Mun Landings the Railsmith Way

[Railsmith]

So, I\'ve done a few Mun landings and returns. Eventually, I figured out the easiest way to pull off a landing on a low-framerate computer, which unfortunately goes against all of the advice I\'ve ever seen in videos or the forums. I\'d just like to see if anyone else can build and land a rocket in the goofy way that I do. It goes a little like this:

1. Your lander gets you all the way from (hopefully low) suborbit to the munar surface, and back. Return stages are possible, but a single-stage lander will net you bonus points. Usually, this involves a single stage to kick the lander out of the atmosphere, then a massive, overbuilt monster to handle the rest.

2. No orbiting the Mun. In your TMI burn, you\'re going to try to fall as close to vertical onto the munar surface, and then all you do on descent is retroburn. Landing in some mountains? Good luck. Hope you packed enough legs. Nighttime where you\'re coming down? Nut up or shut up, if an idiot like me could bring a lander down on the night side you can too.

3. RCS. C\'mon guys, there\'s a lot to be said for RCS. When you\'re doing a vertical descent and you want to stay vertical, RCS can keep you steady. This one\'s more of a...suggestion, though. Kudos to you if you come down on RCS only or have over 16 thruster blocks.

4. Incredibly slow landings. By the time my altimeter hits 3000 meters, I\'m doing 12 m/s. By touchdown, I\'ll be maxing out at one meter per second. If you can survive the thrilling boredom of coming down into a crater at that sort of speed, congratulations! You\'re my kind of crazy. Ultra bonus points if you can touch down at 0.4 m/s or slower.

5. Headwonky returns. Ehh, who cares about equatorial return orbits or fuel efficiency? Just turn whichever way you can and don\'t throttle down until your Kerbin periapsis is in the atmosphere.

So what do you say? Can you build a rocket insane enough? Probably! Screenshots would be appreciated if you claim a successful mission, and .crafts if your lander takes up over half of the vehicle\'s total height.

[Clouds]

Well, in .15.2, with MechJeb for precise and efficient piloting, I had gotten to the Mun and back to KSC with no stages or detachments at all, and powered return descent without parachutes. Haven\'t tried in .16 yet.

I can\'t tell if your challenge is to pilot a slow and laggy monster, or to make a super-efficient lander and return craft...

[Cthulufaic]

Well, in .15.2, with MechJeb for precise and efficient piloting, I had gotten to the Mun and back to KSC with no stages or detachments at all, and powered return descent without parachutes.

I don\'t think Mechjeb is allowed for that reason, and if it isn\'t then I think it should.

[Mr_Orion]

4. Incredibly slow landings. By the time my altimeter hits 3000 meters, I\'m doing 12 m/s. By touchdown, I\'ll be maxing out at one meter per second. If you can survive the thrilling boredom of coming down into a crater at that sort of speed, congratulations! You\'re my kind of crazy. Ultra bonus points if you can touch down at 0.4 m/s or slower.

That\'s what people think is slow? I thought 0.2m/s was a generally fine landing speed... I mean, landing at 10m/s would be crazy. That\'s over 30km/h!

[semininja]

I typically touch down at about 2 m/s...

[Millst0ne MK II]

I usually come down at around at anywhere from .5 m/s to 10 m/s, depends on if I\'m using mechjeb

[Railsmith]

Pah, Mechjeb. Who needs it? This is basically an overbuilding and goofy-trajectory landing challenge. If you use Mechjeb to come down at .2 m/s or something, c\'mon. I know you can do it manually!

[Vostok]

In all my Mun missions to date, I never have once used a parking orbit after the Munar transfer. I go straight down (vertically, as you say) after killing my velocity to 0m/s at several Km altitude.

Then, I touch down at <1m/s, using no RCS, usually (I fly landings by navball only, with occasional height referances to the game scene), and on the dark side, too.

I once managed to land a rocket with no landing legs. This sounds simple, until you hear that the rocket in question consisted of a stack of three large 1m fuel tanks, above a medium engine, with a lander consisting of a pod, asas, fuel tanks, engines etc... on top of THAT. (no rcs :S )

Then, I launch from the mun and fire the engines until the orbit intersects Kerbin (or is less than 6,000 periapsis).

No mechjeb, I disapprove of it

Some would call it inefficient. I call it \'rocket science\'. Plus I have a NASA T-shirt, that means it\'s legit, right...?

So, is this landing the railsmith way?

[Bluejayek]

In all my Mun missions to date, I never have once used a parking orbit after the Munar transfer. I go straight down (vertically, as you say) after killing my velocity to 0m/s at several Km altitude.

Then, I touch down at <1m/s, using no RCS, usually (I fly landings by navball only, with occasional height referances to the game scene), and on the dark side, too.

I once managed to land a rocket with no landing legs. This sounds simple, until you hear that the rocket in question consisted of a stack of three large 1m fuel tanks, above a medium engine, with a lander consisting of a pod, asas, fuel tanks, engines etc... on top of THAT. (no rcs :S )

Then, I launch from the mun and fire the engines until the orbit intersects Kerbin (or is less than 6,000 periapsis).

No mechjeb, I disapprove of it

Some would call it inefficient. I call it \'rocket science\'. Plus I have a NASA T-shirt, that means it\'s legit, right...?

So, is this landing the railsmith way?

I\'m impressed by the landing on a LFE. When I tyry that it alwaysbreas off; you must have been coming down really slow

Good job!

[Vostok]

Looking back at it now, I have no idea how I managed this.

[theflyingfish]

Looking back at it now, I have no idea how I managed this.

Ha!

I love the deployed lander legs, swaying uselessly 3 meters above the surface, like Desford deployed them then decided to not drop the transfer stage.

[simplemunrockets]

I use MechJeb, but only for the surface info, Smart A.S.S., and ascent autopilot. And yeah, my first touchdown in .16 was at .8 m/s.

[Railsmith]

Yeah, I think Vostok might have won this one. Awesome!