How to build up the nerve to go to Duna?

[Srpadget]

I must confess that I haven't read all through all 8 pages of discussion here, so please forgive if I'm repeating what someone else has already said.

If (at least part of) your confidence problem is that you're intimidated by the added complexity of transfer windows, Kerbin's local SOI comes with a helpful "easy mode interplanetary training-wheel set".

Step 1: Send a ship to orbit the Mun.

Step 2: Start calling the Mun "Kerbin" (even though we all know it's not), call Kerbin "the Sun" (even though ditto), and check the map view for Minmus--which of course we will now start calling "Duna" until your training mission is over.

Step 3: Go have fun practicing interplanetary transfers in an environment where distances are less intimidating, all the orbit mechanics work exactly the same as for "real" interplanetary trips, and if you screw up too badly you can always just do on last retro burn as an emergency abort to drop yourself down safely to the surface of the Su....err, I mean Kerbin.

Minmus. Once you can get to Minmus, it's the "training wheels" for, well, pretty much everything else in the game.

[Nicko6550]

Build the the shuttle in orbit the first one you need is the transport vehicle then send up the lander, it may take some time but it's more efficient than doing it all in one launch and try and copy off other people designs like Scott Manley for example or another Youtuber who plays or is good at KSP, that's how designed mine shuttle to Duna

[kookoo_gr]

When you try something in KSP that big it can get scary. Don't sweat about it, it's part of the fun. When i started this game i got overwhelmed by the planets and i wanted to visit them all but reality, ahem the game, proved harder than i hoped for and i always had second thoughts about my missions before gaining confidence in doing thing i do now. Here are my suggestions:

At the start of the game i was completely stock, no wrong in that or the fact that i play now mod both of them are a ton of fun. Here is how i landed on Duna.

First i mastered the art of orbiting Kerbin. When i say mastered i may be exaggerating since sometimes my ships exploded and were badly designed, not to mention i was at 0.18, 0.19 and the ships were harder to fly and design due to "restrictions" of the game at the time, also i was terrible at flying at the beginning. Anyway my point for this phase, learn to build efficient ships that go into orbit easily and learn to go into orbit efficiently, practice makes perfect and don't worry about failures. There is a saying in my country. Every obstacle is for the best, you will learn form your failures.

I did a lot of Mun and Minmus landings with probes and sometimes with Kerbals. That way i built my lander landings confidence. You can train yourself with Mun/Minmus transfers but in KSP i have done this less than 5 times. My point in this is that it's not as important as you think but if you do it you can gain the confidence you need. For Duna you can land with parachutes and have an engine for braking. Just a heads up Duna's atmo starts to get thick at less than 10k for the chutes to start deploy so it's going to be a scary experience when coming in for a landing.

When i had enough confidence i planned my Duna trip. Not much, a simple probe with a poodle engine along with the smallest 2.5m tank, a probe core, batteries, SAS, a few solar panels landing legs and of course the large landing legs. Last but not least the parachutes. I suggest at least four but if want to be sure go for 4 radial parachutes and 2 drag parachutes, the drag chutes will pop at a higher altitude and they will slow you down significantly. Remember Duna's atmo is much thinner than Kerbin's with little room for parachute landing. Also when you go for Duna go for one of the big crates that Duna has since they are lower than the rest of Duna's surface thus giving you more atmosphere to use for the parachutes.

This is my first lander that made it to Duna (ah, the trip down the memory lane)

As for the transfer stage. This puppy made it to Tylo with a rover plus lander, it's the first interplanetary design i made and it proved it's worth with a few variations, i used an aerobrake at Jool but it can go to Duna without aerobrake even if you mess up the transfer to Duna. In order to go to Duna there are tutorials and the posts other users wrote before me, me i went on my own without using any guides. I just burnt when my ship was about to go to Kerbin's night side, once outside Kerbon's SOI i made corrections until i intersected Duna.

At the start of the game i never used transfer angles or MJ or KER and i made it. Just to show you that you don't need to be "pro" with geeky knowledge or use any of the known mods. I am not against mods but you can play both ways with a ton of fun. Once you complete your first probe mission go for a Kerballed mission, there are many guides and videos posted.

