No one doing a 44th Anniv Re-enactment? Let's all land on the Mun this weekend!

[Captain Sierra]

You stole my idea! I had that as my mission flag all set! Of course My Quantum struts attracted the Kraken so you got to beat me to it damnit.

EDIT: not the US one, the apollo 11 patch.

[NoMrBond]

Strap yourselves in, launch is go!

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[Guest]

You stole my idea! I had that as my mission flag all set! Of course My Quantum struts attracted the Kraken so you got to beat me to it damnit.

EDIT: not the US one, the apollo 11 patch.

Hey, there's no reason you can't do it better! I landed 2.5km away and had to jet-pack it. So there you go. Show me how it's done!

[superecnate]

My tribute to the Great Men who landed on the Moon:

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[British_Rover]

I don't think I have enough experience for an Apollo Style Mun landing, I can barely dock around Kerbin, but I did send my rescue lander to the Mun today to pick up my last stranded crew. I made an ok landing about 6 clicks from their position then took off again to reposition. There was just enough fuel left in my stranded crews lander to take off and cover the remaining distance so I ended up only 600 meters apart at the end. A quick hop from the jet packs and my three macn crew was rescued.

Then I managed my best landing on Kerbol yet. I ended up setting down only about 10 clicks from the Space Center

[Guest]

Let's go home, guys...

[Van Disaster]

Currently re-enacting Apollo 8 after suspicions and a ( half hour! ) Apollo 9 re-enactment confirmed the top half of the munar lander wasn't passing fuel to the engine. Admittedly it's so overengineered the bottom half could reach Kerbin but that's not the point! Sent it down unmanned to provide a shelter for the pilot of Slim Pickens ( see command chair thread ) who decided to try his own landing...

I haven't ISA scanned the Mun in this game so I've rather forgotten where the monument is, so I probably won't land there.

[Tw1]

Here it is. My Apollo adventure, done only as kerbals can do it. It was based on one of the later ones, for extra interest, and includes the GIF that's been going 'round on the pictures thread.

I am pleased to present: A Totally Apollo Adventure:

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[ash73]

On the pad:

Command Module docks with Lunar Module, ready for lunar injection:

Lunar Module and two Kerbals on the Mun:

Rendezvous in lunar orbit, Kerbals return to the Command Module via EVA:

On finals:

[rodion_herrera]

Bedazzled = max points for the most minimalistic Apollo-style Mun landing (using stock parts), ever!

[Keome]

My own mission report is located here. It's not traditional Apollo-style and did have a few problems relating to the Kerbal Attachment System, but part one is complete. Part 2 (the rescue mission) is going to launch later today.

[HeadHunter67]

This is a hard day for me. My dad died ten years ago. He was a NASA engineer, and brought me up to love the space programme. I saw so many manned launches, and my dad had his hand in every single one of them through Apollo-Soyuz. Later on, he was key in making sure the Shuttle could grab the Hubble telescope, among other seemingly minor yet so important things. So what I'm posting in these pictures is a testament to my father. To what he taught me. To what he showed me. And how I wish he were here to point out every last little thing I've gotten wrong in my designs!

Even more than your amazing pictures, I am most moved by your story. The history of our space program has been a series of seemingly ordinary men and women accomplishing the most extraordinary feats - moving mankind forward one giant leap at a time.

[Tw1]

So many good Apollos. I wonder if someday in the future, people visit the landing site do this in real life.

As there's a full moon out, I'm of to look at it.

Even more than your amazing pictures, I am most moved by your story.

Same here (I read the thread after making my mission's post.)

[Aragosnat]

I don't think I have enough experience for an Apollo Style Mun landing, I can barely dock around Kerbin, but I did send my rescue lander to the Mun today to pick up my last stranded crew. I made an ok landing about 6 clicks from their position then took off again to reposition. There was just enough fuel left in my stranded crews lander to take off and cover the remaining distance so I ended up only 600 meters apart at the end. A quick hop from the jet packs and my three macn crew was rescued.

