First Mun Landing:

[MaverickSawyer]

Yeesh, I KNOW I don't have pics of my first landing on the Mun. That was nearly 7 years ago, back in the TRUE Old Days of 0.13.2, when the only guidance for TMI burns was "The Munway Opens at Munrise." This was before MechJeb, before maneuver nodes, before you could even tell if you were actually going to cross SoI boundaries, before you could even run more than one mission. Heck, i don't even think we had the landing legs that @Vanamonde was so gloriously modeling for us there. (thanks for the trip on the wayback machine with that pic, btw.  )

 

I DO have my latest Munar landing, taken just hours before 1.5.0 dropped. I hope this shall suffice as an acceptable offering...

Bill and Bob went down to the surface to set up the science outpost, collect the not-transmittable data, and do the customary "flags, footprints, photos, and surface sample" bit that accompanies every science and career save mission.

[FinalFan]

1 hour ago, Orc said:

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

Thanks very much!  I have to confess, though, that I actually had three parachutes, not just one:  you can see it clearly in the picture where I'm landed on the Mun.  I'm not convinced a single parachute would be inadequate but it's definitely pushing it.  (Perhaps you'd lose the heat shield, and I'd want to put the materials bay underneath the passenger bay for more crumple zone just in case.  I actually think I've done that before but not with this particular vessel.) 

I think that once you begin "biting into" the atmosphere you sort of lock yourself in your orientation to a certain extent.  Even if your reentry vehicle has a slight preference for going in prograde, if you maintain retrograde while beginning re-entry I think the atmosphere itself will help hold you in place.  This is why I was only flipped to prograde after slowing down a lot—if I recall correctly, it started to wobble at about 1600-1550 m/s, having decelerated all the way from 3200 with no problems.  (Assuming that your retrograde cross-section is still aerodynamically preferable to any possible sideways orientation, then this blocks the ship from going to the prograde orientation while aerodynamic forces are at their strongest.)  This only goes so far, though—if you're extremely top heavy then you may be in danger of flipping despite this effect without strong attitude control. 

Also, I'd be a lot less comfortable relying on this effect if I didn't have a pilot or probe helping keep the vessel oriented towards retrograde:  even if the vessel's attitude control is weak, having a force keeping it on the ideal line helps a LOT because loss of control is usually due to small problems getting made bigger and bigger by positive feedback forces.  And obviously it helps everything hide behind the heat shield. 

I hope this inspires your creativity—and bravery! 

[Hydrothermalventclam]

This is my favorite mun landing, because I actually put design time and effort into the lander.  My goal was to be able to build a small rover after landing using KIS, and it worked pretty well (until I crashed the rover).   The actual lander was a two staged design, because the descent stage ended up being under-powered and I did not want to haul the KIS containers back to orbit.

[Xemina]

@Geonovast  @RealKerbal3x I finally landed (on minmus, sorry... i guess) I found it easy ! (apart from the whole flying a rocket and making maneuvers thing :P)

Spoiler

I went a bit overkill...
 

 

Edited November 15, 2018 by Xemina