Munar Achievements

[foamyesque]

Are you remembering to switch your velocity display back to surface mode? The Mun is rotating, after all.

[Kryten]

Some people have had success using winglets as lander legs-maybe give that a try?

[Arrowstar]

But from the Lunar point of view, that IS an escape trajectory

Precisely. The \'free-return\' trajectory is just one where the turning angle of the hyperbolic orbit is precisely that to send you back the way you came.

[thorfinn]

Precisely. The \'free-return\' trajectory is just one where the turning angle of the hyperbolic orbit is precisely that to send you back the way you came.

Did you know that some loonies geniuses⁽¹⁾ once sent a commsat on a lunar free return to salvage a bad orbital insertion?

http://carlkop.home.xs4all.nl/asiasat.html

(1) 'Remarkable how often those two traits concide....'

[Slpee]

Did you know that some loonies geniuses⁽¹⁾ once sent a commsat on a lunar free return to salvage a bad orbital insertion?

http://carlkop.home.xs4all.nl/asiasat.html

(1) 'Remarkable how often those two traits concide....'

That was the most amazing thing I have read all day, thank you for sharing that story good sir.

[Key of door]

My Munar Achievement was these charts.

http://keyofdoor.deviantart.com/art/Moon-landing-267001049?q=gallery%3AKeyofdoor%20randomize%3A1&qo=0

http://keyofdoor.deviantart.com/art/Moon-landing-267001049?q=gallery%3AKeyofdoor%20randomize%3A1&qo=0#/d4ewy42

http://keyofdoor.deviantart.com/art/Moon-landing-267001049?q=gallery%3AKeyofdoor%20randomize%3A1&qo=0#/d4ewrva

[Ferrit]

Did you know that some loonies geniuses⁽¹⁾ once sent a commsat on a lunar free return to salvage a bad orbital insertion?

http://carlkop.home.xs4all.nl/asiasat.html

(1) 'Remarkable how often those two traits concide....'

That is more Kerbal than 90% of the things on here! woah!

[Ronox]

I\'ve done my share of successful munar missions, but until the orbit bug is fixed, I took the opportunity to do this. Take that, nasa.

[Key of door]

I\'ve done my share of successful munar missions, but until the orbit bug is fixed, I took the opportunity to do this. Take that, nasa.

N.A.S.A can not do it now, budget cuts. (God bless America remember?)

[Arrowstar]

N.A.S.A can not do it now, budget cuts. (God bless America remember?)

NASA couldn\'t do it ever, technically. Shuttle is a strictly LEO vehicle.

[OtherDalfite]

I\'ve done my share of successful munar missions, but until the orbit bug is fixed, I took the opportunity to do this. Take that, nasa.

If only Nasa could do that now. *snff* :\'(

[Key of door]

NASA couldn\'t do it ever, technically. Shuttle is a strictly LEO vehicle.

They could have rewrote the rules?

[Ronox]

Maybe they could have, but this probably would happen. Need more boosters.

[Justin8Ball]

Four landings successful. Two different landers.

[Fabri91]

They could have rewrote the rules?

It\'s not a problem of regulations, but of technical suitability: how should the Orbiter have got to the moon, let alone landed there?

(Mind you, the feasibility of using the orbiter for circumlunar flights was studied, but refuelling the ET on orbit would have required about 13 Shuttle-C launches)

[ludsoe]

;D

Woot! 8)

[DeadlyPear]

I\'ve landed, with full to spare for the return trip.

Only one minor problem, the lander fell onto its side when I bounced the landing... :-[

Ah well. Break out the next set of clones!

Actually depending if you are next to a hill all you have to do is full thrust up the side and you can get yourself into a good orbit.

Happened to me once and it worked.

[DrLucky]

Are you remembering to switch your velocity display back to surface mode? The Mun is rotating, after all.

I normally forget that until I get down to about 50m, but the extra 10 m/s or so is pretty obvious once you\'re that low. I\'ve always landed in surface mode. I usually have loads of extra fuel, so I take my time shopping for a landing spot. Hard to tell if there\'s a slight slope, though, until you\'re down.

And I\'ve used three legs made of 2 radial decouplers and a wing each, but they break off like everything else... and I can\'t reinforce them with struts as far as I can tell.

One thing I typically *don\'t* do is bring RCS. I\'ve heard people recommend using it to kill translation, but I have good success just pointing directly into the X anti-velocity marker to kill lateral motion. I wonder if my lander\'s just too heavy; I use a vectored liquid engine for descent (and ascent), and in order to finesse the throttle I land as heavy as I can -- if you\'re very light, tiny throttle increments lead to large acceleration variations.

And besides, RCS is a lot of mass -- and top-heavy mass at that.

[sarkun]

One thing I typically *don\'t* do is bring RCS. I\'ve heard people recommend using it to kill translation, but I have good success just pointing directly into the X anti-velocity marker to kill lateral motion. I wonder if my lander\'s just too heavy; I use a vectored liquid engine for descent (and ascent), and in order to finesse the throttle I land as heavy as I can -- if you\'re very light, tiny throttle increments lead to large acceleration variations.

And besides, RCS is a lot of mass -- and top-heavy mass at that.

I don\'t use RCS for lateral motion control either - I usually kill horizontal velocity when I\'m high above the Mün, and later just point my thrust into the retrograde vector. Works fine for me. However, when I\'m really close to the surface (below 1000m) I dislike messing with the throttle - so I leave it in a spot that my lander will accelerate only slightly - and then engage rcs to deaccelerate.

This way I easily have a touchdown speed of around 1 mps.

[Motorsheep]

Finally made it to the mun and back for the first time. (I didn\'t get a lot of time to play games these past days)

I used a two-stage rocket with a single-stage lander module, where the first stage was just for ascent, the second for everything else up to the final landing approach.

I approached the mun from an opposite-direction orbit and did not orbit the mun but more or less flew right into it after a short retro burn. I cancelled the massive horizontal velocity with the last of the fuel from stage two and then descended almost vertically with the lander engine.

Touchdown was very smooth at slightly less than 1m/s, after about 14 hours mission time.

So far, so good, but then I made a mistake:

I used a direct ascent for re-launch, after which I had very little fuel left and ended up on a strongly elliptical orbit.

A retro burn at the perikee was out of question - I would have merely been able to circularize my orbit and then watch as my three kerbonauts circle Kerbin until the end of time.

So I decided to go for a retro burn at my apokee - with results that, in real life, would have killed the crew just as well:

[dbellmo2]

Did this yesterday:

Mission Stats:

We\'re planning a rescue mission.

[Ydoow]

For a direct ascent? no no no..

You can just burn in a backward orbit and let Earth capture youw tih gravity.

Your kerbals are running out of air!

Backward orbit? Teach me your greatness oh wise one

[Altair1371]

After reaching the Mun, I retro-burned down to the surface, landing on my side. I managed to take off again, bu only after losing my parachute. With little fuel left, I managed to retro-burn back to Kerbin and splash down. I think this counts as an epic win. 8)

Unfortunately, I did not snap any pics, but suffice to say My lander is water soluble. ;P

[CardBoardBoxProcessor]

I never landed but it is alot cooler if you ask me.

http://youtu.be/KlFs4yZtLG4

[CardBoardBoxProcessor]

Landed on my first landing attempt.