Duna Lazarus

[Kadrush]

So I picked up the strategy of landing on Duna. After rushing missions to get the science and the money for the ship / upgrades to KSC I built my ship to Duna. I sent 2 missions before, one for science in orbit (hi / lo ; duna / ike) and another for scansat the planet, both became polar orbital relays afterwards. The ship is a 2.5 nuclear engine with 3 more in aspargus to deliver it to Duna (i added a small tank with LFO fuel for the lander), the mission package is a 1.8m cargo bay with a single kerbal deep freeze pod inside, a 1.8m habitat, a 1.8 command pod, a skycrane (for Duna, as the lander cant land and return on his own) and a lander (for Duna and Ike).

After a 285 day trip I unfreeze the kerbal, insert orbit right direct on Ike, land in an anomaly (got a nice sci bonus), return to orbit, refuel, move to Duna Low orbit (60km), leave the lander and the skycrane there (with the pilot of course), move the ship to a 400km orbit (in order to move it slower) and sincronize it with the lander, so I get remote tech signal after the land (I retracted the antena to avoid a snap).

The land, turned off the lander engine, blocked cross feed and made a controlled, low power deceleration all the way down (avoid using full trust so the docking node dont snap or the fumes burn stuff on the lander). Before landing i set all parachutes to 5000m and 0.01 pressure. Opened everything, reduced speed to 10.5 m/s on the 5000 final meters, enjoyed the time to make some flying low science. Closer to the ground I undocked the skycrane as it was almost empty and it weight would flip the lander on the return trip, make small burns sideways with the lander, so the crane dont land on top of it. The lander came down at 11 m/s, demanding a controlled burn to touch down at 2 m/s.

On the ground: collected the science from the flying low harvest, reset the equips, made some more on the ground, flag planting, eva report, sample collecting, harvested everything again. Strategia completed. the skycrane landed nearby, in one piece.

Returning to orbit: 45% inclination burn with RCS turned on (essential) so the lander dont flip (quite high monoprop usage got me worried). Made some science while flying high, collected it on orbit.

Orbit: Returned and docked with the main ship, transferred the science, spent a few days awake (I roleplay so it was interviews and checkings Bob Kerman is now famous). Bob returned to Deep Freeze and the ship is resting at 400km orbit for a bit longer than 1 year until the return trip windows opens. Once it returns I plan to park it in high Kerbin orbit and sent a ship to pick Bob and the Science (the part which i couldnt sent for 100% of it value).

Price tag: 500k main mission, 300k from the other flights.

 

The album:

http://imgur.com/a/qOOYE