Is this the most current thread? It seems to be, but maybe I'm blind or something
Here's the (science/career save) fleet I sent to Duna today. It's the second fleet I sent to this planet in this save: A bunch of Billy rovers and a backup relay. The first fleet was a bunch of relays and probes, plus a planet scanner.
The planet is now ready for a 3rd visit, this time with actual flesh & blood astronauts! But for now we can relish the success of Project BILLY.
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The first fleet contained 4 relays, 4 probes, and a planet scanning thingy. One of the relays became inoperable during the entry into the system,it ran out of electricity.. zoomed out of the system and that mission continued with one less relay. The other 3 relays were inserted in Duna orbit successfuly.
This fleet contains 6 rovers and 1 backup relay. Duna rendezvous burns were fairly successful. Here's the intercepts:
Billy Williams - 191 days 2hr
Billy Chen - 191 days 4hr
Billy Johnson - 192 days 5hr
Billy Picard - 199 days
Duna Relay - 208 days
Billy Markowski - 244 days
Billy Peters - 257 days
The Duna system after the second fleet's arrival and deployment of the backup relay:
The relays in the system were able to cover every one of the rover missions without any planning. i.e. coverage seems to be pretty good. I have 2 polar relays and 2 equatorial ones that orbit retrograde to each other.
The relay on the crazy orbit is the lost one from the first fleet that i was able to get in the Duna system about 3 months after the 2nd fleet arrived. It was stuck around the sun for a while, out of range of relays.. It did not have much fuel, so I was only able to put it on that stupid orbit. Don't know if it's really useful like that, so I'm going to try to devise a mission to move it (later)
Billy Peters was the first to drop down:
He arrived last but ended up in the closest orbit to Duna. This made it appealing for a first rover landing attempt on Duna. The probes from the first fleet did not have a fun time landing
Atmospheric entry first involves the protection of a large heat shield. This is not really required for this planet, but it looks cool when you drop down from a higher orbit. This exact design is also meant for Eve, which has a much thicker atmosphere.
After the shield is no longer needed it is discarded and the engines kick in.
Four heavy duty parachutes ensure that the rover drops down the rest of the way at a reasonable speed. A reaction wheel allows the parachutes to be atttached under the rover.
After landing it is easy to detach the rover. Alternatively you can crash down at the exact speed the parachutes dictate, which tends to destroy the landing stage and leaves an intact rover.. There's an explosion though so I don't like doing it that way.
Anyhow, after landing.. science can be had! The objective in this case was to land at the edge of the polar ice cap with the rover, but I did not end up getting close enough to reasonably drive over and do some more science.
Each rover was able to drive about 5 km on average away from its landing site, scanning various things along the way, and sending back valuable science. One rover that had a canyon adventure traversed over 10km
When one of my rovers was coming down, and I was trying to land in one of the two large canyons.. Ike ended up ruining it for me by blocking my view...
This rover ended up disappearing somehow actually, it must have gotten detached at some point.. That left 5 rovers that made it to both poles and both canyons.. as well as the midlands.. A 2,111 haul of science overall!
Billy Chen had the most epic adventure out of everyone in the fleet. He landed maybe 100m from the edge of the western canyon, at about 6,200m. He did a bunch of science at the top, then dropped down and drove all the way to the bottom at speeds approaching 220 km/h (136 mi/h)
^ That's the nicest picture I got Billy Chen descending into the canyon, but it got a lot crazier than that. There was a whole buncy of flying through the air, a decent amount of out of control spinning, and somehow in the end the only thing that was lost were the extendable solar panels. The rover is otherwise fine and can easily recharge using the other solar panels.
All 5 rovers are standing by on the planet's surface in case they are needed when the non-robitic explorers arrive, or if i ever figure out that there's artefacts nearby that I can visit