Flying the new Munshine V to the Mun!

[Wayfare]

Fly Me To The Mun

Well, it took a little longer than I thought but I rebuilt my0.20 Munshine V into the 0.21 Munshine V and flew one final, complete mission before releasing her to the public! 0.21 allowed me to make some real imrpovements. The smaller 1m fuel tanks made the lander a lot lighter, which in turn allowed the CSM to be a lot lighter, which in turn allowed me to slap a Skipper on the third stage and do away with the hassle of a three-minute TMI burn. All these saving also gave the launcher a better power balance, especially after I increased the fuel load of the first stage a bit. Finally it all required a lot less strutting due to the new, more gentle SAS. All these improvements combined saved a buttload of parts to boot.

Chuffed

From the pad to a 100km orbit in roughly five minutes. Boom - done!

Trans-Munar Injection burn followed by Transposition, Docking and Extraction. Made much easier by using action groups throughout the mission instead of relying on a wonky staging sequence or manual operation of parts.

Correction burn, capture burn and crew transfer.

Landing and frolicking on the Mun.

Ascent, rendezvous, docking and bringing the boys back to the CSM.

MM jettison, return to Kerbin, re-entry and touchdown. Welcome back space heroes!

[BostLabs]

Nice! I never had much luck with Apollo type missions. I'll have to try again.

[EnDSchultz]

Very awesome. I always did like Apollo look-alikes, even if I was never very good at designing my own. I'm curious; why did you swap in the new inline micro engine for the LEM ascent stage as opposed to the LV-909? Is the engine such a large fraction of the mass that you get more dV out of a lighter, less efficient engine than the 909?

[Rhyunix]

Very Nice! Well done there - I have to admit, I never developed the ascent stage for the LM, I thought it looked too bulky when I designed it. Still, it was similar to yours in most senses apart from that.

[Wayfare]

Thanks folks! If you like the ship, go show her some love in the Spacecraft Exchange thread - rocket builders thrive on feedback

I'm curious; why did you swap in the new inline micro engine for the LEM ascent stage as opposed to the LV-909? Is the engine such a large fraction of the mass that you get more dV out of a lighter, less efficient engine than the 909?

Good question! The 48-7S actually gets a little less delta-V than the LV-909 due to its poor specific impulse. There were three reasons for me to choose the wee one:

1. Control. The LV-909 is pretty overpowered for an ascent stage and under 0.21's less snappy SAS this leads to a lot of drift.

2. Parts frugality. The small 1m fuel tanks clip into the stack a little due to the way their collision boxes are set up. This causes an LV-909 to get wedged in between and snap off when the descent stage is separated. I could space the tanks out a little using cubic octagonal struts, but that would add another four parts to the design.

3. Looks. The ascent stage sits lower on the descent stage due to the 48-7S' lower engine profile, which I think makes for a better looking lander overall.

[Drunkrobot]

Boy, do I love teeny tiny landers. A question-are the toroidal tanks there because the T100s add almost, but not quite enough fuel, or are they there for the sexyness? I like to think I'm good at efficient non-atmospheric landings, so would it be possible to ditch the toroidals or is the safety margin tight enough as it is?

Yes, I could do the maths myself, but it is very, VERY early where I am, and the mathematician that lives in my head is asleep.

[Landge]

Excellent job! Love the rover design and how it attached to the lander. I couldn't figure out a good way to add one on Mine.