The Dunatian - BRING HIM HOME

[Mikki]

[ilya_f]

5 hours ago, Mikki said:

Hi there, some tips:

1. Put the Kermes on a retrograde trajectory around Duna, high elliptic, periapsis not to low... maybe 250-350km above surface...

 2. Launch with Bob towards west when the Kermes is incoming... timing is the key...

3. Match up trajectory, inclination and speed as fast as you can, bail out Bob and enter the Kermes on EVA, no docking required...

4. Enjoy the thrill! 

The KRES IV ascender should have enough deltaV for this direct-ascend-and-rendezvous maneuver, you have little time to make it right, but it is possible as you see below: 

This maneuver is really hard to process, but it is just like in the cinematic. It`s possible, with lots of safetymargin left, timing is the key.

I hope you can imagine on how to set the maneuver up... good luck! 

@ilya_f   IIRC the ascender has three stages, look closely!!!  Nope, two stages....sorry...

What is the relative velocity at rendezvous point (Kermes and Kres4) in your case?

[Mikki]

18 hours ago, ilya_f said:

What is the relative velocity at rendezvous point (Kermes and Kres4) in your case?

IIRC the Kermes was buzzing with around 1400m/s (high eliptic orbit in the SOI) past Duna, so the Kres IV plus the deltaV of Bobs monoprop in his backpack have being well enough to catch up and board the Kermes at one of the crewcabins in the ringmodule.

Not wasting much fuel for hitting the right inclination during takeoff is crucial, this consumes alot of precious fuel in the ascender.....

If all goes wrong, use the ion drive of the Kermes to close up towards Bobs position, save at least some of his EVA fuel for entering the vessel.

This task should be well doable for experienced KSP players.

I once catched up with the Kres IV to basically zero difference in velocity/trajectory  and the Kermes was well in sight a few hundred meters away.

 

Edited October 11, 2019 by Mikki
typo

[Dexter_D]

21 hours ago, Mikki said:

the deltaV of Bobs monoprop in his backpack have being well enough to catch up

Yeah right, it's about 600 m/s Deltav. You have to do the Iron Man^TM!

Edited October 12, 2019 by Dexter_D

[ilya_f]

On 10/11/2019 at 8:38 PM, Mikki said:

IIRC the Kermes was buzzing with around 1400m/s (high eliptic orbit in the SOI) past Duna, so the Kres IV plus the deltaV of Bobs monoprop in his backpack have being well enough to catch up and board the Kermes at one of the crewcabins in the ringmodule.

Not wasting much fuel for hitting the right inclination during takeoff is crucial, this consumes alot of precious fuel in the ascender.....

If all goes wrong, use the ion drive of the Kermes to close up towards Bobs position, save at least some of his EVA fuel for entering the vessel.

This task should be well doable for experienced KSP players.

I once catched up with the Kres IV to basically zero difference in velocity/trajectory  and the Kermes was well in sight a few hundred meters away.

Hmm... That explains my problem. In my case Kermes has velocity around 3300 m/s.... while passing Duna. The orbit that I've built is wrong...

I guess that I have to replay from the point of refueling Kermes.... And 60 min travel on the Rover one more time ))))

[infinite_monkey]

4 hours ago, ilya_f said:

And 60 min travel on the Rover one more time ))))

Yeah, at the third time I just installed VesselMover...

[pogo protie]

THANK YOU MIKKI for this great great great mission. 

 

i still a newbro in KSP. coming from old school orbiter does help a lot tough..

 

but i really fell for this long adventure.. 

 

this will be hard to top i gotta admit

 

[Mikki]

15 hours ago, pogo protie said:

THANK YOU MIKKI for this great great great mission. 

i still a newbro in KSP. coming from old school orbiter does help a lot tough..

but i really fell for this long adventure.. 

this will be hard to top i gotta admit

 

@pogo protie, oh well, i see you successfully returned Bob back to solid ground on Kerbin... thank you for posting your mission endlog! 

Glad you liked this adventure, i`ve played orbiter too back in the days and followed simulations like FS from microsoft and all the rage.

"The Martian" by Andy Weir seemed to me a perfect fit for a KSP Mission, and the mission was even harder in my first releases, but i barerly could make it myself, so i reduced the mission to a playable size... 

I made quite some background research on the cinematic and my goal was not to exaggerate with partcounts of the various vessels and keeping some "Kerbal lore", with a bit of freedom on the narrative () and on how the mission ends.

Congrats to you, for science!  Excellent!

The "Dreamchaser" part was something out of thin air, i love the concept and gave it a reference in the "The Dunatian" as a nice final task.    

Edited October 16, 2019 by Mikki
typo uhmm

[Dexter_D]

Hi guys,

I just wanted to let you know, that the mission still works just fine in KSP 1.10.1.

And there are still no mods needed.

 

[HardlS]

On 04.08.2020 at 13:18, Dexter_D said:

Привет, ребята,

Я просто хотел сообщить вам, что миссия по-прежнему отлично работает в KSP 1.10.1.

И никаких модов пока нет.

 

I wants to walk it mission.Hope, it be success

[Dexter_D]

On 8/15/2020 at 4:36 PM, HardlS said:

I wants to walk it mission.Hope, it be success

Why ist that? Did you manage to crash the rovers?

