capi3101

I should mention that you're going to want to come in closer - much closer - to Duna's surface than 25,000 if you want a successful aerobraking. Myself, I haven't successfully aerobraked if my periapsis was above 15,000. It doesn't have that much of an atmosphere. Are you performing your correction burn before or after you enter Duna's SOI?

Well...okay. Tier 5 tech (at least Tier 5 in 0.24.2; the wiki hasn't been updated yet for new stuff in 0.25). Big chutes, big lander legs, Mainsails, Mk1 Lander Cans... Hmm. A Mk-1 lander can with sixteen radial chutes, 4 Z-100 batts, 4 big lander legs, a Jumbo-64, an X200-32 and a Mainsail could make Kerbin orbit (4622 m/s delta-V assuming constant seal level Isp with a launch TWR of 2.45), deorbit and land safely at elevations below 5000 meters. Any of the lighter sci instruments attached wouldn't affect the delta-V all that much and the lifter has more than sufficient thrust for the job. You could easily launch an assembly like that, make LKO and return to Kerbin with the whole thing intact. Set your periapsis to 44-45k meters above KSC prior to re-entry, and you can even do a complete return to sender. Whole thing costs a little over 30,000 funds. The trick is flying it - from the get-go the Mainsail provides you waaaay more thrust than you need and it'll only get worse as the ascent progresses. Start by following the terminal velocity curve to 10,000 meters (benchmarks are 100 m/s at 1000 meters, 130 at 3000, 160 at 5000, 210 and 8000 and 260 and 10,000). Make your gravity turn and throttle back as you ascend to keep the craft at the top of the green band of the gee meter. You'll lose too much delta-V to drag if you keep the throttle to the stops the whole way up. Really, it is a matter of figuring out what you want to do and then how to do it most efficiently. Pretty much what everybody else has said. Alshain's given you good advice; I'd go with it.

Just go edit your post, go into advanced mode and you should be able to fix it there. Now I'll see if I can give you some advice on your question, as soon as I read through what everybody else has said...

You can also find the gravitational acceleration at any given altitude above the body with this equation: g = GM/(R^2), where g is the gravitational acceleration, G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the body, and R is the distance to the center of the body's mass. GM is sometimes represented in aggregate by the greek letter Mu, and is a parameter called the standard gravitational parameter. For the bodies in the Kerbol system, all of this information is readily available from the wiki. So, for Gilly at its surface - mu = GM = 8,289,449.8 m^3/s^2 R = 13000 m (i.e. the moon's equatorial radius) g = (8,289,449.8 m^3/s^2) / (13000 m)^2 = (8,289,449.8 / 169,000,000) * (m^3/m^2s^2) = 0.049049999 m/s^2 Bear in mind that this would be the value at "sea level" (i.e. an altimeter of zero meters). For 2800 meters above sea level, the value becomes: g = (8,289,449.8 m^3/s^2) / (15,800 m)^2 = 0.033207 m/s^2 (i.e. what everybody else is telling you). EDIT: And I see that KerikBalm told you this a few posts ago. So never mind me...

I've been using a mod called LoadOnDemand - it basically loads texture files only as they're needed. I've noticed a marked improvement in the game's performance since I've been using it. I can't recommend it at the moment because the mod designer has yet to update it for 0.25 and it is currentlt broken; if (when) it's fixed I'll post the link. Might have to try the PNG conversion too...

Go for it... Still not a lot of time to play last night; got the recompiled KAS installed and made sure to get the updated ModuleManager with it (which had the side effect of getting universal KER to work again). Farted around with a VTOL, still having issues there but I find that's mainly a lot of "not taking the time to read through the guides correctly" and "general stupidity on my part". Still haven't blown up the KSC...I'm starting to feel left out.

Checked the development site - Faark self-assigned the issue Gaalidas opened up 17 hours ago, it says. Just an update for y'all.

KSP 2: The Covenant Arrive, now available for download from Squad. I hope that was your sandbox...

I concur; thanks for y'all's hard work to date. Downloading now.

Installed 0.25 and copied over my save from 0.24.2, as well as my mods (mainly to see which ones worked and which ones were no longer necessary) and my flags. Was determined to bomb the KSC, but I'm still having problems getting my graphics settings right it seems - LoadOnDemand isn't working with 0.25 yet and all the new 'splody structures around KSC make the game pretty laggy close to the surface (at least on my ultra-low end box). Probably not the best of times to experiment with VTOLs, but I did it anyway... In case anybody's wondering, all of the structures in my instance of KSP are still intact this morning. Several reverts have taken place.

Alright, thanks. I did note as I got into the game that the KAS parts were still present in the VAB and SPH; I did not, however, attempt to use any KAS parts in that initial run. If there's still a question of whether or not KSP is just being KSP this evening, I'll do a more thorough test. Running the game in Win7 if that's at all helpful.

I need to report that 0.25.0 is saying that NRAP is incompatible.

I too am getting a message indicating the mod is incompatible with 0.25; if you'll give me a few minutes I'll try to post the specific message. EDIT: The message reads: "LoadOnDemand has detected a problem and may not load properly. Operation is not valid due to the current state of the objec..."

Just letting y'all know that KAS 0.4.8 is non-compatible with KSP version 0.25.0. At least, the game didn't like it when I tried to fire it up with KAS installed.

Hoping I can bump this challenge without getting it locked by the admins for flagrant thread necromancy - with the changes in v. 0.25, ascertaining direct hits should be a hell of a lot easier. Moar interesting and 'splody too, I'd imagine.

