Bill Kerman's Big Duna Trip, the story of my first manned, returning, Duna attempt

[Bobnova]

It suddenly occurred to me this evening that while I'd landed probes in a lot of places, and Kerbals on some, Duna was largely untouched. I landed a Kerbal there in 0.20, but it was a one-way trip.

It was time to fix that.

A rocket was built, untested, Science was installed, and it was launched. Bill Kerman became the pilot, as I forgot to un-draft him. Jeb's in a space station with no return ship (oops), so we won't be seeing him for a while.

Here's the ship:

Lot's of Science to bring home. The tech tree is maxed, but Science is fun anyway. Nice stable lander, lots of parachutes.

One thing worth noting: I've never lifted anything off Duna. KE says I have the TWR, so onward we go!

The launch window turned out to be perfect (random luck), I didn't take and screenshots as I hadn't planned on writing this up, and yet another launch (that works) isn't that exciting.

Arriving at Duna SOI I found I was aimed straight into the planet, not for the ~15000m aerobrake the map screen said. I blame Bill, personally.

While fixing that it occurred to me that I was going rather fast and my transfer stage, while long on DV, was not long on TWR. Aerobrake time! Plus I like aerobraking.

Here Bill is lining up for aerobraking, we're going deep:

Aimed for ~9,000m to clear the big stuff, promptly found that Aerobraking alone wasn't looking good, things were starting to look distinctly Mars Climate Orbiterish and had Bill light the nuke. Bill looked less than pleased with matters.

And released the six Duna parachutes.

That did the trick, and down bill went at a stately 11m/s. The transfer stage was jettisoned as it had done its duty.

The landing shocks didn't appreciate the jolt much, but they held. Bill's untested ship made it!

Bill was psyched.

Even more so when he stepped out to look around.

Rocks were collected, Science was done. I had Atmosphere and Science Bay testing at high altitude, low altitude and surface, goo at low and surface, the other sensors at surface, almost all of it brand new data. I elected to bring it home for the Greater Glory.

Taking off and heading for orbit, I almost caused the End of All Things, when it tried to treat Duna like Mun/Minmus/Dres and burnt at a low angle. Here I've spent a couple minutes going straight up again to try to get headed in the right direction and am finally able to gravity turn. After this point, it all went well.

Then came a long, boring, wait at 100000x for Kerbin to line up correctly, as I was down to ~1100DV remaining.

Finally the window arrived, and I got Bill aimed for home. No pics, cause meh.

During this time Bill EVA'd to repack the Duna chutes, just in case.

Upon entering Kerbin SOI I again found myself aimed right at the dirt. While that may work in-game, I like to pretend otherwise. Plus Mountains.

I aimed Bill for a ~30,000m aerobrake and deployed three of the Duna parachutes manually, for reasons unknown at this time.

Aerobrake begins, fairly violently:

As aerobraking continued, I was feeling nervous for some reason. Maybe because at 24,000m Bill was still going a bit fast.

Suddenly:

My face and Bill's face likely looked identical (other than color, anyway). It was enough of a shock that I missed the screenshot until that point, sadly.

The entire bottom half of the craft fragmented, all the carefully saved science? Gone.

This is exactly why I use spaceplane cockpits and put some parachutes on the cockpit itself. Bill touched down fine.

Thankfully Bill had kept his Duna rocks in his pocket, so we still got some Science.

All told I enjoyed it immensely, KSP is an amazing game that way. The moment it starts getting boring something happens. Had I been less shocked I'd have hit F3 to see if the parachutes deployed and tore the ship apart. It seems both unlikely, as I've deployed very similar chutes a lot of times in similar situations, and like the most likely explanation giving the current aero model.

Great fun, in any even!

[Scotius]

Very pretty lander. Really sci-fi look