Mun landing attempt

[SJC_Hacker]

In addition to burning retrograde to make your lateral velocity zero, I also recommend switching the altitude indicator to altitude above ground level..  You have at altitude above sea level.  Of course they is no sea on the moon, I guess they define sea level as the it as lowest point on the surface.

[Orc]

Hi all

20 hours ago, Streetwind said:

@Orc I can give you my early-career three-crew lander. It's admittedly a bit jury-rigged... you know, function over beauty and such. You'll also need at least the Making History DLC. And, do you have the seismometer unlocked yet? I usually rush for it on the tech tree, but I can take it off if you don't.

Otherwise you'll need half-size 2.5m and 1.875m tankage, the Skipper, the three-crew soviet capsule, 1.875m engine plate and aeroshell, and basic solar panels.

 

I'm always up for seeing someone else's work, especially if its function over beauty. I have flown some bug-ugly things in my time. You don't want to even know what my DEMO version Mun landers looked like when they were still back on the launch pad. Think it through carefully, no LF tanks larger than the FT-L 200, only the Reliant engine, and only the Flea and Hammer SRBs. 

I must admit to being disillusioned with the 1.875 m FL tanks and engines (the Pollux however ROCKS - try launching just a MK1 capsule with mono-prop engines on a single Pollu). I'm finding myself going straight to 2.5m tanks, and occasionally I'll use the Bobcat engine because  I like its look, and it is an OK engine for lower mass rockets going to the Mun or beyond.

I usually attempt my first Mun landing with a Terrier, and a Swivel, a big stack of FTL-400 or a couple of 800s, some of the basic one-panel solar panels, and some batteries. I almost always haul along a 2HOT, the barometer, 8 goo-pods and a Material Bay (Science Jr thingy). Later I tend to use a modified Kerbal X, with extra fuel tanks, some SRBs, a Hitchhiker and sometimes two passenger jet two seaters for transporting tourists. With some refinement you can keep landing that configuration on the Mun and Minimus until you don't have to worry about funds for forever. 

I haven't really used the new crew capsules much since getting Making History. Not dislike, just inertia on my part.

 

Anyway, take care everyone.

 

Regards

Frank

 

 

 

[Streetwind]

@Orc Well then, try this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c726ji8iofqscna/Munraker IIa.craft?dl=0

It requires only 90-cost science nodes. Well, the seismometer requires a 300-cost one, but that's the only part, and you can remove that in sandbox and re-save if necessary.

It doesn't use the Bobcat, because the Bobcat is secretly terrible. I mean, its TWR is great and its Isp is perfectly usable, but it's just so weak in absolute thrust terms. It can barely lift a single max-size 1.875m tank if there's also an upper stage on top of it, whereas the Reliant can push two FL-T800's, and the Mainsail might even push three Jumbos sometimes. This screws with the flight profile and the stage mass fraction you get out of it, and means you cannot really build proper all-1.875m rockets with it, not in the same way you can with other engines in their size class. Rather, you'd use the Bobcat for a 1.875m first stage below an otherwise all-1.25m rocket.

So I went with a booster-assisted Skipper instead. Much better all-around.

In a nominal mission profile, you'll stage to the lander in the last 5% or so of transfer burn to the Mun. You then have enough dV to capture into low orbit, land, launch back into low orbit, and return to Kerbin. As with all of the soviet pods, it detaches absolutely everything for reentry. So if you're playing a hard more career game where every last recovery penny matters, this might not be the best design. But at least it's reasonably cheap to launch for the amount of Kerbals and instruments it carries, and available earlier in the tech tree than something based around the mk3 pod.