Duna planning

[322997am]

I am planning a mission to Duna and I have a rocket with enough delta v to land on the mun return and kill its orbit completely. Is this Duna capable. I will anyway make a huge ship that is docket and it will have 2surface outposts a dunastation and a landing and return crew for Duna and Ike and maybe even a couple of satellites. Is this worth it? And my mobile base on Minmus that I will be launching today how should it look like?

[Callmedave]

Check some the delta v charts available to see if you ship is capable. You can check your ships delta v in the VAB. Don't forget that you can aerobrake (use the atmosphere to slow you down) at Duna to save delta v.

As for how should it look? - how do you want it to look? There is no right or wrong way.

[Zephram Kerman]

I don't mean to spoil the fun of exploration. But since you mentioned 'mobile base on Minmus', be aware the game has an issue that rover wheels don't work very well there. Due to the very low gravity, they don't get much traction. They do work, sort-of. But it looks more like 'garbage trucks on ice'. What I did instead was to land my MPL, and use it as a base to send out a tiny RCS hopper with the experiments. That didn't work very well either.

How should it look? "Pointy".

Edited June 27, 2015 by Zephram Kerman

[322997am]

I know that wheels don't have much traction there which is why I put 10 rcs thruster blocks and the wheel attachment girders. But will an about square base not flip all the time. And will I be able to drive with 4 out of 10 wheels broken assuming I have a cupola and a 2.5m reaction wheel. Power. Won't be a problem cause that thing is covered with solar panels and has 10000 units of electricity in batteries. And it has loads of Monopropellant. So I want that thing to drive the biomes until it becomes immobile and then I will do science process it and fly a return ssto there.

[NecroBones]

The good news is that Duna doesn't require a huge amount of additional dV compared to going to Mun/Minmus, if you're efficient about it. That means using the Oberth Effect to your advantage, so you'll want to set up your escape maneuver from Kerbin to put you on (or very close) to an encounter with Duna, rather than simply exiting Kerbin's SOI and then doing an intercept maneuver. Same thing for the return trip. You'll want to minimize doing burns in solar orbits, or far from the planets, if you can help it.

Edited June 28, 2015 by NecroBones

[Xannari Ferrows]

Make sure that Duna is 44 degrees father into it's orbit than Kerbin. This will save you a fair bit of Delta-V.