Let me share my mission with you! I just completed my first successful Duna mission (manned, I had sent probes before), with a dual purpose of landing successfully and also retrieving Jebediah Kerman who had been stranded in the command module there without enough delta v to return home (but with enough, which I siphoned into my own spaceship once I got there. Bob and Bill had died in the service of science in this failed attempt.
Last time the lander had been too small, (or really, I hadn't put drouge chutes on it and its parachute was cannibalized from the return module, which I had planned to fix once the lander was back in orbit), so this time I added loads of solid rocket boosters. This was with the same command module and interplanetary stage that I had been using for the last one, which meant I found out half way through the mission that I didn't have enough delta v.
The only option I had was to aerobrake on Duna's atmosphere at 30km. I will be honest I used quicksaves here in order to find the right height that wouldn't kill me. At the same time I was burning hard and staged half way through, dropping off the inteplanetary stage into Duna's atmosphere. It fell like a burning longship leaving the cove. Things started exploding, and we lost our folding antennae which I had left extended for some reason. Somehow it worked. Valentina and the scientist were an aurora over the red planet.
I put the Crisgard in the lander and separated so that it would hit the atmosphere again and its orbit would decay, and then went to fix the orbit for the command module. Between its skips, I matched my orbit close to Jebediahs'.
The lander skipped off of Duna's thin atmosphere for a couple of orbits, decaying the velocity until it was more manageable. And then came the landing. I had two drouge shoots, which I turned to deploy at the minimum pressure possible, but they came out frighteningly late. The two main parachoutes also deployed very close to the ground, and for a moment I was scared it was too late… but they shot out, and my speed quickly dropped to a steady amount.
A steady amount that was too fast. 40 metres per second. I used my RCS to try and slow, and considered using an SRB, but it would have been too much and would have killed me. Without any other option, I extended the landing gear and prayed. Please, don't be an explosion. It exploded. Parts scattered everwhere. It was a warzone.
Once the dust had settled, I found Crisgard is in the wreckage. The landing can was in tact… and in fact most of the upper stage was in tact. Only the solid rocket boosters were completely blown up, the remaining ones rolling around in the ditch. The bobcat engine was still fine, and in fact I had loads of delta V. I realised I probably hadn't needed the solid rocket boosters after all.
The only problem was that I was on my side. After doing plenty of science and planting a flag for all kerbalkind, Crisgard got in the lander again and started up the engine. We slowly slid along the ground, leaving the wreckage field and the scraping up the side of the hill. I had done a similar trick on my first moon mission, though there my lander had exploded on nothing (well, it was midnight so I probably hit a rock that I didn't see). Here, it scraped along perfectly.
Crisgard lanuched off the top of the hill and we kicked into full throttle. The bobcat roared and we easily sailed into the Dunan air. Somehow, I had made it out of a catastrophic crash! We left the atmopshere easily and I made ready to rendevous with the command stage.
But that's when I found out that Crisgard was not qualified to make manouver nodes! I was confused because earlier it had worked, until I realised that my command module's folding antennae had been one of the random things that had exploded during the aerobrake because I hadn't folded it in! Luckily there were a couple of probes with relay antennas so there was still connection sometimes and of course I just had to get my orbit out of the atmosphere which was very easy. Also, I had run out of monopropellent.
In the mean time I had docked with Jebediah's identical command stage in order to save him and the science he carried. I would have liked to use his ship rather than Valentina's since it was less damaged, but it had lost its parachute to be used on the failed lander, and I didn't have an engineer in this trip. After siphoning all the fuel, I left the empty ship hanging and made to rendevous with the lander, which was just as easy. I took all the science, siphoned what little fuel the lander had left, and prepared to return.
The return to Kerbin was very simple. I sped up time until the planets were close, then I burned on the side of Duna closest to Kerbin until I came close to it. A slight correction with RCS and I was headed into Kerbin's atmosphere. 200 odd days later I was speeding towards kerbin. I fired my engine until it was dry, before dropping it off and readying the heat shield for re-entry. I thought of how much thicker the atmosphere of kerbin was compared to Duna. But the re-entry was sucessful, and all three Kerbans returned. Mission accomplished!
This was such a cool and difficult mission for me. I think putting solid rocket boosters on the Duna lander made everything 100x harder and I didn't need them lol. But I somehow made it. And guess what? I returned with 1950 science! I don't know what to spend it on. That's enough to pay for the whole tech tree!
The next planet I am heading for is Eve, since it seems easy to land there with a parachute, and I will just get back up with some SRBs. Otherwise I'll go to Dres because I want to see the big canyon which I think is a reference to Vesta's crater IRL (and I am a big Vesta fan).
shining path space program
seeking out new life, new civilizations, new babies to boil