Dave Kerbin

Done correctly it could be faster, I'm not entirely sure it would be more efficient if we are thinking about the same thing. I went south partially because I felt it was more intuitive but also because it provided the space to break things up into nice clear pieces. Without mods (like PreciseNode) getting around in KSP can be less then accurate, sometimes even frustrating. Using the stock maneuver node interface is far from accurate and while a player who already knows what they are doing can compensate and even make manual corrections mid burn it doesn't help someone who has not done that kind of maneuver before and is trying to learn from an example. For that reason I did it without combining steps or making intuitive adjustments (that could only be made by someone who already knew how it worked) to get things perfect. Stock KSP control is imperfect so any instructions or plans need to accept imperfection.

I did it in a sandbox file so there was no cost. It was a two stage lander because I wanted the ascent part to match your reported delta-v. If I had used a normal Mun lander then some of the fuel would be burned during landing, make it impossible to plan precisely how much fuel (and delta-v) would be available for ascent. I considered having drop tanks or shifting fuel around after landing but it was just much more simple to spec out an ascent ship that matched your delta-v and then throw it on top of a transit/landing stage and add a launch stage that was equally simple. I usually overlook that. Of course if I had landed somewhere else near the poles, maybe 90 degrees east or west, then I would need to wait several days while my orbit shifted in relation to the Mun to get the cheapest return, though I am somewhat convinced now that with 1000 m/s available you wouldn't need to wait, just find the best fit for that orbit and go. TAC life support makes things more complicated, since a low delta-v return can take more then 24 hours. I'm not sure how tight it was on your ship, but playing BTSM getting to and returning from the Mun in a short amount of time is very important since every minute you are consuming precious power and batteries add a lot of weight at that stage in the game (I've got it under 10 hours for the entire round trip in order to get it under the mass limit for certain tech levels).

Ok, somehow you've gotten to the Mun's polar crater. I'm used a 2 stage lander because I wanted to match your delta-v as closely as possible. The extra solar panels and communication dishes are to adjust the mass of the ascent ship slightly so that it has a total delta-v of 1000.7 m/s. The big engine on the descent stage has been shutdown and so it will only serve as a launchpad for our return. Now in my original set of comments I suggested that if you where close to the equator you should find east and take off in that direction. Since we are much closer to the pole we'll take a different tactic - take off and fly directly south at the same 45 degree angle. In map view we wait until the AP is around 8 or 10km and shutoff the engine, we are aiming for a low and fast orbit. If you have a low thrust to weight ratio (small engine, heavy ship) you'll want to go to the high end, maybe even go to 12km because you'll need some vertical clearance for the burn after this one. Using a maneuver node we plot out how long and what direction we need to burn to get into this low orbit. My maneuver node told me that I needed to burn for 16 seconds so I pointed my ship at the blue indicator and when it read T-8s I throttled up the engine. This put me into a low orbit around the Mun with around 371 m/s of delta-v remaining to get home. This flight was done in a fresh save so I actually had the Mun lined up nicely. If it hadn't been lined up I could have waited a while in orbit until the orbital paths crossed. I'm placing a maneuver node close to where my orbit meets the Mun's orbit on the 'front' side of the Mun (if you considered the Mun a vehicle moving forward in orbit). Next we drag out the pro-grade vector to break Mun orbit. Like I said before an easy way to do this is to take the available delta-v and create a maneuver with slightly less then that (so maybe 360 m/s). Once the maneuver is in place we start moving it forward until we find the 'sweet spot' where it dips low into Kerbin's atmosphere or even disappears into the planet. In this case using 360 m/s is more then enough to go into Kerbin, even when I then reduced it to 276 m/s it was still more then enough to easily reach Kerbin and I had to nudge it a bit around the sweet spot to get a 30 km entry instead of plowing straight into the ground (I'll admit this is stock so that actually works but I've play a lot with Deadly Reentry so I've picked up the habit). The burn is done the same way as the orbital insertion burn and we are safely on our way back to Kerbin.

If you are going above the atmosphere you aren't playing 'casual' (if KSP can even be mentioned in the same sentence given that it's a complex physics simulator that requires you to do literal rocket science). MechJeb isn't a cheat but it can easily mislead players into think that MechJeb's solution to a given problem is the right one. When you ask MechJeb to return you to Kerbin or dock with another ship it is not giving you the best solution it is giving you a solution and more often then not it is the brute force solution which is good for a computer but bad for a human (not only is MechJeb wasteful of monopropellent when docking, trying to copy its method as a human pilot will result in docking being about 10 times harder then it should be). Give me a few minutes and I'll show you, in pictures, exactly how to return from the Mun Polar Crater using less then 1000 m/s.

