Mission to Moho in 1.1.3

[Firemetal]

So I did a Moho round trip earlier this morning. The whole thing took about 2-3 hours and was quite successful.

It all started yesterday. I had just rescued the Kerbals from my Laythe mission and brought them back to Kerbin. This completed the Jool moons and I now had only 2 more planets with surfaces un-visited. Moho and Eve. Obviously the first one will be Moho because it is WAY easier. But not as easy as it may seem.

I have attempted it many times before and failed miserably with each one. But now I was determined to finish it. So I built The Astro Explorer MK3. It has more DV than The Astro Explorer 1 and with the help of a small lander, has the landing capabilities of The Astro Explorer 2. However with only one nuke, the burns were painfully long although very DV efficient.

Wow the launch vehicle looks like Matt Lowne's latest Moho rocket. The spacecraft is a lot different as you'll see though.

It is very stable during launch and quite easy to fly to orbit. like it's the previous versions.

After separating the first stage and the fairing, it coasts to AP where it will circularize its orbit.

And the Payload has been revealed!

The transfer burn. I tried to Launch when Kerbin was on the descending/ascending node for Moho but this just made my encounter awkward so I just did the plain change.

And voila! The Moho encounter.

And now for a very painful 24 minute capture burn. (I made it 6 with phys warp but it was still painful :/)

And ready to descend!

Tamthy Kerman is eager to get on the surface.

Landed on Moho on the second try! On the first try, I forgot to retract the solar panels and they were shattered.

Ascent. As always, I missed the cruiser and had to wait for it to catch up to get a good rendezvous.

Adios, lander!

Escaping Moho!

And again, as always, I forgot to take any more screenshots for the rest of the mission. And it went as smoothly as getting there did. Re-entry was a breeze and although I spent about 4000 m/s getting back, I got back in the end so it didn't matter.

 

Anyway now I have to do a Eve round trip and then I will have visited every planet and returned in the game.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

[Mister Dilsby]

Very nice report and an absolutely adorable lander, great use of the venerable ROUND-8 fuel tank  

[Firemetal]

Just now, Kuzzter said:

Very nice report and an absolutely adorable lander, great use of the venerable ROUND-8 fuel tank  

Hey thanks! The lander didn't fly really great since it was so small and the Kerbal unbalanced the COM and COT. Never the less, it was a fun experience and I'm glad you liked it.

[Geschosskopf]

4 hours ago, Firemetal said:

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Nice trip.  Did you have any thermal gauges on Tamthy just from being there?  In my experience, Kerbals on Moho have a bronze-colored bar showing about 50% of their fatal heat level.

Also, nice job getting there on a direct transfer.  The 24-minute capture burn that resutled, though...  How much dV was that?

[Firemetal]

15 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Nice trip.  Did you have any thermal gauges on Tamthy just from being there?  In my experience, Kerbals on Moho have a bronze-colored bar showing about 50% of their fatal heat level.

Also, nice job getting there on a direct transfer.  The 24-minute capture burn that resutled, though...  How much dV was that?

Nope. None of the parts were overheating either.

The capture was 2300 m/s I think.

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Edit: (Also it wasn't a direct capture. I burned retrograde right after the closest approach and got an encounter at the same place after an orbit.)

Edit 2: (Was that what you meant? )

Edited July 27, 2016 by Firemetal

[DaMachinator]

I went to Moho one way with a probe lander. I'm far too impatient to go through the logistical nightmare of sending Kerbals there with life support. Kudos to you, sir!

[JacobJHC]

On 7/27/2016 at 1:23 PM, Firemetal said:

Landed on Moho on the second try! On the first try, I forgot to retract the solar panels and they were shattered.

My Moho mission had this issue, I would shatter them if I landed to hard but my lander was powered by an Ion engine so I had no choice. Nice mission by the way and good luck on your Eve mission. It seems you and me both are after that planet.

[Firemetal]

1 hour ago, DaMachinator said:

I went to Moho one way with a probe lander. I'm far too impatient to go through the logistical nightmare of sending Kerbals there with life support. Kudos to you, sir!

Life support is a whole different story. It could be done easily since Moho missions don't take that long in-game but you'd probably need to have a lot more fuel since it adds mass. Thanks!

 

56 minutes ago, JacobJHC said:

My Moho mission had this issue, I would shatter them if I landed to hard but my lander was powered by an Ion engine so I had no choice. Nice mission by the way and good luck on your Eve mission. It seems you and me both are after that planet.

I believe I have built the Ultimate Eve lander. It has to be short because if the COM is too far away from your heat shield, then you are going to flip during descent. It also has to  have at least 3000 m/s in the atmos since orbital velocity is about that much but mine has 4600 at sea level. And one more tip. Do not try to do your gravity turn before about 28km! Thanks!

[DaMachinator]

1 hour ago, Firemetal said:

Life support is a whole different story. It could be done easily since Moho missions don't take that long in-game but you'd probably need to have a lot more fuel since it adds mass. Thanks!

 

I believe I have built the Ultimate Eve lander. It has to be short because if the COM is too far away from your heat shield, then you are going to flip during descent. It also has to  have at least 3000 m/s in the atmos since orbital velocity is about that much but mine has 4600 at sea level. And one more tip. Do not try to do your gravity turn before about 28km! Thanks!

When I eventually go to Eve, I think I'll take advantage of the ability to put ablator in Procedural Fairings (requires another mod and i haven't found out which one yet) and also the ability to turn the ejection force up so high it's like a small bomb.