Reaching Other Planets

Necessary Tech

Interplanetary distances are far bigger (orders of magnitude) than those in LEO (low earth orbit) or Moon. Surprisingly for inner planets like Venus or Mars you'll need not much more dV than to reach the moon. Obviously you need respectively bigger LV(Launch vehicle - rocket) capable of putting your ejection module (part of the craft that puts you into trajectory of the target body) and payload to LEO. Short checklist to reach nearest planets :

• Interplanetary communications
• deep space avionics.
• LV capable of 3+ t to LEO or more depending on your payload. (150t plus) It is important to make your payload (probe) as light as possible and to use as efficient engines (ISP, and propellant densities) for last stages as possible to minimize your payload mass. It is good to have some capability to make middle course trajectory corrections (RCS is usually enough).

Communications

See the RealAntennas Wiki for help with planning. Make sure to use the highest communications tech level available and upgrade your tracking station if you can. It is not only enough to have a connection though, 1bit/s connection is rather incapable of relaying substantial experiment data. Make sure to have proper bandwidth and power generation capacity to actually transfer experiments data back to Earth.

Power generation

Your probes need to have some source of power to function. Mercury, Venus and Earth are relatively short from the Sun and solar power is somewhat cheap (in weight) for what you get. Mars starts to show decreased power production, and vetting to dwarf planets and Jupiter builds challenge for solar powered crafts, though it is not impossible to do so. Most deep spade probes use RTG to power the craft.

• make sure you have enough power when you reach your target
• use kerbalism window (bottom right in VAB when you have statistics for your probe - look at energy consumption and select target body if using solar)
• adjust for transit times (might be long time) so your power source works effectively when you reach the target.

Using Transfer Window Planner

TBD

Making the Transfer With Principia

TBD

Making the Transfer Without Principia

TBD

Landing on Venus and Mars

Heat Shields

Venus will need a lunar-rated heat shield, unless you slow down into an orbit first, but Mars can do fine with an LEO-rated heat shield.

Parachutes

RealChute can be programmed to do calculations for other planets. Note that standard parachutes will be melted on Venus, so you'll have to use Kevlar and open them fairly low, but the thick atmosphere makes slowing down easy. You may not even need parachutes. On Mars, parachutes can be quite useful, but, like in real life, they won't be able to slow your craft all the way to a soft landing. Kevlar may be the material to go with here as well. There are some small throttlable engines you can use, or you can use an engine with an RCS config. If you're very skilled, you can even use a skycrane for style points, though you may run into bugs with the cable.