Interplanetary travel for a noob

[louddifference]

i know the title says im a noob but i dont really think i am. ive been playing ksp for the last 2 and a half years and have gone to the mun and minmus. i have docked and built a station in orbit around kerbin and the mun and have a mun base. the only other planet ive been to is duna and with the debug menu.

so if anyone has any good tips and/or ships to help me go to duna for the first legit time any help would be appreciated!

[Jason Patterson]

Without mods, the best and easiest way is to get your ship into a low altitude parking orbit around Kerbin and then follow the burn advice given at the Interactive Illustrated Interplanetary Guide and Calculator for KSP. It will show you where in your orbit you need to make your burn and where Kerbin and Duna need to be with respect to one another (in their orbits, that is) when you burn.

1. Get Kerbin/Duna in the right spots (just timewarp on the launchpad until they're in roughly the right place.)

2. Launch into LKO.

3. Set up a maneuvering node with a prograde burn at about the location given by the guide.

4. Adjust the prograde/retrograde burn until you get your intercept. You might need to slide it along the orbit a bit or add a touch of radial or normal burn, but for Kerbin-->Duna you ought to be able to get away with prograde only. The total delta-v should be reasonably close to the value given by the guide.

5. Make your burn. Adjust for the intercept of your choice once you're out of Kerbin's SOI.

This advice will work for any pair of planets, but the more eccentric the planets' orbits are, the less accurate the guide is. It's still a good suggestion for alignment, but you'll have to tinker with it more, particularly for Moho or Eeloo.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Jason Patterson

[jamis]

Were you wanting to make a manned, or unmanned trip? For your first visit, I'd recommend a probe, myself. It simplifies so many things.

For a probe, you don't need a very big rocket. In fact, one of the tiny Rockomax 48-7s engines, and a fl-t400 fuel tank, should be more than sufficient for the probe itself. Make sure you've got enough power, too--more than once I've got a probe on approach to another planet, only to discover it's batteries were dead.

Once there, the simplest (though not the most efficient) way to do it is to just get your probe into orbit around the sun. To do so, just get in a low Kerbin orbit, and burn prograde until your orbit escapes Kerbin's SOI. For our purposes, it is best to do this when you are "behind" kerbin relative to it's own path around the sun--in other words, you'll want to burn when the sun is behind you. This way, you can use Kerbin's own orbital momentum to push you into a higher orbit (closer to Duna).

Once you've escaped Kerbin's SOI, set Duna as your target, and use the maneuver nodes to experiment with a trajectory to Duna. Pick a spot own your orbit and pull the prograde marker until the orbit reaches Duna's. Slide the maneuver node around your orbit until you get an intercept (or reasonably close). You may need to make a full orbit around the sun before you find a good intercept.

From there, it's very much like visiting Minmus from Kerbin. You follow your maneuver node to change your orbit to intercept, and then make any necessary course corrections mid-flight to get the best intercept you can. And once you're in Duna's SOI, you should be in familiar (technical) territory again--adjust your periapsis, circularize your orbit, etc.

Duna's a great place to visit! Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

[700NitroXpress]

You don't have to wait for the planets to align in just the right way in order to get to them, it helps a little if you do, but otherwise you just want to eject from Kerban's orbit around the sun going either prograde for the outer planets and retrograde for the inner planets. As far as transfer stages go, anything with more than 3 nuclear engines is overkill and a waste of fuel. You can easily get craft of over 150 tons out to Jool, with just 3 nuclear engines.

This is my personal favorite ship design to use at the moment. It has an apollo style design. So the lander on top can undock and transfer one kerbal to the surface and then return to orbit. It has enough fuel to go to Moho and return, it also comes with my Leviathan MK - I super max payload lifter. Easily gets anything up to and over 200 tons into orbit. Or if you would like to try out my Duna Command Center, you can fly it out to Duna and land it on the surface as a permanent base. All you have to do is put the refit engines on it.

Download it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-vTRL2n8wvzTmVCdWM3RElYZHM/edit?usp=sharing

Download the subassembly for the Leviathan lifter here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-vTRL2n8wvzQkEtUTBCNHpIMW8/edit

Download the Duna Command Center Here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-vTRL2n8wvzalY4b0VZc0Fsdk0/edit?usp=sharing

Download the Refit Engine Here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-vTRL2n8wvzMldXempWQ1BiMUU/edit?usp=sharing

Duna Command Center

Here's a video to show you how to use the Leviathan lifter:

Here's a video of how to setup and land the Duna Command Center on Duna:

If you try these out or if you found the designs helpful, let me know. Hope these help in some way. Have fun!