What happened when you first landed on the Mun?

[Ghost13]

The first unmanned mission was success, the craft legs failed due to the bug during the decent so I had to land on the engine, the engine exploded but the pobe was generally intact one solar pannel and battery survived the crash landing to offer some surface operation. My second moon mission was much better planned, however I did not know how to kill my horizontal velocity properly, so I spend around 5 minutes touching the surface but going up again since craft was going to fall. After a while I bleed out my entire horizontal velocity, but then my ship was moving inside of the crater and I could not land on the high slope, so I returned to the edge and then finally performed landing planted the flag and did other Kerbal stuff. I spend huge amount of fuel on all of this maneuvers but still managed to get back to Kerbin. I could not do proper rendezvous back them to it was Mun direct sort of mission. After I learned how to do docking I performed the successful trip to Minmus with the similar craft design, the only difference was the fuel tank nuclear engine and lander was detachable. However I forgot to put any sort of probe body to the fuel tank part of the ship, making the docking procedures by lander quite… entertaining. 　

[SilverlightPony]

Last Monday, I started the day off planning to use a pre-made Saturn V Apollo analogue I got off the internet to go land on the Mun, just so I could say I've done it.

Like the real Apollo rockets, the lander is behind the CSM, so you have to flip around and dock with it mid-flight. I forgot to do this on Munshot 1, and docking in low orbit is a royal fecking pain, so I just brought them home.

Munshot 2 successfully landed! Unfortunately, I missed my intended landing spot just outside a large crater, and instead come down on the inner slope of said crater. The lander slid, upright, halfway down the slope before one of the landing struts broke and it tumbled to a stop. The can was fine, as were the two Kerbals inside. But they weren't getting home on that ship.

Munshot 3 became a rescue mission. I modified the lander with a remote guidance unit so I could send it down unmanned. It got all the way to Munar orbit before I realized one of the landing struts had gone missing somewhere along the way. Junked the lander, brought the CM home.

Munshot 4 made it to the Mun intact, but something derped in the landing system, and it came down on the other side of the Mun from the stranded Kerbals. Yeah, real useful there. >_<

Munshot 5 finally managed to overcome the glitches in the landing guidance computer and land within jetting distance of the stranded Kerbals. After about a month on the Mun, I finally got them safely home.

[chrischambers]

Well, first *time* I landed on the Mun, I used Mechjeb. Later, though I did it legit. I was thrilled.

this was the same for me, it was more enjoyable doing it yourself then allowing MechJeb do all the work.

[Zaeo]

First Attempt at "landing" got re-purposed into an "impacter" mission involving live kerbals as guinni pigs Volunteers for the betterment of Kerbal kind. 797 m/s with no fuel remaining.

*Black box recording*

"Bill: There she is...The Mun...

Bob: Yeah, Great, Its a big rock in space. So what?

Jeb: THE MUN THE MUN THE MUN THE MUN THE MUN HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Bob: Bill, you have the honors of landing.

Bill: Roger...Beginning velocity cancel...now!

Jeb: *Squee sounds*

Bob: Uh...Bill...fuel??

Bill: Wha-Oh CRAP!

Jeb: WOOHOOOOOOO!~

Bill: Uhh...mission control...We are bingo on fuel. What do we do now??

Mission control: You're WHAT???

Bill: Yup, out of fuel. Altitude reads....398,324 and dropping...We are on collision course with the Mun.

Mission control: ... Okay, we can still salvage something from this. We are planning a wreckage retrieval mission to learn everything we can about that rocket design. I want Jeb to eject from the ship and attempt to slow his descent enough to land with your included pack fuel. Bob, you will handle transmitting all data to us until the time of impact. Bill....Strike a pose! Gods Speed Gentlemen. It was a pleasure to work with you. Your clones are already in the pro--*End comm*

Bill: *sigh...^Pose struck, Image transferred back to mission control*

Jeb: Hey! Hey! Look, Its getting Bigger!! hahaha!!

Bob: *facepalm* At least ONE of us is going to die happy. How long to we have?

Bill: At the rate of descent its at...about 1 hour.

Bob: Well, I guess I'll start transmitting the data. Go ahead jeb, jump out and LIVE!!

--------------------

1 hour later: *Explosions*

...

1 hour and 30 minutes later. KSC noticed a small poof of white smoke on the mun. They can only assume jeb landed sucessfully and that it was a dust plume kicked up by the rocket pack."

Sorry, super long

Edited October 17, 2013 by Zaeo

[Jeb Kerm�an]

Coming in to land, couple of hundred metres to touchdown, I realised I'd attached my new (and untested) lander legs upside down, but I still managed to land successfully.

[Random Account]

I successfully landed a "base" which could hold 5 kerbals(but only had 1 on it), but it fell over because I left the SAS on when using time warp. After that I had 7 failed unmanned rescue missions, got 3 more kerbals stuck there and tried to land all of them using a lander with no parachutes (it was supposed to be a Apollo-style mission).

[AlexanderB]

First time I landed on the mun I broke off my winglets and the engine snapped off too, leaving 3 kerbals in a tiny mk1 pod stranded, unable to EVA.

0.13, good old times.

[spudcosmic]

The first time I landed on the Mun I didn't quite grasp the concept that horizontal motion was a bad thing, and ended up tipping the lander. I made the same mistake the second time, but ended up getting the third time thankfully.

