RyanGt04

I use a radial fuel tank design on most of my rockets also. Like others have said, position the decouplers near the top of the so that is pushed out enough for your center stage to clear. If you are mostly clear of the atmosphere make sure you are either at 0 throttle or out of fuel with the radial engines before you stage. Make sure you rocket is moving as straight as possible and decouple your radial tanks. Start your center stage burn a couple seconds after this to allow for the radials to clear some and make sure you do this at very low throttle and your center stage will slowly pull out from the middle of the opening radial tanks. The only time I have ever had any problems doing this is when I use to much throttle initially with the center stage....once your clear then you can throttle up as much as needed

With caps lock on (precision control) your movements will be a lot slower allowing for more exact controls. The longer you hold down a key, like W to pitch down for example, the more force will be applied to the movement. I think that's the general idea. Test it out in flight and you'll see what I am talking about

Or you could skip lunch one day and buy the full game, then you can download all the mods you want. Can't find a better game than this for the price...and it's not even finished yet

This design had plenty of fuel for a return from the Mun. I haven't tried returning from Minmus yet but with the amount that I had leftover from the Mun return I think you would be able to make it. I slapped on a few booster for the Minmus version just to be safe and save some fuel during launch but that was probably a little overkill/fun (more flames). This design is super stable and can be landed easily without MechJeb, SAS, or RCS.

Back when I was still learning how get a Mun landing I was testing some designs that would give me enough fuel for a return trip. After making some small changes to the best rocket, I went for the Mun. I brought it down to just a few meters above the Mun surface for my first ever landing attempt only to realize that when I made changes to the lander legs I didn\'t turn symmetry back on :\'(

It might not have been the easiest but I used the cart rover as the lander and didn\'t have to worry about separating stages on the surface. I burned to kill most of my horizontal and vertical velocity near the surface, then used RCS to bring it down nice and easy like a hammer...damaging my parachute and stranding yet another crew on the mun. Here\'s what mine looked like, I haven\'t been on here in a while so not sure if anyone has made something similar or not.

This is my first and most successful Mun lander so far. I am still fairly new to KSP so this may not be the most efficient design but it is very easy to fly and has plenty of fuel for the trip to the Mun and back with extra left over. If maneuvered correctly it will also leave no debris in orbit. It has two initial solid booster stages to help get out of the first level of the atmosphere while saving some fuel. The next stage will separate after you begin to roll to build orbital velocity and will fall back to Kerbin. This stage will bring you to the Mun and help you eliminate some speed (this stage will disengage the middle portion of the rocket so you must be careful while separating from the jettisoned exterior fuel tanks to avoid collision). The next stage will help you with your descent to the surface. Finally you will be left with only the lander and plenty of fuel to make an easy landing and return to Kerbin. Please feel free to make any suggestions to help the design, I know it isn\'t perfect but so far it is my easiest lander. Thanks...enjoy

That\'s actually kind of a funny story, I didn\'t know how to lower the lander legs at the time. So instead of taking a couple seconds to look at the key bindings I just went ahead with my mission to the Mun and hoped that when I reached the stage with the legs in it they would lower....obviously this was a small mistake on my part. Now I\'m going to try it the right way *Update- I made some adjustments to the location of the lander legs to ensure they would extend below the engine and made a very successful entrance into Mun\'s orbit. The lander had a good separation from its main fuel tank and was approaching the surface for a smooth landing with gear extended this time. However, during my modification of the landing legs I did not notice that symmetry was not enabled! Its not very easy to land on one landing leg. The result was eerily similar to my previous post.

Something tells me this doesn\'t count as a successful landing :\'(

Yea, I had the demo for about a week before I realized there was a map view that shows your orbit pattern....guessing didn\'t work very well.

Just bought KSP Wednesday and love it! Yesterday I got my first successful Kerbin orbit and now tonight a successful Mun orbit. Gonna try to descend to the surface tomorrow.