Mission to Duna (pic heavy)

[Umlüx]

After establishing a flourishing Muna Base with all the comfort, fuelmining and munracing a kerbal could wish for it is time to expand the empire and spread the word of god (me) to other worlds.

Like NASA in the real world, i am going to visit this friendly red guy from the neighborhood. Let's go to Duna! There are already 2 rovers roving the Duna surface and a small probe in orbit from previous missions, but they where all unmanned launches.

Its time for the first Kerbal to geht his boots sandy (or rusty).

Constructing the Spaceship

First we need a ship. A big and fast ship so the crew would reach their destination fast enough without having them start choking on their own beards. Meet the BILKIS:

250 tons of creamy, shiny spaceship goodness-ness sporting 7 NERVA engines, living space for up to 5 Kerbals, a atmospheric capable lander, 2 deep space probes an a small space tug to carry them around.

The Bilkis was assembled in low kerbin orbit over the course of 5 different launches bringing the modules up because it is far to big an heavy for a single launch.

The Crew will consist of famous Jebediah Kerman himself and his brother Bob. Those two should be skilled enough to face the*challenges ahead.

Onwards, to Duna

It took two passes in low Kerbin orbit burning at full throttle to reach the escape velocity needed to leave kerbin and get on an intercept course with Duna. But despite the not ideal launch window, i managed to get an intercept within a reasonable time and without spending too much fuel.

Two more correction burns will follow once i leave Kerbin to finetune the course of the bilkis. The NERVA engines are very efficient, but low thrust. So everything takes foerever.

I think there will be some aerobraking involved once we reach Duna, because i doubt i can kill my*ÃŽâ€v fast enough with only engines. But more of that later, for now the Bilkis is on its way to new worlds.

Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye bye

We're here!

After nearly two and a half months in deep space and one small course correction, our brave Kerbals finally reached Duna. So the next step was reaching a stable Orbit around the Planet. Killing our high interplanetary speed will cost masses of fuel and take forever with those low thrust NERVA engines..

or will it? Maybe it's time for a somewhat reckless maneuver

We will do it the Kerbal way and brake in Dunas atmosphere, hoping it will slow us down enough to reach orbit. Targeting a low Duna Periapsis of roughly 10.600 meters we dive in, low and fast. We have to get so deep because Dunas atmosphere is so thin and low, we wouldn't get the desired effect otherways. It's so thin, we don't even get any reentry heateffects going. Thats good, because the Bilkis wasn't originally build for such shenanigans 8-)

Eventually we achieved a stable orbit and the next mission phase could start.

Probing Ike

The next task was to send a probe into a polar orbit of Duna's moon Ike. Ike is somewhat massive in relation to Duna, so an intercept course was easy to lay.

You can't throw a stone in Duna system without hitting Ike, but the polar orbit will need some more ÃŽâ€v than the probe can achieve on its own, and we need one if we want to cover the whole surface of the moon.

The Probe was decoupled from the mothership and docket to the small spacetug. It will carry the Probe to Ike and release it into orbit. There it will scan the terrain for future landings and ressources. As Duna has only one moon and flying back was to much of a hassle, the small spacetug was deorbited and crashed into Ike after fulfilling its purpose. There it took some last readings and pictures of the dark surface of Ike before disintegrating.</p>

With this task out of the way we could now concentrate on the next big step..

Landing

Time to send the first Kerbal on the Surface of Duna. After checking the fueltanks of the lander, the Crew was transfered. Jeb and Bob will both attempt the landing as the computersystems of the Bilkis are more than adequate to hold the ship up in orbit in their own.

One last check later, the Lander was decoupled from the ship and began its decending burn.

Now we were set and on the way for a somewhat rough landing. The lander is equipped with several big parachutes to help slowing down, but as mentioned before, Duna's atmosphere is so thin we cannot relay only on them. So we had to use its engines to help reduce speed to tolerable levels. With the low thrustlevels of the nuclear engines and the hefty weight of the lander, we had to burn nearly through the whole landing procedure, but in the end, we managed to slow down enough for a safe touchdown.

After several sweaty and exhausting minutes, the lander sat down on Duna.

Jeb and Bob didn't hesitate one second and left the Lander as soon as the engines shut down. Being the very firste Kerbals on Duna they were more than excited and Bob nearly fell from the ladder. One small stumble for a Kerbal, but a giant laugh for the live TV broadcast audience!

It's safe to say, both Kerbonauts were very happy to witness.. no, to LIVE this historic moment. Let them have their moment for now, because there is more work to do.

