The2ndPete

Well, my fail seems to be more of an inability to land stuff on the Mun. I'm playing in 0.23 career with a stock install. After a set of manned flights all over Kerbin and doing everything sciencey possible in every biome )did you know there are 3 different ones alone in the KSC?) to me netted enough science to unlock the first tier of technologies I did a manned flyby of the Mun. So far, so easy. My orbital burn went without a flaw, the transfer into munar orbit was equally easy and apart from a slight excentricity on returning to Kerbin all was dandy. Lots of new science and the Stayputnik probe core. Yay! Unmanned test flights to the Mun! Well, my probe basically consisted of: - Stayputnik core - FLT-100 tank - LV-909 engine - two goo canisters and - four landing legs (long enough to hold the engine clear off the ground) The Mk.I was flown around the KSC to test stability and train landing since I remembered that landing on the Mun was particularly hard from my previous dabblings before the career mode. These test showed: You need MOAR POWER. So was born the Mun Probe Mk.II with three battery packs (why more, the engine generates charge, no?) and the Commutron antenna (a hindsight since my manned flyarounds showed: no antenna = no transmit). Slap on some SRBs, a stack of liquid tanks with LV-T45 and off goes the Mun Probe Mk.II! This flight... its fiery untimely reentry led to the creation of the Mk.III with MOAR Boosters to get me out of the lower atmosphere! Well, that allowed me to do some Goo science in low and high Kerbin orbits which allowed BIGGER Boosters! Sadly the transmit totally drained my batteries since I forgot to throttle up first :/ Hello Mk.IV! A central stage of two FLT-400 tanks on a LV-T45 getting the Mk.II Probe with some added thermometers to the Mun. Four sets of FLT-400+FLT-200+LV-T45 to push the center into LKO and start the burn to Mun. EIGHT large SRBs to get the whole orbital stage through the first 10km of Kerbins atmosphere. Wow what a flight, easy into orbit, perfectly over to the Mun, just leave map and timewarp and... why doesn't the probe respond? Wha...? ARRRGH! No power! Bye bye Mk.IV and hello Mk.IVb. Same setup, this time with very careful monitoring of the electric charge to replenish it with short burns when necessary. Needless to say, I came into Mun orbit and had my lunar transfer/landing preparation stage emptied. Ah shucks, shouldn't return anyway! Let's look for a nice spot and touch down there, transmit some science home! I looked at the orbit, chose a spot, set a node to get the right timing, estimated the remaining charge, judged it enough and timewarped. Exit at T-10s and... where's my power? SAS? AAARRRGH! Welcome Mk.V: Bigger tanks everywhere, basically. Because you have to compensate for the Science Jr. And there's gotta be a way to get down on Mun! LKO, transfer, insertion into LMO, picking a landing spot: flawless! Hmm, coming in quite fast with 180something m/s. Better slow down. Why am I drifting? Ah, the legs will handle that! Slow down, slow down, 4m/s above ground, roughly 2m, perfect! Slowly decrease throttle aaaand touchdontipnononostaaaAAARRRGH! OK, still I saw that I had quite some fuel left so just try again, pick a better spot and go again. Mk.Vb - dried out during Kerbin-Mun transfer and was without power to start engines. Mk.Vc - timewarped too far into Mun encounter and tried to drill to Mun core Then, finally: Solar Panels thanks to scraps of leftover science on Kerbin and a manned Minmus flyby. Mk.VI: Added four small solar panels to the Stayputnik, rest stayed the same. With that I was able to get my probe to Mun, go to a nice landing spot, touch down and tip over. But since the Stayputnik only broke the lower panel I did some goo science, looked into the Science jr, took temp measurements and transmitted all. Mk.VIb - flew well until I tried to touch down: tipped over, I tried to rescue it and created a nice set of explosions. The landing legs survived. Mk.VIc - crash and burn in Kerbin atmosphere due to untimely decoupling (thanks dog!) That was the moment I decided that BIGGER = BETTER. So welcome the Mun Probe Mk.VII: 6 landing legs around a LV-909, supplied from a FLT-200 fuel tank (for save returns). Topped with a Science jr. with two Goo Containers, one thermometer and a radial chute for ease of planned Kerbin touchdown. On top of that the Stayputnik core with Commutron and four small solar panels. The transfer stage got two FLT-400s on a LV-T45 and is junked by 8 Sepratrons after decoupling. The orbital insertion stage got a four-set with two FTL-400 on LV-T30 (for more power). The initial booster is a set of eight large SRBs and for the necessary control winglets and an inline reaction wheel are installed. The transfer was without trouble, until I burned the last fuel of the transfer and fired the probes 909er. It started wobbling. Not bad at first but definitely worrysome. SAS was on, gimbal unlocked so what caused that? Can anyone guess? Stubborn as I am I tried a slow descent to maybe eek out a touchdown but with every firing of the 909 the wobble got worse. In the end the Mk.VIIa did the same as many before: it ploughed into the Mun. No surviving parts but a nice stretch of explosions over some hundred metres. When even some quickloads all did the same I decided to start a new probe. Same setup for Mk.VIIb, thanks to a slightly botched start with less fuel in the transfer stage and thus higher orbital velocity for the probe core to kill. That meant more wobble and a nice compact explosion on the Mun surface. Dangit! Finally it dawned on me: that radial parachute. Only counterweight was a 2HOT... I decided to quit for that day. And add a set of RCS to the next probe! After all: there's no working probe on the Mun. Just a tipped one drawing just enough power to survive the night from the solar panels... And a set of four legs, lying somewhere quite picturesque.

Have you tried getting these to shapeways? Would be a nice complement to the different kerbals and planets Squad put up there...