Then I managed my best landing on Kerbol yet. I ended up setting down only about 10 clicks from the Space Center

Nice landing. But, Münar lanings is heck of a lot easier to achieve then docking. You only have to worry about one direction to slow down thrust and it is such a big target you cannot miss ever. Unless you're a Kerbal.

[Brotoro]

I'm not going to do an Apollo 11 reenactment until I get version 0.21 because I like leaving my descent stage on the münar surface as a tribute to the Apollo astronauts...and if I did that now, it would probably just get destroyed by the new terrain in 0.21. Plus, I already have a descent stage still sitting there from my previous reenactment... So here is the previous reenactment instead:

Acting All Apollo-ish

I've seen several YouTube videos where people have done "Apollo-style" missions, so I wanted to do one of my own. Except

I wanted my spacecraft to look and act as much like the real thing as could be accomplished using stock KSP 0.18.2 parts.

Onboard for this mission were Nelemy "Neil" Kerman, Thompbles "Thompbuzz" Kerman, and Milski "Michael" Kerman.

I didn't try to make the launch vehicle look like a Saturn V, since I needed to use what works. But it does have five

mighty "F-1" Mailsail engines powering the liftoff. And it is the tallest rocket I've ever built.

Once the most dangerous phase of the boost to orbit is over (the booster separations are completed), the

Launch Escape System tower is jettisoned.

Below we see the stage I call "S-IVB" completing the boost into orbit. The stage below it actually had enough fuel

to complete to boost into orbit, but I cut off its engines and separated it so the the S-IVB with its "J-2" Poodle

engine could do the job.

I made three orbits of Kerbin to give the crew and flight controllers plenty of time to checkout the systems of the

vehicle and then to get into position for Trans Münar Injection.

The S-IVB stage performed the Trans Münar Injection burn to send the ship on its way to the Mün. It still had

about a third of its fuel left after the completion of the burn, but this would not be used (since the job of the

S-IVB is done at this point). In fact, oddly enough, at this point I transferred about half of the fuel from the

Lunar Module's ascent stage tank into the S-IVB (to lighten the LM of its fuel load, which was too large, as dictated

by having to use a Rockomax X200-8 "tuna can" fuel tank in that stage...as explained later).

The trajectory chosen to get to the Mün is shown below. Although it doesn't look like it on this plot, the ship

makes a figure-8 path around the Mün, and will end up in a retrograde nearly-equatorial orbit around the Mün. The

plot also shows that the ship is on a free-return trajectory that would allow the ship to return to Kerbin at a

proper altitude for reentry should the burn to place the ship into Münar orbit fail to happen.

Time for the Transposition And Docking maneuver. Below the Command/Service Modules (henceforth referred to as "Columbia")

separated from the rest of the vehicle. And here's where I ran into a bit of a problem. Even though I used the TR-18D Stack

Separator (which releases both sides of the connection), the piece of debris representing the engine shroud did not

separate cleanly from the top of the LM, getting jammed in place. Really, it should split into four panels and float

away (that's just MY opinion, anyway). But because it is actually a separate piece of space debris, I was able to

select it using the square bracket keys and the press escape to end its flight to make it disappear.

With that nasty piece of space debris eliminated, Columbia was able to proceed with its turnaround.

Below we see that Columbia has successfully docked with the docking port on the top of the Lunar Module (henceforth

referred to as "Eagle" or "LM"). The LM descent stage contains an OKTO probe body, so that part of the ship was

still under control so it was nice and stable for docking.

Then the LM was then separated from the S-IVB and pulled away by Columbia. I had to disable the RCS thrusters on

the LM to get this picture of the CM/SM pulling it away with RCS firing.

For the trip out to the Mün, the spacecraft was oriented at right angles to the sunlight and put in a slow

"Barbecue Mode" roll to insure even heating. Note that Columbia has deployed its high gain antenna for better

communication with flight controllers. I suppose using an X200-8 tank instead of an X200-16 tank for the SM

would have been a little more to scale, but I wanted to be sure I had plenty of fuel.

