Your first trip to Mars

[PaulG]

Beats me. But I didn't go outside the orbit of Mars, it was all internal. It was a very shallow approach to Mars though.

Would you mind checking the parameters I entered and seeing if something is out of whack? The MFD and actual times coincided pretty exactly.

But, as I said, I was able to plot 2 separate paths, a steep, high dV one that took 247 (or so) days, and a shallow, low dV one which resulted in 347.

Thanks for the help.
Paul

That still doesn't make sense. 347 days is too long for any normal transfer. I'm wondering if you ended up on a trajectory that went out past the orbit of Mars and then met Mars coming back in.

 

[RJGrandia]

I never had a first time. I got a CTD the second it came into visual range

Did you have LandMFD enabled in the Orbiter Launchpad? If so, try turning it off until you're in orbit around Mars and actually need it. It's been known to cause CTD's on entering a body's SOI.

 

[Jarvitä]

My first trip to the mars consisted of an NLSSTO with unlimited fuel and 0.01kg of propellant, turning towards mars and burning at 18 g's half the way, then turning retrograde and braking at 18 g's the rest of the way there, entering a somewhat circular orbit and crashing down on the surface at near-orbital speed after attempting aerobraking.

No astronauts were harmed in this experiment, since the capsule was left on Earth to achieve higher acceleration. Total time taken was less than one day.

 

[garyw]

Venus was the first world I went to then Mars. I'd be using Orbiter for about 2 years before I attempted Mars! I used IMFD to pull off the transfer and had to do a MCC en route. Took about 5 months to get there and closely followed the Phoenix flight plan except I got there a bit quicker

 

[Urwumpe]

Venus was the first world I went to then Mars. I'd be using Orbiter for about 2 years before I attempted Mars! I used IMFD to pull off the transfer and had to do a MCC en route. Took about 5 months to get there and closely followed the Phoenix flight plan except I got there a bit quicker

Venus is also much simpler to reach as Mars, thanks to the low relative inclination and low eccentricity. Mars is even for me, with all training I have now, a challenge, and requires careful navigation, while getting to the other planets (except Uranus and beyond) is already a routine job.

 

[garyw]

Venus is going to be the first world I travel too using an interplanetary ship.
whilst I use IMFD to plan to the burns I also use Encounter MFD to work out how accurate the burn was.
Add that to aerobrake MFD and you can't go far wrong....