[HardlS]

22 hours ago, Dexter_D said:

Why ist that? Did you manage to crash the rovers?

nice joke(i really almost crashed the rover)

[taio]

Great mission in a lot of different ways, this would be a long post if I listed them all. I modified the supply mission to stick an extra RA-100 around Kerbin, put 3 RA-15s around Duna, and send another rover docking-port-module with 4x6 solar panels cause why not - made the  rover journey and the commnet stuff hell of a lot more straightforward oh and gave the damn lander more fuel and an engine so i could land it lol

TAC Life Support mod integrated into this would be dope.

Issues I ran into -

1. the red rover's wheels would not draw power from anything on the red rover. Couldn't figure that one out.
2. some of the triggers in the mission were overeager. just because something like the RTG or the KRES ascent vehicle is the active vessel, doesn't mean Bob got there, just means I looked at it when the mission started to see what vessels I had to work with.
3. And sadly I couldn't get the mission to finish despite landing right on the runway. Looking in the mission builder it looks fine so I don't know why this would happen.

 

Edited November 16, 2020 by taio

[Dexter_D]

On 11/16/2020 at 7:37 AM, taio said:

3. And sadly I couldn't get the mission to finish despite landing right on the runway. Looking in the mission builder it looks fine so I don't know why this would happen.

Sorry to hear that.  How did you install the mission? Via Steam or manually? I'm asking because I finished the mission a few months ago on  a stock ksp 1.10.1 install. The only thing I'm always altering on the mission is the amount of fuel in the supply probe. Last time I forgot to fill it up, but I still was able to use only the red rover to get to the ascend vehicle and use the fuel cell for power generation. Maybe the game can't handle it so good if you don't do things in order.

Edit: Did the mission progress until the landing task?

Edited November 17, 2020 by Dexter_D

[taio]

Installed via Steam.  Yes the mission progressed until the landing task.

[Trann]

Thanks very much for all your effort in making this, Mikki.  Long time player and I came back to see how 1.10 performed when I stumbled on this mission.  You're right that the film was a perfect fit for this.  Personally, I think I did pretty well: 
- 1 restart when I ran out of electrical on a rover because I thought I could pre-complete mission tasks instead of doing them in sequence

- 1 restart when I wasn't paying attention to ground speed and launched my rover over a crest

- a few dozen restarts because I was constantly experimenting with trying to get the perfect Ascender-Kermies hand-off; taking away maneuver node planning was evil but the right thing to do

- 1 restart when gliding to the runway because I misjudged the glide capabilities and fell a few hundred meters short

A few hours of play each day, I got everyone home, and I had a lot of fun for a solid week.  Take a bow.  Cheers!

[TheDuckman]

Excellent work! Still functions in 1.11.1. Took me 3 tries to get it right:

First time didn't plan the Kermes-Dreamchaser rendevous well and ended up running out of fuel on every possible combination

Second time I messed up the Dreamchaser re-entry and undershot the runway (by several hundred km)

Finally got them home on attempt #3 after several days of fun!

Edited May 5, 2021 by TheDuckman

[Single stage to ocean]

Off topic, but I wish there was a challenge with EVA construction, where you have a bunch of parts, you have to assemble them(while on Duna) and must race to Kerbin. You have various parts there, and don't have to use all.

[adsuri]

So I just finished the Martian and now I have actually realized what this is about, I saw it first on Steam and was pretty confused about the whole thing until recently .

[Dr. Kerbal]

I will bring him home!

[FM2828]

I really liked this mission (so far), but when I dock the KAIJANG KHEN to the Kermes and transfer the fuel, it doesn't check the "Refuel the KERMES" goal. I've tried undocking and redocking many times. Can you help?

[creymartin]

Same issue... maybe bug persists in version 1.12.... I am basically unable to get checked in any mission where the "Distance < " constraint is present.... So the 2km Kermes to Kaijang never hits

I thought I could debug it by naming the Vessel, no avail

Otherwise super fun to play

 

[Bilka]

Do the rover docking ports align with the DTV?  The rover(s)' docking port is a bit higher than the DTV's docking port.   Am I missing something?

[taio]

I think the mission is broken as of 1.12.5 - the Jiukuan launch site can't be launched from, so when it comes time to launch the Kaijang Khen, the mission node "succeeds" but without actually spawning the craft (instead focus switches to the Kermes). This soft-locks the mission since the specific vessel the mission requires you to rendezvous with the Kermes, spawned only from that mission node, doesn't exist.

I am running some mods, so I'll test again on vanilla, but it will take a bit of time to untangle.

EDIT: I would guess this is the same issue faced by @FM2828 and @creymartin. I'll post again if I find a solution.

Edited February 7, 2023 by taio

[taio]

I reproduced the Jiukuan  issue on a vanilla install. You can see, even from the start of the mission, that it doesn't appear in the list of launch sites.

Also, I'm no longer able to get the dumb rovers to dock with the DTV, either on the front or the back. In the past, they still weren't aligned, but I could eventually get them to dock by increasing the docking port acquire force and either ramming the two ports together at a few m/s, or placing them close together and unloading and reloading the crafts (so the DRV bounces via physics easing). Not having success with those methods anymore for some reason, nor with fiddling with the wheels' settings to get the rovers to bounce. The root issue may be that landing struts worked differently (or just had a different default spring setting?) when the DRV was designed, such that the resting position of the struts held the craft slightly higher above the surface. Or maybe it's the rovers' wheels that held the rovers lower down.