First Kerbonaut (finally) returned from Duna

[colonel0sanders]

Well...I've managed to finally land someone on Duna and return them safely home. It took significantly more effort than it should have.

Alford landed perfectly on the surface of Duna on my very first mission there, but he was running on fumes when he set down, so I knew I''d have to send another ship to pick him up. So I build a new rocket using the 3-man pod, removed two of the Kerbals in it, and took off. Made my Duna intercept just fine, deployed some parachutes on the way down, and impacted the surface at 50m/s. The funny thing is, the pod survived. Now there were two Kerbals that need a rescuing. So I made some modifications to the rescue ship, sent it back up, and the same thing happened. I was up to 3 stranded Kerbals, and they were about 10km away from each other on the surface.

So I started the rescue ship design from scratch. Got to Duna, and finally was able to set down on the surface again. I picked up alford and one of the others (walking them 10km along the surface of Duna. It's a great thing you can run while at 4x time warp now) and took back off. This, being one of my missions, of course had to have a failure somewhere. Once I got them up into orbit, I didn't have enough fuel to get them home.

One more ship (this one without landing capabilities), one more transfer to Duna. I made it there just fine, pulled off my second-ever orbital rendezvous, transferred Alford and the first rescue mission pilot, and returned them safely to Kerbin with fuel to spare. It only took 5 different ships over a course of about 7-8 years to do, and I still have one Kerbal on the surface and one in orbit that I have to go back and get.

[Luxmaster-CZ]

This sounds so awesome! Next time, make bazilion of pics!

[colonel0sanders]

I did manage a few pictures, but yeah, more would have been better.

[hebdomad]

A truly Kerbal way to get to and from Duna!

I've still got the original three still stuck on the surface with maybe enough fuel to get to orbit. That rocket had multiple parts fail and its amazing I landed on target in the first place. I'll have to send a Mech-jeb rocket to save them when I get back home. (I'm currently 700km away)