My first landing on the mun was surprisingly uneventful - and not particularly well planned. I just went by feel, rather than go by navball and altitude and stuff like that. This was on my second play of the game, so I had no idea how to do most things - hadn't even played the tutorial. So I somehow, miraculously, landed my two kerbals on the mun! One of them left the lander, bounced around a bit, and then returned. I had no idea at this point you could plant flags, so really I have no idea why I bothered going there anyway. I think Jeb talked me into that. He does that sometimes. (Don't ask me about the trip to Duna.) My second landing was somewhat more eventful. It took place shortly after the first one... As in it took place after I realized on trying to get off the mun that I didn't have enough fuel left even to get into stable orbit around the mun. Luckily trying to get into orbit at any cost had given me a very shallow trajectory, and just before landing I managed to ease it down a little with my RCS-thrusters... the slide was forever, things exploded all over the place, and I did my best imiation of those three monkeys, trying not to see the terror, not to hear the explosions, and not to wake my neighbours with my terrified wailing. Did I mention I had no idea you could revert missions to launch? Or like... pretty much anything else about the game? Anyway, some debris remained, as did the landing capsule, and my kerbals were shaken, but not stirred. Except for Jeb, he's... definitely stirred, not shaken. Except possibly as a baby. Repeatedly. So now... now I had kerbals stuck on the mun. I was desperate. Time to read the instru... uh... nevermind. Time to google! "How do you rescue Jeb! (Because screw the other guy, he's just dead weight anyway. Jeb can eat him if food runs out.) This taught me a lot about the game. Like that you can actually leave the rocket... that you can do unmanned missions... that you need more fuel than I thought to get back from the mun. Little things. No worries, science will prevail! Science and explosions. The third landing on the mun, to rescue Jeb, and the other guy since I had a seat or two over in my hitchiker container on the unmanned lander, worked really well. Of course I landed on almost the opposite side of the mun, so I ended up doing a low bounce getting closer rather than walk all that way. Of course once I had launched, and then got into orbit... and then tried getting to Kerbin... well, I ran out of fuel about two seconds of boost away from breaking free of the mun orbit and returning home. So, plan Q or so... (Yes, I skipped a few failed attempted on the way... You know, for brevity. I'm all about brevity.) I built a rescue rocket with hitchiker containers and ladders sticking out in all directions, to match orbits with my dead rocket and try to EVA to safety! I kept running out of electric charge during all the intense manoeuvring to match orbit. This was when I realized I had been using the wrong solar panels that needed to be extended... Ah well, what's a bit of extra debris in mun orbit... Oh right. My next attempt, with the right solar panels, crashed into one of those broken ones left on previous attempts, and didn't do so well. Back to the drawing board... ehrm... google. Oh, you can remotely delete debris! Awesome. I didn't even know I built a self-destruct into those things, must have been Jeb. Jeb would totally do that. Even though he's trapped in space. Poor Jeb. But yeah, after like two days of trial and error, a few new craters on the mun, and more than a few near death experiences for my kerbals, they eventually landed back on Kerbin! At which point I decided I should probably read up a bit more before attempting any more missions. So I did. That's when I learned Kerbals could plant flags. 5 minutes later Jeb was on the launchpad in a new and improved (MORE BOOM!... eh.. FUEL!) version of my original mun lander. This one made it out of mun orbit before running out of fuel. Unfortunately it missed Kerbin... That rescue mission was a lot trickier.
