Duna and Back Speedrun

[Pds314]

Okay... that's... enough... for today.

My new rocket design MAY have some issues to work out. But hey. Never gonna get 3500 tonnes of nuclear-powered transfer stage to LKO without breaking a few space centers...

(It's 135 meters tall, ~15000 tonnes, and still needs WAY moar boosters)

Edited August 5, 2019 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Intended payload:

Bottom stage has 171 Nuclear engines.
Then there are 6 inflateable heatshields to cover the next stage.

Then 63 more nuclear engines.

Of which 9 are left after the Asparagus boosters burn their fuel out.

And then 1 more nuke on the final stage.

There will also be a small lander attached.

[esmenard]

Wow. I thought mine was large, but just wow. How much time do you want to do with this ?

[dire]

I don't think I can compete with PDS314 on raw power, but I wanted to try again. I don't want to uninstall my mods anyhow because I've got a career save, which would break if I did that.

So I'm setting this run up with life support. My kerbals (yes, 4 of them!) get lonely, they get hungry, and they get claustrophobic if they don't have luxury accomodations to help them survive the perils of the warp. The Kraken is out there, it's always watching, and a lone Kerbal can go mad in the empty silence of deep space.

As soon as I figure out how much delta-V I actually have I can start thinking about whether I have enough for a reasonable attempt. I'm thinking I should be able to do something reasonable with 12500 dV, not counting the lander which is its own thing.

Edited August 11, 2019 by dire

[Pds314]

On 8/10/2019 at 10:44 PM, dire said:

I don't think I can compete with PDS314 on raw power, but I wanted to try again. I don't want to uninstall my mods anyhow because I've got a career save, which would break if I did that.

So I'm setting this run up with life support. My kerbals (yes, 4 of them!) get lonely, they get hungry, and they get claustrophobic if they don't have luxury accomodations to help them survive the perils of the warp. The Kraken is out there, it's always watching, and a lone Kerbal can go mad in the empty silence of deep space.

As soon as I figure out how much delta-V I actually have I can start thinking about whether I have enough for a reasonable attempt. I'm thinking I should be able to do something reasonable with 12500 dV, not counting the lander which is its own thing.

Pro-tip: you can make multiple KSP folders if you want the stock game instead of life support.

[doggonemess]

Can we use Tweakscale or SpaceY to make bigger fuel tanks to reduce part count? My PC can only handle so much.

[dnbattley]

16 hours ago, Pds314 said:

Pro-tip: you can make multiple KSP folders if you want the stock game instead of life support.

I've never tried it, but there is a section of the save file where mods are listed as "true/false": might it be possible to disable active mods such as life support via that?

[dire]

Well, I can't even load a ship one-third the size of PDS's monster without the kraken breaking it into little pieces. Eventually I got so greedy for dV with my mk3 station that I literally couldn't do anything with it without the kraken making it explode. Couldn't dock or undock, couldn't start the engines, it literally just had to sit there.

So I tried again with a 3.5 meter setup. And even though I was a lot less greedy, the Docking Port Sr's are still very touchy and tend to explode if I accelerate or turn too hard. Or look at them funny, or transfer fuel in just the wrong way, or EVA too close to them. Still. 800 tons to Lunar orbit, a refuel trip there, and then on to Duna! I did have to lighten things by about 200 tons, but that's for the better, really. I didn't need that tankage anyhow *sniff*.

Also I don't know why you guys are worried about mods. I'm using Poodles and Rhinos with Kerbodyne 1400's for main lift, and the snacks and living space mean my payload to Duna is like 20 tons instead of like...5.I'm mostly using mods for inline RCS thrusters+SAS that don't actually save me any tonnage or add any dV, they just save on parts count so my ship is less likely to explode. I've also got a 3.75 meter science lab which masses the same as the stock version ,and balancing that is a kolonization pioneer, power pack and mini science lab...both science labs are kind of useless because this is sandbox mode, and I only brought the one scientist, but hey, science! So that's 9 extra tons that I can ditch in a pinch. And I might ditch anyway because those are the docked modules that keep undocking and exploding, once I run another couple of tanks dry. And then food is another 3 tons I think...actually i probably need to send one more supply rocket to catch up with them because they may run out of food. And that would be bad. Which the comms rocket with the big Orange had like 9000 m/s dV, so another one like that should be fine.

Edited August 16, 2019 by dire

[xendelaar]

I'm not sure if this counts and sorry for necroing the post... But I did a speedrun to Duna and back in approximately 110 days..
It is a somewhat atypical post as I first went to Duna without thinking about ever returning. After Jeb landed, I (almost immediately) made a rescue ship and retrieved Jeb afterwards.

Getting Jeb to Duna took me 20 days and getting him back took me 82 days. 

I didn't record the dates when I left or when I returned so this entry is not valid, but maybe it will spark others to redo this pretty sweet challenge in a better way. 

Here are the video clips I made of the mission.

And here is my rescue mission:

 

[Pds314]

On 3/11/2021 at 2:14 AM, xendelaar said:

I'm not sure if this counts and sorry for necroing the post... But I did a speedrun to Duna and back in approximately 110 days..
It is a somewhat atypical post as I first went to Duna without thinking about ever returning. After Jeb landed, I (almost immediately) made a rescue ship and retrieved Jeb afterwards.

Getting Jeb to Duna took me 20 days and getting him back took me 82 days. 

I didn't record the dates when I left or when I returned so this entry is not valid, but maybe it will spark others to redo this pretty sweet challenge in a better way. 

Here are the video clips I made of the mission.

And here is my rescue mission:

 

Interesting. I'm not entirely convinced that sending your return craft separately is preferable to simply launching it all at once. Really impressed you survived Duna entry at 18 km/s though.

[xendelaar]

On 3/13/2021 at 5:34 AM, Pds314 said:

Interesting. I'm not entirely convinced that sending your return craft separately is preferable to simply launching it all at once. Really impressed you survived Duna entry at 18 km/s though.

it was really dumb of me to do indeed. I just though about it when Jeb got stranded and I figured: what if I just send a really fast ship again to come pick him up. I think I could be able to get from and back Duna in less than 70 days if I would do it in one go. Maybe somebody else would want to try.