First Mun Landing:

[Xemina]

In this thread, you can post your first ever Mun landing, your proudest Mun landing or any landing of that type. 

RULES:

- It has to be a manned vessel.
- You have to have an image.
-  It has to be YOUR photo and landing

Listen, this thread was not made for me as no matter how hard I try, I either crash on the Mun or do not have enough fuel to return... I wish I could land on the Mun, and maybe someday I'll be able to, but for now, this thread is for the amazing Kerbal Kommunity and not me. Some people might know about my tries, such as @Orb8Ter , @Monkey Taylor  and @Eveeloo , two of which have left the forums. 

Hope you all enjoy! 

[Geonovast]

Regretfully, it was in the tutorial.  It took me many, many tries.  I didn't successfully land until I stopped listening to what the tutorial told me to do and just started winging it.  Very proud moment.  Happy birthday to me (Did it on my 30th).  Done on my old potatoish computer.

If you're having issues with landing and enough dV, I highly suggest installing KER.  It will throw a lot of numbers at you, which can be scary, but you can trim it down to just the important ones, like per-stage dV, terrain altitude, acceleration, etc.  The newest versions even have a red target on the ground where you're going to land.

[RealKerbal3x]

Here's a shot of my first ever Mun landing, with Jeb and Bill.

Back in the old days of 1.3.1, even before I installed KER. Once you figure it out, it's as easy as....something that's easy. I'd recommend checking YouTube for Mun landing tutorials:

@Matt Lowne did a fantastic Apollo-style tutorial, and that's how I learned.

 

@ShadowZone also did a more basic Mun mission for his tutorial, which is also amazing.

@Xemina I'm sure you'll get there! Just keep trying!

[Xemina]

@RealKerbal3x Thanks! But I've already followed ten tutorials, I know I will get there! I just need to stop #timewarping. (And the OLD days of 1.3? I've been playing since 1.1)

Edited October 28, 2018 by Xemina

[RealKerbal3x]

Just now, Xemina said:

I just need to stop #timewarping.

Try using the 'warp to here' function. It's in the same action menu as creating a manoeuvre node. It takes a bit longer than just mashing . but it means you'll be able to control how far you warp.

And try cancelling out your horizontal motion at ~10km above the surface, then paying attention to your speed and altitude as you descend. When to start your landing burn depends on your craft, but try to hit the surface at under 10 m/s or you could damage something on your spacecraft.

5 minutes ago, Xemina said:

(And the OLD days of 1.3? I've been playing since 1.1/1.0)

1.3 may not have been that long ago, fair, but a lot of stuff has changed since then.

[Pecan]

It is a tribute to KSP and this community that *everyone's* first Mun landing is worthy of celebration - hats off to all of you.

'fraid I can't remember mine and certainly don't have any pictures any more but I can still appreciate the work that anyone puts in to make it there and your elation reminds us of ours.  There is no greater, more deserved, feeling of achievement to be had from a computer game/simulation.

PS: It's a lot easier to land on Minmus.  Mostly because of the gravity but also because it's harder to find somewhere safely level to land on Mun.

Edited October 28, 2018 by Pecan

[Geonovast]

5 minutes ago, Pecan said:

PS: It's a lot easier to land on Minmus.  Mostly because of the gravity but also because it's harder to find somewhere safely level to land on Mun.

Depends on how the lander is built.  If it's too tall and comes in at just the slightest angle, you could easily be on your side.  In some ways, Minmus is easier.  In some, it's harder, especially if your landing gear is bouncy.

[Xemina]

@Geonovast @RealKerbal3x I made it! I landed! (with a probe, so I don't need to return, but still...) 

[RealKerbal3x]

1 minute ago, Xemina said:

@Geonovast @RealKerbal3x I made it! I landed! (with a probe, so I don't need to return, but still...) 

Well done! Now try going for a crewed round trip. You need 500-600 m/s of dV to get back into orbit, and roughly 300 more to get into a direct Kerbin return trajectory.

