OK, So… I’m starting over ;) But before I do, I wanted to share…
[CENTER]The Rhea Silvia Mission to Duna
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In my current career play through I missed the first window to Duna. So when the next window came along I wanted to make the most of it. Enter the Rhea Silvia mission to Duna. This was a 7 launch mission to Duna and Ike that included:
[ul]
[li]two satellites for collecting scansat data, The Remus and Romulus satellites[/li][li]two unmanned probes for science landings in various biomes on both planetary bodies, the Remus and Romulus probes[/li][li]Two manned landers for Duna and Ike, the Remus and Romulus landers[/li][li]The main mission vessel that carried the crew, life support and a science lab.[/li][/ul]
The launches all took place several days before the window was open to guarantee all the wrinkles were worked out, and all 7 vessels were ready to make the 250 day trip to the Duna sphere of influence. Once the launch window opened, each vessel made its transfer burn a day apart, to give me plenty of time to capture everything. Even so, one ship was lost in the transit. The Romulus satellite caught its capture burn, but managed to smack into the side of ike as I was capturing another craft. Thankfully after some review of deltaV and how over engineered the entire trip was, it was determined that the Remus Satellite would have the gas to scan both planetary bodies without a problem.
The Rhea Silvia carried 4 crew members to the Duna system; Jebediah the pilot, Siggun the scientist, Newke the scientist and Bill the Engineer. Newke would be in charge of scientific data gathered around Duna, and Siggun would be in charge of the ike missions. All 4 Kerbals would end the trip as 4 star astronauts with many honors bestowed upon them. The ship also maintained a full Science lab. The science lab was loaded with scientific data from the Kerbin system which it processed during the long haul to Duna. During it’s stay in orbit, and on the way home, the science lab would analyze the data from around Duna and Ike. When the trip was done, we collected a total of 18,400 science!
The Remus and Romulus unmanned probes were very successful. Remus landed on Duna twice, in two separate biomes, and returned data to the Rhea Silvia one time. During the second landing Remus used a highly elliptic orbit to change it’s inclination for a polar landing, where it collected new science and transmitted it back to Kerbin. There was not enough fuel left to return to orbit. The Romulus probe landed and took off from Ike a total of 3 times and returned its data to the Romulus lander which was manned by Siggun at the time.
The manned landers were successful as well. Siggun was able to land on ike and retreive science samples and drop a flag before returning to orbit around Duna, and meeting up with the Rhea Silvia. After that he spent most of his time in the science lab. Newke was able to take the Romulus lander to Duna twice, thanks to some creative fuel transfers between the remaining vessels. This mission was almost a wash however. It turns out that the TWR numbers were a bit off, and the fully loaded lander was too heavy to leave the surface! Fortunately we could unload some of our fuel to the Rhea Silvia, and that was enough to correct the oversight. Both landings went much easier then I remember Duna landings in the past!
The entire trip was terribly over engineered. On the return trip home, I picked up a mission to fly by three moons in the same journey. I already had Ike, so picking up Mun and Minmus on the way home was a snap. I left the probes and landers in orbit around Duna and Ike, just in case they prove useful in the future. The Rhea Silvia returned to Kerbin with roughly 1600 deltaV remaining even after a orbital burn of about 900.
[ul]
[li]I think this will be the last mission I fly in this career. But I was able to finalize my mod list for the ultimate Fozzmod pack. [/li][li]I am going to leave off of the USI Kolonization stuff. I really don’t want to mine and track 20 different resources to make gas and food =)[/li][li]I found a nifty mod called Simple Construction which adds Interplanetary launchpads to existing parts.[/li][li]I like the near future stuff I think the construction and solar panels, while not needed are nifty looking =)[/li][li]I am going to use the Community Tech Tree. I think it is just too easy to fill the current one especially with Dmagic, which I like.[/li][li]Planetary base systems seems like they would be harder to land then USI, but that is not the case. I like the look of the bases, and found them easy to use.[/li][li]Kerbalism looks neat, but it is not compatible with a number of other things, and the author changes an awful lot of basic cycles in the game in this mod. For that reason, I’m going to stick with USI Life support and remote tech, and connected living spaces.[/li][/ul]
This is the biggest Kerbal mission I have ever done, and although I also made some pretty cool bases, space stations, etc. I needed to share this one =)
I don’t think there is a way to link an IMGUR album is there? so For the full mission album click here.
