Any ideas for Duna lander?

[ShuttlePilot]

Hello, i just wanted some ideas for Duna lander, becuase i tried to make one, but all of my attempts were unsuccesfull. The final product is wobbly as hell and the landing struts are very unstable, engine efficienty is very poor. I want a lander that can fit and dock. Don't worry i have both DLC's because i'm attracted to this game! I got to the mun like 67 times and it's getting boring, so i wanna go to Duna, but my spacecraft is very unstable, wobbly and inefficient. You can give me any ideas you want, i am an ace at maneuvering and redenzvous. Thank you!

[ShuttlePilot]

Hello, i just wanted some ideas for Duna lander, becuase i tried to make one, but all of my attempts were unsuccesfull. The final product is wobbly as hell and the landing struts are very unstable, engine efficienty is very poor. I want a lander that can fit and dock. Don't worry i have both DLC's because i'm attracted to this game! I got to the mun like 67 times and it's getting boring, so i wanna go to Duna, but my spacecraft is very unstable, wobbly and inefficient. You can give me any ideas you want, i am an ace at maneuvering and redenzvous. Thank you!

[Vanamonde]

This is going to end up being a craft sharing thread, and so I have moved it to Spacecraft Exchange.

And oh, lookie here. I just happen to have a Duna ship.

https://kerbalx.com/Vanamonde/Far-Shore

You could snip the lander off and put it on your own rocket, if you want. 

 

[Gargamel]

Moved to Gameplay Questions. 

[VoidSquid]

2 hours ago, ShuttlePilot said:

wobbly as hell

Stuts/Autostruts ftw  

I built a Duna lander for 3 Kerbals some months ago for a friend who was getting into KSP, if you're interested, l can share the craft file. Needs MH DLC, but you have that.

[ShuttlePilot]

41 minutes ago, VoidSquid said:

if you're interested, l can share the craft file. Needs MH DLC, but you have that.

Okay, i would want to check out and compare what i did wrong, would be nicely appreciated.

[VoidSquid]

https://easyupload.io/c93iua

Depending on your fuel consumption, you might need to adjust the staging a bit.

Edited January 8, 2021 by VoidSquid

[Le Lynx]

A pod, 2 chutes.

[king of nowhere]

I generally land on duna with large, complicated things with ISRU. but once i made a small rover as part of a challenge, and it's fitting to land almost everywhere, including duna

there is a terrier at the bottom, not very visible. it's enough to reach orbit with fuel to spare. the wheels work; the rover isn't particularly good, graceful, stable, fast or anything, but it's enough to move around some kilometers and get all the surface features. there is a parachute on the other side of the HECS, not visible from this perspective. it's some 20 parts total, and little more than 3 tons.

EDIT: forgot to mention: the parachute slows you down to 20/30 m/s; you need to use the rocket to slow down before impact. on going up, the thing is not aerodinamic at all - i made it as a universal lander, and a wide base helps stability; i'd only have to face an atmosphere once, so i didn't optimize for it. even in duna's thin atmosphere, this thing flies poorly. a gravity turn is not effective, too much drag. You should ascend vertically at a speed between 200 and 300 m/s until you get past 15 km of altitude, then you can turn. launching from the top of a mountain helps. even with the extra gravity and aerodinamic losses, though, you still have plenty of spare fuel

Edited January 8, 2021 by king of nowhere

[fourfa]

https://kerbalx.com/fourfa/Dunalander

This one fits neatly into a 2-unit Mk3 cargo bay for ease of mothership integration

Edited January 8, 2021 by fourfa

[Vanamonde]

Overlapping threads have been merged. 

[ShuttlePilot]

I just came back to my first ever post on the Kerbal Space Program forums. never going to forget this thread. So many awesome crafts have been tried... Thanks to all of you! Nevermind the question that is solved, people can still share their duna landers on here because some people may find this thread useful again.

[Mars-Bound Hokie]

I know it's late, but if you want to reduce the overall funds expended, I recommend learning the ways of the spaceplane. If you do it right, you can get the entire vehicle back along with your crew and data.