Last but not least spam the Alt-F5, Alt-F9 at various phases of your journeys, despite what others may say now that you are new to the game this a life saver option since it is going to be tedious for a new player to start a mission from the launchpad if they had eg. the lander staging wrong. It took me 3 times to land the above probe to Duna and without quicksaves i would have rage-quited.

Don't worry if have many fails at the start of the game, as you go you will learn and the fact the you are "scared" of going away from Kerbin's safety will give you a huge sentimental reward once you complete your first mission outside Kerbin's SOI. Think of how the first astronauts/ground staff felt during humanity's first steps into space.

Edited January 28, 2015 by kookoo_gr

[Hund]

Thanks for all the helpful info. Yes I will only be sending unmanned probes to the first planets I plan to visit. I can do Mun/Minmus missions. I haven't used any mods cuz I wanted to learn the game first, but I see that's theirs a lot of info the game dosent tell you that is important. Like the DeltaV and TWR stuff. Plus I was afraid of Mods breaking the game or causing problems that are mod related, and without playing the game stock I wouldn't know for sure if it is mod or game related. I am constantly reading the forums and viewing all the youTube vids to get more info. So thanks again.

[Renegrade]

Thanks for all the helpful info. Yes I will only be sending unmanned probes to the first planets I plan to visit. I can do Mun/Minmus missions.

Yeah, the tips about unmanned are good ones.

I actually probed Duna before doing a manned Mun landing in my original playthrough...

[Wanderfound]

As a mod-free option to help with interplanetary transfers, see http://ksp.olex.biz

[SkyRender]

You don't actually need that much to do a successful Duna mission.

This craft is a great example of one that's relatively low-tech, has no complex operations, and can gather a wealth of science from Duna while allowing two Kerbals to go along. You don't even need a pilot Kerbal thanks to the OKTO core, so you can take an Engineer and Scientist along instead.

The strict tech tree requirements for this craft are: Basic Rocketry, General Rocketry, Stability, Survivability, General Construction, Advanced Rocketry, Fuel Systems, Flight Control, Science Tech, Heavy Rocketry, Advanced Flight Control, Electrics, Space Exploration. (Obviously some changes will have to be made to the craft for it to work at that tech level, mostly just replacing the orange tanks with two mid-size 2.5m tanks; the nosecones are purely decorative for this version of KSP as well.) All of that you can unlock in the first tier of the R&D center, and the rocket itself can easily be built in the tier-2 VAB for a tier-2 launchpad.

Flying it's easy too. Get to orbit, intercept Duna, aerobrake, land, return to orbit, re-pack parachutes, return to Kerbin.

[sedativechunk]

So, I'm afraid I'm stuck. I don't know where to go, really. I'm rather new to the game, and I hit a roadblock something a week ago or so, and I'm having issues designing a rocket, heck, even a lander that could take me to Duna successfully. It's a combination of lack of motivation, overwhelmedness by the game's scope (and more specifically the massive distances involved between planets), a concern for safety for my kerbals, and having my first and second missions to the Mun (second time was to rescue the first, third time was to rescue the rescue mission) as well as my trip to Minmus being thiiis close to being a colossal failure because apparently I simultaneously overbuild and underbuild my rockets.

I need help. Can somebody find me a guide or something, or explain what I'm doing wrong, because I'm incredibly nervous and it's completely wrecking the game for me.

Hmm, maybe you are overthinking this game a bit! First of all, have you got to the Mun and Minmus? You should set a personal goal for yourself; you should try to land on both the Mun and Minmus a combination of 15 times. Each time you go, try a different design to get there, try different rockets, lander cans, landing legs, engines, and other part combinations to see what works best. Become a master at building basic rockets, basic spaceflight, and lunar landings.

The next phase - practice interplanetary travel! Build various unmanned probes and send them en route to Duna. Practice getting them as close to the planet as possible and getting into a proper orbit. Practice brining some of them back to Kerbin. Once you get the hang of the orbital mechanics of interplanetary travel, try sending a single Kerbal to orbit duna. Don't attempt to land them but let them do some orbital observation.

