Zoku Gojira

Thanks for the welcome, Gojira. This is my handle from XBL and PSN as well, sorry to partially duplicate your nick, lol. Uri, if you think this ship is chunky, you should see the monstrosities I was launching before the last few updates. Triple and quad towers of fuel tanks that needed extensive help from SRBs just to lift off the pad at a plodding pace. Mighty impressive, just not terribly elegant. This thing is a svelte little spaceplane in comparison. 8)

'I chose the impossible. I chose... Mun Rapture!'[/Andrew Ryan voice] Very cool idea and well executed, kudos.

Thank you for your reply and very thoughtful feedback. The lander is indeed overkill, an over-reaction to previous landing attempts where the descent module either ran out of fuel or snapped a winglet, if not killing my Kerbalnauts then certainly transitioning their command module into what their space agency might call a 'stationary science platform.' Going for lower weight and working on my throttle discipline should have been my focus, as this experiment in brute force made for a fairly white-knuckled descent that I\'m not anxious to repeat. I thought the motionless winglets at least enhanced stability. I\'ll swap them out for the functional winglets if they really are basically stylish heat sinks. Also, I\'ll have a look at the asymmetry. Part placement kept wanting to place three or four of a fin or booster, so I went single in placing a lot of these parts, then had issues lining things up. My next iteration isn\'t likely to stay 100% stock, I\'ll probably add lander legs now that I\'ve made the trip with just the pinewood derby kit, so to speak. No warp drive yet, though.

After messing around for a long time trying to fix my ships from previous versions, I started over with the Athlete series and reached stable Munar orbit and return with the basic 2nd stage you see in the completed stack. Sorry, I didn\'t take snaps during the missions. The first time, I was convinced I\'d just crash again. And the second time I was convinced I was just lucky the first time. Hence the launchpad snap just to give a visual look at the stack. With the addition of a booster stage, I had the reaction mass needed, and more, for Munar landing and return, achieving this goal yesterday and once again since. This is a very forgiving and responsive machine, otherwise thorough Kerbal exploration of the Mun might still elude me. Save the RCS fuel for when you\'re out of the atmosphere and/or landing on the Mun. Just enable ASAS and launch, letting the airfoil surfaces do the work. This leaves a full tank of RCS fuel for quickly executing the roll after intiial stage-and-a-half separation and for the actual Mun landing. Leveling off on the way to a highly inclined orbit followed by Munar orbit insertion is quite a sight, looking like a spaceplane burning towards Kerbin\'s nearest neighbor. The vertical stabilizer on the upper surface of the orbital stage is there to help differentiate, but even without such visual aids, this stage is quite easy to control, and should have some fuel left over to aid in the burn towards the Mun.