A Mobile Refueling Base on Duna! (0)
I got two contracts that inspired this mission:
- Mine 1100 units of ore on Duna
- Build an outpost that can support 5 kerbals on Duna
So guess what? Let’s create a base than can be easily extended with a miner that can refuel other ships if needed! This base could then be used to refuel missions departing from Duna. The base has a large tank of ore (1500 units), some monopropellant and some fuel. The miner has an ore tank, a fuel tank and all the necessary tools to mine: drill, radiators, solar panels, converter (ISRU). The second ore tank in the image above has been replaced for a fuel tank.
The refueling truck and the base itself have been tested on the runway to test that everything’s level. Each craft will be sent on a separate rocket. We’ll test our landing skills!
Duna has an atmosphere, we can use it to land without having to use too much of fuel. The chutes will be deployed and then our skycrane will use the small engines to slow us down to a maximum before dropping the rover.
Standard ascent once again. The payload is quite light, we don’t need huge boosters for this one.
This kind of view always cracks me up, it looks so stupid :).
The chutes have a maximum velocity tolerance, we need to burn some fuel before being able to open them.
We’ll be landing a few kilometers from a miner we sent there for another contract.
Using the engines, we can slow even down to 0m/s.
The rover has landed safely! After waiting some time for the tanks to fill up, we finally managed to mine what we wanted: 1100 units. They’ve been since converted to fuel to make some room.
The base will follow the same design: a skycrane and some wheels. The landing legs aren’t that necessary but they provide stability and they look cool I guess? Here we have once again: fuel, ore, monoprop.
The base needs to be offset inside the fairing because of its mass asymmetry.
Larger boosters on this one!
bbrbrrrrrttftftf I love the revamp of the mainsail engine.
Did I already talk about this kind of view?
Once again, burning some fuel to slow down. We should be landing quite close to our target, that’s quite nice!
Well, 750m is indeed quite impressive for what I’m used to.
I forgot to link the fuel tanks to the engines though, the base impacted the ground at 15m/s… Thankfully, those little wheels have great dampers and nothing broke. It’s time to visit our miner!
Everything lined up, let’s deploy the landing legs to get level.
The base went a bit farther to ditch the unnecessary chute fairings.
Contracts completed! The base is also all filed up.
Lina Kerman is really happy about her new home.