Giant Hop III - Third kerbaled landing mission with Duna monument, Duna Elcano circumnavigation (polar), and three-kerbal crew landing on Ike

Poppa Wheelie · February 29, 2024

I've been working on this mission for over a month: a couple of weeks of design and build, 1 day to launch and get to Duna, another couple of weeks doing the Duna Elcano, and 1 more day to do Ike and Kerbin return. Plus another day to put all the screenshots in order.

This was my third launch that involved landing kerbals. These are my "Giant Hop" missions. On this mission I obtained over 8000 science points, plus another 3035 points for the following 3 missions:

Are There Fuel Stations In Space (35): Orbit Kerbin with a X200-64 methalox fuel tank and a docking port
Duna Monument (2000): Visit the Duna monument
Three Is Company (1000): Land 3 kerbals on Ike

Here's the mission report. Enjoy!

A full set of screenshots here: https://imgur.com/a/Wn2FzAj

A subset of those screenshots are used in the highlights below.

Launch, Transit to Duna, and Duna Landing

More:

Spoiler

Launch vehicle

To orbit:

To Duna:

Transfer crew, separate lander, land. No heat issues at all, by the way:

Duna Elcano Circumnavigation

Some of my favorite screenshots along the way:

Spoiler

Crew Cam:

Did science in every biome:

Duna Monument:

Spoiler

North to the North Pole

South to the South Pole

And back north to the landing site

Documentation of the Elcano:

I couldn't figure out a method to mark the Map View to show where I've been. Flags do not show up on Map View. So what I have for documentation is a set of 37 screenshots, 1 taken every 10 degrees of Latitude (with the landing location represented twice): https://imgur.com/a/PTpaWhz

I noticed that items dropped from my lander, such as parachutes, did show up on the Map View. They also provide a waypoint marker in flight view when they are 50km away or less. I used my dropped parachutes to show my landing location every time I went to Map View, and to guide me home as I finished up the Elcano. Anyone have any ideas on how to bring 18 to 36 items to drop during the course of an Elcano? Let's just have flags show up, please.

Overall, the scenery was great, but the Elcano just took too long and required too much personal attention while running it. If I start to talk about another Elcano any time soon, talk me out of it.

And, yes, I experienced what I call the "finger flick" bug consistently and repeatedly throughout the whole journey. This is the bug where, with no input on my part, the kraken flicks a giant tentacle and knocks my rover to the right or left, sometimes spinning it out of control, sometimes messing up a tricky ascent or descent. This bug has already been reported by others through the bug reporting process. What a pain!

Duna to Ike, and back to Duna

More:

Spoiler

Pop a wheelie for takeoff. The reaction wheel was plenty powerful enough to take care of this, as long as the rear wheels were placed appropriately.

Launch:

Drop the nosecone:

I did rendezvous and docking with the mothership, but only got this screenshot

Refueled, undocked the lander again, and headed for Ike

Did the science, planted a flag, took lots of photos, then got back in the ship:

Pop another wheelie for takeoff (with no wheels). Again, the reaction wheel took care of this, no problem.

Then back to Duna

Transfer crew, deorbit lander and Kerbin transfer stage:

Kerbin return vehicle:

I used Alex Moon's web site tool to determine return window and parameters. He called for Kerbin to be 59.57 degrees behind Duna at transfer time. I guess that was pretty accurate. The protractor is from the Probably Askew mod.