3-man Landers

[Dizzle]

Hey guys.

Ever since 0.16 came out, I've had a pretty annoying problem. I've gotten pretty good with sending one-man pods to the moon and back, and the two times I've landed on Minmus have been even smoother. And yet, I've STILL not been able to construct a reliable 3-man pod that can land on the Mun with enough fuel to get back, and I haven't even gotten close to Minmus.

I have only once managed to successfully land a 3-man pod on the Mun... with 87 liters of fuel left. It now sits abandoned, after the crew was rescued by Single-pod mechjeb landers.

So, how do you do it? How to people make these things efficient enough to pull this stuff off? So anyway, let's discuss how this can work, the best ways to do it, and I'd love it if someone could attach a .craft file.

[sal_vager]

What I do is break my designs into separate sections, first is the launcher, it might have more than one stage and is only meant to get almost to orbit.

Then is the transfer stage, this completes the orbit, performs the trans Munar burn, the Munar correction burn and begins the Munar de-orbit.

The transfer stage is jettisoned shortly before landing, leaving the lander with plenty of fuel to finish landing and to return home.

Here is my current preferred Munar capable craft, the Atacama.

http://www./?e7g03pqiuzng82a

[Oggula]

https://www.yousendit.com/download/TEhYZXQ2V3JrUmxMWE1UQw

https://www.yousendit.com/download/TEhYZXQ4R3NiV3pIRHNUQw

2 Craft attached, one is a basic lander, the other is the interplanetary version, both use mechjeb. The most efficient way of getting a landing is using 1m parts to launch a 3m halftank, lander engine and pod. If you can get the 3m pod, tank and engine into a lunar rendezvous without using any of the fuel in the halftank, then you will be able to get home after landing.

[TheDarkStar]

My 3m pod landers usually have a large first stage to get off the ground. Second stage completes orbit and gets to the target moon. Third stage is for deorbiting and landing. It has a large tank and fuel lines to take fuel from my return stage if necessary. The return stage is above the command module and uses 1m large tanks and the most efficient engines. I usually have enough fuel in the lander stage to land on the moon, go somewhere else on the moon, take off, and get back to Kerbin.

[Railsmith]

Here's the Arctis 4, a real monster of a lander. It gets all the way from suborbit (courtesy of the overbuilt first stage) to the Mun and back with tons of fuel to spare. Judging by my latest flight, it can land on the Mun, do a 70-km suborbital hop for a precision landing, then a return with a few hundred liters of fuel to spare. Once I get to my gaming computer, I'll post a .craft and a little more detailed of a description.

Edited August 9, 2012 by Railsmith

[_Aramchek_]

My lander consists of the 3 man module, one of the half size large fuel tanks, 1 rcs tank and 4 rcs linear thrusters, with 6 of the 20 thrust little rockets and six of the new large landing legs.

It can easily land on Minmus or the Mun, with lots of fuel left to get back. It has enough to visit both in one trip if you want.

[Samo]

Here's my highly successful 3-man lander. I just posted a video of the entire rocket if you wanna see more of it. Simply put, radial mounted engines are your friend

Edited August 9, 2012 by Samo

[_Aramchek_]

Seems I had actually forgotten how my big lander was configured.

Here's a pic.

As you can see, I did not include a parachute as it's my own version of a little base, but it has plenty more fuel to get you home, or wherever really. The main stages are enough to get you to the orbit of minmus with fuel to spare. I'm glad I never seemed to have problems with my large rockets randomly blowing up.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/80346/TitanLander.jpg

How to spoiler?

[borzwazie]

Here's my highly successful 3-man lander. I just posted a video of the entire rocket if you wanna see more of it. Simply put, radial mounted engines are your friend

Every time I try mounting a chute on top of the asas unit like that, it always separates and sends my kerbals to an impact landing.

[MrMadGameplay]

The trick I use is like so, one middle stack of tanks and then add more around it and use the onion peel effect. This is where all the outer tanks feed the fuel into the inner tanks so that all engines fire at launch and then the stages just peel away. I found this really effective for the 3 crew pod.

[hittingsnooze]

I really like your design for the interplanetary ship, Oggula. Since the part balance in 0.16 I've had to start learning how to stage properly. All of my designs so far have either been very inefficient or incredibly unstable. The staging and fuel lines on your lower stage taught me quite a bit. Thanks for posting it!

[Samo]

Every time I try mounting a chute on top of the asas unit like that, it always separates and sends my kerbals to an impact landing.

Do 6x struts connecting the pod to the ASAS, works like a charm.

[MissStabby]

hmm i've designed a few 3man landers already, they went both to minmus and mun and returned safely.

here's one of them in the editor:

And when it finally touched down it was mostly empty, but enough to get the craft home since it didnt weight a whole lot anymore:

Here's a bit lighter pod with the radial tanks being jettisoned on mun/minmus escape:

often i'd just burn until kerbal's periapsis is about 20 and then i detach the pod to coast back to kerbal

Edited August 10, 2012 by MissStabby

[jloosh]

Mine has a first stage of solids with the liquid, then just liquid, get on my way there, then a motor to get into orbit and to start the decent, jettison that when I get close and it gives me a rough idea of how close to the surface I am when It smashes into it.

btw it bogs the computer down bad during launch and during the getting into mun orbit

Edited August 10, 2012 by softweir
Spoiler added.

[samstarman5]

Comes with being spoiled on how rockets behaved before 0.16. It has come time to unlearn what you have learned and start afresh. Don't be afraid to explode a few rockets trying crazy designs.

[GOOMH]

Too bad you'll have to relearn again sort of due to the fuel bug in 0.16 still most rockets should mostly work.

[Ziff]

Every time I try mounting a chute on top of the asas unit like that, it always separates and sends my kerbals to an impact landing.

