Moho, conquering this beast

[technion]

Hi,

As you probably gathered, this mission report details my trip to Moho. Moho was always a problem, but the nerfing of the lv-n engine made several of my previous designs inoperable. I played around for hours using spaceplane parts on a nuke to try and get somewhere, and ended up with this mission.

A few second after launch. Sorry I didn't get an image before it. The rocket is mainly built on 2.5m parts, with a 3.5m lifting stage.

The 2.5m lifter is an incredibly good part.

For some reason I started seeing all these heat alerts after I killed the engines.

Here's the ejection vector. Rather than using a direct transfer, I'm using this method as best I can: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/61478-Oh-bugger-Injection-burn-at-Moho?p=835667&viewfull=1#post835667

The engines weren't actually setup with asparagus staging like this, I just manually activated two, and managed decouplers.

Blowing the shroud to reveal my lander.

Doing some science out in the sun, then resetting the experiments. This won me a contract.

THIS is why moho sucks.

- - - Updated - - -

Right where I did not want to be: Using my last tank of transit fuel this early on in the circularise.

I promise I managed to land, but for some reason I never got a shot. The lander wasn't without incidents though. First, it turns out I never attached landing gears, and it took five or six tries to touch down softly enough that the engines stayed intact. And then there's this launch, where decoupling the three outside tanks left one stuck to a light that was apparently clipped into it.

Lander had more than enough fuel. This was a burn to both circularise, and fix the inclination. There's that empty tank being lugged around

It wasn't exactly a smooth rendezvous, but this lander had fuel to spare.

Jeb transferred to the transport. I then also had a scientist go back to the lander, reset the equipment and get more science.

- - - Updated - - -

We've blown off all the supporting equipment and come down to our last stage. Guess what - not enough to get home.

We did however, just make it to Eve.

Aerobraking.

With a rescue mission to Eve a lot more promising, here's a drone controlled fuel delivery.

Interplanetary resndezvous - pretty ordinary.

Extending the claw, coming on in to grab.

Might as well do this while I'm here.

Topped up and easily able to get home.

Heat shields: Because who needs orbits?

Coming on down. I really don't get the ablator count. I mean I get that it might match realism. But I don't see how it's possible to actually ever get that counter to 0. It's not like anyone reuses shields repeatedly.

Anyway, I also neglected to take a landing picture, but you can see it's going to happen.

Seriously, the game needs and all liquid fuel X200-32. That trip home from.. ugh.