[Pecan]

12 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Depends on how the lander is built.  If it's too tall and comes in at just the slightest angle, you could easily be on your side.  In some ways, Minmus is easier.  In some, it's harder, especially if your landing gear is bouncy.

Yes, Minmus is just generally more forgiving on lander design, location and flying ability but it isn't simpler than any other non-parachute landing.  Even a bumpy Minmus landing is going to be more survivable than a rough Mun one.  This is a thread for first ever alien landings so ... Minmus is more forgiving.

To put it another way - Can you think of anything that could land on Mun but couldn't land on Minmus?

Edited October 28, 2018 by Pecan

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, Pecan said:

To put it another way - Can you think of anything that could land on Mun but couldn't land on Minmus?

It's not a matter of can or can't, but difficulty and approach.  And there's so many "it depends" that, no, I can't think of anything that can land on the Mun but not Minmus, because there are literally an infinite amount of combinations on building a ship in the game.  All I can say is that when I'm designing a lander, where it's going influences the design, because landing are different.  Anything I design for the Mun certainly can land on Minmus, but is it the best for it?

For an experience player, there's not gonna be any difference in difficulty.  But something that comes down and stays down on the Mun may bounce on Minmus, and if it bounces fast enough SAS is reflexively re-set to retrograde (which an inexperienced player may do), the thing will flip and you're gonna have a bad time.

6 minutes ago, Pecan said:

This is a thread for first ever alien landings so ... Minmus is more forgiving.

That's not what the title says.

[Pecan]

@xemina, Powered landings along with rendezvous and docking are the hardest things to learn.  For a lot of stuff - like dV - it's enough to do the maths and follow the numbers but when it comes to metal meeting rock you've actually got to be able to *do* it there and then, every time.  Theory meets practice, hard *grin*.  You're nearly there now :-)

1 minute ago, Geonovast said:

That's not what the title says.

Oops, my bad, you're right.

[Xemina]

10 minutes ago, Pecan said:

This is a thread for first ever alien landings so ... Minmus is more forgiving.

Or any landing of THAT type. (All planets or moons which you need to use powered landing.)

Anyway, back to the thread title and not a "Help Xemina Land On the Mun"! 

Edited October 28, 2018 by Xemina

[purpleivan]

How about biggest Mun landing.

A while ago I set a challenge called "Mun Rocked" that asked for entries of the largest mass landed on the Mun. As my entry I sent the Eve Party Boat, made a couple of years earlier for a trip to Eve and back for a party of four.

The mass on landing was 620 tons.

The launch.

One of many fueling ships sent into orbit to gas it up.

The crew about to board.

A member of the crew insepcting the engines.

Departing Kerbin.

Braking into Mun orbit.

Coming into land.

A happy crew headed for the surface.

Party time.

Edited November 2, 2018 by purpleivan

[Atkara]

No screenshots to show for my first Mun landing -I don't remember ever taking one. But it was a weird lander in KSP 1.0, filled with whatever experiments I had available at the time and propelled by a Terrier and... 4 Ants: a strange decision in retrospect, but one that saved Jeb that day.

See, each Ant engine was installed at the lower end of a group of 4-5 Oscar Tanks. The plan was for the Ants to assist the Terrier, as I feared it wouldn't be able to lift the lander off the Mun's surface -shows how little I knew back then and I still had no idea KER was a thing. I did have fuel ducts connecting the Ant-Oscar groups to the main engine -or so I thought. Because halfway into the home transfer burn, the Terrier flamed out. Turned out the fuel ducts weren't connecting to the Terrier's tank. So, I was left with a bunch of Oscars and the Ants attached on them. It was then when I learned one important lesson at the time: once in orbit, thrust, no matter how small, is thrust.

