I made it to mars

[Kaito]

So, after many, many, MANY troubled attempts, and about to completely give up on IMFD, i FINALLY made it to Mars. Orbit insert was sloppy: after IMFD gave me more troubles then I could handle, i went back to my good old OrbitMFD and lowered my orbit myself.

Total trip cost:
3 tanks of gas
Screaming
Landing a half-planet short of Olympus
Landing on the surface of mars going 500m/s

Now, just gotta figure out how to do it normally...

 

[Urwumpe]

Congratulations Mars is one of the toughest targets in the solar system, thanks to the eccentric orbit and the high inclination. Even Neptune is easier.

 

[Kaito]

Naturally
I was at first going to go for Venus, but I thought "Hey, Mars should be easier" >.<
Of course it would be the hardest one to reach. Why wouldn't it *sigh*

 

[Urwumpe]

Of course it would be the hardest one to reach. Why wouldn't it *sigh*

Well, because you look at the solar system map and say "It is the next one outward, should be close."

But easy to reach depends not on the distance, but on the navigation you do. A distant planet only requires more fuel (or more complex navigation maneuvers)

Even going to Saturn over a Jupiter swing-by is pretty easy compared to Mars, as Jupiter has a very stable, almost circular orbit, reducing the math errors in most navigation MFDs.

 

[garyw]

I went to Venus first and then Mars. Didn't have a problem with either but I recall that the delta-v required for Mars was quite high

 

[Pquardzvaark]

I find landing on Mars is the hardest part. I can't just do a burn and reduce my velocity (relative to the surface) to near 0 as in the Moon, but the atmosphere is really thin for any braking.

 

[TMac3000]

I'm still trying to get Mars right. Last time, I used TransX and missed it by 7 million km.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Hmm, then I must be doing good. My first trip outside Earth-Moon was to Mars via Transx before we had such things as hyper sensitivity and such.
Yea, Mars's atmosphere is a PITA. Too thin to use, too thick to ignore!

 

[Master of Blades]

My first interplanetary trip was to mars, using IMFD in a DGIV, wasn't THAT difficult, only problem is that I arrived there quite short on fuel, oh and that it took ages .

 

[Oceanic]

congratulation

i hope i can follow your footsteps soon.

only made it to the moon so far. IMFD and TransX are still a little complex for my skills.

give EncounterMFD a try, i use it it to fine tune my approach to the moon. i am sure it will help you too, if you rely only on the "basic" MFDs

 

[EtherDragon]

Raises an interesting question - the ecc of mars and Rinc... Why are we planning on sending people to Mars instead of Venus if Venus is so much easier to get to?

Answer:
Venus' atmosphere is a costic crushing cloud of corosive green-house acidic death.

Edit:
Congrats on you acheivement! Get that difficult journey down to a science, and you'll be able to explore the entire solar system with little trouble.

 

[garyw]

give EncounterMFD a try, i use it it to fine tune my approach to the moon. i am sure it will help you too, if you rely only on the "basic" MFDs

Good tip. It's a lovely MFD for fine tuning approaches.

 

[Ghostrider]

Answer:
Venus' atmosphere is a costic crushing cloud of corosive green-house acidic death.

That wouldn't be much of an issue since the stuff is in the clouds. What really kills you is the pressure and the 500 °C heat. A shame, Venus is a very interesting planet.

 

[ripley1]

Good job! I am trying Mars today too, still nothing...

 

[EnDSchultz]

I recently made a trip to Mars in the XR2 with a payload of one habitation module, one LOX tank (14 day default ain't enough for Mars. ) and one main fuel tank. Once I got there I managed to do a maneuver to land on a custom Deimos base with about 30% left in the main tanks...Just extrapolated that someone delivered 7000kg of fuel there for my tourist vessel to refuel with.
Not sure what my next stop will be, perhaps Mercury...