Atempting to make it the the moon!

[Stilgar2300]

I've been toying with KSP for a while now and i finally made a design capible of interplanetary travel (See 1st pic) and now am trying to land on the moon before i try anything else. well i realized how difficult it is to make it (I used up almost all my fuel with corse corrections.) It failed miserably. Any tips for a struggling space program? also i can't seem to get Mechjeb to work, it doesn't show up or the new parts. (Note: the pics are from two missions, don't worry jeb made it back home fine)

the whole ship

Stage One complete:

Stage two complete (Now for jebs favorite part):

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=346kg9w" target="_blank"><img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/346kg9w.png" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

Stage three complete:

Well here goes nothing..... crap i don't have fuel

I saw that one comming

Thanks for reading!

[Lesarthois]

For a Munar and Mimunar mission, your lander is way too big.

Tips for the mission is to have a stage with fuel for slowing down on Mun/Minmus, so you use your lander fuel only to slow down and land on the very last meters.

For that stage, use the NERVA (nuclear) engines, they have low thrust, but high efficiency.

When you start to land on Mun/Minmum, slow down as you get closer; the Mun ground may come to you faster than you expect, and faster than you can slown down.

Edit : here are picture of my rocket design :

third stage to move into space. Overpowered for Muns travel (I waste a full fuel tank on the munar soil) but good for interplanetary travels.

My lander on Mun :

1 large tank fuel, it's enough to get back on Kerbin, even from Minmus (but you might not succeed the first time trying it)

Edited October 11, 2012 by Lesarthois

[Nibb31]

Much too tall, even if you had landed, it would probably tip over. You only need one tank to return to Kerbin, and a smaller engine. The small parachute should be enough too. And why are you carrying winglets all the way to the Mun and back? And why bring SRBs into orbit? They are best used as 1st stage boosters.

[Stilgar2300]

It was originally designed to make it to another planet, I was using mun as a good test spot, hence why the lander is so big.

[EndlessWaves]

also i can't seem to get Mechjeb to work, it doesn't show up or the new parts.

Did you extract it to somewhere and then copy the parts and plugins folder inside the mechjeb folder to your KSP directory? It's not packaged so you can just extract it straight in unfortunately.

Your ship is fine. It could be smaller and more stable but it shouldn't have any problem making it and landing won't be too much of an issue as long as your avoid hills (crater bottoms tend to be flat). Your issue is the flying, how are you navigating to the mun?

[A Fat Pokemon]

First thing I recommend is to add a third tank of fuel to each stack in your initial stage, as the thrust from your current initial stage might be detered by all the air resistance if your TWR is high. I also think you should remove those solid fuel boosters, and replace them with regular fuel tanks and engines. Aerospike engines would be good, as their ISP is always 390 no matter where-ever they are. I also suggest switching the large engine in your stage that also uses the boosters and use the slightly smaller one, not the smallest, so you have some thrust vectoring, which would go great with the aerospikes. I hope some of this helps

[AncientAstronaut]

This rocket is way too big. You don't need nearly that much Delta-V to get to the Mun.