Ok, I think I understand the situation now.

How far is your landing site from the Mun's equator? Are long as you are close you should be able to do it (if you want to post your persistent file I could even test it for you). If I was doing it I would fly it like this: -While on the ground look at your navball and find the orange 'north' line that runs though part of it. Go counter clockwise from that line 90 degrees to find 'east'. It's just like when you launch from Kerbin and turn right, only on the Mun you might be twisted around so you need to figure out the right direction. -Take off at full thrust and unless you need to clear a crater wall immediately turn 45 degrees east. -Quickly switch to map view and hover your mouse over the AP marker. When it hits about 10km (or even 8) press X to cut engines. -Drop a maneuver node on your AP point and pull the prograde pointer until it shows a roughly circular orbit. -The maneuver should give you a direction and burn length. Point in that direction and start burning at about the half way point (so if it is a 20 second burn, starting your engines at T-10 seconds from the maneuver node) -You should be in a low, fast orbit around the Mun. You may want to calculate your total delta-v at this point. -Zoom out a bit so you can see the orbit line that the Mun follows. That line crosses your own ships orbit twice. Start by placing a maneuver node on one that is in the direction the Mun is traveling. -Again drag the prograde marker out until the total m/s is close to but not quite equal to the amount of remaining delta-v. -Now start moving the node around, you'll want to move it closer to the side of the Mun facing Kerbin. This is much easier with PreciseNode since you can use keyboard shortcuts but it can be done with just the mouse. Turn the camera a bit so you don't accidentally pull the normal/anti-normal part of the maneuver node while you are moving it. -You should be able to find the point where it will take you out of the Mun's orbit and swinging low enough to Kerbin to aerobrake -Use the same technique to burn for this manuever node as you did for the first one -You should hopefully have a few drops of fuel left (and maybe RCS too). If you find that you didn't quite get low enough to aerobrake in Kerbin's atmosphere then wait until you reach the AP in your new orbit around Kerbin and use any remaining fuel and RCS to brake.

Was the save created before .24? I'm not sure that .23.5 career saves are treated as 'career' or if they are 'science'.

Just to be sure, you are using the [ and ] keys to try switching and nothing is happening?

Objects that are 'on rails' in KSP don't interact with anything because they are being simulated as just a solid mass orbiting whatever body they are near (so no rotation, no structural flexing, no atmospheric drag). However to avoid some issues there is an altitude above every body where an on rails object will be deemed to have 'crashed'. For Kerbin that altitude is 22km so any on rails object getting that close will 'crash' and be instantly deleted.

Putting Moho/Eeloo together kind of messes things up. I would rate Eeloo as noticeably easier then Moho or Tylo. The only difficulty with Eeloo is that it is a small target to get an intercept with so you're fiddling with maneuver nodes (as the maneuver node editor is improved it gets easier). Tylo vs Moho is hard to say. While Tylo does requre an extra step to reach it's not very hard. Tylo is basically brute force in terms of how much delta-v you need to carry. Moho requires more finese - it does require a good amount of delta-v, but if you are off even a little the delta-v costs skyrocket. I guess I would have to consider the ships required. A ship with enough delta-v for Tylo could do Moho even with mistakes, so I guess I'd have to rate Tylo as the harder one. That fits in well with the fact that Tylo is often not a very tempting target.

Unless it has changed in .23.5 (I don't think it has, they where going to use monopropellent but held back on that) then the pack has a delta-v of 600 m/s. You have plenty of delta-v to get off Gilly and board, it's just a matter of accurate piloting. As for fatal collisions that's a harder question. It seems that it matters a lot the position and angle of the impact - for some reason Kerbals can survive some pretty bad impacts if they land on their head or at an angle. I think Scott Manley has some videos where he explores that question.

