Jeb's Monument

[Yakky]

Felt like we needed more humorous missions, so I came up with this:

 

Jeb's lost in space and presumed dead, so we've built a giant 300-ton statue in his memory.  We just need you to take it to Duna for us.  Land it upright on the special pedestal we've built at Duna's north pole for maximum points, or anywhere nearby for partial credit.

The statue is waiting for you at KSC on top of a ridiculously large launch vehicle.  It flies like a pig, but with the gentle touch of a skilled pilot (or perhaps the repeated touch of quicksave/quickload), it will reach low Kerbin orbit with fuel to spare.  And if you don't get the launch quite right... well, who doesn't love a massive explosion with parts scattered everywhere?

After you get the statue into Kerbin orbit, you'll have a million funds to build a Duna interplanetary tug and all the landing apparatus you'll need to get it safely down at Duna.  (The statue was thoughtfully festooned with lots of docking ports to allow you to attach things to it easily.)  Build and attach whatever you think you'll need, but be frugal to earn max bonus points.

This mission will test all your Kerbal skills: piloting, spacecraft design, docking, re-entry, precision landing, and efficiency.  It's a serious challenge.  Building in extra performance margins to your spacecraft (extra fuel, extra maneuverability, extra solar panels, extra snacks...) will make your job easier and more fun.

Ways you can fail:  break the statue, land it farther than a reasonable hike from Duna's north pole, or run out of money.

Mission here:  https://kerbalx.com/missions/61

I have play-tested it, but it's complex with 72 nodes, so I may have missed something.  Please let me know if anything is broken.  I don't have a huge amount of time these days but will attempt to fix things when I can.

[Vanamonde]

Are you sure this is possible? I lose control a couple of minutes into ascent. 

I like the idea of it, though.

[Yakky]

Yes, I've achieved orbit several times.  Do about a 70 degree gravity turn right after clearing the tower and then don't touch the controls until you need to stage.  Over-fiddling with the controls always seems to do me in.  Use care in staging if you are not aligned exactly prograde, since the ejected boosters may collide.

If you cartwheel after staging, you can still recover and make orbit with a little quick work and careful restorative burns.  The air should be thinning rapidly after a cartwheel or two, allowing the remaining rocket motors to have plenty of control authority relative to the awful aerodynamics.  After all, Jeb was never afraid of a little atmospheric tumbling!

There is actually plenty of fuel for a sub-optimal launch trajectory (within reason), so you can bias your ascent to be more vertical (to reduce the staging cartwheel tendency) at the expense of then having to a bigger lateral burn later on.

Hope this helps.  Let me know if you're still having trouble.

 

Edited July 2, 2018 by Yakky
embellishments

[Vanamonde]

Thanks. I'll try it again, but not right away. 

[Yakky]

Wow, just saw that this mission was anointed a ToTM for July... what an honor!  Thought I'd add a few more hints to help ease some of the potential difficulties.  Don't read them if you want the maximum difficulty in this challenge.

Spoiler

1 - Launch:  First see comments in my previous post.  One final technique not discussed above is to use the available fuel to ballast the statue a little differently (i.e. move more fuel toward the top of the statue).  This may improve aerodynamic stability enough to make you happier, although you'll have to manually move it back later if you want to burn it on the way to orbit.  (FWIW I did not have to re-ballast any fuel to successfully make orbit.)

2 - Duna booster attachments - There is a large docking port under Jeb's, um, seat area that is reasonably well aligned with the statue's center of gravity.  I suggest connecting your main interplanetary booster there.  You will still need a lot of maneuver control (many SAS units and/or thrusters) to wrangle the statue around in flight and counteract the small misalignments between your center of thrust and center of mass.  You can also ballast the statue by moving some extra fuel around the various extremity tanks (fingers etc) to try to get the center of mass better lined up with your thrust.  This is especially true if you use the high-ISP nuclear engines since they don't have much (any??) gimbal.

3 - Duna approach - You might be tempted to try a straight-in aerobraking approach to the Duna landing site for efficiency.  I certainly did.  Turns out this doesn't work very well because of how the Duna arrival geometry works out.  (Try it if you don't believe me.)  Thus you will probably need to do one of the following to land close to the pole:  (a) first enter a Duna polar parking orbit, (b) rely on retro-thrust rather than aerobraking to slow down over the pole, or (c) do some clever gravitational maneuver with Ike to alter your Duna approach angle to something more suitable.  Lastly, don't forget to refill the bottom leg tanks if you've emptied them earlier.  The mission requires the statue to have the correct weight after landing.

4 - Duna descent and landing - I use a combination of lots of parachutes plus a few retro-rockets to slow down in the last 100 meters or so.  There are built-in landing legs on the heels to help the statue stand up a little better... use them, or don't, I don't care.  Try to pick a flat landing spot as nothing is more frustrating than surviving touchdown only to have the statue tip over!  For greater precision, you might try attaching some fins to allow you to fine tune the descent smart-bomb style by "flying" to the intended landing point.  Or use the Trajectories mod... I would definitely not consider that cheating here.

Let me know if there are other challenging areas I should address, or if you encounter things that look like bugs.

 

Edited July 3, 2018 by Yakky