the drills.

I hope she lets him win at cards or something on the way home, because she has been flying around in the coupla, planting flags and climbing mountains while he has been stuck in a hitchhiker module babysitting drills the whole time.

Do you by chance have KAS installed?   ...sometimes a Kerbal with a wrench is sufficient to attach a ladder to something temporarily.  I find myself slapping those hand-hold ladders on to stuff so frequently that I typically include one in my backpack along with wrench as standard equipment.

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This is my entry.

Progress so far
Ike Polar Landing - Both poles done
Ike Highest Point - Landed 12,588m  Flag 12,730m will attempt again
Ike lowest point - 94m
Duna Polar Landing - Failed (Impossible with my current design and VTOL skills)
Duna Highest Point - Landed 8,248m  Flag  8,262m.
Duna lowest point - 241m
Duna canyon Landing - Done
Duna polar crater landing - Done
Duna drive 5km - Done
Crew returned to Kerbin

 

Edited by James Kerman
Progress Update
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I started into this challenge with the thought "I've been to Duna many times. This should be pretty easy". Well, I set some limitations to myself(that I broke, more like bent) for even more of challenge. I was going to do this with both high and low spots on both bodies(forgot about the polar crater or canyon), only use stock parts with the exception of TACLS parts, do it in a single launch, and get back home. Also, I love spaceplanes, so I was going to do it with one of those. In the testing phase, the wheel hop bug rendered my first idea completely useless, no more space plane.

ok, so a rover....well it will have to be 2 of them because I don't want to add the complexity of a rover/launcher. I settled on a 17.09t, 78 part roll cage with wheels that had crew space for 6, self-righting ability, and all the science parts that stock offered. The stock materials bay was impossible to fit into my design so I bent my rules a bit and added a universal storage materials bay. It's powered by 2 large fuel cells, 2 RTGs, and has 2 backup solar panels. It also has 2 twitch rockets to assist long uphill climbs. The weakest external part can handle a 80 m/s crash (probably). I outfitted one with parachutes and the other with a ~550 m/s dV array of 8 twitch engines and packaged both in their own fairings.

The main body was designed as a space plane but I didn't want the extra weight of the useless wings. I designed the wings to attach with small docking ports. The wings also included the landing gear, a probe core, and a bunch of fuel.....oh yeah fuel wings is a mod (why is this not stock?). I kept the fuel. On the front of the plane was supposed to be a shielded docking port but you can't attach things to the port and I wanted a parachute module for the duna landing. I tested the plane with a shielded port and it flew ok-ish. I didn't think putting a regular post on it would hurt it to badly, and I was wrong. The atmospheric glide into the runway was filled with "ohgodohgodohgod we're all gonna die!" moments but, everyone lived and the plane still had wings when it stopped.

Launching this draggy, weighty, overly complicated beast turned into a nightmare. Stock parts are not up to this challenge without using 500 more parts. After many attempts, I said @#$ it and used a 3 stage mix of stock and space Y parts(most of which should be stock, IMHO). The final assembly was 449 parts, 2162.5 t, and cost 1.28 million kerbucks.

The Duna landing was exciting. The main body had a packaged rover and a parachute module stuck to nose and was facing prograde because of the heatshield on the rover base. The plan was to wait for the drogue chutes to act as a fulcrum so I could lever the craft around retrograde, burn the engines until main chutes can be deployed, then separate the 2 pieces, use a powered descent with the return vehicle, and let the rover lithobrake. It pretty much went down like that except for more swinging around, praying, crying, and drawer soiling. I missed the duna low point by 30km and the rover was a little over 1km in the other direction. Jeb made the long walk to the rover and did some testing on the way back to the lander to pick up the other 5 folks. Of course, he (I did NOT. It was his fault) rolled the rover at just over 50 m/s and landed on the roof. The self-righting mechanisms work great.....good sciencing Jeb. The rest of the journey was uneventful except for running out of fuel and having to stop and recharge a couple of times on the way to the lander. Total trip was over 500 km. (thanks mechjeb rover autopilot)

Ike was much easier. I left a pilot in the lander and landed at the highest point I could find and drove down hill to the lowest point (~147km). Some of the trip was done quite a bit off the ground and resulted in a retrograde burn that ended with zero fuel 500m off the surface while still traveling ~48 m/s. The 3 axis spin afterward was quite fun. 

