Poll: Did your first Mun landing need a rescue ship to come rescue the Kerbals?

[milbournosphere]

I landed successfully for the first time yesterday, after playing with the game for a few months and spending many hours sending sattelites around and practicing transfers/free returns. I overlooked the fuel needed to get the module off of Mun and home, so I had to send the rescue crew to save them. Tank goodness that I added a docking port at the last second!

[thescientist]

My first munar landing was very good, but the second one...

I crashed the lander, I crashed the rescue ship

I missed the target with the third mission

The fourth I landed on...errr...imagine what happened...

[el_coyoto]

My first Mun landing went without a hitch, but it's not such of an accomplishment, because I used a very conservative approach and my tons of experience in Orbiter.

So I (over)built a 1 man lander with way too much fuel, did my Munar injection, retro burned and conservatively killed all my horizontal speed at 10 km (bad experiences in Orbiter with H-speed lol). During the descent, I controlled the vertical speed much like I was used to, until I noticed that KSP displayed the ASL, not the true altitude which got me to freak out and regularly kill my V-speed when the terrain seemed too close.

Return was easy, I went back to Munar orbit and used my Orbiter memories to guesstimate the good moment to burn for Kerbin (no maneuver nodes in KSP at this time).

My first Mun landing was so cautious and conservative that I still vividly remember it and feel ashamed. I can't look at Jebediah in the eyes any more since that time... XD

[_Aramchek_]

No, it was going fast enough that no one survived.

[Skorpychan]

Mun landings are kinda boring after you've done a few of them. I can manage to get a Munbase down, and land a crew less than a kilometer from it.

[royying]

In the old version of KSP, no EVA, therefore no way to rescue~~

[Starwaster]

My first Mun landing went off without a hitch.

However, I did run into problems with my Duna landing. I was using the airship mod and I crashed the damned thing and stranded three Kerbals there. Well actually they were pretty much stranded anyway since the ship had no return capability. WHich, I thought it HAD but it had NOT. My fault for not reading the label.

I had to send a mission to rescue them. It was a magnificent ship I thought. With a detachable nuclear drive unit The lander was from a mod whose name escapes me but it was a combo garage, habitat and ascent vehicle. It was basically just to give the original three Kerbals somewhere to live while I put together the REAL rescue mission. So I land the little mini base, send the rover out on auto pilot to rescue the Kerbals, drive back then the two crews hang out and party and then it was time for the second crew to depart. They take off into orbit and I look around for the propulsion unit to I can rendezvous and dock up. And it is GONE. Turns out that it got classified as debris when I undocked and hey guess what! When I installed the mod with the combo lander/garage/habitat I had crashing problems so I set max debris to 0. Hilarity ensued.

So I had to redesign the rescue mission so that it carried a brand spanking new propulsion unit and an ascent vehicle for crew #1. Not sure why I didn't just send a remote controllable lander/ascent vehicle for Crew #1 in the first place... I think I just wanted to put more Kerbals on Duna. oh well

[MarkusA380]

My first mun landing?

Well...

I was on vacation in California, somewhere between Death Valley and Grand Canyon, with a friend of mine who took his Macbook with him. I started building the "QX - series", starting with QX - 1000, a one-person orbiter. It was hollow in the middle. So, somewhere in a hotel in the desert I had the idea to fill the middle of it, creating the QX - 2000. (My first idea was a small drawing on a serviette). The rocket was so GIGANTIC that KSP had something around 0.1 FPS and the Laptop around 100 degrees celsius. It worked perfectly, I landed the ship with shivering hands and a beating heart. My lander had enaugh fuel to return the Kerbal safely. And I didn't know about Orbiting and such, I just shot up to Mun like Scott Manley's ten minute challenge!!!

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

I built a rover (modded, it was 0.16) and sent it over. I wasn't that good at targeted landing and 40km's at 8m/s is, well, tedious. Then I slowly built it up into a base around this tiny 1 man pod (it was bill Kerman BTW)

[WafflesToo]

Well, oddly enough my first landing went off without a hitch... but the poor Kerman died during an EVA mishap.

My SECOND attempt tipped the lander over. Luckily, the lander from the first attempt was only about 9k away. So naturally, I pointed Bill in the right direction, weighted down the'W' key, and left to make a sandwich.

[Longsok]

My first landing went perfectly, until I loaded a quicksave where it never happened. So, then I sent a second mission. Everything looked great, the nuclear brake section detached, and exploded on the mun, and I was a few meters above the surface descending at 2 m/s, when boom, the engine exploded. Didn't stop me from getting Jeb out to take a picture. In game time, that was an hour ago. I already have the core of my rescue mission/base project in orbit. Now just to learn precision landings and get the rover, habitation module, resource module, kethane factory, fuel block, kerbal capsule, and lander on that. Good thing I dug up an old Rockomax design from before I wrote them off as "impossible to fly".

[Giggleplex777]

Well, the very first time I did it was in .13.3. I crashed my engine because the ailerons were too small. The pilots survived, but there was no persistence yet, so I couldn't rescue them. The next time, I came prepared with ze mods, and landed on my huge landing gear (from the old NP IIRC).

