[STOCK] Shoot For The Mun

[HOC]

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present:

Shoot For The Mun

An entirely stock parts created ship initially made with the intention of taking you to the Mun and back. When we realised it can easily do this, and exceeds the mission fuel requirements, we put it to the test on all kinds of different missions.

Shoot For The Mun has:

• 
  [li]Been to the Mun and back.[/li]
  [li]Been to Minmus and back.[/li]
  [li]Achieved KeoStationary orbit[/li]
  [li]Completed Low and High Kerbin Orbit rendezvous
  

Shoot For The Mun weighs in at 127.2 tons on the launch pad, and is equipped with Advanced SAS, 6 Winglets (mounted on the Launch stage), One RCS Fuel Tank and 3 RCS Thrusters (mounted on the Landing stage).

Shoot For The Mun has three main stages:

[list type=decimal]

[li]Launch Stage: This stage is made up of 9 LV-T30 liquid fuel engines, fitted with 3 vertically stacked standard fuel tanks each.[/li]

[li]Orbital Stage: This stage is made up of 3 LV-T30 liquid fuel engines, fitted with 3 standard fuel tanks each (2 are stacked vertically, whilst 1 is laterally mounted- see pictures below).[/li]

[li]Landing Stage: This stage has 1 LV-909 liquid fuel engine supplied with 1 standard tank of fuel. It features 3 RCS Thrusters (with 1 RCS Tank between them) and 6 Landing Legs (The damn things are terribly unstable).[/li]

Pictures:

Launch Stage, Orbital Stage, Landing Stage

The launch and orbital stages are capable of lifting their own weight from Kerbin\'s surface. The landing stage is capable of lifting its own weight easily from the Mun\'s surface. The RCS thrusters alone are capable of lifting the landing stage off of Minmus, which is extremely useful.

Download Link:

SHOOT FOR THE MUN

It is said that once, long ago, a group of engineers working at the Kerbal Space Centre stole plans for Shoot For The Mun. These daring troublemakers devised their own version of the Craft, codenamed 'Shoot For The Mun B', which was said to be faster, more efficient, if a lot less pretty.

When news of this came back to the original designers they took the new plans, modified them slightly, and gave them away for the world to see.

Related links:

http://www.youtube.com/HOCgaming - My YouTube Channel, where I upload many Kerbal Space Program videos and other gaming nonsense.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=13862.0 - My Fan Fiction Story, an epic saga of three kerbals\' trip to the Mun using this ship.

[Commander Zoom]

A beautiful and well-built ship, as I said on your fiction thread (which I\'m also enjoying on its own). I look forward to flying this one, and may end up making her my new main-line booster (recent changes to the game have left me pretty much starting from scratch).

[Tim_Barrett]

RCS does not have to be directly attached to RCS tanks.

[HOC]

RCS does not have to be directly attached to RCS tanks.

I\'m insulted that you think I didn\'t know that... XD

But seriously, yes- I already knew that. I just figured that the centre of the lander was a good place for them to be, and that\'s where my RCS tank happened to be.

A beautiful and well-built ship, as I said on your fiction thread (which I\'m also enjoying on its own). I look forward to flying this one, and may end up making her my new main-line booster (recent changes to the game have left me pretty much starting from scratch).

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. This design of mine actually goes way back, I designed its first iteration in... 0.11, I believe. It has changed as the updates came and went, and despite resetting my own persistent world and deleting my fleet of creations I have kept Shoot For The Mun. It\'s nice to know you like it as much as I do.

[closette]

I gave it a try - certainly plenty of fuel in the 2nd stage for touring around the Mun to find a landing spot.

However, it\'s a bit slow off the ground due to a low Thrust/Weight ratio to begin with. The most fuel-efficient ascent is one where you boost up to about 100m/s in the first 1000 m, and by 10000m you should be going at least 200 m/s (which yours almost does), ideally about 270 m/s.

You could try deleting one tank per engine in the first stage, and adding solid boosters at launch for improved efficiency. I bet you would still have plenty of fuel left over by the time you reach orbit (which will be sooner as well).