(Further R&D background) The sling method wasn't my only idea for crew transfer but it was the most viable. Another involved having an extended ladder sticking out of both ships but that would have required switching between the ship and the kerbal rapidly to keep them perfectly aligned. A variant on the sling idea was to actually send the ship on a collision course using RCS, have the kerbal (who is holding onto a ladder right in position to be squashed between the two) let go, then reverse course at the last second so only the kerbal drifts forward. Again this would have required some timely switching and I wasn't confident it could work 100% of the time. Once I had figured out a viable design (mostly with tier 6 tech) I assembled it in the VAB to see what it would look like. Without Advanced Construction there would be no struts, and without fuel lines I could end up dictating overly tall fuel tanks to match what was designed on paper (pure numbers). I originally started out with the Apollo style pod to shuttle the crew to the Mun and back, using the tier 6 batteries and the tier 6 probe core. The batteries where the first to go when I figured out that I could do both trips in under 5 hours. The rest stayed for a while as I tried to find ways to save weight on the return trip - getting to the Mun and landing seemed be a solved problem if I could get the return to work. I had 4 combinations - Apollo or Can, tier 6 probe core (2.5em/min) or tier 5 (5em/min) that I would plug each set of new numbers into to see how low I could go. Using the more primitive probe core meant carrying an extra 750em in power while the Can required an extra 257em/hour to operate, offsetting most of the weight savings. My fear that I could end up with an unworkable design was correct when I reached a workable tier 5 + can set of numbers. To save weight both lander and transit designs originally used a single engine (I alluded to that when I talked about the lander originally having an engine in the middle that needed to be protected by the landing legs). This meant that the numbers dictated a lot of fuel in one long tank. Here you can see two revisions of the transfer ship (the second one has the final pod design, only the engine/fuel tank layout was revised) and a pre-final version of the lander. Despite trying to design it to keep the weight balanced for landing it really didn't look right. With that in mind I tried putting it on the launchpad. This is how joints work in .23.5. Nothing on that ship is broken yet - it slowly leaned over and eventually the center of weight had moved far enough that the part right side started to tip off the launchpad (you can see it starting to tip) which caused the bent over top to come in contact with the ground and explode. I reworked it, combining the transit and landing into one stage and moving some fuel to the 2nd stage booster so that I could use two engines. The transit ship got the same modification though initially there was an issue with fuel tank placement, it would prevent the top of the capsule from ejecting. That was solved by rotating the 2nd stage booster 90 degrees so that the 3rd stage engines could be lowered.

Some background on various parts of the mission. I used my original BTSM save to play around with some of the ideas before committing to the final mission (I also wanted to know exactly what techs I would need so I could ensure the missions I was planning returned enough science - while the ships where not complete I had all the numbers balanced before the end of the Clarke missions so I knew which items needed to be unlocked). My goal of course was getting to the Mun without using Advanced Construction and generally as low tech as possible. I originally started with most of the tier 6 items but worked down from there. FlowerChild was correct in his original assessment that a manned mission to the surface of the Mun might be possible (in fact Effinger 1 had about the right amount of remaining power and delta-v to land though without legs it might not have been pretty) but that was as far as you could go on 125 tons. My own math agreed with him but I was sure there was a way around it. I considered one profile where the crew would land in one ship and take off in another one, but the weight savings from only needing life support for half a journey where just not enough to even suggest it was possible. My next idea was a crew transfer. I didn't have docking ports so they couldn't do it internally and I didn't have jetpacks so they couldn't do it under their own power but many times in the past I've used the mechanics of centrifugal force to toss previously connected ships apart by releasing the docking port after starting a spin. My first trip to the Mun used it to accurately get the used lander safely out of the way. But throwing something away and accurately throwing a kerbal at a target are two things so I sent up a test mission to LKO. Of course with most of the tech tree unlocked I would have a safety net. Infinite power, lots of monopropellent, both ships under probe control and SAS, and most importantly the crew would have jetpacks so they could simply grab the controls and fly back for another try if they missed. Merdun and Jorster piloted the ship which carried the docking target with it before it was detached and positioned about 10m away for testing. Initially things don't go very well. Merdun misses the target half a dozen times and needs to use his jetpack to flyback. Eventually I bring the ships closer, to 5m and try again. Here I learn more about the factors that control success or failure and finally make a successful transfer. With some more practice I understand what needs to be done to make it work without the safety net on a real mission. The 3 factors I identified where: 1. The release angle doesn't matter. Now in reality the angle that the kerbal is released (if you draw a line from him to the center of the ship he is holding onto and to the target ship) is the key factor in what direction he will fly off in. Release too early and he'll go too wide, release too late and he'll cross over and miss the target on the other side. But once you are controlling a kerbal the camera is moving in such a way that it's just not very practical to try and precisely judge that angle. From my animated gif earlier you can see how I'm constantly moving the camera to get the correct angle, because the rotating ship keeps moving the kerbal and the camera attached to him away. Of course this leads directly into the second factor. 2. You must be close. This seems really obvious but because of the camera issue you need to get really, really close to the target. Close enough that you significantly reduce the impact that the angle of release has on success. You want it to be like shooting the side of a barn. With Effinger 1/Fearn I was holding my breath not because of the risk of losing the kerbals, but because the radial fuel tank on Effinger was coming within inches of Fearn on each rotation. If they collided it would have thrown the unpowered Fearn off course and trashed the transfer. 3. The vertical element matters a lot. It wasn't until I got closer that I found out how frequently a correctly timed fling would still fail because the kerbal would go above or below the target. Because of orbital mechanics the ships are never 100% stationary in relation to each other. There is a small and growing amount of relative movement. On the other two axis this small movement isn't important because it is easily out matched by the sling velocity of the kerbal. But on the up/down axis this small difference means that even though the ships are correctly aligned when we start spinning in the 10 seconds or so it takes to align, release and float across the distance they can easily have moved 1m vertically, enough to miss the hatch entirely. I realized that for the final ship I would need two things, one was careful attention paid to try to align and cancel out vertical velocity, and the other was a tall ladder so that I could either adjust my vertical position up until the last second, or so that I had an extra tall target to aim for (aim for the center and I could drift up or down and still hit it).

