Duna Base I

[Proxle]

DUNA BASE I

My Dunian base developments and completion. Post ideas for me to try if you want.

Plans (so far):

Two rovers

Science Lab

Hangar large enough for 2 rovers

Enough Hitchhiker containers for 10 Kerbals to have their own

Beacon for nighttime

Big solar array

Space Station orbiting for re-fueling and return back to Kerbin

(Link to Photobucket where all the pics are posted if you just want to browse through them. http://s1078.photobucket.com/user/Proxle/media/Tugv1_zps82a9814a.png.html?sort=3&o=0 )

Edited May 14, 2014 by Proxle

[Vanamonde]

You can report upon the progress of your mission, in Mission Reports, which this thread now occupies.

[Captain Sierra]

...stuff....

Big solar array

...moar stuff...

What will you be powering? Or is this for looks? Thought of adding kethane mining? You can realistically get up to 50% mass ratio on Duna if you are smart about craft design.

[Proxle]

Day 1

Duna Base Core built and launched to Duna. This is where the Science Module, Solar array and Hitchhiker containers will be attached.

Core itself

On the launchpad!

It flies!

In space over Kerbin

Orbiting Kerbol

Boring Orbital stuff

In space over Duna

Location of my base, chosen because it borders the ice cap. I also thought it was flat but as you will see in the next picture I was wrong

Landed!

(Its very hilly so I'm going to send a rover to pull this to a better spot.)

Day 1 Was a success minus the fact the my skycrane didn't work because of where I positioned my engines so I ended up having to use the nuclear engines to slow me down more. After that I locked my landing suspension and landed at roughly 14m/s.

Tomorrow I will be sending a rover there to pull the core into a better location to so the base will be more level and look better.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Proxle

[Proxle]

The solar array will mostly be for looks as it will just power the base itself.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Proxle

[Proxle]

Day 1.5

So as I said earlier I was going to land a rover to pull my Duna Bases Core onto a flatter spot. The mission went well and here are the pictures.

The rover on Kerbin (Named the Tug V.1)

Rovers Rocket (It flew really well, no wobble at all.)

The rover was lighter than I had thought so the launcher I used was overkill and I ended up only using the nuclear engines in Duna Orbit.

Here is a picture showing the location of the Base Core as I approach my Landing Zone.

Skycrane and Drogue chutes in action.

Landed and in the process of moving the Bases Core.

Core in its final location ready for the next module. You can also see the beginning of the ice cap on the northernmost pole. (Also in this picture is the Skycrane used to land the Bases Core. Its actually 100% intact with fuel leftover.)

In the end this mission went superbly well and I fixed lots of problems. I redesigned my Skycrane and this time the rockets worked properly and I had a nice 3 m/s landing on the ice cap. I landed about 10 km away from the Base so I had a bit of a drive over to the core. Once I reached the core I attached my rover to it and pulles it about 400m to a better spot for the base. Tommorrow I will send out either the solar array or the beacon.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Proxle

[Proxle]

Day 2

So yesterday I said I would land either a Beacon or the Solar Array at the base. I decided to go with the Solar Array. Its going to be bigger but for now I'm going to leave it like this. Here's the missions events.

I used my basic Dunian launcher which you would have seen launched both the rover and the bases core. It took off successfully but while turning over at 10k I experienced a lot of wobble so I ended decoupling the 6 liquid boosters to save the ship before they were empty.

(No Picture of the wobble sorry)

Shot of the Solar Array orbiting Kerbin.

Another problem I had was my maneuver node, I ended up having an encounter that refused to allow me to areobrake so I had to then use more fuel than normal but it wasn't a much of a problem in the end.

Picture of how I landed it, I didn't use a skycrane to land but rather just parachutes.

Solar Array attached to the Bases Core.

So in the end the mission went well again. Not much excitement here other than the fact that the parachutes fully opened at 300 m/s which made me thing everything was going to rip apart but that never happened. I landed the Solar Array at around 24 m/s and had to use the tug to tow it about 3.5 kilometers to where the bases location is. Thanks for checking this out! Tomorrow (or maybe tonight) I will land the first Crew Cabin.

Feel free to post comments on my mission, I like knowing what people think of what I am doing.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Proxle

[Proxle]

Mission postponed until I get back form May-long Weekend.

[jfull]

have you considered putting more than one component in orbit at once and then launching them to Duna during the same transfer window?

Alternately, you could put more than one part of the base on each rocket.

[Speeding Mullet]

Taking notes - I really like the solar array that you landed there.

It looks like you are using a common launch vehicle so far, can you expand on that a little?

[Proxle]

It uses six LFB KR-1x2's around the new Kerbodyne S3-14400 with a KR-2L Advanced Engine. The rest of the time it's just 2 nuclear engines around a Rockomax X200-32.

[Proxle]

have you considered putting more than one component in orbit at once and then launching them to Duna during the same transfer window?

Alternately, you could put more than one part of the base on each rocket.

I haven't thought about that yet but I will probably use your first suggestion for the station. Thanks!

[Proxle]

Day 3

So this post is late. It took a while to design this and I got a little lazy but know I'm back into it.

I wanted to land my first crew module so I can be closer to landing actual crew. I wasn't having any success designing my own module that looked cool I goggled "Mars Base". My search came up with this :

https://www.google.ca/search?q=mars+base&rlz=1C1SKPL_enCA402&es_sm=93&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=n29-U8PAF46PyAT474DgBg&ved=0CCwQsAQ&biw=872&bih=840#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=r72oU8D46a0vuM%253A%3BV6-y_LdBHBxPDM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.esa.int%252Fvar%252Fesa%252Fstorage%252Fimages%252Fesa_multimedia%252Fimages%252F2003%252F06%252Fartist_s_impression_of_a_base_on_mars%252F9744942-3-eng-GB%252FArtist_s_impression_of_a_base_on_Mars.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.esa.int%252FOur_Activities%252FHuman_Spaceflight%252FLessons_online%252FRadiation_and_life%3B8000%3B6400

So that's the base I took inspiration after when it came to this module. Here is the mission.

The launch

I forgot to take alot of pictures but here is the module from the side view in Kerbol Orbit.

While getting a stable orbit that allowed me to areobrake I had an Ike encounter.

More Burning.

Chutes Deploying over the landing site. I used a sky-crane Parachute combo to land this at 5m/s

Crew Mod Landed. (The explosion is from the decoupled sky-crane exploding.)

I drove the Tug 9 km over to the crew mod and attached to it to tow it to the rest of the base.

Attached and landed with the beacon on.

This mission went well except for some wobbling since this was a very odd shape. The hardest part was docking wit the core. The core was lower so I had to raise lower raise lower the landing gear until I met up and docked.

Next mission is sending a space station into orbit and hopefully landing the first astronaut at the base. I may want to land another couple crew modules first.

So far I have my rover/Tug, Solar Array, Core and one crew module landed and assembled. If you have any ideas of things I should try just post them and I will see what I can do! Thanks for reading! Comments about what I am doing are very much appreciated.

Edited May 23, 2014 by Proxle