Kerbal Space Program

Worked out this interplanetary stuff now, just landed on Duna (Mars), with absolutely no problems and a ton of fuel for the return flight. If anyone doesn't know, it's pretty easy. I've been using Mechjeb, but only using Smart A.S.S for controlling the ship, it doesn't support the transfer stuff quite yet.

Use the link to the calculator, http://ksp.olex.biz/, and get the values you need. So, for Kerbin to Duna, write down 44.36° Phase and 150.91° Ejection. Then, use Adammama's Plugin, which will give you this information on screen. Time accelerate at 100,000x on the launchpad to get the Phase Angle within .01 or .02, then put yourself into a 100KM 90 degrees orbit. When you get to the Ejection angle of 150°, light it up and keep it lit until your apoapsis is on an intercept with Duna.

Because of the eccentricity of Dunas orbit, you will need to make corrections mid-flight. The best thing to do here is press F5 to save, time accelerate to see if you get to the intercept point before or after Duna, then press F9 to reload. If you arrive after, burn prograde, if you're before, burn retro, until your map shows you intercepting. (This might count as cheating a little, but I imagine it as the people on the ground running a Simulation, makes it sound better). From there it's exactly the same as landing on Min or Mun. I'm still working out how to get home though, basically though launch into a 270° orbit from Mars, get the figures from the calculator above and repeat the process.

My ship is a pretty standard, main nuclear engine to take me all the way and a standard rocket to get it into space, similar to Scott Manley's rocket in his latest video but with a few of my own quirks to it. I'l post the ship file if anyone wants it for an easy life.

For landing on Duna, it has enough of an atmosphere that parachutes work, so to make landing absolutely easy put a couple of extra parachutes onto the capsule, and make them stage at the right time. I still have a parachute left for earth, but the 3 for Duna worked a treat.

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By the way Roalith, go onto your favourite torrent tracker and you will find a link to the latest version of Kerbal straight away. Even though I'm fully paid up I got the latest version from a tracker (much easier than the updater), although most downloading from that site won't have paid.
 
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Thank You for the above guide. Made it to Jool on my 2nd attempt. Did manage to land, sort of ;) Well, it survived long enough for the Kerbin to get out and EVA, then the ship exploded.
 
Landed on Duna again, getting wipuite good at it. Finally working out which directions to point, to get my prep it down to 10km.

However I am still completely lost when taking off and getting an orbit on a zero plane. But I'll keep plodding along and hopfully it'll start to come second nature, like a lot of other maneuvers have.
 
Bills taking one for the team, crafts cant land, but I've heard kerbals can

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Down safely, but gravity is so high he cant do anything and camera wont rotate properly either
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just...updated and wow they are so many planets which are so far away! I've only landed on the mun once, successfully. I will try and build a craft just to orbit around the furthest away planet.


Nearly got to duna first go, now im playing catch up :( No idea what happened, i was on good course. I think what happened was i tried to make it level at 90 degrees after i was on a interception course. Which, i did wrong and screwed up. should have checked before time acceleration :(

Just got to Duna, Didn't realise there was another planet around it!

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Finally made it to Duna earlier on my fifth attempt, spent far to much fuel manoeuvring to get the orbit around Duna and landing spot right so had to land it with parachutes and the single nuclear engine I had remaining.
Above Duna
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Landing goes slightly wrong.
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Oh god no!
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Cool guys like jeb can just walk away from that.
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that reminds me of my first (and only) "landing" on Duna so far. I keep missing it now, im using all the guides and the AdamKSP thing to set the angles EXACTLY right, and still get there too late/early every time :(
 
Forget the speed equation, get close to the orbit with the orange line, but don't get to it. Then warp till you are orbiting the sun. Once outside of kerbin influence, slowly throttle up and wait for your line to get the encounter icon and press x to throttle to zero. Warp till you are about 10 days out. Then get mad as you try and get your ap down to about 10k.
 
I still need to download .17 :(

Hopefully when I get time to actually play long sessions again then I can learn how to get places and spend time building actual ships, not just quick jokes.
 
Forget the speed equation, get close to the orbit with the orange line, but don't get to it. Then warp till you are orbiting the sun. Once outside of kerbin influence, slowly throttle up and wait for your line to get the encounter icon and press x to throttle to zero. Warp till you are about 10 days out. Then get mad as you try and get your ap down to about 10k.

this is what i do, 44.36 degrees and 150.91 ejection angle, but i always end up around 10degrees (around 27million KM) behind Duna. Extremely annoying!
 
this is what i do, 44.36 degrees and 150.91 ejection angle, but i always end up around 10degrees (around 27million KM) behind Duna. Extremely annoying!

Are you getting the intercept?
Are you using the map view and looking for the intercept?
Once you have the intercept at about 10days out, you need to do some more burns to get you AP down to within the atmosphere to help braking. Otherwise you will need an insane amount of fuel.
For Duna there is very little atmosphere so get AP as low as you can. Even inside the plant is good.
 
nope, not even getting a intercept, very odd. First time i did it i made it fine, and i got lucky and captured the moon instead, which assisted me into Duna. I did find that the atmosphere is extremely thin and that the chutes didnt slow me much untill they opened at 500meters and ripped the craft apart lol. Kinda wish we could still manually open them early.
 
You just need to keep engines on untill you get the intercept icon then. Onetime you orbit may go a fair bit over Dunas orbit, before you get intercept. You don't have to be that accurate with angles, you'll get the intercept eventually. Just do that maneuver when in the suns orbit.
 
You just need to keep engines on untill you get the intercept icon then. Onetime you orbit may go a fair bit over Dunas orbit, before you get intercept. You don't have to be that accurate with angles, you'll get the intercept eventually. Just do that maneuver when in the suns orbit.

ok thanks trying it now :) i think it may be because the distance from kerbin's orbit and duna's changes so much i guess my first time i got lucky.
 
right, 6 attempts tonight, and not one intercept with duna. I done what you said and kept burning till i got a intercept and that was only with Jool!!

Are the angles of 44.36 and 150.45 wrong or something? I had more luck GUESSING than trying to do it properly.
 
I don't get what you are doing, it's not that difficult.

What heading are you using for your orbit.

Even better take some screen shots of each maneuver.

Or compare it to this video

 
1: take off heading 90degrees. (waiting for the phase to be around 44.39).
2: Get to orbit of 100km (been using 125km for last few tries so i can use higher time acceleration).
3: Orbit untill the Phase is 44.36 and then fire when the ejection angle is 150.45. Ejection burn DOES take a hell of a long time, so maybe its messing up the ejection angle?
4: Get the orange line out roughly to Duna's orbit and kill the burn.
5: wait till the orange line turns blue (orbiting sun) then burn to intercept Duna, which never happens. Last time i ended up twice as far out as Jool and intercepted Jool on the return, then collided with a moon lol.


I may wait till the Phase is around 40, because i *AWAYS* fly past duna behind it. I know its not that difficult, i managed the FIRST time by pure fluke, before even getting MechJeb or AdamKSP to give me angles and better control. Maybe i should wait till both orbits are at PE so the distance is shorter, but every time i start again Duna ends up at (or near) its AP of its orbit.

Watching video now.
 
Made a spacecraft just to get to Duna and back. I realised i would have not enough fuel to get back due to a retarded launch, so i decided just to burn it all and see how far i would get. To see if i could orbit the sun further away than jool is. Then this appeared.

I'm on way to jool :P just to orbit
screenshot31.png

After closer inspection :\ i get to jool on the 2nd orbit of the sun......damn :( long wait ahead!
 
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