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Fairing on Duna


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I am building a Duna Sample return mission for science and for my Duna surface to Duna orbit stage i am asking if fairing are useful or not and if they worth the delta-v lost during other part of the mission. I am still very early in the design process, so any tips to help me succeed  the mission  would be welcome.

 

thank you

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I usually land on Duna with "vacuum optimized" ships (that is about as streamlined as the Apollo Lunar Lander), this DOES incur a significant deltaV penalty when ascending, maybe as much as 500m/s, though it makes it a lot easier to slow down. Duna's atmosphere is 10% as thick as Kerbin's so it's not as thin as like Mar's atmosphere is (0.6% of Earth's), you can't completely ignore it in terms of drag, you CAN ignore it in terms of engine ISP, vacuum engines work fine just fine.

So putting aside Fairings and generalizing the question: Should you streamline a Duna Lander? I say no. Make it draggy. That way it'll easily bleed off velocity when landing which, in my opinion, is worth more than the deltaV savings when ascending. If you want to get tricky you can try making a cone-shaped lander which descends tail first which is high drag, and ascends nose first which is low drag, though that is tricky and Duna deltaV requirements are low anyway.

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