Over the backside of the Mün, Columbia fires its engine to slow the ship into Münar orbit. The mission controllers

are waiting on pins and needles to see if the ship comes back around the Mün at the correct time to indicate a successful

Münar Orbit Insertion burn. The initial orbit was elliptical, but then I circularized it to about 60 miles (96 km), as is

right and proper for such things.

Nelemy and Thompbuzz have transferred over to Eagle and are checking out the systems, such as the landing leg

deployment. Unlike Apollo, my astronauts needed to transfer between the two ships via EVA.

What I had to do next was wait a while for the sunlight conditions at the landing site to be correct (daylight, but

with the sun not too high so that good shadows showed any landing obstacles). Once the time was right, Nelemy and

Thompbuzz separated in the Eagle and checked out all the controls and activated the various engines and thrusters.

Below we see the Eagle floating in front of the Columbia, upside-down. "SOMEBODY's upside-down," says Nelemy.

I performed a burn to put the Eagle into a descending trajectory, with a little plane adjustment to get it to

pass over the target landing site.

The map below shows the initial descent trajectory (still long at this point). The target landing site is near

the southern edge of the maria in the upper-left, which I will refer to as "Mare Tranquillitatis" for today's exercise.

Below we see the Eagle coming in for a landing on the relatively flat terrain. "30 feet, 2 1/2 down... faint shadow...

4 forward... 4 forward... drifting to right a little... O.K....". Man, that Thompbuzz can drone on. After landing, the

descent stage tanks had a little under 1/3 of their fuel load remaining. It would have been a much closer thing if I

hadn't off-loaded half of the fuel in the ascent stage tank. Then Nelemy would have also had flight controllers

joggling his elbow with fuel level warnings as well.

Here we see Nelemy getting out first after distracting Thompbuzz by giving him a sandwich. Pardon the crappy

backlighting for the first steps on the Mün, but some things are traditional. I'm sure if you were a young boy

sitting on the living room floor in Minnesota, you'd be spellbound by all this anyway.

Below, Nelemy hops down to the surface of the Mün and flubs his line.

But now that Nelemy is on the surface with the Hasselblad camera, we get much nicer shots of Thompbuzz descending

the ladder. Navigating the path from the rungs on the side of the crew cabin and fuel tank to the angled ladder

is a bit tricky...one must let go, then walk a bit along the horizontal rungs ("front porch"), then grab the angled

ladder. Falling onto the top of the other structures can make the kerbal go all floaty-ragdoll, and looks embarrassing.

Overview shot of the boys on EVA, just after Thompbuzz stepped onto the surface.

Nelemy took this nice picture of Thompbuzz with the Eagle in the background. The descent stage of the LM has a

cruciform arrangement of fuel/oxidizer tanks around the descent engine (FL-T200 tanks and an LV-909 engine). The

areas between the tanks are filled with RCS tanks and assorted equipment and science instruments, giving the descent

stage an octagonal layout, as is only natural for a properly-built descent stage. The descent stage also has

batteries (located on the tops of three of the tanks, mostly to help fill an unsightly gap), and an OKTO probe

body on top of the fourth tank. I had a hard time making an ascent stage that would have enough fuel, but still

looked nice. It would be nice if KSP had some round radially-mountable fuel tanks in various sizes. So I made

do with an X200-8 tank, which has way more fuel and weight than is needed (and that's why I pumped off about half

of its initial load into the S-IVB tank to lighten the lander).

The sides of the "equipment bays" of the LM are walled off a bit with solar panel packages, which you can

just picture as general purpose equipment containers. But which CAN be deployed to recharge the batteries, in

an un-Apollo-like manner. This nice picture of Thompbuzz checking out the slightly floating lander leg pads

was taken by Nelemy.

Below is a picture taken by Nelemy of Thompbuzz doing a standard kerbal jump from near the lander footpad.

