Week 3: Duna Mission
Now that I've semi-successfully landed on both of Kerbin's moons, the next step is landing on another planet, so I selected Duna, which is the Kerbal equivalent of Mars. There are two main differences between going to another planet and going to a moon, and the first is that when you're going to another planet, the timing is much more important than if you're just going to a moon. To get to Duna, you have to wait until Kerbin (turquoise, 3rd from sun) is about 30° behind Duna (red, 4th from sun), which would take over a year in real time. Luckily, as I mentioned in my previous post, you can speed up time.
The second difference is that since a planet is farther away, you need more fuel. My moon rocket was way too small, so I had to build something bigger.
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| New Rocket |
It may not look much bigger, but the main body of this rocket is actually twice as thick (3.5 meters) as the body of my previous rocket, which was only 1.75 meters across. The lander/return vehicle is contained within the nose cone, which will open once I leave the atmosphere and no longer need to be aerodynamic.
Speaking of atmospheres, there is actually a third difference between moons and planets, planets have atmospheres and moons don't.
Eve, Kerbin, Duna, and Jool have atmospheres, but those are the only planets I plan on visiting, so the others don't matter.
Okay, one of Jool's moons (Laythe) does have an atmosphere, but I'm probably not going there either.
Anyway, the reason the atmosphere matters is because I don't have to use fuel to land. So in reality, though Jool has an atmosphere, it doesn't matter because Jool is just a ball of gas that you can't land on anyway. As I learned today while looking up Kerbal Space Program atmospheres, Duna has a thinner atmosphere than Eve, so I may have chosen the wrong order to travel to them, but I was still able to land successfully on Duna
Alright, now that I've landed, let's go home. Wait, where's my engine‽‽‽ Apparently it blew up when I landed because I was going about 1 m/s too fast and my landing gear was too springy, so my engine touched the ground. Sadly, even the great Jebediah Kerman cannot fly without an engine, so I would have to try again. Luckily, After the difficulty I had landing on Mun, I learned to always save my progress before trying to land. On my second attempt I was able to land successfully, and Jebediah got out (I added a ladder this time so he wouldn't end up on his face again), repacked the parachutes, planted his flag, and got ready to go home.
The return trip was not fun. Remember how I thought it was annoying when Mun kept getting in my way when I was trying to return from Minmus? Ike is worse.
No, not that Ike, this Ike:
For those of you who have never played Kerbal Space Program (which is probably everyone), the yellow ball in the top left is Duna's moon Ike. The blue arc is my current trajectory. The relatively straight dotted orange line is where I want to be going, the orange loop at the end of the blue arc is where Ike wants me to be going, which is back into orbit around Duna (the purple oval).
For the record, I do not dislike former president Eisenhower. In fact, he was a pretty cool dude. He was able to compromise with the opposition party, he ended the Korean war without starting any new wars, and he created the interstate highway system. In addition to all of this, and instead of making my project unnecessarily difficult like the moon Ike, he started NASA, without which Kerbal Space Program would have never been created. Oh yeah, he also won the popular vote.
Now back to Jebediah, who has finally managed to get back to Kerbin. It turns out he landed in the middle of the ocean, but at least not on his face.
Tutorial Links:
These posts are really entertaining to read, keep it up! How long would you say it takes you to build a successful rocket? I imagine there are a lot of small changes to be made (you mentioned going just 7m/s too fast).
ReplyDeleteThe actual building usually takes less than an hour because I don't have time to design and test my own rockets. There are a lot of small adjustments to be made in flight though. In fact, it's generally best to make adjustments as far away from the target as possible because at that point a tiny adjustment makes a big difference in your location by the time you reach the target, and smaller adjustments use less fuel. The number was actually a 1(one), but the font I used made it look like a 7(seven) (I actually just estimated, I don't know the exact amount). Either way, it was a tiny difference and I don't know what caused it because when I retried I didn't do anything significantly different. It could even have been that I landed on a bumpy area so the ground beneath my engine was slightly higher than it was under the landing gear.
DeleteWow, I know nothing about Kerbal Space Program. Kudos to you, though, because this is a pretty interesting topic. This game looks pretty hard, but then again, I am a disgusting trash man who knows nothing. What planet are you looking at next? It's always good to plan ahead. Do you have a certain strategy to planning which planet you travel to? Anyways, good luck with your adventure. Cool breeze.
ReplyDeleteNext I'll be going to Eve(Venus). My original strategy was to just go in order from closest to farthest (I'm skipping Moho/Mercury because it's boring and instead going to Jool/Jupiter because it's not boring). My reason was that I falsely assumed that distance and difficulty were correlated, but it turns out it's a lot more complicated. From the research I've done so far on Eve, the atmosphere is very thick, so hitting the ground too hard shouldn't be a problem. It also has a friendlier moon that won't try to pull me off course because its gravity is extremely weak. I don't know the exact size of its sphere of influence, but I'd probably have to get within a kilometer or two for it to actually start to affect me or my rocket, and even then, it would barely be noticeable because at that point I would probably be traveling at several kilometers per second.
DeleteGreat post, Sam!
ReplyDeleteWOW! creds to you man! This is super cool and I have not gotten to take a look at this yet and I have now looked back at some of your other posts too! You seem to be doing really well and you seem to love what you do which is great! I am wondering how much time you spend perfecting these rockets to get it to the successful goal? Just an estimate maybe? Well, Good Luck!
ReplyDeleteThe entire thing usually takes from around 2:00 to midnight, so about 10 hours. However, the building only takes about an hour because I copy other people's designs. The rest is trying to launch, failing, and trying to figure out what I forgot to put on the rocket for another hour, then 8 hours of planning out maneuvers and waiting to reach the location of said maneuvers.
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