Once you get good at this, design a rocket/lander that you think could land on Duna and take off. Make it one that could carry a Kerbal, but DON'T bring a Kerbal to Duna yet. Instead, attach a remote guidance unit or Stayputnik to the craft and attempt a Duna landing and takeoff unmanned. If you crash, you only lose an unmanned ship.

We are doing the same thing as humanity right now; we've sent dozens upon dozens of rovers to Duna, some failed, others dramatically succeeded (like Curiosity). You could send probes, but if you are aiming for manned missions, I suggest using the actual ship designs that will take them there and back.

Have fun with the game now; you are only a noob once! I miss the days of not knowing what all the planets were like in this game and practicing the basics. Send tons and tons of unmanned probes. Master the game with them first, and then advance on to Kerbals. And as others here have said, watch YouTube videos. Many people have posted various ways to get to Duna. Duna is the easiest planet to get to, you can aerobrake on it and it is very easy to land and return compared to some other planetary bodies in the game.

[xnorb]

Getting to and returning from Duna isn't a problem if you don't overbuild your rocket (like many beginners do).

The real problem is the time window that you need to hit to actually get there.

So http://ksp.olex.biz and Space Center forwarding at a rate of 10.000 are your friends.

When it comes to designing your lander either watch others doing it, or rely on your judgement and luck

[Marclev]

Solution depends on your personal restrictions. People have very different sets of opinions and choices. You should tell what you do not want to do or use.

It is very difficult to make a Duna trip without planning. You have to know delta-v of many maneuvers, launch windows, basic orbital mechanics for dockings etc. One way to do it is to use suitable mods and tools. MechJeb is an excellent mod. It can show dvs of stages, calculate maneuver nodes, launch windows and even execute burns. In my opinion space flight game without such capabilities is a joke (or good modding platform). But seemingly other people find the long series of guesses without information and failed experiments as a fun and basic calculations and planning as a cheating or at least too nerdy stuff. Of course you can calculate everything by hand. Consult Wikipedia or textbook of celestial mechanics. Some basic knowledge from math is necessary. Alexmoon's porkchop plot calculator is an excellent tool to find out launch windows and dv requirements of interplanetary transforms.

Planning is best to start from lander. You can even test it if you use Hyperedit mod. Then you build a mother craft with enough dv for interplanetary burns (and life supplies, if you use such a mod). Then launcher to put everything on orbit around Kerbin.

You can also start unmanned and follow a real progress. First you can build a flyby probe. You learn to use porkchop plots to find launch windows and make interplanetary burns and trajectory corrections. Next step is an orbiter. You add a Duna orbit insertion burn. Then you can make a lander. Real planetary lander probes go typically straight to the atmosphere, but you should to do a low orbit first, because you learn for future. You find out what landing needs. After that the last step is an unmanned return probe. You need also Duna orbit rendezvous and return to Kerbin. After that you just build a larger manned ship and go on.

There are huge number of tutorial videos, if you want to use them. You can see what kind of stages is needed. But I decided that I make everything by myself and watch videos after that.

Oh come on, you do not need to do the slightest bit of maths or to get anywhere in KSP, it's meant to be a game not an lecture. And the only reason you'd need docking is if you want to land, for a straight forward fly-by, don't bother about that stuff. How to practice getting to Duna:

1. Go into sandbox mode.

2. Bung together a hugely overpowered rocket (you can worry about efficiency later).

3. Launch into orbit. Set Duna as the target

4. Plonk down a manoeuvre node at either Pe or Ap. Zoom out to see the solar system.

5. Drag the manoeuvre node out prograde. If your predicted orbit goes "the wrong way", then scrap the manoeuvre node and try again with a new one at the opposite end of your orbit.

6. Fiddle with the node until you get an intercept (this may take a few goes but soon becomes second nature).

7. You can probably figure out the rest from there!

[Renegrade]

5. Drag the manoeuvre node out prograde. If your predicted orbit goes "the wrong way", then scrap the manoeuvre node and try again with a new one at the opposite end of your orbit.

You can drag the entire node itself around on the orbit without having to remake it, btw. Just click and drag the center ring instead of the little colored icons.

[Wjolcz]

I recommend OP to download Kerbal Engineer Redux. It's all you really need. TWR and dV readouts are incredibly useful for planning missions.