The height of the jump is not very Apollo-like, but at least mission controllers kept the boys from posing

standing on top of the LM.

Pictures of Nelemy? Sure...here's one Thompbuzz took of Nelemy checking out the condition of the surface

under the lander.

There was an unusual feature located nearby the landing site (or "nearby" after a lander hop to adjust

location). Below is a picture Nelemy snapped of Thompbuzz standing on the monument.

Here's a picture of Thompbuzz returning to the crew cabin. The high gain and radar antennas are made from cube

and octagonal struts, and unextended omni antennas. There are some additional omni antennas stuck onto the

ascent stage in traditional locations (not visible in this picture).

With the crew back on board, it's time to head back up to the Columbia. The separator fires and the LV-909

of the ascent stage sends the Eagle's ascent stage upward. Make the first part of the boost vertical so

that the ascent stage gets away cleanly and the thrust from a rapid turnover doesn't actually blow the

descent stage over (I have it on good authority that this can happen). Good thing we didn't plant a flag

close by in a slipshod manner, or it probably would have been blown over, too.

I felt like John Stafford trying to handle the comparatively skittish ascent stage as I turned over,

but all was well eventually. Below we see the Eagle ascent stage passing over an interesting valley.

Left behind on the surface, as it should be in an Apollo recreation, is the Eagle's descent stage.

I'll keep it there in my persistence file as my own little monument to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Meanwhile, back in orbit, the Eagle returns to Columbia. I used the Columbia, which is easier to handle,

to conduct the Münar Orbit Rendezvous and docking that is characteristic of an Apollo-style mission.

Here we see Thompbuzz transferring back to Columbia in a non-Apollo-like EVA.

The Eagle ascent stage is cast off to remain in Münar orbit as the three astronauts, safely back in

Columbia, prepare for the trip home. Since the Mün lacks masscons that disrupted the orbit

of the Apollo 11 ascent stage and caused it to eventually crash onto the lunar surface, I will

manually remove this Eagle later.

Around the backside of the Mün, Milski becomes relevant again as he fires the Columbia's engine

to perform the Trans-Kerbin Injection to send the ship home.

The Columbia falls back to Kerbin, after a midcourse correction to insure an ocean landing.

Separation of the Service Module before reentry.

The chutes are out in reefed condition.

And we have three good mains at 500 meters.

Ocean splashdown as befits the ending of a Apollo flight. Now where is the Hornet?

[Landge]

I posted mine in the Mission Reports forum:

Kapollo 11 Reenactment

[almondj]

This gave me another reason to rebuild the Saturn V for the twentieth time. The result was one of the best looking landers I've come up with:

[Guest]

The result was one of the best looking landers I've come up with:

Get some light on that guy.

[HeadHunter67]

Even though I used the TR-18D Stack Separator (which releases both sides of the connection), the piece of debris representing the engine shroud did not

separate cleanly from the top of the LM, getting jammed in place. Really, it should split into four panels and float away (that's just MY opinion, anyway). But because it is actually a separate piece of space debris, I was able to select it using the square bracket keys and the press escape to end its flight to make it disappear.

The descent stage of the LM has a cruciform arrangement of fuel/oxidizer tanks around the descent engine (FL-T200 tanks and an LV-909 engine).

The separator fires and the LV-909 of the ascent stage sends the Eagle's ascent stage upward.

I just have a few questions about the lander construction and the staging - particularly between the command module and the lander, but also of the lander's ascent and descent stages. I have been trying to construct something similar without much luck.

Am I correct in seeing that the stack separator is the only thing between the CM's engine and the LM's docking port? Will everything assemble correctly in that way?

More importantly, I continue to be confused by the center of the LM descent stage and how it separates. Does the descent stage have its own engine, separate from the 909 of the ascent stage? What is the hollow circular thing in the center of the descent stage?

I think once I understand how those fit together, I can finally give this a try. Thanks in advance for any advice or help.

