Minimalistic Munar Landing And Return

[Fragosus]

Make the smallest stock spacecraft that can successfully land Kerbals on the Mun and bring them back to Kerbin. Craft files and pictures are preferred.

My Contribution

The L-112 on the launch pad

Landed on the Mun

Powered landing on Kerbin

[ToadDude]

No parachute; you must have been pretty confident.

[Kosmo-not]

I\'ve done it on 2 RCS tanks.

[Apotheosist]

I believe the smallest stock mun return craft that does not take advantage of some of the outrageously unbalanced new C7 parts is the altered version of my original 'The Bare Minimun' craft that used landing legs to seperate stages. Since that is no longer possible, i have ahd to use regular decouplers, and to make up for it I needed half a tank more fuel. The new craft is called 'The Bare Minimun II'.

Once on the surface of the Mun, a lot of tricky dancing is required to get the craft pointing upwards for the burn. Another interesting note about this mission was that for the return I burned vaguely in the same direction as the mun, thus increasing my Kerbin apoapsis. Then I burned retrograde at apoapsis to bring my periapsis to 30k for re-entry. I believe this is called a bi-elliptic transfer, and can be more efficient than a Hohmann type transfer. I had enough fuel left to perform my classic landing where the tanks and engine is deliberately crushed in order to slow down the capsule enough to survive intact.

Edit: You don\'t actually need that extra half tank in the core stage, I managed it with just 3 tanks.