Rotate the camera so it faces down on the command pod. Place a parachute -VERY- slightly off center of the top node. You can now place a decoupler on the node, hiding the parachute. Top it with an ASAS and you can simply eject that stage during rentry to allow your parachute to deploy.

Hey guys.

Ever since 0.16 came out, I've had a pretty annoying problem. I've gotten pretty good with sending one-man pods to the moon and back, and the two times I've landed on Minmus have been even smoother. And yet, I've STILL not been able to construct a reliable 3-man pod that can land on the Mun with enough fuel to get back, and I haven't even gotten close to Minmus.

This is a well designed rocket (I used math!) with very good staging, it is very fuel efficient and has enough delta-v to get to the Mun and Minmus with spare fuel for those Kerbal type emergencies. It is well balanced, easy to control, and doesn't even require control surfaces.

The theory, and how it works. The lander has about 2300m/s delta-v, enough to land on the mun and return to kerbin. The stage below it is the trans injection stage. It has enough fuel (and more) to transfer to the Mun or Minmus, and start the deorbit burn. It gets jettisoned before landing which actually saves a ton of fuel in the lander for an emergency.

Those new large engines? Yeah, they're not efficient, at all. Lotta thrust that get's wasted. So I use only 1, with a single large tank, and a half tank. The fuel line feeds upwards to the tank attached to the 3 engines in the TMI stage so that those engines can fire from Launch all the way through without using their own fuel. Engines that don't fire at launch=dead weight.

All the lateral tanks feed inwards, it is the most effective way to build a rocket. As those stages empty, you can detach them so even though you lose thrust, you lose weight, and with the altitude you gained you should be keeping your T:W ratio above 2. Which is exactly what happens here. The large boosters are so the craft gets up to 4km with almost no effort from the main engines. Hopefully this works, here is the craft file if you want to play with it. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/93355756/Spaceman%20Ziff.craft

Let me know if that link works or not.

Edited August 10, 2012 by Ziff
Spoiler added.

[MET?]

Currently, My Mun/Minmus Rocket, consists of three main stages. The first consists of, and I'm speaking from memory, but I do believe it has 13 of the large 3m engines, along with 12 of the new large SRBs(the SRBs have yet to be added to the design and tested, the rocket works fine without them but they will help infinitely with the initial thrust on liftoff). Each of the Liquid Engines in the first stage has 3 full sized 3m fuel tanks. This is enough to take my rocket onto a suborbital path, where the second stage completes the orbit insertion.

The second stage consists of 5 of the Large 3meter engines, each with 2 fuel tanks, this is enough for Munar Transfer, Munar orbit insertion, and Munar deorbit.'

The third and final stage is the lander, With a 3person pod sitting on top of a half 3m fuel tank, four landing legs, and 3 detachable external half 1m tanks. Each one carries an rcs tank on top and a small 1m lander engine underneath. The main engine is the 3m lander engine, along with 2 of the radial engines (may be removed to increase specific impulse).

This comfortably gets me anywhere in the kerbin system and back.

A word to the wise: If you add fuel tanks/engines to the upper stages of your rocket, make sure you also give the lower stages the extra force to haul that thing up.

Ill get some pics and post later...

Edited August 10, 2012 by MET?

[Kersplattle]

I originally constructed a 3 man craft so I could rescue stranded kerbanauts ! I'm an empirical constructor although I will get around to doing the math at some point. Strictly stock construction, attached is a pic and a craft file. Biggest problem is keeping frame rates at a point where the altitude meter doesn't go haywire, and stopping the craft disintegrating on ascent with a failure between fuel tanks. Works fine otherwise, has fuel for Minimus and Mun in one mission. Can be a cow to control with the lower stages in place though.

I really should rebuild to refine, but as it works I haven't yet done that. Currently trying to launch enough fuel with a one man lander to do a 4 x landing, Min/Mun/Min/Mun and get home, three is easy enough, 4 has been a bit marginal on fuel. Can't wait for 0.17 and some further challenges.

[Gunhed]

Here's my design to go to Mun or Minmus.

Notice the double RT-B20 Solid Fuel Booster stage at the bottom.

They are not fired together, but the outer laver first and after it's seperation the inner layers.

This in addition to the other stages of RT-B20 Solid Fuel Booster and RT-10 Solid Fuel Booster gives me enough thrust to use only two stages of liquid fuel boosters.

It's also astonishing stable, but it took me some time to figure out the best way to use the Strut Connectors.

[Khrissetti]

design them pretty much like the 1 man landers but put the bigger capsule on top so it looks like a mushroom.

My first 0.16 Munlanding.

Edited August 10, 2012 by softweir
Spoiler added.

[Rickenbacker]

Same here, I've had more success mounting two or three small parachutes to the side of the capsule. Sometimes even putting a decoupler on top, so I can lose the SAS unit on the way down.

[bsalis]

This is my preferred 3 man lander. The reasons which should be obvious.

Heres my old all-stock except Mechjeb lander.

Edited August 11, 2012 by bsalis

[pomplemus]

Lots of great designs!

It took me while to get a good 3 kerbal lander, just try many different designs and you'll find something that works.

I sent many landers to the moon, but always forgot enough fuel to bring everyone back...

Using the damned aerospace crewtank I made 13 kerbal Mun lander, that has the ability to get everyone back to Kerbin under a parachute descent:

I used Mechjeb for the detailed information, but its perfectly pilot-able without it.

Of course Bill, Jeb, and Bob were in the in command capsule!

Edited August 10, 2012 by softweir
Spoiler added.

[softweir]

Moderator Note: Can I please remind people to put images in spoilers.

You can use: ["spoiler=Title]image["/spoiler] (but without the quotes) to add spoilers.

Many thanks!