I brought Jeb home. If not for these peashooters, I would have to send a rescue mission, which I had no idea how to do back then. That part, I learned some time later, when one of my landers ran out of fuel on the surface of the mun and the automated lander I sent to bring Jeb (again) back, had barely enough fuel left to make orbit. Yeah

[Vanamonde]

[Geonovast]

14 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

I feel this design could use some context.

[ZL647]

On 10/28/2018 at 5:25 AM, Xemina said:

It has to be a manned vessel

That's discrimination. At this current point I don't have any live Kerbals to pilot vessels. They all died early in the program so that we might learn what not to do in later missions.

[Vanamonde]

14 hours ago, Geonovast said:

I feel this design could use some context.

I kept exploding when I hit the ground and was hoping more landing legs would absorb the shock better. Eventually, I figured out to just touch down at a much lower speed. 

[Chel]

10 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

I kept exploding when I hit the ground and was hoping more landing legs would absorb the shock better. Eventually, I figured out to just touch down at a much lower speed. 

So figured out that landing at 500m/s was a bad idea, so you slowed it to 5m/s instead?

[DerekL1963]

All the way back in 0.19.1, and I'd been playing all of two days... (forum post)



Check out the orange tank used for TMI and MOI...  And the teeny-tiny little lander...  And two huge tanks of monoprop!  Back then, SAS (ASAS) didn't work quite like it does now and you needed RCS, especially during boost to orbit, to help maneuver the rocket.  (Standard method to reach orbit:  Boost straight up to 10km, flop over to 45 degrees and boost until you hit your desired Ap.  Really needed the RCS to stop the 45 degree flop from turning into a head-over-heels tumble.)

 

 

[Scarecrow]

My first successful landing on Mun was so long ago I'm not sure I saved any of the screenshots I took at the time.

[Bej Kerman]

I don't have any pics as this was years ago back in the good ol' days of 0.18 but in my first landing attempts, I'd just point straight at the mun. Embarrassing.

[FinalFan]

As for the largest lander, I too sent an Eve ship to the Mun.  I thought it would be more convenient to have it refuel itself most of the way rather than send many refuel missions to LKO—I was very wrong.  It weighed 1,833 tons fully loaded, and more like 480 tons on landing.  Despite how annoying and expensive launching that many refuel missions to LKO would be, it was even more time-consuming to wait for it to fill up its tanks on its own.  But there was also something odd going on where it would mine and refine at different relative rates depending on whether or not I was watching it, so that may have been a factor.  Anyway ... here it is: 

[edit:  TinyPic is dead; long live Flickr.  Original link for insanity posterity:  http://i67.tinypic.com/2430wgn.jpg ]

I am pretty sure I have no pictures of my first Mun missions, but I still have the rocket designs.  My first Mun orbiter (first Mun flyby, for that matter) was actually designed as "maybe this will be able to do a landing mission, maybe not", and at the time I judged that it was probably able to land but not return my kerbals home.  

I decided it would be fun to re-enact that mission and see if I could make it a landing mission after all.  

My first thought on seeing the design again after so long was, "No wonder I had problems with my rockets flipping back then!" Apparently I treated aerodynamics as more of a suggestion than a rule.  

[ http://i64.tinypic.com/30c3nzm.jpg ]

(The main engine is a Skipper and not a Mainsail, partially because a Skipper is enough but mainly because I hadn't unlocked the Mainsail yet.)  

Even then I had been aware of how blatantly silly it was to have girders sticking straight out of the upper stage, but I considered it unavoidable due to my lack of landing leg technology.  In addition to this, I had been entirely ignorant of how much drag the ladders were adding—I had thought physicsless meant dragless.  And I had innocently hoped that "only half of the science box showing" meant only half of the drag.  (Actually, since they were attached to another box inside the storage bay, I'm still not sure about this one.)  The end result of all this and more was that back then I had just resigned myself to the apparent fact that half of my rockets were doomed to flip 360° on their way to orbit.  