After two days on the Surface of Duna and conducting some very important scientific tasks (including jumping around and admiring the view), it was finally time for the next big Task. Since there were loads of fuel left, KSP command thought: well.. why the heck not??..

Visiting Ike

Since we already sent a probe with surface mappers out there and got a great deal of information, we knew (or thought.. assumed.. *..hoped..) landing on Ike would be a piece of cake. Jeb and Bob brushed of the rust.. or dust.. and engaged the engines of the Lander Module to intercept the Bilkis. This used up much more fuel than planned. Well, somebody ate a fair share of Duna Cookies down there...

Eventually we reached the Mothership and docked the Lander for refueling and transfer to Dunas moon, Ike.

It took only some small drops of fuel to reach Ike since it is relatively big and has a wide sphere of influence.

Immediatley after reaching a stable orbit, our stup... brave Kerbonauts prepared the Lander and Jeb set off into the darkness of Ike. And when i say darkness, i mean pitch black darkness like the anus of tyrannosaurus rex' bunghole!

However, the landing was a success and Jeb spend several hours conducting important scientific tasks like.. jumping and some more jumping while waiting for the Mothership to get into the right Position for the rendezvous.

Even the most fun field trip comes to an end sometime and the crew startet preparing for their journey home.

Home, sweet Home

After docking the Lander to the Bilkis and transfering leftover fuel into its main tanks, we started plotting a course that will bring us home. Kerbin wasnt in the perfect position for the transfer.. or anywhere near it. But with enough thrust, one can get everywhere in the Kerbol System.

We first returned into a low and highly elliptical orbit around Duna to get the most out of the Oberth-Effect while burning the main engines and off we went, into interplanetary Space! Let's just hope now, we have sufficient fuel reserves onboard to get home.

After two more months in interplanetary space, Jeb could almost smell the fresh Snacks, waiting at KSP Headquarters... if there wasnt the somewhat foul body odour of Bob wo never used the showers since they departed months ago. eeeew!

however, one small problem remains.. killing the extensive transfer speeds to reach a stable orbit around Kerbin. Again we*doubted the NERVAS would be strong enough for this task.. and again we concluded.. why the hell not? i mean.. it worked once? Let's airbrake in Kerbins Atmosphere.

One member of the Bilkis main engineering team shot himself after hearing of this bold plan.. but there was no way back now. Let's retract the solar panels, fasten the seatbelts, point the engines prograde and pray (or pass out preferably)

I think, i'll just leave this pictures here

Nobody knows why and how it worked.. but the Bilkis mastered the airbraking maneuver like a pro and reached a stable Kerbin orbit. Braking without breaking.. just fantastic!

After donning a fres pair of diapers, Jeb and Bob pulled themselves out of the piloting seats and prepared for the reentry. I originally planned to send up a small capsule to get them and leave the Ship in orbit, but the tech teams learned much and more from this mission and already began to plan a new, bigger, better, faster and probably laggier interplanetary Ship. So the Crew will use the Lander for reentry and the rest of the Bilkis will stay in Orbit to be decommissioned someday or turned into a flying museum.

Landing this thing was a no-brainer after all those shenanigans.

And here are our Heroes. The most far traveled Kerbals today. Safely back at home to be showered with neverending fame and fortune. Welcome back, Jebediah and Bob!

[magnemoe]

Nice, but why the small tug, you could just as well added the fuel on the satellite, but perhaps you had plans to reuse it?

How much fuel did you use? three orange tanks should be able to take you to Jool without problems perhaps even Eeloo. You had two droptanks but did not drop them, however this might be for reuse.

[Deejay2000]

What day is it? Man, that was an epic (and somewhat long) story. I'll send this straight to NASA, they'll be able to use this as a guide for getting people to Mars.

[Umlüx]

dualpost due to serverload..

Edited July 24, 2013 by Umlüx

[Umlüx]

Nice, but why the small tug, you could just as well added the fuel on the satellite, but perhaps you had plans to reuse it?

How much fuel did you use? three orange tanks should be able to take you to Jool without problems perhaps even Eeloo. You had two droptanks but did not drop them, however this might be for reuse.

the bilkis was indeed constructed with reuse in mind. but frankly.. this was my first mission of this size and i had no clue what i was doing. so i simply overpacked, hoping all would go well

after return i had roughly one orange tank of fuel left., but the transfer windows werent ideal and i didnt exactly fly fuelefficient.

[The Jedi Master]

Is this 0.21?