lawsonuw

Cool little ship! The capsule RCS and 3-4 thruster unit is pretty good at holding together in a tip-over. You might try leaving off the landing wings next time so you have more of a fuel cushion. When I fly the RCS return module I try to do as much of the return burn close to the Munar surface as I can. So far I\'ve aimed to break a ~5-10K orbit at 800m/s, I\'ll try 850m/s next. It should also be more efficient to orbit against the Munar rotation ( a ~20m/s hit) and break orbit in the same spot to try leaving the Munar sphere of influence far from Kerth with a minimum of angular momentum. (i.e. trying something more like a bi-elliptic return) My goal is to be in an orbit intersecting Kerth\'s surface when I leave the Munar sphere of influence. Lawson

I\'ve made a full Munar lander with 3-4 tanks 3 wings and 8-10 RCS blocks. That\'s enough to touch down from ~50Km and -100m/s and return to Kerth. No ASAS so landing is tough, the analog sticks on my controller help a lot. Lawson

After experimenting with rcs thrusters. I decided to find the smallest craft that would return safely from the Munar surface. I\'ve estimated that each thruster provides 2.18 thrust. (or enough thrust to lift 0.22 Mu on Kerth) So, at Munar surface gravity two thrusters should be enough to lift the command module, parachute, and one RCS tank. Still, the thrust to weight would be marginal. I\'ve tried 3 and 4 RCS thrusters so far. Both are able to reach Munar orbit with a bit over 1/3 of a tank left. And assuming you got the orbital inclination right, can complete the return trip with some fuel to spare. (About 1/6th of a tank is needed to reach Munar escape velocity retrograde to Munar orbit. The final 1/6 of a tank is then more than enough to setup an aerobraking return trajectory. ) If you had a Kerbal Mun landing, like in these two screen shots, it\'s easy to recover with this return module. Use SAS and RCS to tip the ship on it\'s head pointing (mostly) strait down, and kick in full reverse RCS. Once +10m/s vertical velocity is reached, start rolling over allong 90 or 270 degrees longitude on the nav ball while controlling latitude to keep the vertical velocity at +10m/s, then keep thrusting till orbit is reached. (sorry no take off screenshots, I\'m kinda busy right then ) Landing back on Kerth is easy, just pop the chute and watch the (survivable) fireworks. The empty RCS tank and thrusters are light enough that you only fall ~11.5m/s this is slow enough that the expolsion of the RCS tank slows the command module enough to survive. Or if you have some fuel you can thrust before landing to drop the impact speed to just over 10m/s and make the landing gentler for the Kerbonauts. (still plenty of fireworks though.) Lawson