[Rickenbacker]

I would like to know what happened when you landed on the Mun for your first time.

When I first landed on the mun I found out I had put my landing legs on backwards so I had to land with them closed (I landed successfully and near one of the arches). Then I sent Bill out to go to the arch. I used his jet-pack to get to the arch and about half-way there he randomly exploded.

My first time, there were no landing legs, so I used fins on radial decouplers. There also wasn't a map, so I had to use tables to get the right speeds for orbit around Kerbin and the Mun. The first landing didn't go great, the capsule broke off and rolled down a hill... And since there was no EVA, I had to just leave those three brave guys there .

[TechnicalK3rbal]

The first time I landed on the moon, it went almost perfectly , thanks to the fact that I over engineered it So that the lander had enough delta v to go to duna and back.

[Cederic]

My first landing on the mun was surprisingly uneventful - and not particularly well planned. I just went by feel, rather than go by navball and altitude and stuff like that. This was on my second play of the game, so I had no idea how to do most things - hadn't even played the tutorial. So I somehow, miraculously, landed my two kerbals on the mun! One of them left the lander, bounced around a bit, and then returned. I had no idea at this point you could plant flags, so really I have no idea why I bothered going there anyway. I think Jeb talked me into that. He does that sometimes. (Don't ask me about the trip to Duna.)

My second landing was somewhat more eventful. It took place shortly after the first one... As in it took place after I realized on trying to get off the mun that I didn't have enough fuel left even to get into stable orbit around the mun. Luckily trying to get into orbit at any cost had given me a very shallow trajectory, and just before landing I managed to ease it down a little with my RCS-thrusters... the slide was forever, things exploded all over the place, and I did my best imiation of those three monkeys, trying not to see the terror, not to hear the explosions, and not to wake my neighbours with my terrified wailing. Did I mention I had no idea you could revert missions to launch? Or like... pretty much anything else about the game?

Anyway, some debris remained, as did the landing capsule, and my kerbals were shaken, but not stirred. Except for Jeb, he's... definitely stirred, not shaken. Except possibly as a baby. Repeatedly. So now... now I had kerbals stuck on the mun. I was desperate. Time to read the instru... uh... nevermind. Time to google! "How do you rescue Jeb! (Because screw the other guy, he's just dead weight anyway. Jeb can eat him if food runs out.)

This taught me a lot about the game. Like that you can actually leave the rocket... that you can do unmanned missions... that you need more fuel than I thought to get back from the mun. Little things. No worries, science will prevail! Science and explosions.

The third landing on the mun, to rescue Jeb, and the other guy since I had a seat or two over in my hitchiker container on the unmanned lander, worked really well. Of course I landed on almost the opposite side of the mun, so I ended up doing a low bounce getting closer rather than walk all that way. Of course once I had launched, and then got into orbit... and then tried getting to Kerbin... well, I ran out of fuel about two seconds of boost away from breaking free of the mun orbit and returning home.

So, plan Q or so... (Yes, I skipped a few failed attempted on the way... You know, for brevity. I'm all about brevity.) I built a rescue rocket with hitchiker containers and ladders sticking out in all directions, to match orbits with my dead rocket and try to EVA to safety! I kept running out of electric charge during all the intense manoeuvring to match orbit. This was when I realized I had been using the wrong solar panels that needed to be extended... Ah well, what's a bit of extra debris in mun orbit... Oh right. My next attempt, with the right solar panels, crashed into one of those broken ones left on previous attempts, and didn't do so well. Back to the drawing board... ehrm... google. Oh, you can remotely delete debris! Awesome. I didn't even know I built a self-destruct into those things, must have been Jeb. Jeb would totally do that. Even though he's trapped in space. Poor Jeb.

But yeah, after like two days of trial and error, a few new craters on the mun, and more than a few near death experiences for my kerbals, they eventually landed back on Kerbin! At which point I decided I should probably read up a bit more before attempting any more missions. So I did. That's when I learned Kerbals could plant flags. 5 minutes later Jeb was on the launchpad in a new and improved (MORE BOOM!... eh.. FUEL!) version of my original mun lander.

This one made it out of mun orbit before running out of fuel. Unfortunately it missed Kerbin...

That rescue mission was a lot trickier.

[Dean Harper]

My first Mun landing? Well, I don't count the various probes or rovers I put there (or tried to put there). No, what matters is the first time I put a man up there. That man was Bill Kerman (Jeb was involved in a horrid accident some time earlier).

Getting there was easy enough, but landing became something of an issue. Bills lander was a tall rocket with struts at the bottom and was quite top heavy. This wouldn't have been an issue had he not landed on a steep hill.

His ship tipped over and started to slide. It stopped (eventually), allowing him to perform a Mun walk. After climbing back in he had to try taking off, but that was going to be a bit of an issue. By extending and retracting his landing gear he managed to pop his ship into the air, giving him a very brief window in which to take off without scraping his ship along the Muns surface.

He gunned it and pulled up. It was close, the rear of his ship missing the ridge of a nearby hill by only a few meters, but he did it. After reaching a safe altitude he changed course and headed back home. Amazingly, he had enough fuel (and luck) to manage a landing within 5 kilometers of the launch pad.

[Zapness]

First time I tried I crashed.