YADS ( Yet Another Duna Story)

[NewtSoup]

Hey guys, 

I'm off to Duna.  Technically this is my first real mission.  I know I sent Valentina into Duna Orbit in a Sandbox game using an Ion Craft but I don't really count that.  This is a full on Duna Surface and Return mission!

Due to Duna's thin atmosphere I have no heat shields for Duna descent, just a ton of parachutes and 100m/s of dv for final breaking ( bottom 4 thrusters on the lander below ).  The lander then has  6  Twitch thrusters for getting back into orbit  - chosen for their weight and atmospheric ISP  - 250 I know is not good but I am relying on Duna's thin atmosphere to up the ISP abit. KER says it should work.  It has the DV for orbit and, hopefully, enough left over to get back to Kerbin!.  I will be relying totally on Aerobraking to make Kerbin orbital insertion and indeed landing.  I'm not going to have any say at all where I splash down.

I have no tech to make a communications network that far so I this is a 3 kerbal mission with a basic science package.  The crew are Valentina ( Pilot ) Catsey ( Engineer ) and Robart ( Scientist ).

I have no real experience in transfer windows so I'm just going to burn prograde when Kerbal Alarm Clock says there's a window and see what happens.  Basically eyeballing a Kerbin Duna Transfer while mostly blind   Should be fun!

Oh I should also mention that the lander / return vehichle is 2 stage.  The lander lands under parachute and the bottom four engines.  Then it jettisons the 2 arms with the parachutes ( for weight ) and science package ( Robart will collect all data ) and takes off on the upper ring of 6 engines.

[NewtSoup]

Monkey feathers! the next Kerbin - Duna transfer window is in 1 year 194 days.  Cue "The Girl from Ipanema"

[NewtSoup]

And I have a Duna Encounter!.  No Maneuver nodes.  Just burn like crazy when the alarm goes off!  I'll refine the encounter mid way to get an aerobraking maneuver.  I can't be certain I'll make Duna insertion on aerobraking alone so I will be firing the engines close to periapsis.


 

[NewtSoup]

Fair Duna Encounter Now.  I  have plenty of DV just to retro-burn into Duna Orbit but I've decided to dig deep into the atmosphere anyway and save as much as possible.  I may even leave the excess fuel in orbit around Duna as "useful junk" in case of emergency on future missions.

[DeltaDizzy]

This is looking great so far, and I dont think ive ever seen anyone eyeball a Duna transfer before.  I'm anxious to see how this turns out.

Edited May 28, 2018 by DeltaDizzy

[NewtSoup]

Well, I dug deep and retro burned about 200m/s and captured into Duna Orbit

All good So far

 

On the third aero brake though I dug too deep and reduced my AP and PE too far 

 

Time for an Emergency Landing!  I burned off the remainder of the fuel and took a dive into Duna's lowlands!

 

Sadly I forgot to screenshot the parachute stage but I'm sure you can all imagine what parachutes look like.    They reduced my speed to 9.8m/s which is fine regards survivability but a little high speed for Duna's low gravity.  So as per the plan I fired the landing thrusters in a kind of suicide burn at around 50m.  They have enough thrust to lift the whole craft up including the science stage so rather than separate on the surface I will make use of the DV available and ditch the science stage on the way back up once the fuel is burned.  But hey! I'm down on the surface and I can do moar science!

 

 

Wish you were here, instead of us!

[NewtSoup]

422 Days to Kerbin Transfer Window - Will do this tomorrow as it's now nearly 5am in the UK and it's light outside.

[NewtSoup]

Good Morning Kerbals

Well, good afternoon really, it's 14:24 and I got up a half hour ago.  But I have coffee and KSP running and 2 days to my Kerbin transfer window.  Going to try and get this thing back into orbit.  I've realised I have monopropellant that I have no use for.  I'm going to burn that off while landed to lose a few kilos.  Every little helps!

[NewtSoup]

Time to blow the arms off this thing!



Ok, Atomic Batteries to power!  Turbines to Speed!
Data Collected and moved to command pod - Check!
Chutes Repacked - Check!
Mid Launch Snacks on trays - Check!
Staging Checked - Check!

 

Robart doesn't look entirely happy.

I decided on a very shallow ascent - Again because of the thin atmosphere - I figured it would be more efficient to gain as much surface speed as possible as soon as possible.

 

A strategy that worked really quite well - Orbit at 70km with over 900 m/s of dV left

For the transfer burn,  I'll be looking for any Kerbin encounter, no refining, no planing, just an encounter or even a sketchy closest approach.  I'll correct everything else after 150 days of return flight.  I know I can get away with this because the orbits of both Duna and Kerbin  have very little inclination, so much like the Mün as long as I know the window is there I can burn and get something.  Before this I was clueless about transfer windows - but it really is that simple.  It's the period of time during which you can make a burn and be sure of getting an encounter with your target at some point.

[NewtSoup]

Bah, ended up using a maneuver node after all.  The return journey is not as simple as "Burn".    Though I did get an encounter quite easily all the same.

 

I was about a minute late on the burn having been distracted by coffee, however the results were still perfectly acceptable.  I'm entering Kerbin's SOI on the right side of the planet.  I'm between Minmus and Kerbin and I have very little dV left.  I'm going to have to rely on aerobraking to capture into Kerbin's orbit.  I'm pretty confident it will work as I've seen others do it.



Bye Bye Duna, it's been fun!

Edited May 28, 2018 by NewtSoup

[NewtSoup]

Here we go, time for some course corrections:

 

Hello Kerbin, nice to see you again!

 

The result of which was this   Sadly I'm going to be landing on the dark side of Kerbin, but never mind, it can't be helped - perhaps with more experience I could be more selective.

 

Still I took some shots of the glowy goodness

 

Good Capture!

Parachutes are not particularly exciting.  Parachutes in the dark even less so.  Still, I did my best with what the Kraken provided.



And the result! This is from a single landing on Duna and a few orbits. Not sure if it's enough to finish my tree - I think I'll need another 2000.  The KSC is underwater after the scene change.  Oops!

I'm happy, my first Duna mission was a complete success and my 3 Favourite Kerbals got 3 stars each!.

Edited May 28, 2018 by NewtSoup

[NewtSoup]

Another 2290 Science needed to finish my tech tree.  I just need Advanced Unmanned Tech, Experimental Science and Large Probes ( ooerr missus )

Where to next?

I think - I like Ike

 

Edited May 28, 2018 by NewtSoup

[NewtSoup]

Epilogue -

 

[Kerbalstar]

Very nice mission @NewtSoup!

[Sorabh]

@NewtSoup The ambient lighting can be increased by post processing, or better yet, changing the ambient light boost factor in game, or in the settings.cfg.

Here's the last parachute landing picture after a 2 minute post processing:

Before:

After:

Just a protip for your future mission reports!  This was a good report and I am awaiting more!