Effinger 1 (Part 3) Rewinding a few hours Fearn 1 has landed and surface operations have been completed. While the crew waits for Effinger 2 to circle around ground control takes advantage of the remaining power on Effinger 1 to line it up for a return to Kerbin. It made sense for the ship that carried the crew out to simply be a copy of the ship that would bring them back, and a consequence of that is that Effinger 1 has the same landing capabilities (this was also an important safety feature so that if something went wrong during the launch, or if the orbit inclination or fuel level was unacceptable, then the crew could abort and return to Kerbin). Without the preparation that went into Effinger 2's atmospheric skip return it's not smart to try the same return from a lower Mun orbit. Instead Effinger 1 is sent on a course that will take it to within 45 km of Kerbin's surface - low enough to induce drag but high enough to generate little heat. Since the battery won't last much beyond Mun orbit (and indeed the capsule will be seperated from the rest of the ship before it does) it doesn't really matter how long it takes for it to finally make it to Kerbin's surface. Indeed it takes many passes. After finally making a gentle reentry the unmanned capsule is deposited in some grasslands. It's a bit heavier then Effinger 2 (more monopropellent), doesn't have the benefit of RCS thrust slowing it down and is landing at a higher altitude. All this means that a feature meant for the manned capsule is put to use, the destructable landing cushion. While some of the crew reports are redundent the capsule does bring back valuable information, completing the manned mun mission program. Mun landing preparation included 7 launches gathering 890 science over a period of 13 hours and 10 minutes (enough science to unlock all of tier 5 except for Advanced Construction, though in this case 2 items where ignored to grab a tier 6 item). The Mun landing itself needed 3 launches (for a total of 10) and took 20 hours to complete the main objective, with another 39 hours required to bring back the last crew report ending the program on Year 1, Day 4, 0:00:15.

Effinger 2 (Part 2) With the move to the return capsule things are going well. Effinger 2 has enough power to run the life support system for 5.5 hours, right on the mark. Thanks to a better then expected Kerbin launch (planning on paper can never really capture the exact efficiency of an air ascent so my designs tend to always come up with extra delta-v from that portion) there is over 700 m/s available though only 400 m/s will be used since the return burn was calculated far in advance based on a known altitude and return path (depositing Effinger 2 into a 30 km holding orbit was very deliberate). It won't take too long to reach the return point though in the mean time some more crew reports can be taken (some are redundent with the ones already collected, including a high orbit one I'll take later, but I want them in case the others are lost). Fearn 1 is still drifting nearby up until the burn for home. (that other ship on a return course will be explained shortly) Approaching initial reentry the service module is ejected after transfering electricity and life support to the command pod and some monopropellent to the service module (only a small amount is needed and any excess is extra weight for the parachute for which the landing velocity is expected to be close). The reentry is designed to limit the air pressure the capsule is exposed to on the first pass to keep temperatures under 1400 degrees. The capsule then skips back up to 42 km where it makes a much slower second and final descent. Landing over water is ideal and at the last moment the remaining monopropellent is used to brake a little more to make a safe water landing at 7.5 m/s. Oh, those Golden Grahams. Crispy, crunchy, graham cereal, brand new breakfast treat...

