Has anyone ever built Matt lownes mun lander for the first trip to the mun?

[Jurassic kerbal]

I did and I ended up missing the mun by a second and going out of the solar system.

[Superfluous J]

I will admit here to having never watched a thing he's made. So no, I've not used it.

[Rocket Witch]

This one?

IMO it's quite bad in terms of useability for a new player. A beanpole with tiny, springy legs is typical of most players' 'good enough' designs and the associated problems they experience with falling over. I always wait for 2.5m tanks before sending Kerbals to Mun; the X200-8 tank is wide and flat.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Rocket Witch

[Demordrah]

I did, last year.  I have a habit of over engineering my rockets, and wanted to see if I could complete the Mun landing and return mission with something that had just enough Delta-V to get the job done.  Well, this rocket fits that bill pretty well, so I gave it a shot.  I only used it once, and while I completed the mission, it wasn't exactly easy for me back then.

Matt means well, but as @Rocket Witch pointed out, it's not a very forgiving craft for newer players, and leaves you little margin for errors.  If you do go ahead with trying to use that rocket, allow me to offer you a bit of advice from my experience with it.  When you get to the Mun, try not to land inside of a large (or any) crater.  That alone can mean the difference in whether or not you'll have enough Delta-V to get back to Kerbin.

[Jurassic kerbal]

Thanks that would explain how i ended up out of the solar system not able to save my poor kerbal i wasn’t very good with my prograde and retrograde and stuff so I was off slightly ( I am still not very good with the prograde and retrograde stuff)

[SJC_Hacker]

18 hours ago, Jurassic kerbal said:

Thanks that would explain how i ended up out of the solar system not able to save my poor kerbal i wasn’t very good with my prograde and retrograde and stuff so I was off slightly ( I am still not very good with the prograde and retrograde stuff)

Are you adjusting the orbit after you encounter the Mun?   I've never been able to one shot and get into stable Mun orbit without adjustment.  After you the "Mun Encounter" you will enter the Mun's gravity.   However,  you will probably escape the orbit quickly if you do not adjust it.  

Create a manuever node just after you the "Mun encounter".    Depending on how you approached the Mun, you will need to adjust prograde/retrograde (the green icons), until you see a stable orbit.   In addition, you may need to adjust the blue icons in the manuever node, though i can't remember what their names are.  Make sure the periapsis is > 5000m.   

Personally I try to "hit the Mun" and not let it catch up to me.  Although i think you use less delta-V with the catch-up approach.

I also suggest matching the Mun inclination prior to leaving Kerbal orbit (the purple icons), although if it is only slightly off, by maybe max a few degrees, its not a big deal.    

 

 

[KerikBalm]

2 hours ago, SJC_Hacker said:

Are you adjusting the orbit after you encounter the Mun?   I've never been able to one shot and get into stable Mun orbit without adjustment.  After you the "Mun Encounter" you will enter the Mun's gravity.   However,  you will probably escape the orbit quickly if you do not adjust it.  

You can't one shot and get into a stable mun orbit. You need a capture burn. Otherwise you will leave the SOI with the same velocity relative to Mun as when you entered the SOI. 

As you cannot enter the SOI with a non-zero relative velocity (the mere act of crossing the SOI boundary implies a relative velocity greater than zero, even if it can be arbitrarily close to zero), you will always leave Mun's SOI without a capture burn.

2 hours ago, SJC_Hacker said:

Personally I try to "hit the Mun" and not let it catch up to me.  Although i think you use less delta-V with the catch-up approach.

I also suggest matching the Mun inclination prior to leaving Kerbal orbit (the purple icons), although if it is only slightly off, by maybe max a few degrees, its not a big deal.    

Umm, unless you have your Ap wayyyyy past Mun, it will be catching up to you as you near Ap. I prefer to have it catch up before I reach Ap (faster transit), but many encounters will have your craft get to Ap first, and then have the Mun catch up. Ships tend to "hang around Ap" (ie, they spend more time near Ap than Pe), so just hanging around near Ap while Mun comes along is an easy way to do it.

I prefer that the Mun Soi comes along and scoops up my craft before it reaches Ap, even if my Ap is around mun orbit. For the lowest dV capture burn, you want the lowest relative velocity when crossing the SOI, so this would mean crossing the SOI right when you reach Ap, meaning your Ap shoul be right at Mun's orbit.

FYI, the Mun has 0 inclination to kerbin's rotation, if you get into orbit of kerbin with no inclination, you're already aligned with Mun. Its Minmus that you need to worry about.

[SJC_Hacker]

37 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

You can't one shot and get into a stable mun orbit. You need a capture burn. Otherwise you will leave the SOI with the same velocity relative to Mun as when you entered the SOI. 

As you cannot enter the SOI with a non-zero relative velocity (the mere act of crossing the SOI boundary implies a relative velocity greater than zero, even if it can be arbitrarily close to zero), you will always leave Mun's SOI without a capture burn.