KSP has evolved so much since then, eh?

Same, I landed on the Mun before we could rescue our Kerbals.

During my first landing in 016, my lander ran out of fuel, crashed and all that was left was the capsule. When I tried to rescue my Kerbal with a 3 Kerbal lander, I crashed while trying to get closer to the first lander.

[goldenpeach]

I don't remember.

However,I remeber that at that time,I had never did a rescue mission(etheir they died,either I leaved them on the moon or either they returned safely to kerb in(or either I just pressed on the relaunch(the old end-fligh options (at that time,there were no docking,so all the flight had to be a direct ascent one)).

[Echostatic]

My first Mun landing resulted in the ship slamming into the surface of the dark side. Guess I should have brought lights. My SECOND Mun landing (the first one doesn't really count!) was a complete success and the Kerbalnaut got home safe.

[GDJ]

There was no rescue, just a recovery mission if I chose to do it.I hit the wrong button, the lander spun, couldn't recover, and it blew up upon impact.I think there is a leg 1/2 stuck in the Mun surface.This was back at version 0.13 (demo).

Edited September 4, 2013 by GDJ

[PwnedDuck]

Would have, but since it was in .17 and .18 came out the next day, it never actually did. (Besides, I never EVA'd anyone out that time, so the first Kerbal to step on the Mun, Jeb naturally, made it back safely).

[Ittiz]

Well yep my first Mun landing went quite well, until after I was landed anyway. The first ship I sent was rover which I had only tested on Kerbin. So after I landed I got my Kerbal into the first car wreck on the Mun too because I didn't realize you couldn't just gun it like I had done on Kerbin. I had to send another rover, with which I was able to finish the mission and return the Kerbal.

[leopardenthusiast]

My first Mun landing was in 0.15.2. I was using the NovaPunch Odin OTV as a payload for an experimental rocket that turned out absurdly good (Single Stage To Anywhere That Existed At The Time). Landing was flawless. My assembly of the Odin OTV wasn't, and everything but the capsule itself detonated.

There were no EVAs back then. If you launched a capsule, the Kerbals stayed there until the capsule was either destroyed or the flight was ended.

I didn't bother sending a rescue mission.

[Jacob01]

My first mission to the Mun was fine, but on my first landing mission to Minmus to capsule fell off because someone called me on Skype and KSP got minimized. Luckily, they didn't die and were rescued.

[NERVAfan]

No, but Jeb died on Kerbin reentry because I'd forgotten to add a parachute (and I'd saved and loaded, so no 'revert flight' option).

[innovine]

My first landing was a bit hard, and one leg of the lander broke off. The lander fell over onto its side and landed on the door, obstructing it.

My second lander touched down softly, but due to a last minute redesign which hadnt been tested, the poor kerbal discovereo that the ladder blockeo the door and prevented it from opening.

My first landing on duna went well, and my kerbal managed to get out the door. I was just thinking of some first words when he tripped on a bend in the ladder and faceplanted into the dirt

Ksp is awesome!

[Subbota]

My first landing was mostly successful. I landed my ship on its side, but cycling the gear was enough to get it upright and ready to return home with no damage.

After that things got really...dark. I smashed several subsequent missions into the surface so hard little or nothing remained. Then we got the .21 update and the new terrain features made it much harder so I had a long series of missions where I got the approaches right but always ended up breaking important parts off landing on slopes. Now I have this fear of the mun that makes me avoid it for the most part.

TL;DR: First landing went fine. Since then not so fine.

[Dedjal]

First ship landed like a beached whale, sliding along the surface of the moon before coming to a halt.

Most was intact, was just missing the engines, some landing legs and was on the side.

First rescue craft crashed horribly and littered the moon. I had left an orange tank in orbit in order to refuel before heading back. The rescue craft was unmanned by the way.

Second rescue craft suffered same faith. I had not yet mastered the navball completely.

Third craft landed 2km away from target. Kerbal out and start walking. Realising that it would take ages to get there, I decided to move the rescue ship a bit closer... Ended up littering the moon some more.

Now there was 3 orange tanks floating around the moon. Not going to have any problems getting the fuel needed to head back, heh.

Fourth craft succesfully landet, got the kerbals and went into orbit again to refuel and return.

Now, the orange tanks left in orbit lacked docking ports... Fifth craft sent up, now equipped to refuel the return ship! Weee.

Finally the kerbals can go home! They landed safely in the desert were a plane picked them up (after a lot of tries... Got alot of respect then for people designing aircrafts, both ingame and real life!).

I learned alot from the whole moon thingie. Especially how the navball worked. Latter sent up a tug with ironbeams prodding out of it and sent those orange tanks to the surface of the moon.

[Felsmak]

At first I was going to say no, but I then realized that my first Mun lander actually ran out of fuel on the way back and got stranded in an eccentric orbit around Kerbin. Oops.

[Sylon00]

I just made my first ever Mün landing today. It didn't go well, however our trio of heroes did survive, in fact the command module was the only thing to survive the landing. So, now I get to figure out how to save them. I couldn't even land on Mün safely, now I have to figure out a rescue mission? Crap, lol.

And, I didn't even land in the right crater to check out the easter eggs.