Project Home Duna - The Beginning of the Colonisation

[Potatus]

The worst name you can possibly imagine combined with nearly the worst colonisation idea ever, it's Project Home Duna!

This thread is for the first part of the colonisation, the Duna Test Base, a "Colony" on the Kerbin North Pole as a test for the actual base.

The project begins with the Jool I (mentioned in my Mun Exploration thread) lifting up the Science Probe up into orbit and towards Duna, this was for testing the conditions of Duna.

I was going to dock the module on to the Kevin Space Station, but I decided that the Jool I has more than enough ÃŽâ€v to lift off to Duna, (Which is why in the second image there's a docking port at the end)

I arrived at Duna orbit and set up a trajectory into Duna.

Module in high Duna orbit

I thrusted retrograde and got a landing trajectory on Duna, I didn't try to mess about with aerobraking as the atmosphere is too thin for me to carry on safely, and the fact that I never attempted to aerobrake makes me more nervous of slowing down using the atmosphere.

Science Module de-orbiting.

I adjusted the parachute's deploying altitude to 1.5km because the atmosphere's so thin and Duna is quite mountainous. Usually it would crash into the surface because I didn't thrust enough. So I kept quickloading.

Science Module landing with the fuel tank decoupled and the parachutes deployed.

I landed perfectly this time (I had to quickload several times due to the fatal mistake of not having any landing gear, therefore, tipping my probe over as soon as I land), I toggled on the solar panels and the sciency stuff. I timewarped to observe the orbit of Ike, Duna's moon.

After the Science Module was landed, I rushed things and moved straight on to the colonisation (without testing the modules first, unfortunately this part doesn't have any pictures taken). The Jool I was carrying the Habitation Modules up into Kerbin orbit, maneuvering was so difficult due to the fact that the Hitchhiker storage units doesn't have any form of control, and the fact that it was controlled by a tiny probe on the skycrane. I got a Duna encounter on my maneuver node and waited until I can burn. The mistake here was that I used pretty much the least efficient engine out there, the Rockomax Mainsail engines. I ran out of fuel, so I decided to use the skycrane to try and get it into a Duna encounter. It failed miserably, the engines don't seem to be doing anything (Not even a 1 m/s difference), after a while, the parts beneath the skycrane exploded, sending the skycrane flying towards Dres orbit...

Edited November 20, 2014 by Potatus

[Potatus]

I rethought this, I tried to make the parts lighter by removing the Skycrane and replacing the 3 Hitchhiker containment units with the 4 Mk 1-2 command pods. It sort of worked.

By this time, I thought it would be wiser to do a test landing on somewhere, specifically the North Pole. I gathered up all the Kerbals on my team. 12 Kerbals ready to leave their

comfortable Astronaut Complex and enter the cramped command pod.

The Jool I was once again used to carry the modules to their destination. I went into a polar orbit and burned fiercely to de-orbit and land as close as possible to the North Pole, because Santa Kerman lives there it was the closest I can get to replicate Duna's temperature. Due to the lack of Skycranes, I used the stack separators to my advantage by pointing them to different directions to leave enough space to land (and not land on each other).

It's like paratroopers!

I planted a flag so I wouldn't forget about it and sent my Kerbal back to the warm Command Pod.

That flag took several attempts to face the sun, I gave up at about 10 attempts.

Well then, I'm currently in the process of the project, so it's not possible to post more, sorry.

Edited November 20, 2014 by Potatus