[Commander Zoom]

Quick and very dirty example (I\'m almost ashamed) attached. I got it up to 250 m/s at 10k.

[closette]

Nothing to be ashamed of - quick and dirty works just fine! I got it to the Mun just as easily as the original. My only other suggestion would be to add another RCS tank and block (of 4 or 6 thrusters) some way down from the existing RCS thrusters, to provide a bit more torque for maneuvering. Rotating the ship around (especially with the first stage attached) is a bit ponderous.

I also navigated your original to Minmus but bad piloting left me out of fuel in orbit.

Nice ship overall - i had fun with it.

[HOC]

Thanks for the reply! And yes, I understand it has a low Thrust/Weight ratio; that\'s mainly due to the fact I try and avoid SRBs because they really are out of control, It is my aim to never again lose a crew and since removing them I never have.

But, whatever you prefer, you use!

I also navigated your original to Minmus but bad piloting left me out of fuel in orbit.

Ooh... spoilers. Shh! http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=13862.0

[HOC]

Commander Zoom and Closette, take a look at the paragraph underneath the download link

[glugg23]

This is a really good rocket, I used it to try and land on the Mun, I failed and now you\'re rocket is orbiting the Sun!

[HOC]

try and land on the Mun, I failed and now you\'re rocket is orbiting the Sun!

A situation it\'s been in many times before, my friend!

[Commander Zoom]

I\'m blushing. Really. :-[

(But we didn\'t steal the plans, we just... borrowed them for a little while. Made copies, a few revisions, put them back where we found them...)

Your version is, of course, much more elegant than mine; I should have thought of it myself, but after the unexpected difficulty I had extracting the middle tanks from the launch stage and putting it back together, I went for (as I said) quick and dirty. (heck, the first time I just bolted the SRBs directly on; decouplers came later.)

Both this and the original are very easy to fly, stable and forgiving even with ASAS turned off for the gravity turn. I haven\'t had a good opportunity to put one down on either satellite yet, but I\'ll probably give that a shot this weekend.

[HOC]

Both this and the original are very easy to fly, stable and forgiving even with ASAS turned off for the gravity turn. I haven\'t had a good opportunity to put one down on either satellite yet, but I\'ll probably give that a shot this weekend.

It\'s great to hear you like using the ship so much.

Some tips: The orbital stage has so much fuel in it that I tend to use it as long as possible. When landing on either the Mun or Minmus, I drop it from a few thousand metres up and watch it fall. However far away it is when it explodes gives you your real altitude.

On Minmus, the RCS thrusters alone are able to just lift the lander. I find it extremely useful to be able to use just them just before touch down.

Also: something I\'ve been meaning to ask, have you noticed a bug with the launch stage? A magic force seems to allow the outer engines to begin feeding on the tanks of the centre instead of their own... causing the stage to last longer than it should at the expense of the three centre engines deactivating early. Please, let me know if you\'re getting it too.

[Commander Zoom]

Well, the tanks are basically in contact - which gave me no end of trouble when trying to reassemble that stage - and it\'s possible that fuel is flowing across that contact. That\'s the only thing I can think of.

[HOC]

Weird...

[dnleek]

I had the same problem. Despite messing around with fuel ducts for a good half hour, I couldn\'t fix it without detaching the offending parts and reattaching them to the center stack on top of radial decouplers. However, I found out that when you do that, not only is the craft less efficient due to the weight, but the fact that the bottom stage doesn\'t last as long means that it performs worse than when the middle thrusters disengage early. Weird indeed. Also attaching a few detachable SRBs greatly improves launch performance.

[HOC]

However, I found out that when you do that, not only is the craft less efficient due to the weight, but the fact that the bottom stage doesn\'t last as long means that it performs worse than when the middle thrusters disengage early.

Ah, so this is a useful bug. I had reason to think it helped, but never bothered to actually do the maths involved.

Also attaching a few detachable SRBs greatly improves launch performance.

Take a look at THIS