My first minmus base + possibly vertical docking on a body [Pic.hvy]

[WhiteWeasel]

Taking heed of scott manley, my first manned destination was minmus, so I set out to create a lander, which was roughly inspired by kurtjmacs' design. The Mk I had aerospikes, which I soon learned would be really, really overkill for minmus. So the Mk II had 909's instead. My lander sends three kerbals at a time comfortably, and can fit up to six uncomfortably. Also has a neat IVA view.

But I realised that if I spent almost half my fuel just to get to minmus, how would I get back with out crashing? (EDIT: I've gotten much better a flying so I need much less DV to do these landings now ) So I had to Send the MK III which had chutes, two, drag and two drogue, and a few more lights. And it even landed with more fuel this time! However, there was another issue, I realized that if I landed far away I could not move it without using precious liquid fuel, but noticing that I barely used the monoprop, I decided to make the MK IV with 12 omni-directional ports on the bottom as hover jets. And they did come into use on the 3rd landing.

Next I sent my mobile command to there,which after landing, the rover had trouble not flipping over. Not because of the low gravity, but because of the wheels I picked apparently.

My completed base:

But after being lagged down a bit I decided to return one of them, so I picked the MK III which had the most fuel left and 4 kerbals home, leaving 6 behind so they could all leave in a single craft if need be. Used up every drop of fuel to get back to kerbin safely.

Base now:

But now if that lander needed to use all of it's fuel to get back to kerbin, and this lander has about 15% less fuel, I was likely to run out of fuel before it got home and would be stranded. The other lander has much more fuel left, but no parachutes. I prudently put on docking ports for when I had learned to use them for orbital stations/refuelers. And I had the hover jets! But the docking ports were on the top and bottom though, and I had never seen a vertical docking on a planet, or docked before.

Edited June 9, 2013 by WhiteWeasel

[WhiteWeasel]

Request to be moved to mission reports.

[Supernovy]

Moved as Requested.

[WhiteWeasel]

I thought, more people would be interested by this .

[Pipcard]

I love the lander.

[Wolfos31]

I've never attempted a docking on the surface like this. I think Minmus would be the place to do it because of the very low gravity making it a bit easier. Impressive.

[WhiteWeasel]

I've never attempted a docking on the surface like this. I think Minmus would be the place to do it because of the very low gravity making it a bit easier. Impressive.

That's probably the reason I was able to do it at all, I don't know if the hov jet would work on the moon though.

Edited June 9, 2013 by WhiteWeasel

[Margaul]

I think that's pretty impressive. Good job. I like the idea of Minmus-surface-docking.

I also just like Minmus. A lot of fun to be had with the low gravity.

[WhiteWeasel]

New MK VI lander! More fuel! Can house up to 4 kerbals comfortably, and 8 uncomfortably.

Tower of power!

Edited June 9, 2013 by WhiteWeasel

[WhiteWeasel]

Upon design refinement I had the idea to retrofit the lander design into a orbital fuel depot.

And voila! Now my first station!

Resources at full capacity:

2615 Electric Charge

2540 Liquid fuel (just over 7/8 of the jumbo 64, or big orange tank)

3104 Oxidizer

1790 Mono propellant

5600 Xenon gas

Can dock with one medium and two small docking ports.

Awesome IVA's

Final transfer stage, which-even without the fuel in the depot itself-is enough to finish getting into orbit, circularizing, inclination, transfer, and just barely enough to deorbit itself. Has two ditch tanks to lessen mass. The poodle is used to establish orbit because the nukes aren't strong enough by themselves to finish orbit before reentry. Once a stable orbit has been established, the poodle is shut off. and only the more efficient nukes are used from here on out. The only downside to this design is that the station has no propulsion of it's own, so once the transfer stage is ejected it can only perform docking maneuvers.

Edited June 9, 2013 by WhiteWeasel

[Regnium]

Base and Reful Station are really cool, good job man!

[WhiteWeasel]

New and improved MKII Refueler transfer stage.

Long story short I was curious at how I could make my ship have a higher TWR so it could establish an orbit more quickly, so I don't spend too much fuel just trying to get into orbit before I fall too far past my apoapsis. After some experimenting I found that two aerospikes (350 kN) use up only a bit more fuel that a single poodle (220 kN) but in return are much more powerful-about a 60% increase in thrust. (Which is technically more efficient).

It may seem a bit silly to put my aerospikes on the ditch tanks, but I only need them to establish an orbit-where being quick is more important than efficiency because a bunch of fuel won't do you much good if it's crashing back into kerbin or spent fighting gravity the whole time. Also because of that they are dead weight for the rest of the trip, so things actually work out nicely.

Edited June 9, 2013 by WhiteWeasel