Flying on duna? ---Vessel situation

[Tweeker]

   I recently recovered a vessel, and I noticed in the science tab of the recovery menu that it gave me "vessel returned from a flight over duna"  This is the first time I've seen this, I don't have this for any other planet or moon..

   So my question is what parameter must be met to generate this situation? On tis mission I aero braked into orbit, around Duna to complete a contract, and then went sub-obital on Ike for science. then returned home.

 

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

The criterion is "be in atmosphere while not on an escape trajectory."

So as soon as your aerobraking slowed you below escape velocity, you were "flying at Duna".

[Tweeker]

How can I duplicate this on kerbin? More to the point why don't I already have this?

[ZooNamedGames]

44 minutes ago, Tweeker said:

How can I duplicate this on kerbin? More to the point why don't I already have this?

Did you record any science while in the Dunation atmosphere?

[Tweeker]

I didn't do any science, and didn't go sub-orbital 17K periapsis, --apoapsis was about even with Ike's orbit.

[ZooNamedGames]

34 minutes ago, Tweeker said:

I didn't do any science, and didn't go sub-orbital 17K periapsis, --apoapsis was about even with Ike's orbit.

Odd. Hm...

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Tweeker said:

I didn't do any science, and didn't go sub-orbital 17K periapsis, --apoapsis was about even with Ike's orbit.

That's right.  But the vessel did experience that situation, which is why you got credit for it.

KSP gives you science when you recover a vessel that's been somewhere interesting.  (Where "interesting" is defined as "haven't got credit for it already").  So you will get credit for "recovery for a vessel that was flying at Duna" regardless of whether it actually did anything or acquired any science while it was there.

If your craft experienced multiple situations (e.g. you were flying at Duna, yes... but you were also orbiting Duna, for example), then the game picks the best one and gives you credit for that.  Repeated visits to the same place don't give you the same credit, though.

36 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Odd. Hm...

Not odd, this is expected behavior.

2 hours ago, Tweeker said:

How can I duplicate this on kerbin? More to the point why don't I already have this?

Not sure what you mean.  You get "flying at Kerbin" pretty much any time you're in atmosphere.  Try collecting any science results while you're in atmosphere but not landed-- the result will say "while flying at Kerbin".

You're not seeing credit for "recovery of a vessel that was flying at Kerbin" because that's such an overwhelmingly common scenario that you already got the credit for that in your first launch of your new career, so there's nothing further to report there.

[ZooNamedGames]

3 minutes ago, Snark said:

Not odd, this is expected behavior.

Expected to give scientific data for not doing science? I am admittedly weak on my career mode but that doesn't add up.

[Snark]

2 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Expected to give scientific data for not doing science? I am admittedly weak on my career mode but that doesn't add up.

Yes.

Simply going somewhere (for the first time) and recovering the vessel will give you science.  The mere act that you went there and came back has value.  Basically, "go to a new situation in a new SoI" counts as a sort of mini science experiment of its own.

It's not a lot of science-- I think it's less than, for example, taking a single materials-bay measurement at that location-- but it's there.

The feature has been in KSP a long time; certainly since 1.0, I think it pre-dates that though.

[ZooNamedGames]

1 minute ago, Snark said:

Yes.

Simply going somewhere (for the first time) and recovering the vessel will give you science.  The mere act that you went there and came back has value.  Basically, "go to a new situation in a new SoI" counts as a sort of mini science experiment of its own.

It's not a lot of science-- I think it's less than, for example, taking a single materials-bay measurement at that location-- but it's there.

The feature has been in KSP a long time; certainly since 1.0, I think it pre-dates that though.

Oh... well I did not know that.

[Tweeker]

   I think my confusion is coming from the fact that on kerbin you get "vessel that survived a flight" but on Duna you get " returned from a flight over Duna"

And also from the fact that on Kerbin it is when you first launch, but on Duna it is from an orbit with an atmospheric Periapsis.

[Geschosskopf]

On 7/26/2016 at 1:13 PM, Tweeker said:

   I recently recovered a vessel, and I noticed in the science tab of the recovery menu that it gave me "vessel returned from a flight over duna"  This is the first time I've seen this, I don't have this for any other planet or moon..

   So my question is what parameter must be met to generate this situation? On tis mission I aero braked into orbit, around Duna to complete a contract, and then went sub-obital on Ike for science. then returned home.

Bummer.  I was hoping this question was about how to fly airplanes around on Duna, which is one of my favorite subjects.  Still, I shall try to answer your question....

The milestones for things like suborbital and atmospheric flight work differently on Kerbin than they do at any other body.  On Kerbin, suborbital flight is a ballistic trajectory that starts and ends on the ground and has an Ap above the atmosphere, and atmospheric flight is when you start and end above the ground but the Ap is within the atmosphere.

At all other planets, the suborbital milestone triggers any time your trajectory intersects the surface of the planet, even if this only happens temporarily turning a burn (such as, once you enter the SOI, you burn to move your Pe from the inboard to the outboard side of the planet, or change your inclination from one side of 90^ to the other..  Without ever touching the planet, maybe even without ever coming close to it, you still trigger the suborbital flight milestone if your future path, at any point during a burn, touches dirt.

Similarly with atmospheric flight at other planets.  All you have to do here is have your trajectory inside the atmosphere, even if only for a split second and you never actually touch the air.  Thus, aerocapturing will certainly do it.