Where to go next?

[Eyekonn]

Hello fellow Kerbinauts!

I was curious on where to go next in the solar system. A little bit about my experience is I have landed and returned from the Mun and Minmus. I have only been playing for about 3 weeks and I find this game to be more challenging as I go, I am hooked. I was curious if any experienced Kerbinauts had any ideas on where would be a good route to head to next.

Knowledge is power, so pass it on!

Thank you for any help!

My Minmus lander!

[KerikBalm]

Well, with 23.5, there are near kerbin asteroids ot rendevous with, but I haven't tried that yet, it may be quite hard, I'm not sure.

The next step is ussually Duna - it doesn't take much more dV to reach than it takes to get to Minmus (but you need to wait for the transfer window, and the transfer is quite long - in game time ofc, time warp makes it trivial). It has very little inclination, relatively low gravity/escape velocity - and best of all, it has an atmosphere- which helps a lot for capture (ie orbital insertion, so you don't just go whizzing past Duna) and landing. Yet the atmosphere is thin enough that it doesn't cost you all that much dV on ascent.

Its pretty much the opposite of mar's atmosphere - mars has too little atmosphere to ignore (spacecraft can burn up if they come in too steep), but too little to be of much use (even with parachutes, a spacecraft will be going far too fast, and needs relatively powerful retrorockets).

Duna's atmosphere allows you to land with just parachutes, assuming you brought enough, and land in the lowest depressions (where the atmosphere is thickest) - but you don't need to worry too much about it on ascent (although you should still ascend at terminal velocity).

For most incoming trajectories , you want a perapsis between 10.5k and 12.5 to aerocapture into Duna orbit (it should give you an apopasis outside the atmosphere, and you burn there to raise your perapsis outside the atmosphere, or for a lander - do nothing and let the orbit degrade for no additional fuel use).

Due to the added dV of taking off from Duna again, you should do it "apollo style", and use a lander that will launch and rendevous with the inter-planetary stage (or at least leave some fuel in orbit).

- No sense in deorbiting the fuel you need to get from Duna back to kerbin, only to have to haul it back into orbit again.

So in Kerbin orbit, perhaps you should practice orbital rendevous

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Try to do a flyby on Eve and land on Gilly. It has the least amount of gravity in the Kerbol-System but it's high inclination and excentricity make it quite challenging to intercept.

Allthough it is a great training for further Missions to Dres or Moho

Also you could try to go to Duna & Ike. There is also a lot of Science to get from there.

[Skorpychan]

Either a one-way landing on Eve, or a return to Duna.

Return from Eve is a more advanced thing, so anything you drop there until you've got the hang of either bare-bones or completely excessive ascent vehicles is pretty much gone. Good for mining science through transmissions, but Duna's a more complete mission.

In terms of Muns, both have one. Ike loves to be a pain in the ass, and Gilly is a pain in the ass to get to and even more of one to land on. I tried landing the cruise stage for a probe mission on there on a whim, and it literally would not settle properly. A single nuclear engine and bunch of weight, and it only actually settled down because the engine snapped off. The slightest touch of throttle, and it ended up in a suborbital hop.

[helaeon]

How accomplished do you feel like you are at Mun landing? Have you built landers capable of multiple landings on the Mun in a single trip? Visited all the biomes? Found the anomalies?

If you've done that... then... I'd be looking towards Duna and Ike.

Eve fly-by is kind of cool and easier to get to than Duna and landing on Gilly is interesting but tedious.

I say build an unmanned probe (rover) to go to Eve with the orbiting/delivery vehicle designed to come back to Kerbin, maybe land on Gilly first.

[KerikBalm]

Meh, you don't need to find all the anomalies or visit all the biomes before moving on to Duna.

IMO, it gets a bit tedious to just do the same basic mission over again, just different landing sites - although trying to get to the canyons is cool- as is sending a rover near the intersection of 3 biomes, and roving around to get full science from all 3 (I think I did one in a crater, by a canyon entrance- get crater science, go into canyon, get canyon science, go back to crater, ascend torim, get highland science, return to ascent vehicle and transfer data).

Once you've gone to minmus and landed and returned from the mun, why not go out further?

As already mentioned, you can also go to eve, but anything that does more than dip into just the top of the upper atmosphere is going to become a 1 way mission real fast....

An eve orbiter/gilly explorer is quite feasible to do next.

But IIRC, the Duna launch window opens before the Eve launch window, so I'm sticking with my Duna recommendation.

[Smorfty]

After Mun/Minmus. Go to Duna or Gilly (the moon of Eve).

Check the wiki http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com to learn more about other places to go.

If you read the wiki, you'll learn that Eve may be easy to get to. But is pretty much the hardest place to land/ascend from/to.

[Pecan]

Orbit difficulty (how hard it is to get there and back without landing): Mun, Minmus, Ike, Duna, Eve, Gilly, Dres, Tylo, Vall, Pol, Laythe, Eeloo, Jool, Bop, Moho

Landing difficulty (getting there, landing, taking-off and getting back): Minmus, Mun, Ike, Gilly, Duna, Pol, Dres, Vall, Eeloo, Tylo, Bop, Moho, Laythe, Eve

Grab a deltaV chart and you can check for yourself the likely problems. Distance is, generally, the simplest to overcome (it just takes longer to get there). Inclined and eccentric orbits are harder to match with so need more deltaV in the burns and more, or more complex, burns. That's why Minmus is harder to get to but easier to land-on than Mun.

There is an amazing amount of fun to be had just messing-about in Kerbin's system though; docking practice, space-stations around and bases on Kerbin, Mun and Minmus. Have fun.

[700NitroXpress]

I'd say Duna would be the next best place to go. The inclination is about the same as Kerbin's, so you don't have to worry about extra fuel for an inclination burn. Also, If you go at the right time, you can get an intercept with really low fuel usage. Then you could an aerobrake with Duna's atmosphere. If you set your incoming periapsis to about 25k above Duna, you should have enough for an aerobrake, you might need a little burn going retrograde to assist with the first pass, but after that you should be good and then just circularize around 60k for an orbit. Duna is an excellent place to drop a rover and go exploring if you want to try that first and do a manned ground landing later. Use the atmosphere to your advantage and put parachutes on your landers. After you're done with Duna, try landing on Ike.

[MarvinKitFox]

After mastering Mun and Minmus. (well, after at least getting to the point that a mission to MinMus is routine rather than a *project*)...

try:

Send some probes to Jool. That is one pretty system!

Go visit Eve. Try your hand at Aerobraking in the atmosphere when you arrive. Remember to F9, as you will want to try it a few times.

While near Eve, go visit Potato. erm, Gilly. Experience the joy of jumping like superman. Experience the joy of losing Jeb into outer space from a 10-second EVA RCS boost.

Go visit MoHo.

curse a bit, built MOAR BOOSTERS, and try again.

curse some more, and figure out that MoHo is further away than Eeloo, in terms of delta-v. Go to Eeloo!

Build a jet fighter, and go to Jool's Laythe. It has oxygen air, jet turbines work there!

When out of ideas, visit this forum's challenge board. Weird expletive deleted goes down there!!

And above all, have fun!