After a series of budget cuts leading to mismanagement of funds, NASA has lost their main super glue supplier, and supplies are dwindling. Without this crucial ingredient, it is impossible to put together any rockets. So in order to save supply, I have put together a Mars mission with only four parts.
The Mercury capsule serves as a control method, heat shield, and parachute all in one part. The ion engine is needed to perform burns as efficiently as possible when thrust isn't absolutely necessary. The Redstone fuel tank is the largest single fuel tank that can be protected by the heat shield. And finally the frontier engine is used as it is by far the best engine for a rocket this size, with high efficiency and good thrust.
The mission starts by getting into LEO, using the ion engine for as much of the circularization as possible. Then the rocket launches into a Lunar encounter with the ion engine. In the Moon's SOI, I used 0.1% throttle on the ion engine to fine tune the encounter so well that I will get a second Lunar assist, which flings me out of Earth onto a resonate orbit that makes me encounter Earth again in one year for another Lunar assist. I continue to mess around in Solar orbit, getting more Earth+Moon assists to increase my orbit more and more.
After a *long* time of this, my orbit was finally high enough to encounter Mars. I first completed an aerobraking pass that put the rocket on a trajectory to land on the summit of Olympus Mons. After another reentry, I used the parachute and the engines to touch down.
After staying on the surface a while, it was finally time to return. From the summit of Olympus Mons, the ∆V needed to reach Mars orbit is significantly reduced. Again, the ion engine was used as much as possible. Then, I waited a long time for an Earth transfer with Mars at it's apoapsis, which minimizes the ∆V to reach Earth.
After way too many years to count, the mission was finally coming to a close with Earth reentry. After a toasty descent, the rocket remained in a horizontal position to reduce fall speed as much as possible. With the ground dangerously close, the rocket flipped back to vertical to conduct the suicide burn. The rocket landed with plenty of fuel margin, I totally didn't run out of fuel the very moment it touched down or anything.
And here are the mission logs. As you can see, there was a lot of gravity assist shenanigans in order to get to Mars with the least ∆V possible. Total mission time was about 3 hours, excluding all designing and testing that was needed to make this happen.
Thanks for viewing this ridiculous mission! If you want to complete any low part count missions of your own, feel free to post it here. This was inspired by Marmilo's low part Mars mission thread, but it is pretty old, so I made a new one.
The Mercury capsule serves as a control method, heat shield, and parachute all in one part. The ion engine is needed to perform burns as efficiently as possible when thrust isn't absolutely necessary. The Redstone fuel tank is the largest single fuel tank that can be protected by the heat shield. And finally the frontier engine is used as it is by far the best engine for a rocket this size, with high efficiency and good thrust.
The mission starts by getting into LEO, using the ion engine for as much of the circularization as possible. Then the rocket launches into a Lunar encounter with the ion engine. In the Moon's SOI, I used 0.1% throttle on the ion engine to fine tune the encounter so well that I will get a second Lunar assist, which flings me out of Earth onto a resonate orbit that makes me encounter Earth again in one year for another Lunar assist. I continue to mess around in Solar orbit, getting more Earth+Moon assists to increase my orbit more and more.
After a *long* time of this, my orbit was finally high enough to encounter Mars. I first completed an aerobraking pass that put the rocket on a trajectory to land on the summit of Olympus Mons. After another reentry, I used the parachute and the engines to touch down.
After staying on the surface a while, it was finally time to return. From the summit of Olympus Mons, the ∆V needed to reach Mars orbit is significantly reduced. Again, the ion engine was used as much as possible. Then, I waited a long time for an Earth transfer with Mars at it's apoapsis, which minimizes the ∆V to reach Earth.
After way too many years to count, the mission was finally coming to a close with Earth reentry. After a toasty descent, the rocket remained in a horizontal position to reduce fall speed as much as possible. With the ground dangerously close, the rocket flipped back to vertical to conduct the suicide burn. The rocket landed with plenty of fuel margin, I totally didn't run out of fuel the very moment it touched down or anything.
And here are the mission logs. As you can see, there was a lot of gravity assist shenanigans in order to get to Mars with the least ∆V possible. Total mission time was about 3 hours, excluding all designing and testing that was needed to make this happen.
Thanks for viewing this ridiculous mission! If you want to complete any low part count missions of your own, feel free to post it here. This was inspired by Marmilo's low part Mars mission thread, but it is pretty old, so I made a new one.
