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give minmus some love


malcheus

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Looking at the posts on this forum, I see a lot of people talking about making a munbase, and perhaps using it in the future for deepspace launching bases and stuff like that.

To my surprise, I see only very little topics about doing similar things on minmus. Why is this?

To my experience, minmus is a far more viable alternative to the mun for landings and basebuilding.

Minmus ha less gravity, meaning you will need less fuel to counteract it during your landing, and during your return trip.

Minmus also has less craters, and a lot of dark green flats, ideal for touchdown.

It is true that you will have to travel further to get there, but I think you save more fuel on the landing and takeoff than it costs you to get there.

So why is everyone going to the mun, and not to minmus?

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So why is everyone going to the mun, and not to minmus?

Quicker flight time, easier to get to , bit smoother (ever used mech jeb to land and suddenly found you were heading for 4Km tall mountain slope... you do roll a long way after the crash)

Plus point for minimus is that when you land the rescue craft, the stranded kerbals can easily fly 25km+ to the lander for rescue

or fly off into deep space :(

Boris

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Is a little bit of orbital plane chance that difficult? =P

You will have to do it in .17 to get to the other planets I hope.

and I found the landing on minmus way easier then on the mun, on minmus you know the dark green areas are flat and the light green ones are hills/mountains.

maybe mechjeb doesn't know, but I never use it, it takes the fun out of the game.

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I think I've been to the Mun only a handful of times after Minmus came out. The way I see it, if Minmus were real, NASA wouldn't spend much time messing around in the barren deserts of the Moon when there's a cheaper target with frozen lakes on it either!

I also see a Minmus base as a very likely staging point for interplanetary missions. I haven't had a play with the kethane mod yet, but I think that lets you mine fuel on the surface. Should be good fun. I've already landed a large drill-like structure on one of the frozen lakes. Landing bases is a breeze compared to the Mun because the gravity is so low you can use low thrust engines all the way down. Not a big deal with a small lander, but a massive deal with a more massive base.

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I, for one, agree with the original post! I actually prefer flying to Minmus--the landings are easier, and it's easier to get around once you land (come on people, an inclination burn is EASY!). My minmus base actually set the stage for my favorite moment in the game so far; taking a lonely Kerbal EVAing from my first failed spaceplane trip to Minmus and making it back to the tiny outpost just as it was down to 2% fuel on the thruster pack. It had a really crazy "escaping from the middle of nowhere" vibe to it, and it was nice to feel that I had the ability to actually save a stranded Kerbal, for once.

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(ever used mech jeb to land and suddenly found you were heading for 4Km tall mountain slope... you do roll a long way after the crash)

This makes you sound like the people who drive off a deadend road into a lake and say "The GPS told me to do that! What else was I supposed to do!"

If mechjeb is landing you in a stupid spot, correct! Besides, minimus has immence flat planes that you can easily land on. The Mun is slightly more difficult for that.

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It's nice having a couple inclined bodies for the extra challenge, but I would be very upset if all the planets were on different planes. It just adds extra steps, and interferes with the ability to just do a nice transfer burn, which over these long ranges, adds up to some hefty fuel penalties (since you would have to establish a stable, likely circular orbit, while you wait to change your plane in Kerbol orbit, because you can't do it from Kerbin for another planet). Quite frankly, I hope most of the moons are properly aligned as well, because I want to be able to drive around a planet and its moons, not play tilt my orbit.

And minimus is too easy to land on. It would make a good base of operations around another planet though, since you could 'rest' your ships on it, and it would be quite cheep than land and take off multiple times.

I think I just prefer my challenges at the ends of the journey (takeoff/landing) rather than the navigation. Getting from point a to b is not interesting for me. I only want to be paying attention when something is going on. This would also be why my working space plane has such a short range. I'm never going to fly it for more than 15 minutes, because all I do is takeoff's, landings, and a few loop-de-loops in between, so why would I design in extra fuel.

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As an unexperienced player, I prefer Minmus because of it's exciting terrain and ease of landing. The big blue lakes also make for easily-targeted landing sites. I got to Minmus on my first attempt and I was able to send a rescue mission to Minmus in one attempt with ease.

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With the Kethane mod, I intend to have a 3-step system, which Minmus would be awesome for:

1) Place a large station primarily made of Kethane tanks in orbit around Kerbin.

2) Place a medium-sized tanker ship with a few big Kethane tanks in orbit around Minmus.

3) Land a mining lander on Minmus.

The slight gravity of Minmus makes the penalties for lander-to-tanker trips small compared to the Mun. The freighter doesn't have to make the trip back to Kerbin very often, and it can refuel itself after it does, before pumping the remaining Kethane to the orbiting station. The station can then refuel ships launched from orbit before they start off for other planets.

Dunno how well it'll work, but I'm excited to try it. I was planning on doing it at the Mun, but the gravity makes Minmus much more appealing!

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Actually, that has been my main target so far.

landed 2 dragon rovers. 1 of them all the kerbals died to to leaving them outside during time acceleration, and the other died due to poor driving. i also sent a MEM module there. and the red spar 1999 eagle. I even sent a probe there for flyby.

yep. ive been busy with minimus

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