Trident Communication Satellite/Lander

[Prof. Endwalker]

Hello! This is my third ship, and I hope you enjoy! This took an hour for the entire mission, so I hope that I get good feedback! As I will do forever, the following is screenshots from my mission!

So this is the Trident-Class Communication Satellite/Lander! It has landing legs, quadruple communication antenna, dual communication dishes, and quadruple 1x6 Solar Panels! I found that this was a fun build and flight, and I hope you will too!

Liftoff!

Dropping the first pair of tanks. Did I mention that it is asparagus staging?

Starting gravity turn. Very stable craft.

Dropping second pair of tanks.

Dropping third pair of tanks. Starting to leave the atmosphere.

After getting an even orbit, I create a maneuver node to just barely escape Kerbin's SOI.

I start the burn to escape, and drop the final engine from the main launch. Once I have the trajectory, I set Dres as a target. TIME FOR SOME DEEP SPACE. LEGGO.

Once I escape Kerbin's SOI, I warp time the acceding node.

I boost southwards to angle my orbit to exactly follow Dres'. Dres's? Dreses?! Whatever.

Once the inclinations match, I set up a maneuver node to intercept Dres's... Dre– *sigh* Until I intercept it's SOI.

Starting my transfer orbit burn. I dropped the Poodle engine after a bit, and fire up the Nuclear engines!

After hours of burning (by hours I mean 5 minutes, but it felt like hours!) we finally get our SOI intercept!

After a bit of time warping, we can finally see Dres! Kinda. Then again, not at all.

And now that we are in the SOI, I set up a node to slow ourselves into an orbit, and boost retrograde.

And we have our orbit! Let me just fix it up a bit, and done!

I set up a maneuver node to get a perfect equatorial orbit. I burn when the time is right, and viola here is our orbit!

Well that is that! Thank you for taking a look at this, and I will see you when I– *looks at title of thread* Oh. We have to land. Okay...

I quickloaded so that the satellite would still have the Nuclear engines, and boosted retrograde.

Periodically through the decent, I boosted upwards to slow myself down, until it was the right time to drop the transfer stage.

Coming in for the landing aaaannnddd... LANDED!

Wow, just look at that amount of fuel. Maybe, if I...

I warped to the Apiopsis and burned Prograde! So it can orbit, land, and orbit again! Thank you for looking at this, feel free to comment on it, and I will see you when I see you!

Ship download:

http://www./download/hn91s222clb0551/Trident_Communication_Satellite%3ALander.craft

Edited October 6, 2013 by Prof. Endwalker
Typo

[Woopert]

Great job on this, very clean mission, with some good humor . My transfers always end up non-equatorial, any tips on how to fix this? I've been playing since January 2013, I should know how to do this.

[Captain Sierra]

Adjust inclination at the ascending/descending node in transit doesn't get it perfect but close. DO an inclination change as soon as you enter the SoI. It;s much more efficient than once circularized.

[Prof. Endwalker]

Great job on this, very clean mission, with some good humor . My transfers always end up non-equatorial, any tips on how to fix this? I've been playing since January 2013, I should know how to do this.

Thanks! This was by far the most difficult mission I have done. I have only been playing since late March, and seeing YouTubers fly to Jool like its nobodies business, I have constantly tried to succeed at all of my missions, and after a few posts here, I can see that the people who involve themselves with the game are good people, and I hope that it stays that way.

[Prof. Endwalker]

Adjust inclination at the ascending/descending node in transit doesn't get it perfect but close. DO an inclination change as soon as you enter the SoI. It;s much more efficient than once circularized.

The problem with Dres is that it. Is. Really. Really. Small. It is hard to adjust to have a perfect orbit, and I was also lazy.