[Brotoro]

I just have a few questions about the lander construction and the staging - particularly between the command module and the lander, but also of the lander's ascent and descent stages. I have been trying to construct something similar without much luck.

Am I correct in seeing that the stack separator is the only thing between the CM's engine and the LM's docking port? Will everything assemble correctly in that way?

More importantly, I continue to be confused by the center of the LM descent stage and how it separates. Does the descent stage have its own engine, separate from the 909 of the ascent stage? What is the hollow circular thing in the center of the descent stage?

I think once I understand how those fit together, I can finally give this a try. Thanks in advance for any advice or help.

Yes, there is a TR-18D double-sided decoupler between the Poodle engine of the Service Module and the top of the Lunar Module. BUT, I was getting some weird clipping happening when I built this rocket, and the ASAS unit and docking port on top of the LM were clipping into the coupler (so that the coupler appeared to attach to the top of the lander can instead of to the top of the docking port as expected). I didn't argue with the VAB strangeness, but when I try to rebuild this connection now (I did a quick rip-apart of the ship in order to answer your questions) the coupler mates to the docking port as expected. This will make a wider gap than shown in my old rocket, but will work fine (and may solve the weird problem I had with the engine shroud jamming on the top of the LM at separation). Don't forget the four long struts that run from the SIV-B stage to the Rear of the SM...otherwise this stack is too weak.

The LM descent stage has its own LV-909 engine. On top of that LV-909 is a regular separator and then comes the LV-909 of the ascent stage of the LM. The four fuel tanks of the descent stage are attached radially to the sides of the decoupler.

The cylinder you see in the center of the descent stage after the ascent stage separates is the engine shroud the the decoupler places around the LV-909 of the ascent stage..

I hope this answers your questions. If not, let me know.

Edited July 21, 2013 by Brotoro

[Kerbal01]

I plan to do it tonight, if i can.

[Lanfranc]

Well, I didn't do an Apollo-style mission, but I did land a probe on the Mun… if by "land" you mean botching the ascent and wasting too much fuel, going ahead with the mission anyway, and running out of fuel just 150 m above the Mun surface. Lithobreaking and unplanned parts separation ensued. So, you know… "landing".

[HeadHunter67]

Don't forget the four long struts that run from the SIV-B stage to the Rear of the SM...otherwise this stack is too weak.

The LM descent stage has its own LV-909 engine. On top of that LV-909 is a regular separator and then comes the LV-909 of the ascent stage of the LM. The four fuel tanks of the descent stage are attached radially to the sides of the decoupler.

The cylinder you see in the center of the descent stage after the ascent stage separates is the engine shroud the the decoupler places around the LV-909 of the ascent stage.

Thanks so much for the explanation and advice! I think that helps me to understand how it all goes together. I've managed to cobble together a similar craft, though I reinforced the area between the tanks with modular girder segments and slapped some panels on them, just for an aesthetic surface onto which I could mount instruments and utilities. I also put a Adapter 02 on the bottom between the bottom of the TR-18 and the descent 909.

I'm looking forward to testing it out - I took it out to the pad to make sure all the accessories worked - ladders are properly placed, lights, solar panels and comm dish look good. Separation works fine and the ascent module can take off even in Kerbin gravity (with the help of some Sepatrons), but the descent stage is, of course, far too heavy to take off from the Kerbin surface with only a 909 to power it.

The only problem I'm encountering so far is with the recommended struts - maybe it's due to the slight differences in my lander design but I cannot seem to run the struts past it from the CM/SM to the SIV-B.

I resolved the issue by putting cubic struts on the sides and running a pair if struts between each, but the ship still flexes more than I like.

Edited July 21, 2013 by HeadHunter67

[Kerbal01]

What are the exact coordinates of the Apollo monument? I'd like to visit it in my trip.

[Guest]

What are the exact coordinates of the Apollo monument? I'd like to visit it in my trip.

Try this: Apollo 11 landing coordinates.