A Minmus Lander!

[SpaceFanatic10]

I made this Minmus lander,and so i want to show me landing on Minmus!

The lander:

 

The rocket:

 

Launch in 3..2..1

 

LIFTOFF!

'

So i did some orbital stuff bla bla boring,and this appeared!

 

Ye,an orbit around Minmus!

 

Awesome,we are gonna land!

 

Getting close!

2 MINUTES LATER...

 

Yes! Landing achieved!

Podman seems satisfied with the landing:

 

[Opus_723]

Great job! It's nice to see such a sleek little lander just for Minmus. I always end up recycling Mun landers and while they get the job done, it's not very efficient or elegant.

Congrats!

[SpaceFanatic10]

21 minutes ago, Opus_723 said:

Great job! It's nice to see such a sleek little lander just for Minmus. I always end up recycling Mun landers and while they get the job done, it's not very efficient or elegant.

Congrats!

thanks you! 

[KSK]

That's a great little lander! If you don't mind me asking - where did you hide the fuel? I ask because I'm wondering if I could build one as a landing trainer vehicle and general purpose orbital scooter for the crew of my Minmus space station. A couple of those docked to one end of the station would look really cool.

 

[Sharpy]

57 minutes ago, KSK said:

That's a great little lander! If you don't mind me asking - where did you hide the fuel? I ask because I'm wondering if I could build one as a landing trainer vehicle and general purpose orbital scooter for the crew of my Minmus space station. A couple of those docked to one end of the station would look really cool.

 

Seems like "in the alt-F12 menu" looking at the descent pics. The fuel bar by the engine is empty both 6000m above the surface and on the surface.

This is entirely doable through clipping though. Build the ship as a stack of:

[antenna]
[FL-T200 tank]
[FL-T200 tank]
[pod]
[engine]

Then use the Rotate gizmo to rotate each of the tanks 180 degrees, in effect clipping both into each other and the pod.

Edited December 12, 2016 by Sharpy

[mystik]

So small... It's cute and probably easy to manage, but I like to go on missions and gather 2000 science. I have made two trips to Minmus and gathered over 5000 science. The first lander was a medium weight one, who flew all of the biomes and collected data (with the help of the engineer) but had room for 4 kerbals.

Now I made a tourist lander with 8 tourists and 1 scientist. 40 ton heavy. Strapped 2 nuclear engines and struggled to land on the moon. Not very great for landing using these engines, but I went for super Delta V as I wanted to do both moons with landing as per the contracts. Used most of my fuel landing and going back up to the moon to refuel, then refueled in orbit and went to Minmus. There, I landed again in all biomes and rand new science and had enough fuel to visit all the biomes and return home. Landed with 6 parachutes and had no damage despite coming in at 3000m/s.

Is it me, but I usually make huge landers that have a multiple role, such as contracts and science that make it all more demanding but more rewarding at the end of the day?

Edited December 12, 2016 by mystik

[MinimalMinmus]

Hmm... the mission time is quite weird... 1 day, 2 hours for Kerbin-minmus? My heavy-duty lander takes about a week... Did you cheat? Or did you reset mission time somewhat?

*edit before post* yeah, of course, well spotted guys, the terrier uses no fuel

[KSK]

2 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Seems like "in the alt-F12 menu" looking at the descent pics. The fuel bar by the engine is empty both 6000m above the surface and on the surface.

This is entirely doable through clipping though. Build the ship as a stack of:

[antenna]
[FL-T200 tank]
[FL-T200 tank]
[pod]
[engine]

Then use the Rotate gizmo to rotate each of the tanks 180 degrees, in effect clipping both into each other and the pod.

Ahh, good spot on the fuel bars but thanks for the clipping instructions!

Not terribly keen on clipping but I'm wondering what sort of thrust I'd need for a Minmus landing and whether I might be able to get away with radial Ants (I forget the nickname for them.) Have a pair of Round8s attached to the side of the lander can, a radial engine on each...Or something like that anyway - experimentation required!

I still like the idea of having little runabout craft for my space station.

Cheers.

Edited December 12, 2016 by KSK

[FancyMouse]

1 hour ago, MinimalMinmus said:

1 day, 2 hours for Kerbin-minmus? My heavy-duty lander takes about a week...

Even forget about OP - 1d to Minmus is still achievable, but you need a LOT of extra fuel. You'll spend a whole lot of fuel capturing. Usually my sweet spot is about 4 days where the extra fuel requirement isn't so huge - about 400m/s extra (numbers not accurate) but saves more than half of the usual time.

[Daripuff]

Wow.... 

