Icarus II Multi-use Ship: Duna Flight [IMAGE HEAVY]

[FastMINI42]

This is the report for a 318 day odyssey to Duna and back. A while back I saw a thread about large reusable ships and thought I try building one myself and sending it to Duna. After a tweaking the design part way through, I settled on a 12 Nuke engine, 10 jumbo tank design:

Without including redesign, and including the CSM and LM with rover, from launch pad to Orbit the intrepid workers of KSC put a total of 2,530 components in orbit with a combined weight of 8,047.37 tons at a cost of $2.609 billion. There were some tweaks and testing along the way, such as trying out the lander on Kerbin:

This had the unfortunate result of making Bob extremely excited to go. After a few days of Bob calling every hour and asking "Hey guys, me again. We ready to go yet?", ground control finally gave up waiting for an optimal launch window and just pushed the big red "go" button. Here's Icarus pulling out of the station heading for the Mun:

We tried a slingshot past the Mun:

Before finally making it to Duna:

Jebediah took command of the CSM to take Bob and Bill to a lower orbit:

Bob and Bill were soon on their way to the surface:

Bob and Bill making History:

Total flight time, from launch and construction, to Duna and back, was 318 days and 16 hours. All in all a lot of fun and challenging and I think I learned a lot. I used Mechjeb a lot in the beginning, but after watching I've been setting up the maneuvers myself and doing all the docking. I'm now starting construction on the Icarus III (yeah ... so much for multi-use ) for a combined Dres / Jool mission. She'll have twice the amount of tanks as the Icarus II, and I think I have a way to stack 6 rover/landing modules on the back.

Launch Stats (Pad to Orbit):

Weight: 8,047.37 tons

Part Total: 2,530

Cost: $2.609.49 billion

Pre-mission (completed ship in orbit, with CSM & LM)

Weight: 535.45 tons

Parts: 282

Liquid Fuel: 36,450L/36450L

Oxidizer: 44,550L/44,550L

Post-Mission (CSM returned to Kerbin, LM left at Duna)

Weight: 244.75 tons

Parts: 182

Liquid Fuel: 10,799L/34,200L

Oxidizer: 13,198L/41,800L

More (many more ... I tend to hit the F1 key a lot) pictures can be seen here:

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Edited September 9, 2013 by FastMINI42