The journey home was much longer than hoped for because of low fuel and the need for aerobraking. I lost count of how many passes into the atmosphere before being able to use the last of the fuel to make the runway.

It was a fun challenge and I learned a bit more about KSP.

TLDR; I did the challenge on both bodies except for the polar crater or canyon on Duna. Here's pics

3E819597DF4A4C201863A0B519CF36C3E623F61CBBB079FC296886DD21FF6081E041D2ACE9ECABF5911C742FE02818CDFCB8C2C21D8AF79A0208BE9CBE488ADD2242BC287D265D1077FDDACF68132BED467286FF43333E8D7AE68EA789E358C61994E75F60317C7E9EB8C296FBD61C26E37F71C3978A6116

Edited by AngrybobH
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the plan is................

open parachute to slow down and decouple the rover.....it will land on its own...RIP

but lets hope it works out

 

65B6C5818AE2CB6EA520770D455D953104E26FBC

763C7578483C25D7E250FBE86EA9AA9279198ECF

72037B4C02F34AD014FCF3F474DDC3D4B115E143

2F0D4DEB51FE3E8AB4E121527FFCB1B09AB53089

2E6F17EA0C1378BFB4185585D3141E96447D4A1F

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the rover is still falling giving plenty of time to land safely

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

3A32752BBB367643D51574835BB563BBEA29206B

3E7E1B5CF05C0D8B2D66E140C84D61701707DD4B

WOOT

it did bounce but didnt flip

5D45E49521079110C939099D7CC718CA454BF2AD

447E6396FBA74826362637D00F634C871F199C53

then we quickly stopped by Ike

74181D0DEBA493566F63A917F2EC940C7D9D948F

then we phoned back home

879FA71D09B84A5E6881E969A76A0DBEE26A68C5

AF43851A939C79512503D72A7BE8ADF8FFAD97F9

8AF0F216C727E301C5F883F0ADBBDC6CD2FC16B7

7C910337130261504920C92B78EB4152DC82FAD5

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I don't know that I'll get around to an official entry but today I worked out a lander, set it in orbit, and landed on the north pole of Ike then Duna. Chutes were used on Duna. I first had 4 spider engines but later traded up to one 303 pug engine from Squad's release of Porkjet's stuff. Neat engine. It worked so well, I thought I would try to land on Kerbin. With a TWR of only 0.87 it would work with the chutes.... shouldn't it? Well yeah, it did but only after all the 0.62 tanks exploded one by one along with the landing gear. It got a little tense. Maybe I'll work on a rover and mother ship before this ends.

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 Great challenge!   

I've been designing a mission loosely based off of The Martian for awhile now.  This just fits right in.

Here are a few ships that I have up on kerbalx:  

Duna Ascent Vehicle and Duna mining facility and fuelrover.   Feel free to use them if your Duna program needs a jumpstart. :wink: Return interplanetary transfer, and re-entry vehicle not included. 

Pics :https://m.imgur.com/a/Tfspi

Landing had to be done in a fairly low spot to get the chutes to work safely. 

I had a good time revisiting Duna.  Thanks for the awesome challenge :D  I might try to drive the rover to the high spot on Duna next.

Edited by MrChumley
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5 hours ago, LightBender said:

I would love to take this but I have yet to go to either of the planets...

I must admit that it took me a year or so of messing around in the kerbin system before I felt confident enough to go interplanetary (with the inevitable disastrous results) but I'm a bit thick and learn best from mistakes.

There are many mission reports and videos on Duna that you can be inspired by and the guys and gals here will be happy to help you with all the good advice you would want.  Just start a thread in the gameplay section of the forum if you have any questions and you will get a flood of helpful suggestions.

My advice is go for it.

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