[ http://i64.tinypic.com/j0k6dg.jpg ]

However, none of this actually mattered!  I suspect I was wrong back then.  I didn't know how to calculate delta-V and I probably got scared by the tank being half empty or something.  The upper stage has almost 2,000 delta-V by my calculation, and even with all the atmospheric shenanigans the Kerbin stage still managed to not only make orbit but also do most of the Mun encounter burn, while still having enough to deorbit itself for recovery.  

[ http://i67.tinypic.com/2cylcow.jpg ]

Unless I grossly mismanaged my fuel while orbiting I can't imagine that I was unable to land and return.  But then again, come to think of it, I might actually have done a few orbital adjustments to fulfill various contracts ... so it's hard to say.  But regardless, this thing was obviously more than capable of hitting at least one biome and returning.  

On the re-enactment, I used the lower stage to get the full Mun encounter, and did it retrograde to orbit so the lower stage would be put in position for a deorbit burn and recovery instead of being shot out of the system.  Interestingly, the lower stage could have even circularized on the Mun if I had wanted to.  

[ http://i64.tinypic.com/2rx86y0.jpg ]

Separating from the recoverable stage in anticipation of the capture burn.  

[ http://i66.tinypic.com/jsk6ld.jpg ]

Waited too long to do the landing burn.  After this picture was taken, I panicked and switched to straight radial.  To be fair, I may well have crashed if I did nothing, but I ended up with probably 30 m/s of upward motion before I cut the engine.  

[ http://i65.tinypic.com/a4a5c6.jpg ]

Landed on the Mun.  Let's go pretend we haven't got this science yet!  Notice the three basic antennas, because I heard one might not be enough and I didn't have any others.  

[ http://i67.tinypic.com/4ke8b7.jpg ]

Oh wow, I really haven't gotten all this science yet.  

[ http://i63.tinypic.com/ezq4oi.jpg ]

Sadly, I don't have enough delta-V to biome hop and still get a direct return.  Good night, Mun!

[ http://i64.tinypic.com/2hgd6xe.jpg ]

There is a heat shield and decoupler above the tank.  I'm tempted to just let the lower stuff burn up while it's still attached, but if the legs don't go simultaneously I could be in real trouble, so I detach as the design calls for after depleting the final dregs of fuel.  It turns out there was also a moon in there! 

[ http://i65.tinypic.com/14w7u6q.jpg ]

Whee!  Believe it or not, this is actually the only "normal" heat-shield re-entry I've ever done so far.  I haven't reached any interplanetary destinations yet and in Kerbin SOI I usually do multiple aerobrake passes to recover the full vessel.  

[ http://i67.tinypic.com/sxn7g0.jpg ]

Apparently its butt wasn't heavy enough, because it flipped prograde, but fortunately not before slowing down to a perfectly survivable speed.  It's still quite fiery though.  

[ http://i63.tinypic.com/2md29us.jpg ]

Well, that was fun.  The verdict is:  the vessel was definitely capable of a full Mun landing mission, but with the way I probably piloted the original one on Kerbin ascent back then, maybe I made the right call after all to chicken out. 

Total cost of launch, before recovery:  47,880.  Wow, those were the days.  That's, like, a third of the cost of the fuel alone on the Eve vessel. 

Edited September 23, 2019 by FinalFan
TinyPic is dead; long live Flickr.

[Orc]

Hi all and FinalFan in particular

FinalFan, I MUST congratulate you on flying that re-entry. If I'd flown that ship it would have been a complete loss of crew and vessel, and all the tasty necessary science on board. 

If I'm flying tourists to the Mun, and I'm not using bigger (more advanced) crew containing parts I usually put the passenger compartment part on top of the MK1 Capsule (yes I know horrific drag but on the way out of the atmosphere I have a big rocket with a throttle, and on the way in you WANT horrific drag). I can land that configuration, sometimes even without a heat shield, but going in nose first like that, especially with a single very vulnerable parachute ... that takes skill and guts, and probably luck and a casual disregard for the lives of your Kerbals.

 

Besides for that nice looking rocket.

 

Regards

Orc