Fearn 1 (Part 2) Being on the Mun's light side there isn't much point in staying in orbit for long since that only burns life support. After passing over the canyon (and taking a crew report) a deorbit burn is made that seperates Fearn 1 from Effinger 1 (without a crew Effinger's power reserves are now enough for about 2 orbits operated by the still active probe core). Once the burn is complete the landing legs are extended as the descent begins toward a nice and flat area free of any large craters. For landing the ship is rotated to align east/west (the same as launch, with the orange north marker at the bottom). This is so that the two fuel tanks are aligned to match any residual horizontal velocity when we land - a velocity line drawn through the tanks would also pass through the center of the ship, so that the extra mass there doesn't gain any leverage over the ship and twist, flip or otherwise imbalance it on landing. That's important since the landing gear is set to be rigid in order to prevent the engines from touching the ground (granted the leg setup was designed while the ship still had a single engine, the double engine/large fuel reserve design came later after an interesting pad weight test). The landing is mostly smooth, the lander is not quite aligned with the terrain (last minute breaking) and it teeters a bit to the other side though RCS thrusters and SAS keep it firmly planted. The lander actually carries several instruments including a Double-C, 2Hot and PresMat which are all used to gather readings on the surface to make sure it is safe to go outside (this data is all transfered to the capsule). To save on supplies Sidwell is the only one to get out. He collects a soil sample and records his observations before planting a flag and then returning to the capsule. There is still 958 m/s of delta-v for ascent so we are good there. There is also enough power to meet all requirements and 100 minutes of life support which is our current limiting factor. Launch from the Mun won't be for 40 minutes to give time for the orbiting Effinger 2 to line up. During this window Effinger 1 (still fresh on power) makes some final maneuvers which will be covered later on since they don't affect the rest of the mission. When it is time Fearn 1 launches to intercept Effinger 2 which has been orbiting at 30 km for hours. The initial intercept is on the dark side, but since it will take one or more orbital corrections to actually get into range I decide against trying to fast track it. With adequate power and life support and the relative position of a light side meeting point it makes more sense to get to that point using supplies on Fearn 1, delaying the time when Effinger 2 is powered back up and begins depleting its own reserves. Finally meeting near the same point where the Effinger 1/Fearn 1 transfer occured the same procedure is used to send over the crew. This time Sidwell remembers to take the data with him before going over. After that Fearn 1 needs some SAS stabilization and is brought back into alignment with Effinger 2 for the 2nd transfer. Wilmon isn't as excited by the transfer but things go ok and he boards Effinger 2 and powers it up with Sidwell. There was one other important thing that was carried over and that was power - in developing the return profile it became clear that there wasn't enough mass to carry a complete safety margin, it was very close but not enough. The solution was that since some of the batteries would be empty from the probe core, I could rely on bringing 400em across from Fearn 1 in the space suits. Once on board the suit could be hooked up and that power dumped into the ships batteries, providing another 30 minutes of power (completing the safety margin needed for a complete orbit around the Mun to reach the departure point). With the transfer complete I don't really have any further use of Fearn 1. It will simply remain in Mun orbit as junk.

Effinger 1 (Part 2) After the planned burns and a few smaller ones at the intercept point to match orbit the ship is able to meet up with the drifting Fearn 1 on the day side of the Mun. Along the way a few crew reports are taken of the Mun's surface. RCS thrusters are used to approach to within a few meters and the ship is turned to face north like Fearn 1. Effinger 1's probe core is activated for the first time and takes over the job of station keeping. With the ships 5m apart some minor adjustment is done (H and N keyd) to try and match their velocity along the north/south axis as closely as possible. We need to be less then 0.1 m/s along that axis to make the next part work. The outer thrusters are given a quick tap to start the ship spinning around the north axis and then Wilmon opens the hatch. Climbing down the ladder he tries to position himself at the same level as the hatch on Fearn 1. As the ship spins he fidgets a bit up and down the ladder to try and be sure he is right. This was why it was so important to eliminate velocity on the up/down axis, so that he could line himself up strictly by eye without having to calculate vertical drift as well. When the time comes he lets go of the ladder and begins to drift. Without his grip on the ladder the centripetal force has been transformed into a linear one propelling him toward Fearn 1. Smiling at the feeling of being free in space he travels for a few seconds before he gets within reach of the ladder right of Fearn 1's hatch. He grabs on and once he is happy he climbs the ladder around to the hatch and enters the ship (when at a junction between ladders going in different directions use the A and D key to make your kerbal turn 90 degrees). The next part of the operation is time sensitive. Fearn 1 is still not operational (the probe core is disabled and it takes 2 kerbals to run the system - we can assume Wilmon is still using his space suit until environmental controls are brought online) but due to Wilmon it has been imparted a small amount of rotational velocity. If we wait too long it will be out of alignment and impossibly difficult to safely reach as it tumbles uncontrolled. The station keeping system on Effinger 1 makes a small adjustment on the north/south axis again to align the two the best it can and cancel out velocity on that axis. Then Sidwell gets out and prepares for his own transfer as Effinger 1's hatch lines up for a second time with the sling path. Sidwell makes a perfect trip, grabbing on just above the hatch. Upon entering and powering up Fearn 1 with Wilmon the ship immediately starts blowing RCS thrusters, as the SAS system had been previously left in the on position by the probe system. Everything seems to have gone correctly except for one thing. Neither Sidwell or Wilmon remembered to bring the crew reports with them, they are still in the cabin of Effinger 1. Time, power and risk won't be spared to try and retrieve them at this time, in fact a plan has already formed on how they can probably be recovered without adding any burden to the rest of the mission.