I noticed the MET jumps all over the place. It's at 1 day 2 hours with the Minmus transfer burn,  it's at only 39 seconds with the Minmus orbit,  and 5 minutes at the "approach to landing" and when landed,  it jumps back down to 1 minute 38 seconds. 

Are you just using hyperedit and the F12 cheat menu to do this? It looks like you launched a ship,  achieved a Minmus intercept,  then hyperedited a lander to orbit,  attempted to land it with infinite fuel,  and then hyperedited another lander to the surface. 

[katateochi]

4 hours ago, KSK said:

That's a great little lander! If you don't mind me asking - where did you hide the fuel? I ask because I'm wondering if I could build one as a landing trainer vehicle and general purpose orbital scooter for the crew of my Minmus space station. A couple of those docked to one end of the station would look really cool.

You could just put a couple radial RCS tanks on the side and land using RCS thrusters. No need for an engine and for Minmus who needs legs anyway. This (with just a single stack mounted RCS tank will deorbit from 40km, land and return to 40km (with plenty spare for rendezvous and docking).

Curious why OPs launcher is so big for taking such a small payload to Minmus, something like this will do Minmus and back (with the above "lander") - 2 stage ascent and a transfer stage which is left in Minmus orbit and then returned to for the transfer back home (although the lander probably could do the return transfer on its remaining RCS).

 

[Sharpy]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Ahh, good spot on the fuel bars but thanks for the clipping instructions!

Not terribly keen on clipping but I'm wondering what sort of thrust I'd need for a Minmus landing and whether I might be able to get away with radial Ants (I forget the nickname for them.) Have a pair of Round8s attached to the side of the lander can, a radial engine on each...Or something like that anyway - experimentation required!

I still like the idea of having little runabout craft for my space station.

Cheers.

I don't think I've ever faced TWR problems with ANYTHING on Minmus. I struggled a lot with a rover with a single Dawn on Mun, it kinda worked but was awful. Minmus? A single unidirectional RCS should be enough for most uses Two Spiders is more than enough.

If you want a neat lander with very little 'outstanding' elements and no clipping, consider the toroidal tank. You won't get a great delta-V but it will be enough to reach the surface and go back to a station.

Also, for that purpose seriously consider the command seat.

Stock (one Spark):

or modded (two Ants).

 

[Sharpy]

1 hour ago, FancyMouse said:

Even forget about OP - 1d to Minmus is still achievable, but you need a LOT of extra fuel. You'll spend a whole lot of fuel capturing. Usually my sweet spot is about 4 days where the extra fuel requirement isn't so huge - about 400m/s extra (numbers not accurate) but saves more than half of the usual time.

That was when I was building the base on Minmus.

First, launching two mini-cranes. Rather small, rugged rovers of an interesting "gate" profile Due to length and shape, and to fit them into an optimal fairing, they went on two radial decouplers attached to an orange tank. With a Poodle.

After launching I found myself in orbit with over 5000m/s of delta-V, with a non-reusable transfer/lander stage. So what are we gonna do with it? Fly fast, that's what.

And afterwards came the fuel tanker. A huge beast, which could reach LKO all on its on, SSTO. But not Minmus. So I pulled two standard boosters from the subassemblies, strapped them on, added some SRBs for a good initial kick, launched... and found myself with 4500m/s in LKO. And Jeb in the pilot seat. And it was to fetch fuel from the Minmus base to LKO, so it would be fueled full on the surface. And it would be difficult to land precisely carrying heavy payload too. So what was Jeb to do? He did the Jeb thing.

[Firemetal]

Minimius is very small. You really don't need that big a craft to get there. Also, where is the fuel for the lander? I can't see it. And do you ever plan on returning that kerbal?

Apart from that, awesome mission.

Fire

[KSK]

Some great ideas here - thanks everyone!

@katateochi - thanks for saving me some experimenting time! I was wondering if RCS would be enough to land on, since I'd probably want it for rendezvous and docking anyway. Love the single-kerbal pod, although I might stick an empty Round8 on the bottom as an (entirely fictional) cushion, or maybe a quartet of cubic octagonal struts on the bottom or something to act as landing legs. Landing on the bare pod just looks a bit odd but that's just me.

@Sharpy - that's a cute flying fish lander. Going to have to try making one just for the googly eyed, wide mouthed look of it!

[Opus_723]

Hmm, getting ideas for my someday Minmus colony. I've been trying to make everything bigger and more epic lately, but now I'm in the mood for a swarm of little one- and two-kerbal scooters whizzing around Minmus. Maybe a little army of scooter-kerbals will ride along with the next base.