Umm, unless you have your Ap wayyyyy past Mun, it will be catching up to you as you near Ap. I prefer to have it catch up before I reach Ap (faster transit), but many encounters will have your craft get to Ap first, and then have the Mun catch up. Ships tend to "hang around Ap" (ie, they spend more time near Ap than Pe), so just hanging around near Ap while Mun comes along is an easy way to do it.

I prefer that the Mun Soi comes along and scoops up my craft before it reaches Ap, even if my Ap is around mun orbit. For the lowest dV capture burn, you want the lowest relative velocity when crossing the SOI, so this would mean crossing the SOI right when you reach Ap, meaning your Ap shoul be right at Mun's orbit.

FYI, the Mun has 0 inclination to kerbin's rotation, if you get into orbit of kerbin with no inclination, you're already aligned with Mun. Its Minmus that you need to worry about.

This makes sense.  Since the game doesn't care about how long your in space, probably better for newbies to for lowest dV, which means you want Mun encounter as close to Kerbin orbit apoapsis as possible.  But the orbit has to pretty circular, unless you get lucky with the periapsis and the relative Mun phase.   

I'm pretty sure the Apollo missions did a more direct shot, since they were trying to minimize time in space for the human crew.  I'm not sure about what the probes do, probably minimum dV approach so they can save money and/or maximiize payload. 

Yes, the Mun has zero inclination wrt Kerbin.   However if you don't get to orbit perfectly, you will have some inclination.   Even with SAS, I'm always off Mun orbit by at least a half degree.  Its not a big deal unless its several degrees off.  OTOH if it is bad enough, probably means you wasted too much delta-V on ascent, and should probably just relaunch.   

Personally i don't bother and just load up on the rockets to give me alot of delta V wiggle room.   I only have second tech level in rockets allowing the LV 909 Terrier engine and the "Thumper" SRB. With a upgrade to VAB allowing and launchpad to accomodate, you can stack radial decouplers on SRBs and create a huge, if wildly unrealstic rocket with effectively 5000+ dV, although the calculation in the VAB will be much less.  For my rocket the VAB said around 3200 but when I actually launched, it must have been way more than that because by the time I discarded all the lower SRBs and one Swivel,  my two LV909s stages alone had something like 1500 a piece.  By the time of reaching low Mun orbit with my lander it was still over 1200.  On top of that, my ascent piloting was ****.

 

[RoninFrog]

I bet @Matt Lowne has.

[magnemoe]

On 6/23/2020 at 1:44 AM, Rocket Witch said:

This one?

IMO it's quite bad in terms of useability for a new player. A beanpole with tiny, springy legs is typical of most players' 'good enough' designs and the associated problems they experience with falling over. I always wait for 2.5m tanks before sending Kerbals to Mun; the X200-8 tank is wide and flat.

My standard is one core with 4 drop tanks on decoplers. putting the material bay on one of the drop tanks and some other stuff on the opposite for balance, legs on the drop tanks. its stable but not aerodynamic.
Uses this for both Mun and Minmus initial missions. Mun it was an 1.25 meter stack with 4 boosters with crossfeed, because of weight restrictions I could not use SRB. 

[kpdavatar]

I have watched him but still made my messy but worked vessel.

First landing.

Yes, I know the weather science does nothing on Mun, but it looks cool.

 

[Jurassic kerbal]

3 hours ago, kpdavatar said:

Yes, I know the weather science does nothing on Mun, but it looks cool

True it does look cool

[Dr. Kerbal]

i have.

[Guest]

Not Matt Lownes'. But I used Shadow Zone's as a tutorial. I don't call it my first Mun lander because it was his design. But my first Mun Lander was tall boy! Tipped over in most cases making the only landing spots flat-ish grounds.

[Dat Kerbal Dude]

i suspect that my lander vehicles are "Teorically" similar to Danny2462's ones... i think..

basically some of my landers where direct landing apollo style designs

except that they don't have a second stage,instead,they were SSTOs,i think

The uncrewed/Robotical landers are (Kinda) based of the surveyor program,you know,these ones:

Edited September 19, 2020 by Kane Kerman

[Space Nerd]

On 9/16/2020 at 2:38 AM, The Doodling Astronaut said:

Not Matt Lownes'. But I used Shadow Zone's as a tutorial. I don't call it my first Mun lander because it was his design. But my first Mun Lander was tall boy! Tipped over in most cases making the only landing spots flat-ish grounds.

I used his craft for my first mun mission and I forgot to add a decoupler under the capsule, so I had to cheat Jeb home 

[king of nowhere]

i built a similar one for a no contract career challenge. the reason is, making a large lander would have made aerodinamics too bad for launch, and i had not unlocked the fairings, and i was still limited to 30 parts so i could not cope with more rocket power. so, i was stuck with a thin, narrow lander with inadequate landing pods. managing to put the thing on the ground without capsizing it is one of my greatest ksp accomplishments to date. it involved individually tampering with the spring values of each landing leg to compensate for different ground height.