Duna Flyby with KSP Trajector Optimization Tool

[DivisionByZero]

I restarted playing KSP recently after a hiatus.  I realized I've never actually landed Kerbals on other planets, so that would be a good goal.  I also realized I don't like grinding out funds and science all that much, so I have some pretty easy settings.

The main mods are Outer Planets Mod, the USI Kolonization (including Life Support +USI friends), Kerbal Construction Time, RemoteTech, DeepFreeze, Interstellar, and others.  I'm aiming to put colonies everywhere and this gets more interesting with KCT/RT/OPM since transfer windows and communication limitations make certain things really interesting.

I am looking at some Duna missions and would like to simulate the mission to some extent but you can't do this without visiting the SOI of the body.  So, how do you get the both without waiting for the Duna transfer window to come twice?  Make a flyby mission that gets there as fast as possible and, hopefully, in time to inform the design for the less difficult transfer.

I have just unlocked the Skipper and some of the 2.5m fuel tanks.  A serious limitation is the dish that I can field which can only get about 90 Gm range.  The probe is about 1.5m and I determined that after launch into a 100km circular orbit, I had about 4.7km/s delta-v available.  Enter KSP Trajectory Optimization Tool (by Arrowstar).  Using this tool, I determined that I could burn about 4km/s and get an encounter in about 130d.  This gets me close to the optimal transfer window for the next mission.  I have some contracts to obtain near and high data over Ike so in KSPTOT I had optimized for the Ike transfer.

I'm still sorting through how to translate the burns from KSPTOT to how to actually time them in KSP.  It's non-trivial when you have maneuvers of 4+km/s on a Poodle that takes 3 minutes to complete.  However, I managed the burns near-Kerbin to obtain the first close approach to Ike.  After leaving the SOI of Kerbin, I conducted a small correction burn to get me a close approach to both Ike and Duna.  There's still a few hundred delta-V in the probe, so I might try to arrange a flyby of Jool if I can get the trajectory off of Duna, but even so, this mission will be a success.  Some images are here in this imgur album.

KSP 1.1.2 Kolony!

I'll supplement the thread when the probe arrives.

KSPTOT definitely took a lot of guess-work out of the mission.  I'm hoping to get mission planning a bit more accurate than I did on this first attempt, but so far this has been a nice experience.

 

[DivisionByZero]

Fly by complete!

The Imgur album is updated with a few more images: http://imgur.com/a/wPEiw

The mission was pretty successful.  The flyby maneuver, though, was really fast!  Only a couple hours after entering the Duna SOI did I get to Duna periapsis with the Ike flyby in between.  I had to use RemoteTech to get the near-space science timed correctly and it mostly worked.  The battery drain during transmission really knocked out a lot of information I would have otherwise gained.  There will still be work for my manned Duna mission to do, I suppose.

I had an unexpected treat that I captured in the screenshots: Ike was providing an eclipses on Duna when I entered the SOI.  I hadn't thought about this, but there it was as I got closer.  Pretty neat - made me appreciate the game again.

Not enough delta-v to catch an encounter with Jool, unfortunately.  I only have about 388 m/s on-board.  Instead, I set up a theoretical maneuver at apoapsis that will get me the Jool encounter in a mere 23 years.  lol.  Even though apoapsis is still within the orbit of Sarnus, I don't think the antenna that was put on the probe can make it.  No matter, I'll have long since sent Kerbals to Jool by then.  I better have sent them, I think. We'll see.