Flying ~465 tons to Duna...or most of it anyway!? (Picture heavy)

[ZAIZAI]

Insterstellar mod and some visuals only, mech jab or any other engineering aid are for sissies (and Scott Manley, he is no sissy...)!

~175 tons of payload destined for LKO, I did overcook the ascent so a slight elliptical Kerbin orbit was established, 235 km to 380 km. Oh well, it will make the fuelling and equipment missions more interesting i guess?! The beast can't do more than 100 m/s in dense atmosphere or it will rip apart. No fuel, RCS tanks are loaded however and only one pilot.

After about 10 refuelling missions and attaching landers there is about ~465 tons of Duna explorer (referred to as the 'Beast') burning towards Duna. Crew of 5, 2 scientists for the lab, 1 mission cmdr in the cupola piloting the Beast and 2 mission specialists (landing party and science gatherers). Quite a lot of RCS used during burns, seems the beast is not very well balanced and tend to veer off towards 10 O'Clock on the nav ball.

Arrived at Duna and low orbit achieved. No aerobreaking as the Beast is probably too fragile for that sort of stuff. About 2600 m/s delta V expended from high Kerbin orbit (very little help from mr. Oberth) to low Duna orbit, pretty well eyeballed departure window eh? Lots of fuel left!

First lander departing for Duna surface mission.

Piece of cake!

The mission was planned for three landings on Duna at different biomes, however the last lander was used for a visit to Ike. There was an option to do four excursions with the landers, three on Duna and then to pool the fuel into one lander for a last landing at Ike. This was however scrubbed due to insufficient space to store all the surface samples. Lander leaving for Ike;

The landers ascent stages are dumped in low Ike orbit in order to save weight for transfer back to Kerbin.

Lined up for Kerbin capture burn, the crew is getting quite anxious to get back home...

Back in low Kerbin orbit, capsules are used for getting the crew and, more importantly, about 2800 points of science down to the ground. The Beast was deorbited as the last capsule with Cmdr. Corden Kerman decoupled and set course for landing. Bit of fuel left and quite a lot of RCS... No radioactive fallout was detected when the beast hit the ground!?

The experience from this mission will be used to design a visit to Jool with something similar to "The Beast"...more fuel and less reactors me thinks!?