Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Duna Landing

Today I landed on Duna (fourth planet from the Sun):



The landing was miraculous. I completely ran out of fuel before I was even in orbit around Duna. My approach velocity was way too high to get into orbit, so I used my last bit of fuel to aim my trajectory at Duna's atmosphere. Incredibly, burning through the atmosphere slowed me down enough to get into orbit. The orbit took me around into a second pass through the atmosphere. On the second pass I deployed my parachutes. Unfortunately Duna's atmosphere isn't very thick, so most of my ship was destroyed by the surface impact.

Here is the ship launching from Kerbin:



If you look closely, you can see my main thruster is a nuclear thermal rocket.

My Mun landing happened at 13 hours of gameplay and the Duna landing was at 19 hours.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Landing on the Mun

Today I achieved the impossible: safely landing a kerbal on the Mun.



I landed on the dark side of the Mun, so it is a bit hard to see. Next time I'll bring some lights on the ship. Unfortunately the ship is completely out of fuel, so Bill will have to wait there until I send a rescue mission. Here is the ship preparing for launch from Kerbin:



Here is the support crew, orbiting the Mun: