Liowen

I will attempt one more tonight to see if I can make it even higher using this same basic design, I am right now thinking an engine change might be in order to do it right and get nearly 30 on Mun.

Calander clear....except from 4-9ish pm on the 12th as I have classes that night.

Did you try to roll the rocket around with the Kerbal? Sometimes you can get lucky and it will move enough if you run into it a few time with them. Also congrats on landing on Mun, it is fun no matter if it is your first time or with 22 Kerbals at once . One thing I would suggest is moving the legs a bit further up to make the rocket less likely to tip over, since your motor is so high up I reason the center of mass is also much higher than where the legs are located (I could be completely wrong just how I set up my landers). Now you have a fun mission of rescuing Jeb from the surface, those are what make the game fun for me hehe.

Silly question but is aerobraking determined by weight to get your height or mass? All my attempts have been I slow down so much that I have to land, or crash.

Isn't instagram a place to show what you are eating for the day, or the worst selfy collection? I honestly have never used it, I barely use twitter anymore as I post my stuff to youtube and share it with my friends on facebook. Maybe when things settle down for me a bit in two weeks I will look into it, but right now I do not have the time to do more as finals are fast approaching. Not being rude or anything, in case someone thinks I am being so.

Today I landed 22 Kerbals on Mun and returned 20 of them home. Why not all 22 you may be asking, well the Kraken came when I was time accelerating to stop a Kerbal from spinning on the ground and two of them poofed. SO to honor their loss Bill put up a flag to remember them. Bill is behind the plaque, and cannot be seen but he is there.

While I started with 22 in this ship the Kraken blew up 2 of my Kerbals, so while I believe I lost them due to no fault of my design I will claim only 20 on the surface and home. Launch pad photo: Mun landing: Reading of the plaque and group shot (one is covered by the message but he is there. Slash down (points for it looking like a lighthouse??? hehe) I actually had to get more Kerbals on my test save in order to do this as I originally only had 5 on there. I believe I could have done more, but the Kraken may have eaten more than two if I had.

Yeah I thought for some reason those were double stacked hehe. Sorry

I will see if I can modify my lander I have in such a way to get into orbit from Kerbin, it can almost do it now, but I think I have an idea. If I can dock with my unmanned tug all should be ok then. Right now I am on a different thing so I will see later tonight what I can come up with.

Oddly I am 2 shy of 20 myself yet use less of a lifter to get into orbit. I could add on some SRB's and maybe a few more solo MK-1 pods to get even more into orbit and onto Mun. I will try in a bit again to see if I can get the full crew there and back again. I just threw one together not thinking it would work, and it worked better than I thought! Here is the second attempt I tried last night at the pad before liftoff. (Also No RCS on this bucket either ><)

Ok I have finished reading this whole post and feel so utterly lost right now, is this for a mod or something else?? I have only had the game since the end of last month so maybe there is something I am not understanding here. Seems interesting though!

What I did for mine was built it and saved it, then made the payload dropper as a sub assembly. When I need to use it I load the rover put the sub assembly on top with a docking port to hold it to the payload drop ship. I put a probe on top of the payload drop ship in case I need to move it after dropping the rover to the ground. Mine is very basic but works for what I need, and it can carry two Kerbals if needed. While this is an older picture of the rove on Eve, you can kind of get an idea of what I saying I think.

*Edit: Sorry some how I missed the part about not docking the craft >< *

Yes and no...yes they will slow your craft down, however if your main chutes are too high up or near a part line it could shear them off. At least this has been my experience with them and why on my ship I have main chutes on the engines as well as the capsule. When they all open the force is spread out and the stress is not in one area of the ship, also the more m/s negated before landing the less I have to use the engines. I am not 100% sure if how I am doing it is right, but so far my ships have not broken on landings so that has to account for something.

I built a ship to do this challenge and thought I had loaded with 18 Kirbals, sadly I did the whole mission and realized I only had 2 aboard (it even made it back to the surface intact too). To make it worse I cannot seem to get the rhythm back to land the craft again. I may try again in a few minutes or so, maybe then I will have better luck.

Hmm my rover was not ever heavy to be honest but it sank into the ground and actually nearly broke. I used the same lander setup on Duna and it was seemingly fine, and the rover is doing well on Duna as well. I think the gravity as well as the surface may play an equal roll into this effect as Eve has water, or is it ice, in may of its areas causing it so sink into the ground a bit. I could be wrong on that point, but I have noticed it happen.

For the second and third one I would get rid of those smaller tanks and run two of those half large tanks off of the main tank and eliminate the decoupling ring, unless you are planning on landing that one. If you have a way to share the .craft file I could test it and see if maybe a slower gravity turn might be needed, I found sometimes doing them too fast with bigger lifters will cause it to not make it into orbit. If you cannot share the .craft for whatever reason I will try and build it in sandbox mode off of what I see here, just let me know and I will help the best I can. To be honest I feel your second one would be fine with asparagus staging and the changes I mentioned to get into a decent orbit, but I would need to try it a few times to see.

One thing I found is to mount chutes to the piece that is ripping off along with drag chutes. Since drag chutes open higher up it will greatly decrease the m/s before fully deploying along with the radials. While I do not have a picture of all the chutes on this on this craft you can kind of get an idea on how many chutes this one had. It also weighed in at just a hair over 27T and fuel is nearly full for takeoff. 700NitroXpress helped me tweek an earlier design I was trying to use and made this one work like a gem. The discussion can be seen here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/59747-My-single-crew-Duna-Lander-in-need-of-help. Hopefully it helps in seeing what was done to make it work. Edit: This is all stock parts, but I would believe that you could use mod stuff in place of certain items and make a craft even better.

I had one SRB on a lifter that got moved to the wrong firing order and caused me to nose dive......now I triple check staging before launch and adjust it on the pad.

Well reworked my rover and fixed it and drove it nearly 10km from it's landing site A nice sunrise shot to make the event even better!

Mine is still on Duna awaiting Roller to come so he can drive around on the surface. Yes I finally got one down and drove it nearly 10km already!

I sent a test rover to Eve to test a theory about my tug system, and got there without much trouble and load of fuel to spare. While my incoming orbit was not the greatest (I seemingly come in over the poles on all my planet SOI encounters ). I also decided I would try aero breaking to save more fuel getting into a stable orbit.....This did not work too well. I did a few maneuvers to get a stable orbit not realizing this was bad, needless to say the tug was lost. The rover though was fine as I unhooked the payload and got it down After a soft landing Roller took off to venture forth on the purple planet! Soon after the journey was cut short though as ground clearance became an issue... Once I figure out how to get my encounter orbit low enough to do aero breaking I think my idea to leave the rover tug in orbit will be a great idea for later missions, but until then back to the drawing board.

Anytime. That might be about the only good advice I have right now as I am still learning as well

Well this one pops into my head from time to time (I wish I could have it in youtube videos during liftoffs. I could not decide between James T. Kirk singing this or Elton John, but I decided to give credit to the original artist and let others decide what version gets stuck in their head. Oh and for those long trips you need a good driving song! I have others, but these felt more in spirit of the game to me. There is a Pantera song I like for stepping foot on planets called "Walk", or for those oddball days "I can't Drive 55". And of course this!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mOzRNfuH7g

Second half of the day I tried, unsuccessfully, to land Roller 2 on Mun. For some reason I keep getting into these deep craters and run out of fuel before I touch down, it is getting on my nerves too. I found it easier to land the one on Duna than to do the one on Mun, but I will not give up I shall try harder.