Planning For the Future: Zaxton's Plans for Duna

Duna, the Fourth Planet from Kerbol, is the second-closest of all planets to Kerbin, our home, and far more hospitable to space travel than the closes, Eve. Naturally, this makes it a good prospect for colonization.

Of course, we can't just go off to another planet willy-nilly and set up a new society, any more than you could just go to another continent without a little planning, so we're going to take a conservative approach to colonizing Duna, and her moon, Ike.

Phase I: Site Selection

Because Duna has never been landed on before, we can't just look at a map and select a location to land on. Instead, a series of measures will be taken to determine the best landing sites. This phase of the colonization program, codenamed Action Duna, will involve two separate flights from Kerbin orbit.

The first launch, which will be dubbed the Donner Mission, will involve a convoy of rovers, possibly as many as three, which will land independantly at different positions - the equatorial basins, a near-polar basin, and flatlands near the southern pole. The rovers will be equipped with communications and science packages meant to study these locations for suitability for colonization.

The second launch, the Vasco da Gama mission, will put a kethane detection satellite into orbit around Duna's moon, Ike. Much like the Barbara-Theseus Mission, Vasco da Gama will eventually partner with a kethane-production network to provide an orbital fuel depot in Duna orbit.

Phase II: Duna Transit and Settlement

After a site has been selected, it will obviously become necessary to colonize it.  However, since a single vessel does not a colony make, and we're going to need to get quite a few kerbals into position, this is going to have to be done with many stages.

Habitation modules, together with other equipment, will be launched individually and junctioned to nuclear-powered tugs that will bring them across interplanetary space and into duna orbit, after which each piece of equipment will land or change orbits individually as may be necessary.

This will likely take place over a number of Duna transfer windows, and other projects will probably be undertaken inbetween.

So, in the meantime, I'm going to be doing some vehicular design, and I'll let everyone know what's up periodically!