Fearn 1 and Effinger 2 (Part 1) 12 hours before Effinger 1 reached the Mun (over 9 hours before it was even launched) a different ship was on the pad. Fearn 1 was launched unmanned, controlled by a QBE probe core. Like Effinger 1 it is close to the weight limit at 124.995 tons and also drains some monopropellent to stay under, though it still has a very large reserve at 200L in total. Fearn 1 has a larger 2nd stage so it not only makes orbit but has enough fuel for most of the Munar injection burn. Again this is by design, though due to some last minute design changes relating to monopropellent it reaches orbit with slightly less liquid fuel delta-v then desired. Still within the safety limits but some delta-v expected for padding is not there. There is a chance I might have to use that large monopropellent reserve to make up some delta-v late in the flight. Inclination is 0.7 degrees and I correct it while still in Kerbin orbit. Because of later time constraints it's important that Fearn 1 be a on a nice equatorial orbit to speed up intercept later on. It's a straight forward burn out to the Mun and Fearn 1 arrives at a 15 km PE 4 hours and 5 minutes after launch where it captures into a circular orbit. As soon as capture is completed and a smooth 15 km orbit is confirmed the battery level (2631em) is checked and delta-v is calculated (1685 m/s). Delta-v is close to the cut off, but I do have that monopropellent reserve (154L) to fall back on. With everything checked out Fearn 1 is given a final command to align itself to point 'north' and then all systems, including the probe core itself, are shutdown. The ship is now drifting in stable orbit and could stay there for weeks if necessary (this was part of the plan, as it means I don't need to juggle time restraints or get multiple launches perfect - each launch can be aborted and a replacement prepared without ruining the rest of the sequence). After Fearn 1 is inserted into orbit there is a second unmanned ship to be launched. Basically a copy of Effinger 1 but launched several hours in advance and under probe control instead of being manned. Effinger 2 uses nearly an identical ascent path to the one that will be used shortly by Effinger 1, but is slightly less accurate. Orbital inclination is 1.1 degrees and a maneuver is used to correct it before burning to setup a 4 hour trip to the Mun. Capturing into a 30 km orbit the fuel and power are checked. There is a lot of extra delta-v though power is close to the limit at 5053 em. That was somewhat expected and a good deal of planning for Effinger 2 went into how to deal with the power situation. Like Fearn 1 the ship is aligned to face north and then shutdown. One small things was noted during the flight of Effinger 2, is that the RCS thrusters where not very effective for certain attitude changes. 2 thrusters where attached just before the launch of Effinger 1 to fix this as those attitude adjustments would be required for that mission (I've recently discovered that RCS thrusters are massless so no monopropellent adjustments had to be made)

Effinger 1 (Part 1) After 7 missions we finally have the technology to send kerbals to the Mun. The crew will consist of the two experienced kerbals, Sidwell and Wilmon, who launch into orbit in the early morning. Their ship is close to the pad weight limit, 124.987 tons. Some monopropellent was drained from the tanks to bring it under the limit, so it launches with 48L in total. The second stage takes the ship into orbit but has only 1L of fuel left for the 78 m/s circularization burn. The third stage being required to make orbit was planned and I'm still ahead on fuel. I'm pleased with the inclination - 0.5 degrees which is small enough that I'm not going to correct it before making the Mun burn. That's good because it also cuts down on the time spent in LKO since I can immediately plan my injection burn instead of waiting for the right point to change my inclination (and then circle around again to where I can make for the Mun). I need to get to the Mun fast, so my burn is 930 m/s for a 3.5 hour trip. I do end up correcting the inclination as a 10 m/s burn midway to the Mun, something I'll need to keep in mind for future use. Entering high orbit around the Mun I begin planning my next major manuever, an intercept. I have 3 hours of life support at this time so I can't spend a lot of time orbiting around the Mun. A pair of manuevers should setup my initial intercept within a single orbit or about 2 hours, leaving me with enough time to complete the rest with a safety margin. But before I go any further I should rewind to what was was going on 12 hours prior to Effinger 1 entering the Mun's SOI...

