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Weekly Challenge #5 - Land on Duna!


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Hi all.
I wanted to make the Val level mission with all in one mothership style spacecraft. Kraken tried its it's best to prevent me from succeeding but I won this time! (My sanity took a hit).

Take off. Eight kerbals one mission. 

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Getting to orbit took couple of tries. Spontaneous disintegration on launchpad after loading was quite a problem.

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Decoupling around orbit of Kerbin. 

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Finally on orbit around Duna.  All looks good.

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Now it's time to decouple a lander. Jeb is eager to get down on Duna. His target a edge of north polar cap. (He wanted to drive the rower but  he draw the short straw.)

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Descent and landing.

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Rower does not have any engines to deorbit. Plan is to use mother ship to get a rower on course to landing site.

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Quickly decouple rower, turn around and accelerate to safe orbit. Bill and Bob will wait around Duna and enjoy the view.

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Val and Tim are free falling to a surface of Duna.

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Chutes deployed and rower is safely on ground.

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Mischievous humor of Jebs, Val and Tim have more than a hundred kilometers drive in front of them.

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Drive to the lander, quite a fun, couple of flips. Normal couple of days for Kerbals.

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Finally arriving to lander. Hop on and head to the mothership. Tim seams lucky to get on!

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Coupling was surprisingly uneventful. 

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Kraken showing the tentacles. Around orbit the mothership broke. When changing directions ship did not want to turn.  As if some force prevented that. After a while ship begun to oscillate cockpit most. Kerbals had to evacuate from cockpit. Luckily only part that broke or was cockpit. Kerbals had to pilot from landers cabin.

(Behind the scenes come changes to safe file to turn off struts strengthening cockpit to ships body so only cockpit would broke off. For kerbals it must have looked like some miracle from above... ;-)   )

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Arriving to Kebin. After almost three years Kerbals finally gets to see home planet.

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Lander is going to land on its own but only with Valentina and Bob on board. The rest will take home newly designed SSTO.

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First to land is a lander. Decouple and descend to KSP

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Perfect landing almost spot on. 200 meters and Val would on landing pad. Still good job!

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In the meantime STO approaching the runway. Without a fuel extremely rear heavy and unstable. Better testing in future will be needed.

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Plane spotters around runway are ready to capture this historical moment. Crew of the longest space flight landing back home!

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Crew safe home. Kraken lost this time?!

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  • 4 months later...

Duna - The boss gave me this laundry list of things to do and I'm going to cram it all into one day before the big meeting mission report

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Swooping in with a 5 month necro to post this :D.  With the latest patch out, I've spent some of my free time over the last 2 weeks getting stuck into this challenge.  I decided to go big or go home, throw caution to the wind, and try and run as far as normal what is a typical mission for me.  That is to say - over complicate everything, use too many parts, and be way too detail orientated for my own good.  I also elected to have multiple packages on a rocket, with other rockets relying on multiple undocking and undocking procedures, with complex staging requirements to boot.  I decided to go for the primary stretch Val Watney level, and also decided that in order to keep it simple I would also boost a space station to Duna orbit as a long-term orbital outpost.  Why not right?

I had fun.  A lot of fun.  I really enjoyed basically every single part of the mission.  But would the mission be even completable given the complexity?  Would I succumb to the kraken? 

You can view the full mission report here, and then below a few summary photos from the mission:

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The main crewed ship, and the Duna station docking high above Kerbin

 

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The Duna polar lander with its complex landing deployment, including fairing, heatshield, and braking module detachment.

 

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The return to orbit lander on the surface at the North polar region of Duna.  Absolutely astounding views of Ike.

 

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Duna station on orbit, with the crew ship burning for Ike.

 

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Ike landing with Duna in the background!

 

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First crewed landing on Duna.  Ike is in the centre of the imagine and just visible through the haze.

 

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I love the visuals and music at Duna.  It's so so good.

 

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Second landing, at the pol by the return to orbit vehicle.  Ike in the background again for the naysayers :D

 

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Return to orbit for the crew, and the start of the end of the mission.  Bugs started to accumulate at this stage and it was getting more complex to manage.  Most had workarounds.

 

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Due to fuel shortages some pretty funky orbital manoeuvres were required to A) rescue the crew in orbit around Duna, and B) set up the plane change around Duna to make the return to Kerbin efficient.  The return burn was accomplished and the ship picked up the intercept with Kerbin.  Please see mission report for more details.

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Abandon ship!  By this point the accumulation of bugs had got to the stage of not being able to view the main crew ship, or control it in any reasonable way.  Hendros Kerman now had to represent all of kerbal kind and make it home in one piece.

 

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Splashdown for all Kerbalkind, and mission (as best as possible) accomplished!

 

So what do I say in summary?  This is by far the biggest mission I've run in KSP2.  It took 24 hours of real time in designing, flying and recording the mission.  In the final couple of hours it took all my might to work around the disintegrating save to get that one brave Kerbal home but make it home Hendros did.  This was the most enjoyable couple of weeks playing the game since the release, and I hope you enjoyed the mission report!

SM

 

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