Soyuz Moon Exploration Program

[CleverWalrus]

Hello,

Since i discovered KSP a week ago i can\'t stop playing it, even in this early stage i find it more fun then Orbiter since i can build my own rockets

My favourite 'real' spacecraft is the Soyuz, i always loved that ship so after playing with stock parts i tryed some mods and ended up with the Soyuz Capsule and Launcher, i had to 'edit' the capsule weight/trust since the launcher does not follow the 'standards', what i ended up with is an upgraded version of the standard soyuz with the Engine module replaced with the big tank with legs from Soyuz lander package.

Pictures:

http://www.cleverwalrus.com/files/SoyuzMoon1.png

http://www.cleverwalrus.com/files/SoyuzMoon2.png

http://www.cleverwalrus.com/files/SoyuzMoon3.png

http://www.cleverwalrus.com/files/SoyuzMoon4.png

http://www.cleverwalrus.com/files/SoyuzMoon5.png

http://www.cleverwalrus.com/files/SoyuzMoon6.png

http://www.cleverwalrus.com/files/SoyuzMoon7.png

http://www.cleverwalrus.com/files/SoyuzMoon8.png

Mission Details:

1) Take-off from KSP Center

2) @ 11.000 m or so heading about 30°, the 4 liquid engines are jettisoned

3) @ 33.000 m or so heading about 60°, the main liquid tank and engine is at 25% fuel

4) @ 44.000 m or so heading about 75°, the main liquid tank and engine is jettisoned

5) @ 70.000 m heading 90° (east)

6) Apogee of the temporary orbit moved to 155km

7) Engine shutdown and wait until Apogee

8) Prograde burn for rising Perigee up to 155km, the orbital stage is Jettisoned

9) Wait until the 'mun' rise over the horizon

10) Burn at 90° matching the Apogee with Mun orbital radius, the trans-mun stage is at 25% fuel

11) The Soyuz is captured by the moon with a relative speed of 500m/s at about 1000km

12) @ 100km 'mid' burn for slowing the ship down to about 300m/s, the trans-mun stage is jettisoned

13) @ 50km 'descent' burn slowing slowly and killing horizontal speed with low thrust, the landing zone is facing Kerbal

14) @ 1km from ground the main engine is throttled for making the Soyuz nearly hover, moving down @ about 10m/s stable

15) @ RCS engines correct the heading killing horizontal speed and descending like a feather

16) Touchdown with Mun at less then 2m/s with 0 horizontal speed (Side-note: the crew nearly died when Bob opened a champagne bottle for celebrating)

17) Someone forgot on the KSP Center the lever for opening the hatch so the Kerbonauts can\'t perform a Munwalk

18) The main engine is fired aiming to Kerbal, at 800 m/s engine shut-down, the landing legs are jettisoned as soon as the capsule take-off

19) When the speed reached 400m/s the Soyuz entered an elliptical orbit to Kerbal with an apogee of 2000 km

20) At apogee the main engine and RCS are used to lower the perigee inside Kerbal atmosphere, fuel run out and RCS have to be nearly drained to barely reach a perigee of 30.000m

21) The capsule re-enter atmosphere and slow down (Bob is scared and push buttons everywhere)

22) Parachute open, Bob is in charge to fire the landing retro-rockets just a few meters from ground but miss and the capsule hit ground at about 8m/s, the landing engine explode but the capsule survive.

23) Today is a great day for Kerbal! (Side-note: Bob was sent on the north-east of Kerbal on forced labor to build a very very long railroad by the government)