Delany 1 With space flight now possible for kerbals it's now time to make a dry run at reaching the Mun to confirm how far it is away and discover if there are any unexpected conditions between here and there. Delany 1 will complete this mission, carrying several pods with biological samples to test conditions along the route and some instruments to scan with when we get near to the Mun. It's a night launch but that doesn't seem to pose any extra challenges. A 100 km orbit is achieved and circularized by burning the last of the fuel in the second stage. The third stage is ready to go to the Mun with about 10.5 hours of battery life. I had planned on a pure free return but I couldn't really get the timing to work out - with a set amount of battery power I didn't want to risk getting to the Mun and not being able to collect readings. Instead I opted for a fast trip and use a course correction once in Mun orbit. As it travels to the Mun Goo samples are exposed in low and high Kerbin orbit to get an idea of the conditions along the route. Swinging through high and then low Mun orbit more Goo samples are exposed and the temperature and pressure are recorded. Passing close to the Mun a gravity reading is taken to help prepare for a future landing. With that done a course correction is made to bring the probe back for reentry on a skip trajectory - the probe will decend to 33 km for aerobraking, enough to lower the AP into the atmosphere but not enough to break orbit entirely, rise back up to around 50 km and then descend back into the thicker atmosphere but now going much slower then the Mun return velocity. With the power running out a few hours before return the capsule is already seperated and the parachute armed. A soft landing is made in the desert. Delany 1 earns 269 science and unlocks Landing and Advanced Landing.

A long time ago I asked a question about whether it was safe to delete Bill, Bob and Jeb from my save file. I wanted to have new, original crew members each time I started a new career. No one had yet encountered any issues with this and so I did it and I've run several careers without issue. But now I've found (and was able to sort of patch back into a working state) one issue that occurs. For some reason if you delete crew from the Crew {} section after your career is already underway it causes a completely unrelated bug to occur - the R&D building is closed and you can't run experiments (you get the message you would in sandbox mode). It seems like a really weird connection and I couldn't figure it out immediately because I had made several non-science related launches between deleting those 3 and trying to do some science. It was only because I started keeping a backup at the end of each mission to guard against the kraken that I was able to run diff on working vs not working save files. The cause of past issues was not found and in fact those sections where identical between the working and not working files. I removing differences one by one but the only difference that had an effect on the R&D facility was the crew list. By adding back the 3 deleted crew members the R&D building suddenly worked again. This did mean I had to go in and manually figure out the correct seat assignments for kerbals already in flight (since they where replaced by jeb and bill) but it finally all works. So the warning here is, don't edit the Crew {} section after your career in underway, even if you've never used those crew members.

Clarke 1 and Clarke 2 With mastery of the rockets steering we can now turn to the most important matter, safely sending up kerbals. While we have learned a lot about the conditions up there we still haven't sent anything living so we need to be cautious. Clarke 1 won't travel all the way up to the place with no air, instead this trip will be a short one to evaluate how well the pilot respondsas well as testing some biological samples. Navigation on this flight won't be difficult but it will be dangerous so a special candidate, Wilmon Kerman, is selected. The first stage carries the ship up beyond 10km and things seem to be going fine. At this point the second stage takes over and begins to turn into a more horizontal flight - we don't want to go too high. When the second stage separates it also arms the parachutes - this way if something goes wrong like Wilmon losing consciousness or maybe going insane from seeing whatever is up there he will still be returned safely to the ground. It is rather scary looking down from up here, so it's a good thing that no pilot input is required from this point on. As the ship nears the surface at a terrifying speed the parachute opens for a soft touchdown. Clarke 1 earns 85 science and unlocks Space Exploration For the second mission a braver, smarter kerbal will be needed. Sidwell Kerman is up to the task and boards Clarke 2 which has an added stage and a new capsule designed after examining the goo samples and reading Wilmon's crew reports. This capsule should work even in a vacuum. With the added stage the first stage only reaches 7 km, but the third stage adds plenty of additional power. Like Bester 2 the ship is able to reach above the atmosphere and from there it can burn to enter orbit. Entering an orbit like Bester 2 Sidwell can make observations about many places on Kerbin as he quickly passes over them. On the far side he reaches an altitude of over 250km and reports his findings. After making observations of all the various places he can see and completing an orbit Sidwell turns the ship around and uses the engine to brake. Based on the information from Bester 1 and 2 the new capsule has a device to counter the effects of reentry and is able to safely return to the surface. Clarke 2 earns 280 science and unlocks Advanced Flight Control, Aerodynamics and Heavy Rocketry

