I don’t feel like flying these days. All I do is a bit of racing in Assetto Corsa and playing a bit of KSP.
Here are a few pics. I added a metrical ton of mods (again), so a lot that you will see is NOT stock.
Here is my crew on Minmus. The lander is a total overkill, but I was testing its behaviour because I wanted to use it for my Duna mission.
And here is the Skylon landing, using the “Astronomer’s visual pack” mod that adds a new skybox, clouds, auroras, and a lot of other stuff.
Here you can see the Odyssey, my interplanetary craft, docked to the Skylon that ferried its 6 Kerbal crew up to LKO.
Leaving Kerbin for Duna. The Odyssey features a centrifuge section to keep the crew at 0.8g during transit.
I sent a ion-drive probe to Duna first. A bit more delta-V used but that way I could get it there a few weeks earlier.
Also on their way to Duna at roughly the same time:
Two landers. Their transit stage also contains additional fuel and supplies. I sent two of them in case the landing team gets stranded on Duna.
Finally arrived at Duna. I decided against aerobraking. You can see the radiators glowing red. Those engines produce a lot of heat.
I then rendezvoused with one of the landers, transferred three Kerbals and started the descent. Meanwhile the Odyssey docked with the lander’s transit stage to resupply.
While I was descending this happened. Duna’s moon Ike is pretty big and pretty close so eclipses are common.
I still landed but it was an eerie twilight. Oh, and there was also a sand storm. Talk about bad timing…
As soon as that was over I landed the rover (which had also flown there in a separate rocket and arrived a day after the Odyssey). I missed the intended landing spot by 1.7km. Not too bad. The rover can be remote controlled so it could just drive there.
First Kerbals on Duna! (in this playthrough)
More from Duna soon, but meanwhile here are a few pictures of my solar probe:
It features a heat shield so it can get very close to the Sun. So far I made it to 900,000km (four times closer than Moho) but I will try to get even closer. I did make a mistake though and used ion engines. That won’t work well since I cannot use solar panels that close to the Sun.
I put it on a fairly elliptical orbit so I can fill the batteries and change the orbit while not risking to melt the probe. I use radiator panels to dissipate all the heat from the heat shield.
btw: Thanks to the mod mentioned above you can see Duna and Kerbin+Mun in those last two shots. They are only small dots but that feature alone makes the mod worth it.