 

And if you think building regular spaceplanes is a hard, wait until you meet Duna. The atmosphere alone provides two big hurdles you need to overcome:

• You can't use air-breathing engines on that planet.
  • Which means that you'll have to use rocket engines that will bring your Duna TWR to over 1 when you enter the atmosphere.
    • This is also crucial when you decide to leave Duna. If you use rapiers on your craft, you still need to have enough fuel to make it to Kerbin - or at least your next refueling stop.
• It's significantly thinner than on Kerbin.
  • Flying a plane on Duna is nothing like flying on on Kerbin or Laythe. Apart from not using air-breathing engines, you can't make turns as well and you have to be quite close to the ground before you can deploy any parachutes.

 

Fortunately, I unlocked the secret two years ago. Below is a picture of the spaceplane I use for Duna missions, the Dirtblood.

 

• Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/Mars-Bound_Hokie/Dirtblood

 

Spoiler

Before you ask, do you think I would have posted this on KerbalX if this craft was unsuccessful? Then again, this was built in version 1.8.1. A lot has changed between then and now, so for all I know it may not work now no matter what I try. 

 

After you get this bad boy into LKO, you need to land on Minmus to refuel yourself before you fly anywhere else. Those two NERV engines take up a decent amount of fuel, but it's a small price to pay for a non-rapier TWR of over 1 on Duna. I highly recommend you have an engineer on board to speed up fueling - or repair stuff, now that repair kits are out.* If you have a good enough relay network, you won't need a pilot for this. 

• I haven't updated this craft in about two years. 

 

Feel free to try it out and tell me what you think. 

[ShuttlePilot]

@Mars-Bound Hokie

It's very, very late. This is my first ever thread that I have started. But everyone can still share their ideas of the duna landers here, because some people may still find this information helpful when they come across this post. You have the freedom to post here even after my death (If the forums or the Earth would still exist in that time )

Anynway, this is a great job @Mars-Bound Hokie, I really appreciate your post on this topic, because it is the most detailed that I have found in this thread.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best:

Mk1 pod, FL-T400 tank, Terrier engine. Some landing gear made from cubic octagonal struts and BG grip pads for lightness, though regular landing legs would also work. A bit of RCS and a docking port to make it able to attach to other vessels, a couple of parachutes (a single main chute is all I needed, though you might want a drogue chute too) and it’s good to go.

A nearly identical version that swaps the Mk1 pod for a Mk1 lander can, slightly better for airless bodies due to lower weight but its lack of pointiness made it less useful for Duna.

In both cases there’s enough fuel to land on any airless body and return to orbit (except Tylo, where you might land and that’s it) and they can manage Duna as well due to the very low atmospheric pressure (ISP is almost at vacuum levels), plus it’s relatively small, low part count and light so can be used as part of a larger interplanetary mission- in fact I used these extensively in my two Grand Tour runs, even with the added weight that comes from Kerbalism’s life support systems and supplied they’re capable of landing on Moho, Gilly, Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Vall, Bop, Pol and Eeloo. Yes, single seat only isn’t great, but for your first flags and footprints they’ll do the job cheaply and effectively.

[Staticalliam7]

do you use Kerbal Reusability Expansion? 

[ShuttlePilot]

18 hours ago, Staticalliam7 said:

do you use Kerbal Reusability Expansion? 

I'm not an anti-mods person. One install of KSP is stock and another one is heavily-modded install of KSP with RSS/RO and 16GB of total GameData folder directory size.

Edited November 23, 2021 by ShuttlePilot

[septemberWaves]

A nice general design is one engine with a fuel tank smaller than the diameter of the crew pod, plus a bunch of small radially attached drop tanks feeding into each other and then finally into the main tank. If you can fit the radial tanks into a fairing with a large heat shield at the bottom for entry, it works pretty nicely for various capsule sizes.

[Staticalliam7]

6 hours ago, ShuttlePilot said:

I'm not an anti-mods person. One install of KSP is stock and another one is heavily-modded install of KSP with RSS/RO and 16GB of total GameData folder directory size.

I was just wondering since KRE's landing legs are much better than stock.

Unfortunately, I have not found a good and consistinent lander design yet..

[Scarecrow71]

I put this in my Las Kerbas Kerpollo Challenge thread, but here is the lander I used for Duna and Ike in a single launch:

And for context, my tech tree at the time so you can see what parts I did have available to me:

[Fellow314]

Neatly packed into the Mk2 cargo bay of this SSTO is a Duna lander.