Bester 1 and 2 With going up figured out we need to figure out how to navigate. We need fins to steer and an engine that can be used more then once so that we can change our course. Something that we've been scratching our heads on is the realization that going up also means coming back down - but since the planet isn't flat how exactly does 'down' work? We've put together an instrument that can measure this downward tug called gravity. As we pass over the curvature of Kerbin we can study it closely and figure out how to find our way when down keeps changing. Bester 1 takes off on its new liquid engines and is able to fly straight with the use of its fins. Once it reaches an acceptable height ground control commands it to start turning toward the mountains but the turn stalls part way through, it's still climbing but not turning. It seems the fins only work when there is enough air around and as Bester 1 climbed the air became too thin. Since we don't have control over its direction anymore the engines are throttled down and the probe is left to coast. As it travels westward information about gravity is recorded as it passes over the grasslands and into the highlands, then the mountains. Here it reaches the highest point yet reached by a probe and checks the temperature to see if it keeps getting colder the higher you go. After that the probe begins descending down toward and past the western shore. As the air thickens it seems to heat up and the probe begins to crack at the strain, breaking up over the water before it can make any determinations about it. Bester 1 earns 108 science and unlocks Survivability, Flight Control and General Construction Bester 2 attempts to correct the issues of Bester 1. First a new tiny engine using a fuel that can be ignited in small bursts is added in a set of clusters called a reaction control system that will allow the ship to turn or rotate even without air. The second improvement is an inovation to counter the ballooning mass of the probes (Bester 1 is fifteen times the mass of Asimov 1) - rather then send the whole probe up an explosive charge can seperate a small part of it. After lifting off the RCS system assists in turning the ship even when the fins become useless and when fuel runs out on the first stage the second stage seperates into its own ship to carry on the journey on a course that traces the curve of Kerbin's surface. A second burn in space to keep following the terrain has the effect of putting the ship into 'orbit'. It is always falling but never losing altitude. This will be very useful and the ship can now coast without any additional thrust, passing over the north pole's ice caps and surrounding tundra before coming out above the ocean on the other side of the planet and continuing down toward the south pole. The planet is also rotating beneath the ship, so by the time Bester 2 gets back to the point where it launched it is now above a desert on the western continent instead. With lots of interesting data collected the probe is commanded to try and stop. By burning in the opposite direction it is able to return, though the same heat and pressure consumes Bester 2 as it did Bester 1. Bester 2 earns 100 science and unlocks Science Tech and Advanced Rocketry

Asimov 1 and 2 The goal of the Asimov missions is to explore the basics of going up and figuring out what it is like 'up there', since that is where the Mun appears to be. The first mission reaches an altitude of 23 km and transmits back that it gets rather cold up there. We'll definitely need to learn more about the conditions between here and the Mun so we can be prepared for the trip, we might need to bring winter coats. Asimov 1 earns 4 science and unlocks Basic Rocketry The second mission adds more boosters so we can go higher and a barometer is added on the back with some batteries to get air pressure readings too. By firing the boosters in groups we don't run out of fuel until we are already at 27 km, higher then our last mission. The pressure readings up here are very low, and both the pressure and temperature continue to drop as the probe coasts higher. It's really too bad we couldn't steer in case we might reach the Mun. Finally it reachs a maximum altitude of 76 km and makes a shocking discovery - not only is it colder then the coldest winter up here, there is no air! Asimov 2 earns 44 science and unlocks Basic Flight Control and General Rocketry

BTSM Career #3 - Mun on a Dime This will be my third playthrough of BTSM and I've got an even shorter goal this time (I do like the early game with limited technology much more then the later game). BTSM has been updated with weight limits, so now there are real, fixed goal posts for me to meet. My objective with this playthrough is to send a manned mission to the Mun, collect a soil sample and return everyone safely. The catch is I want to do it with as few techs as possible (I did a low tech landing on the last playthrough but I'm going to try and beat it) and in particular I want to see if it's possible to do this mission without unlocking Advanced Construction. Advanced Construction is an important tier 5 tech (tier 6 is where space suits and other Mun equipment are) and contains 3 key items: docking ports, struts and finally it unlocks a 250 ton pad limit. Until you get Advanced Construction the largest ship you can launch is 125 tons with the latest version of BTSM. I had thought of trying to restrict my playthrough up to the Mun landing as well but I couldn't think of a good set of restrictions that wouldn't be too easy or completely impossible. So instead I've partially role played it, with an emphasis on missions that are advancing my space program from a role playing perspective and not just randomly collecting science.