Whoa, dude - your computer blew whole chunks of Linux everywhere; I'd get it checked out... Hey, no fair with the 0.25 parts already... #hitsthedownloadbutton

The link I provided in my first post on this thread - the one with DocMoriarty's guide - provides a pretty good answer here; you wouldn't stick the base on top of the plane, you'd design either a front-loading or top-loading transport plane, and attach the base components as a sub-assembly to the completed design. Land, drop it off, fly the plane back to KSC (or recover it there at the pole for less return on the investment).

What's your lander configuration typically like for Duna? You kinda skip over that bit in the Sci Pack tutorial; only reason why I ask. Same as Mun, or do you tweak it a bit?

No prob - that design is pretty much what I roll with these days. If you were to attach lander legs to the bottom of the lab (perhaps on I-beams to widen the base?), do you think a safe ground landing would be possible? I've also been playing around with including a lab module in a spaceplane; I've had success getting the design into orbit, less success on a proper landing (though that's mainly due to balancing issues inherent with spaceplanes in general - and I think I've got that problem ironed out with my latest design, if she can make orbit (which I have yet to test)). Same purpose.

They help to make all your base belong to us - Seriously, I've found that their most valuable usage is as a storage module. Take a lab, add a docking port and a couple of fuel tanks to it, launch it to the Mun as an orbiting station. Then take a Geschosskopf Science Pack Lander, take off the top Mk-16 and replace it with a docking port, add a couple of roundified RCS tanks to the fuel pods and some RCS blocks to it. Use the Sci lander to go to the Mun, land, do science, take off, rendezvous with the lab, refuel the lander and store all the experiments in the lab, go back down to a different biome, rinse and repeat. Send the lab module back to Kerbin, recover it, profit. As others have stated, you can easily grind out the tech tree this way in only one or two missions.

Going orbital would allow you more control the timing of your descent - you can do it at your leisure and have the ability to "go around again" if you're not comfortable with the way things look on the first attempt. Get into a 100km orbit, then do a retro burn at the north pole until the periapsis - which should as a result be over the south pole - is at about 44,000 meters, and you shouldn't have to burn again provided you packed enough chutes; the drag will put you down right over the pole (or at least close enough for jazz).

I learned with the Gemini 6A/7 tutorial myself. The tutorial is a couple of versions old at this point, but if you slip a Z-4K battery (the big one) between the lander can and the RCS fuel tank, you should be capable of performing the mission in the current version without issue. Bear in mind that the tutorial teaches you to perform both the rendezvous and the docking on RCS thrust alone - a good way to learn the lesson of going slow, no doubt. When you get better at docking, though, you'll probably want to use regular bi-propellant thrust to conduct the rendezvous part (i.e. you'll still want RCS for the actual docking, but getting to that point goes a lot faster on regular thrust).

Didn't have a lot of time to play today. Tried to land the Lab Rat 7-2, this time with the ground beacons on. I found that the plane doesn't fly very well when it's low on gas - it actually drains from the rear forward, so the CoM moves forward as it flies - opposite of the way most of my designs go. Lawn dart behavior resulted; despite in-flight TAC fuel re-balancing and being able to see the ground beacons this time, I hit the deck with a vertical velocity of -15 m/s and the gear crumpled with all the expected explody goodness. Designed the Lab Rat 7-3 for use in my career game. Symmetry bug hit in numbers usually reserved for invading army ants. Had engine parts in the ground, doubled up, you name it - the damn plane exhibited it. I was, however, able to get it all worked out and the design took off on the first try (after I figured out I had intakes clipping into one another causing spontaneous explosions on physics engine release prior to takeoff). She didn't fly very well; I later determined she was too heavy, so I used TAC to dump off about half the oxidizer she was carrying and she finally started gaining some altitude. Really didn't have time to perform an orbital hop with it last night - I was more curious to see if she'd even make it off the runway - so I'll be doing the orbital run tonight. I'm not optimistic about the design as is (I'm thinking it's probably still too heavy). Keeps its CoM balanced as it goes though, so there is that.

As others have stated, rocket or plane are your best options and it's really a matter of personal preference. Myself, I'd do an orbital rocket; get up to a 100x100 polar orbit, then do your de-orbit burn when you're in the neighborhood of 30 degrees South headed southbound and you should wind up close enough to the pole for jazz. Ten tonnes is a pretty trivial payload for a rocket. For transport plane designs capable of hauling ten tonnes, I'll suggest DocMoriarty's guide.

Spent the weekend setting up an ILS for my sandbox save and test designing/piloting an SSTO spaceplane that would deliver a lab module to the Mere station orbiting Mun (aptly named the "Lab Rat 7"). Once there, all science could be stored aboard the Rat, the Rat could then be refueled and returned to KSC for all the science goodness. Employed the principles recommended by DocMoriarty - if y'all have ever struggled with spaceplanes and haven't checked out his guide, I'd recommend it; it's been pretty effin' awesome and it's given me respect for the power and versatility of the RAPIER engine. Freaked me out when the plane took off on just the second try...usually it takes me about a dozen tries to get the stupid things to fly into the air and not into the drink. Only crashed the Rat twice - the first time because I didn't have a canard set to symmetry (didn't realize it until after the first flight), second time on landing because at some point I'd hit F4 and hadn't realized it - couldn't see that brand new ILS I'd just built. Came in too hot and slammed into the tarmac. The Rat's design is nearly complete; I'm still calculating the amount of fuel I need to A) get the thing into orbit and get it to Mun with enough fuel left over for rendezvous operations. Should be able to get that figured out today with any kind of luck.