Reddit Challenge Week 34 - A Kerbal Perspective

[George van Doorn]

So, I've been looking for a while to do some KSP Reddit Challenges, but in the past few weeks I've not seen one that I thought I'd learn something from / inspired me. Until this week.

Link for this week's challenge:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/5xurqq/weekly_challenge_revisited_week_34_a_kerbal/

 

So, the premise is to pilot a rocket to the Mun, land and get back only from IVA, no map view, no external view. While doing this challenge I've learnt a lot, even though I have more than 2000 hours in this game. I had to remove KER, KAC, Precise Maneuver, everything except SVE and its bundled/recommended mods (EVE, Texture Replacer, Planet Shine)

 

Lessons learned:

a) Piloting only from IVA is hard (you don't say!)

b) The hardest part is not actually landing on the Mun, that was kinda the easiest thing I've done in this mission, the hardest part is getting an encounter with the Mun. I think I've tried that 10 times AFTER I had done a test drive with the map view and all the tools at my disposal. Minute changes in the trajectory would have me not get that encounter the other 9 times. And I could only check the outcome by timewarping, not really ideal.

c) If only there was a way to accurately see my altitude, I'd have had no issues with this at all. The altimeter shows me for example, 2. But what is that 2? 2000 km? 200? 20? 2 km??? I didn't know any way of knowing apart from maybe visual cues (how far the planet is). I almost had an (unwelcomed) encounter with the ground but I brought myself back up pretty quickly.

d) I had to scrap a few earlier attempts because of my habitual tendendency of pressing "M" to figure out what's going on

 

For the hard mode, I chose the Armstrong Memorial to land on, also to commemorate the recent passing of my mother. It's one of the easiest landmarks to reach on the Mun because it's almost on the equator ( http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/List_of_easter_eggs ), so if you get an equatorial orbit (you can check that from IVA, if your prograde marker is on the navball at the 90 degrees angle, you're in a counter-clockwise equatorial orbit). I trained myself before attempting this so I can recognize (grosso modo) the terrain features nearby and hover around the area with 100-150m/s horizontal velocity until I recognize it visually before landing.

So, the landing was a relative breeze. Going back, right after circularization, I was between the Mun and Kerbin, which is the optimal time for a re-entry burn. I must have missed it by a lot because I had to do a few corrections in Kerbin orbit (that's the thing, I can't check the result of the burn until I get there!). Tried to land near the space center but missed it by some 500 km or so, landed further in the ocean, east from KSC.

 

Enjoy:

 

This way I'm also inaugurating my channel (I have a few series in video editing, not yet ready to release them).

 

Used craft:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bkkamex838rh0hu/Mun Precision Lander.craft?dl=0

 

Edited March 7, 2017 by George van Doorn
added .craft file