Munar Landers

[Commander Amaro]

After the announcement that there would be a moon (or Mun, whichever you prefer), many people (including myself) started developing huge rockets, intricate landers, and other associated systems to get them to the moon.

We\'ve already seen several of the rockets that are going to get us there. That\'s all well and good, but what I\'d like to see are the actual landers, the business end of any mission to the Mun, the part that\'s actually going to be kicking up some dust (to quote Neil Armstrong) when you actually get there.

I\'ve started testing a lander in the area around the Kerbal Space Center. I call it Touchdown 1. Here it is after it\'s first successful landing:

It\'s not the most stable design, but it\'s a beginning

Now let\'s see yours

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

Check out my sig for more info

[Robo336]

My tiny lander

This thing is very prone to tipping over but can survive touchdown speeds up to 10m/s.

Out of fuel at 4000m. Who said they have to get home again?

Parachute deployed. They should survive the crashlanding.

[fitosm]

This is my lander. It is capable of landing, orbiting, an landing again. I have another one which comes with parachutes, but this is prepared to land without atmosphere.

I\'ve also recorded a video for the occassion.

[Rickenbacker]

Here are my two attempts so far. I try to stick with stock parts, since I enjoy the added challenge of it.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=3336.0

[Rascal Nag]

I\'m working on direct ascent landers so I\'m ready for the challenge of the direct ascent mission when it comes around. Right now, I have this. I orbited it at 12000km, then came back and landed in these mountains. Though the flat edge I landed on was pure luck. Even if docking is added, I\'m doing direct ascent just for fun at least once.

I\'ll likely add some goodies like RCS thrusters later, but I\'m VERY happy with this. I\'ve managed to nearly perfect getting vertical on landing, and since we should get lander legs in .12, that will cut down on the weight significantly without the struts and decouplers.

[Zeroignite]

I\'ve figured out an secret ninja trick to powered landings, specifically killing horizontal velocity.

It\'s known that keeping your eyes on the navball is key for stable flight... and it turns out this is true for landings as well. When you\'re descending, you should see your retrograde vector icon hovering somewhere in the blue region. It\'s probably not where you want it though; if you have horizontal velocity, it\'ll be somewhere off to the side of the zenith. For safe landing, you want to have no horizontal velocity, and a low vertical velocity. To kill the horizontal velocity without fuss, just tilt your rocket a few degrees away from the zenith, towards the direction the retrograde vector is showing. With your descent engine on, this will scrub horizontal speed and you should see your retrograde vector creep inwards until your horizontal velocity is very close to zero.

Then you don\'t have to worry about horizontal speed. Vertical speed is managed by balancing the throttle, using RCS as needed for small final-approach adjustments. Sadly the throttle control is a bit too widely quantized for real precision approach work. Ideally you want your speed to be 0 at altitude 0, but in practice a few m/s down is entirely acceptable.

Hmm. Now I wanna fly an instrument landing

[Shedao]

My little work. It is very tricky to land it safely but I hope for the lower gravity of the Mun.

The booster below the lander engines will be left on the Mun to proof the Kerbals Jeb was there. It is fully functional and not used during the flight.

With little help from the escape tower the booster remains safe.

[icefire]

My lander, made with Silisko Edition parts. Capable of landing and returning home.

coming in for a landing on the tower

firing separation boosters

ascent stage ignites

It should have enough delta V to get back to Kerbin from the Mun if my calculations are correct.

The rocket it will be launched on:

[SteevyT]

Here is my lander. I haven\'t actually tried launching yet. I simply shoved a bunch of boosters under it to test landing it for now. It seems to work as long as stuff separates cleanly. No pictures though, I have a video.

Hmmm....seems I can\'t build a ship big enough to get this thing into any sort of orbit.