spudman2

(Probably necroing this, but...) This is a good idea, especially with the need to recover science craft that's been added.

Holy wow, man... I am VERY impressed.

Aaand lol'ing on floor.

Hey! On my birthday!

Since it's Eve you could bolt a parachute to the top of it and shoot the rest of the lander away.

I've been doing the same thing, setting up a Mun base, lately, and I discovered a better deployment method. Rotate your payload 90 degrees, so tha if it were a car it would be sitting on its' trunk with the wheels sticking out to the side. Next, put two weaksauce rocket motors up near the front/top of it. Make sure the rockets point towards the wheels. Now, land it normally, then use SAS to tip the lander over. As it tips, use the two tiny engines to keep the tipping at a gentle speed. When you land, decouple and drive away.

I took two one-man rovers with me. I landed just fine, got the kerbals out and F5'd. I jettisoned a rover. It proceeded to suddenly become disinterested in everything and then rolled to the bottom of a crater, unkerballed and with no friends. Reload. I put Jeb in the way to stop it rolling. He was crushed. Reload. Jettison the rover on the uphill side this time. It landed nicely and parked itself against the engine! I rushed Jeb over to go for a drive... and I had the seat on upside down. Oh well, drive anyway. The badly-designed deathtrap flipped instantly, and tumbled... to the bottom of the crater, and then exploded. Jeb bailed, returned to the rocket, and tried to plant a flag in Bill, to no avail. I then returned to Kerbin with 3/4 fuel.

Wow... So yeah, even more struts was the answer. Haven't been able to actually get to Mun yet with the new design, but it gets out of the atmosphere just fine. Time to try again... And thanks for the link to the hilarious guide! "Ladies don't like a wobbly rocket." Update: Yay! It worked perfectly! The payload itself doesn't, but it can get there!

So, firstly, hi, I'm spudman2, and also new here. I hail from the great northern lands of the Orbiter forum, and have recently found KSP, and fallen into a committed relationship with it. Anyway, I'm trying to put a 26 ton payload into a Munar orbit, preferably as a straight shot (i.e. no LKO docking to refuel), but I continually run into my launch vehicle being too... terrible to do that with. So, my questions are A: Are there and tutorials on building specifically big launch vehicles? and B: Is putting this payload straight to Munar orbit possible? Thank you guys in advance.