Crew will transfer over to the rescue vehicle and complete the mission, but only one crew will be able to perform surface operations. Should there be a failure of one o the DTVs during transfer to or from Duna, the second DTV will expend fuel to rendezvous with it and refill from the other's tanks. In the event that one crew is unable to be relaunched in time, the other crew will still launch and the second DTV will transfer to Duna empty to provide a rescue vessel. The LES fires and the crew splash down safely. This is a failure during liftoff of either crew vehicle. The mission is obviously fraught with risks, and as such has several abort modes: The crew rendezvous with their DTVs and perform the Duna-Kerbin transfer burn, returning to Kerbin and splashing down in the CSMs they launched in. The lander ascent stage is a modified CSM-II, lacking parachutes and with a LEM descent engine. Each of the two three-kerbal crews will then drive to the base and rendezvous there, beginning performing their surface tasks, such as driving over to points of interest and the DSO The crew will also perform any repairs necessary to be base and hook up any disconnected modules with pipes and cables.Īfter their extended surface stay, the crew will return to their landers and lift off into low Duna orbit. The crew will attempt to land near a MOLAB unit. The landers use a 3.75m descent stage with five LEM engines attached to it. The Duna Science Outpost (DSO) will then descend, followed by the Backup Cargo Module (BCM).įinally, the crew rendezvous with the landers in orbit, transferring over to them. If all is well, they begin to drive towards each other and dock to form the base. The base modules deploy from their landing frames and perform system checks. Four 'Badger' engines (the same ones used on the Saturn IB first stage) then perform the final descent. The top half of the fairing then detaches, allowing drogue chutes to deploy. Aeroshells protect the landers during reentry. The S-IVB stages will perform a burn to place them within the atmosphere and then decouple.
The five base landers will be next to descent. The mission can still succeed if only one rover makes it down to the surface intact, albeit in a reduced capacity. It is for this reason that three have been sent. These are landing only on parachutes and are in many ways the most vital parts of the mission, as they will be used to drive between the various different craft, which will be scattered over several kilometers. Once all the presupply modules are in orbit around Duna, they will begin to descend to the surface, one by one.
Here's a breakdown of the launch manifest:ĥx Base modules launches (2x base modules in each launch)īang on time, the two Duna Transfer Vehicles ( Kennedy & Von Braun) performed burns to escape Kerbin and put them on course for an encounter with Duna. Well, my exams are finally over, so I can get back to this!Īfter 22 launches, all the elements of my grand Duna mission are on their way at last! I'm sure Boeing won't be too happy about their docking adapter being blown up by a rival company. If NASA sticks by them and they continue to receive funding then they may have a chance, but this sort of failure could cost them very dearly. Sure failure is a part of the learning process and all that but public opinion and the numbskulls at congress are going to be against them. If I were someone with a delicate satellite I wanted launching I wouldn't be knocking on SpaceX's door to do it after they've broadcast their launch failure live to thousands of people on the internet. They probably don't, but it was certainly accelerating things (I can't imagine a company developing a crew capsule purely in their spare time on the off-chance that someone wants to buy a trip to space), and now their reputation has certainly taken a hit. Surely they don't require government funding?
ANDY WEIR SUPERLUMINAL FREE
But this is SpaceX, the company those very same internet people say is the paragon of the free market in all it's glory.