DUNA 1. My first built in orbit reuseable space vehicle.

[Majorjim!]

Hi all,

I recently decided to put together a Duna science mission which would losely follow a proposed NASA mission.

so, here goes.

The plan was to send am unmanned ascent vehicle to Duna with rovers, two com sats and science stuff to make fuel for the crews ascent stage on the surface.

Here is the unmanned ascent and science package.

Found a promising flat area at the inlet of a shallow valley

The rover tug getting to work setting up the science equipment

With the tugs job done, the duna base awaits its first crew.

For the main ship I wanted to keep things simple to maximize my chances of success. This is my first attempt anyway so I knew something would go wrong at some point.

Here is DUNA 1. My assembled ship ready to fly to Duna. I sent up the front section first with that one grey tank the hitchiker container and other docking ports.

then the two hab modules then the engines last. The first section was like a snake on the way up so I flew it by hand which got me sweating!

Duna insertion burn, more than half my fuel. Which was lucky as a bug seemed to drain a large part of my engine fuel when I docked with the main body of it..

In orbit around Duna, releasing on of the two satellites.

Now here's the problem..

I was originally planning to have six Kerbals on the surface and return in groups with an ascent stage. Buuuuut due my general forgetfulness and the fact that I completed the mission over a week or so I forgot to test the two Hab modules properly..

It began to dawn on me as I arrived at Duna and was thinking about sending down the modules that they didn't have enough parachutes or RCS for de-orbit and slowing a decent under chutes. I decided to try docking them and sending them down together to detach when under chutes.

thusly

And here they come down together.

The problem was that they hit to hard and always bounced smashing off solar arrays and causing me to have an embolism. I didnt get a pic of the crashed one, I was too mad to remember!

So a quick reload later and I decided to send just Jeb and Bob down in the one Hab module with enough RCS to slow its decent. I transfered the other crew members into the main ship Hab module and broke the sad news that there would be no Duna surface visit for them.

so, the single surface Hab module arced across the Dunan surface and I couldn't believe it when it touched down unharmed and ready to get to work. Just over 8km from the Duna 1 base.

Here's Jeb and Bob making their way to the Duna 1 base

Jeb seems to like the Tug rover

Final inspection of the atmosphere test rocket

A safe distance, so Bob says. Jeb asked if he could hold it..

Arial view of DUNA 1 science base

This was a hell of a lot of fun. Especially moving those machines around with the tug. We need more little jos to do like that in KSP.

anyway, I hope you found this interesting.

night all.

MJ

[regex]

That was really cool. I like the idea of little science stations deployed by tiny rover, good times.