Planning a 'realistic' mission to Duna in Vanilla KSP.

[Joseph Kerman]

Hi guys. I am planning on making a video about a mission to Duna. I am having problems, however, because I don't know the best types of realistic techniques. I decided on a multi-launch strategy where I will launch 3 or 4 modules into orbit, dock them, and head to Duna. A spaceplane will be docked there to get in and out with science. Do you like the plan? What else do you suggest? 

[KerikBalm]

Realism and vanilla KSP don't go so well together. You can squeak out a SSTO to duna and back, doing 3-4 launches and orbital assembly is pretty overkill.

Ignoring a very optimized SSTO spaceplane... why carry a spaceplane to duna? For just landing on duna and returning to orbit, a spaceplane is not what you want. The air is thin, the gravity is low, a standard gravity turn ascent is what you want, and its much easier to land on chutes and retrorockets than to land a spaceplane. Realistically, assuming duna = mars, no one would consider using a spaceplane to ferry stuff between low mars orbit and the mars surface.

Now... I do sometimes use spaceplanes on Duna, but that is when I have a surface base and I want to be able to actively steer during my descent to ensure that I land very close to the surface base. In some cases, I just have a pretty standard vertical lander, with some fins attached.

As long as you have a "mothership" that stays in orbit and use a separate lander, I'd say that its realistic enough for vanilla KSP.

[Laie]

A few points off the top of my head... for "realistic" you may want to:

• carry extra mass for life support
• have dedicated habitats for in space and on the surface
• generally, bring surface stuff to unpack and use
• plan for redundancy and abort modes
  • like, lander can hover / move about for a bit (think apollo 11 and the debris field)
  • landing may be aborted even at the last moment
  • surface equipment is pre-deployed on a previous launch window
  • bring two lifters, crew can fit into one if the other doesn't check out
  • ...

It's probably easiest to pick one of the existing mars proposals and try to follow it as good as you can.

[Majorjim!]

Try the 'Mars direct' mission plan. I've done it myself and it was a blast.

[MinimalMinmus]

Getting to Duna or Ike in stock is actually fairly easy. You simply take your Mün lander and add a few boosters to grab 1 km/s more dV, and poof, Duna!

For a more challenging mission, you could try to also visit Ike in the same mission (which will almost surely require you to re-dock with a mothership to refuel), or deliberately increase the size (and therefore mass) of the mothership by doing some self-imposed challenges, such as saying "Nobody would like staying for 3 years in a capsule", or planning to get all 4 of the Kerbonauts on Duna/Ike.

[Atkara]

Something like this could be a rough starting point:

It's over-designed since I didn't have just Duna in mind and anything but pretty. It is reusable though.

[big bear]

Realism in my mind would basically be saying RO-RP0 and RSS, but I think there's a mod for Realistic Kerbin system?  Either way that, with Tac/USI-LS and habitation possibly, with KAS, KAC or TWP. All those mods could do some work but at the same time for game mode Id say for realism sake, you can't use time warp, so gl (jk thatd be hell on earth)

 

Id say no quicksave/quickloading unless its quick saving in case the kraken decides to strike. So on and so forth.

[invision]

duna doesnt need a lot fuel to get there and land. if you can make a rocket land on the mun you can fly to duna with it, and because duna has an atmosphere landing is easy peasy and uses little fuel as long as you didnt pile drive through the little atmosphere it has.

to get to duna let kerblin be at 6 o'clock and duna 4-5 o'clock, burn AP on the darkside of kerblin until intercept

to get back let kerblin be at about 9 o'clock and duna 6 o'clock, burn AP on the sunny side of duna until intercept.

 

[DAL59]

What I did was preposition a MAV(inline cabin, mk1 pod, a fl800 tank and an aerospike).  Then I launched vehicle two, which was a MK3 pod with 3 mk1 liquid fuel tanks behind it, and 6 more sets of 3 tanks radially around it.  It had one nuclear engine and a hitchhiker module.  Docked to it was a MDV.  The only mod I used was for the MDV engine, though a terrier might have worked just as well.  

Plenty of spare dv.

I needed up having to hop to the MAV.

MAV ascent.  I had to EVA in the upper atmosphere to remove the landing legs(konstruction)