I like Ike

Going through some files of Kerbal Space Program, probably my favorite game, I found a few screenshots of my landing on Duna's moon Ike. This had been in version 0.23.5, but nonetheless, I decided to make a post about it.

I had just gotten my Kerbals back from a flyby of Dres, and I decided that it was time to do a landing. The ship design itself was fairly simple, a more recent screenshot is below.

The SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters) would send it up for a while then they would detach and the liquid fueled rockets would take over. They are hooked up in asparagus staging so the outer ones feed into the central tank, allowing more mass to be jettisoned sooner and increasing efficiency. I only added the RT-10 Solid Fuel Booster just below the LV-N for fun, it is completely unnecessary, it wouldn't be smart in 0.24. Up at the top is the lander with droppable fuel tanks below the side tanks. These aren't hooked up with fuel lines so I had to transfer it all manually. The lander itself, I think, is self explanatory.

The launch went perfectly. Orbit was no problem. The LV-N cowls and RT-10 separating looked super awesome. I followed my standard interplanetary handbook (the only copy is in my head) and matched apoapsis with Duna's orbit and waited to adjust when I got a close approach. I think this is the launch where I was over-aggressive with time warp and zipped through Duna's gravity in half a second, got mad, and readjusted back in. I had come in at horrible inclination and was in a polar orbit but, for once, timing was on my side. I encountered Ike on my first orbit around. My manual transfer tanks had been jettisoned when I had been fine tuning the orbit. I just had to slow myself down to land, wait with time acceleration till I was ~5000 meters above sea level, then decelerated more. I guess instead of sea level I should say something like average ground height, since Kerbin, Eve, and Laythe are the only planetary bodies that have standing liquid. Anyway, I landed at a nice 2 meters per second after nearly freaking out because the speedometer hadn't automatically changed to surface speed. Bob got out, did science, and planted a flag with a heroic plaque he copied off of an email we sent him. (Standard Kerbal thing to do.)

I took off and quickly got myself into an orbit. When Ike was aligned properly with Duna's orbit I achieved escape from Ike, and shortly Duna. Once again I used my interplanetary handbook to return to Kerbin. This time to land I used a maneuver to simply redirect my momentum towards the planet. When I was getting close I saw that I still had a lot of fuel left, much more than I had intended. I had to ditch the external fuel tanks and watch them crash. I was still thinking about where I could have cut down the parts of the rocket to increase the efficiency when I had to thrust to cushion the touchdown... Well... I kind of did, but the LV-N still exploded, and then the fuel tank just above it followed suit, another bad thing for 0.24.

The only thing Bob had to say when he was found and brought back to the space center, a few seconds later was, "I like Ike."