[Stock 1.6 f] Finally the Taurus5 lander works after the fuel fix.

[Znath]

First off, the launcher which I believe is the most crucial part!

Lands with almost three full tanks on Mun. I thought about landing on Minimus after that, but I figured that'd be best for another day.

Insurance will probably cover that.

I had a lot of balance issues trying to get it to stop spinning from various boosters and so on. Eventually I just had the other 3 boosters drop off and kept tanks instead, that way I had the 3 main engines (center of the 2nd stage) into orbit. Though the problem being now I have that whole center section stuck in orbit each time I launch one of these.. that's a lot of space junk.. but at least it's big chunks instead of a lot of little bullets. My next test will be to see if I can strip it down a little and bring a new radio telescope to minimus using the same inversion landing I used last time.

[zapy97]

well it certainly looks nice

[NetBlitzer]

Nice launcher and lander! And lucky you got Bill and not Jeb, or things may have turned out slightly different.

Also, you shouldn't worry too much about space junk in orbit. Remember, space is VERY large. If you use a parking orbit of 70km, that gives you over 4200km of circumference before a conflict may arise, and that's not counting the rough altitude judgement, or perhaps the slight heading error. You second stage is only around 6x6x10 METERS large, so you're not taking up too much space. If I can find Bluejayek's space, you'll see what I mean about never really needing to worry.

Edit: Found it:

Edited August 31, 2012 by NetBlitzer

[Znath]

And with very little modification, I was able to do a follow-up to my pre-fuel-fix Minimus landing

The landing also includes a drop off of a special payload, what I'm calling a "radio telescope"

It has to land, invert upside-down, land the telescope down, lift off backwards, then land again.

Initial landing to stabilize everything and save some RCS fuel

Inversion and touchdown using RCS

Liftoff to realign the ship for a normal landing

Landed

Bill setting up the array on the "Radio Telescope"

The inverted landing almost botched because those two big full fueltanks on the sides add to the moment of inertia a lot. Either way it seems it went fine in the end. The inversion uses 10 RCS thrusters which is adequate for Minimus, I don't think it'd work well for Mun though, you would need quite a lot more for a lander my size. I was rather pleased that I didn't have to do massive modifications to the lander to get this done. I stripped the extra antennae and landing feet from the tanks but that's about it.. even that was probably unnecessary.

On the way back I managed to get a perfect polar orbit on Mun, but decided not to land, which was a good idea since I barely had enough to get back when I finally landed in the sea... (though I'd rather have landed on land...) I think Bill was happy to make it back what ever the case.

My space junk isn't that regular,.. one problem with these mid stages is they're 9 fueltanks a 3waycoupler, and engines, They're also in a steep orbit because they provide a lot of the force to get to final orbit. Luckily, yes, space is huge. The odds of hitting one are pretty rare. One time I did have the game stop to 1x speed because a chunk came within 100m of me, I didn't even have that much out there!

Edited August 31, 2012 by Znath