Another episode of Good Idea/Bad Idea: Motherships.

[Jakalth]

This is just another episode of Good Idea/Bad Idea.  This time the topic is Motherships.

 

Good Idea:

Flying your mothership to the Mun.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

Bad Idea:

Landing your mothership on the Mun.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

The End.

Spoiler

 

Edited February 17, 2016 by Jakalth

[Mister Dilsby]

Whoopsie! Any idea what your final surface velocity was, and mass of craft? In simulations I found that anything over 1 m/s was enough to kill my 900-ton mothership when landing on the Minmus Flats. I'd imagine the Mun to be much more difficult than that, due to gravity and slope. 

[Jakalth]

Yeah, it was somewhere around 2.8m/s and still slowing when it touched down.  It's mass at contact was around 635,000kg or 635 metric tons.  The craft was held together by docking ports, girders, struts, and many hours of praying to the Kracken.  Works fine in space, where it was designed to live.  Was NOT designed to land on the surface at all in its assembled form.  5 of the parts can safely make the descent on their own though.  Did I mention it had 701 parts making up the craft?  And the 11.8 degree slope probably didn't help things any.

 

I had no illusions of it surviving the landing, I just wanted to try anyways.  See if I actually could do it.  And the results were spectacular enough I just had to share.  Only took me 2 hours of flying the craft under nearly full throttle just to make the descent from a 65km orbit.  Bad TWR for making the landing...  Only 1.41 at altitude and it dropped down to 1.32 at the surface.  But the results were worth it.