Best ship for interplanetary travel?

[pandadude]

Short Question
Which is the best ship with which to dock a DG-IV and then travel to other planet?
Long Question
A while ago I experimented with interplanetary travel, but failed due to not having practiced enough with TransX or IMFD...

Anyway, I'm giving it another shot. For the added realism, I want to use the DG-IV, with the medium amount of fuel and oxygen supplies. Obviously, I'd run out of these resources before reaching any other planet.

Therefore, I'm going to use another ship, like the Deepstar, in order to get there, and then use the DG-IV to either land on other planets or their moons. FYI, if I use the DS, the plan would be that the DS is already in LEO and I'd dock with it after taking off from the KSC.

Is the Deepstar the best ship to do this? I remember before when I experimented with the DS, when I was burning prograde or something, the ships autopilot continually drifted away from prograde heading or whatever.

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[pandadude]

I just had a go at getting to Mars using the Go Play In Space tutorial and its relevant scenarios (which just use the standard DG). I got there without too many problems (the mistakes I did make were pretty stupid in retrospect). The only major problem I had was with Land MFD, which I couldn't get to work but I landed manually instead in a similar way to how you land on the Moon. Obviously there is no problem with regard to burning up on re-entry with the stock DG, will this same approach be OK in a DG-IV? The heat caused by Mars' atmosphere won't be significant enough to destroy the ship, will it?

So has anybody got advice on what sort of long journey, deepspace ship might be of use to me? Something I can dock the DG-IV to whilst I cruise during long flights.

Thanks again.

 

[perseus]

Well, for taste and color preferences, I have flown to most of the bodies of the solar system in deep space [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2136"]intrepid[/ame] , with a capacity of aerobraking and propellant filling in planetary atmospheres. But you can choose from a variety of vessels, each with their advantages and disadvantages. You can find a wide variety orbithangar.

 

[The Aviator]

I did a full exploration of the Solar System on the Vespucci. It has four docking ports where you can dock four DG-IV, a complex engine (read the manual first...), a scoop that can generate fuel and more...
You can download Vespucci here: http://orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=473
Good exploration!

 

[Sorpenderin]

i would defently recomend the deepstar:thumbup:.mabye the arrow,it has a good docking bay for the DGIV.mabye the longshot and defently the hius and the LDSV.now,last but not least,the platform carrier 1. you will probebly not enjoy this ship it doesent even have main engine texture. but its docking ports are so huge that they will seem like bases to the dg4

 

[Ark]

IMO, the Arrowstar is the best vessel to learn interplanetary flight on. The flight characteristics are very easy, it's perfectly balanced with a DG or XR2 in the bay, and the delta-v budget is generous.

I took the config files for the Descartes vessels and upped the thrust and ISP tremendously to resemble a fusion candle-powered ship with a couple hundred km/s of delta-v. I'm having much fun using IMFD to zip around the solar system with a 150 km/s budget per trip.

 

[Izack]

This thread is four years old...

But yes, Descartes vessels are wonderful. Taking one for a low-altitude surf over the Moon, then up and heading for Mars or Venus is quite an experience.

James Cook is another good one, along with the mentioned Deepstar.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

I haven't tried the Descartes (yet), but one of the ships I miss from Orbiter '06 is the Vespucci, pretty amazing to arrive at Neptune with nearly a full fuel tank.
WO2001's got the Polaris (Discovery-1 prototype sort-of).