On the search for bugs, beautiful scenes, and Science! - A trip to Duna

[cubinator]

Having visited both Mun and Minmus with capable vessels, I was ready to go interplanetary for the first time in KSP2. The goal is to reach the monument on Duna. Because precise landings in an atmosphere are tricky, I opted to add a rover to make the final crawl there, and thus came up with a horizontal lander design around that rover, containing it in a cargo bay. That rocket alone didn't have quite enough 'oomph' to get there and back, so I simply made a tanker stage that was about the same size as a second launch that would dock to the lander. Time for launch!

I had to add a nose cone on top of the tanker to prevent various sensitive parts from burning off during ascent, even though I did my best to jump out of the atmosphere quickly.

Goodbye nosecone! The mountains on Kerbin below are quite spectacular.

With both the ship and tanker in orbit, it was time to dock. Both of their main boosters had a decent amount of fuel left, so I kept those attached to use later, which made docking a big challenge.

Two large ships lined up perfectly.

And with that it's off to Duna! I had to stop the burn as the boosters ran out to separate them and flip the ship over. Not conventional, but not ineffective at getting me to Duna. The part manager was no help in telling me how much fuel was left in each stage, and I was a little worried that it would start draining the wrong fuel tanks. Nothing's gone horribly wrong yet, though.

Goodbye, Kerbin! It already feels so small.

There's no feeling like launching yourself so far away from home that you lose your planet in the sea of stars.

280 days later, Duna appears from the sky!

Duna and Ike looming.

The first Kerbals have arrived at another planet.

The next day, it's time to attempt the landing. What's this? Stowaways! Well, they'll soon learn a great deal about the safety of the cargo bay's interior during EDL.

Time to go down. Ike is dark like charcoal.

Parachutes seem more tolerant of high speeds in this thin atmosphere. I still had to load a save once to land safely, but the ship performed with excellence!

Drogues deploying!

Vehicle has righted itself into the horizontal position, time to switch to the landing engines!

I had the luck of landing on a hillside, the shifting sand had my ship sliding down gently into a safe ditch a few meters down.

The landing legs couldn't extend fully, so in order to let the rover out the ship had to do a short hop, which luckily went without damage. Not sure how the rover pirates escaped with their hearing due to their proximity to the rocket engines, but they seem to be unscathed.

More than 50 km of driving lies ahead, but Duna surely has many wonders to show along the way. It's not like they need to hurry home.

 

[cubinator]

The Kerbals descended the slopes of the giant mountainous plateau, and drove until the sun went down, then stopped for the night.

The next morning, they continued on all the way to the monument, which was a grand total of 74 km from their landing site. Then they were unrecoverably bugged out. One Kerbal willed himself all the way back to KSC with all the science, and the other three fell through the ground on their rover on the next load. 

I'm sure they'll be fine. Much later, it was time to return to Kerbin. The game still expressed no intention of showing me how much propellant was left in my fuel tanks, so I had to just assume that when I lifted off Duna I would be able to avoid coming back down.

Time to close the cargo bays and take off! The ship twisted and turned as the center of mass had shifted, but it was just controllable enough to turn to face the right direction for orbit and gain enough height to switch to the main engine at the back.

Off we go! I had to keep the nose tilted high in order to avoid overheating the docking port, but encountered no problems aside from that. The engines were still burning, and the ship still seemed weighty enough...fingers crossed.

Eventually the ship actually made it into orbit, and inched back toward the tanker stage.

After some unexpected rotations by the SAS, the ships docked with monopropellant almost running on fumes.

They were in a somewhat odd angle to return to Kerbin from Duna, but there was enough fuel to make it work. Plenty, in fact.

The Mun falls into its familiar place in the sky. A trajectory correction was needed to fix the re-entry altitude after the Mun's gravitational tug.

Kerbals in a can.

Dropping down into the familiar blue sky.

"Hey, do you think there could be repercussions for contaminating Kerbin with material from Duna that we inadvertently brought along on the exterior of this very capsule?"

Too late now.