Fastest from Mun to KSC.

[Synapse]

I know there's been a lot of races to the Mun, but not one back. This presents the following alterations:

1. No huge deltaV effort to escape the atmosphere, it's pure acceleration from Mun's surface.

2. You need to get your race vehicle to the Mun and landed outside of the competition. You can also construct a ship on the Mun, giving you potentially a lot more deltaV.

3. Kerbin's atmosphere will slow you down, so far higher re-entry speeds are possible. However timing parachutes will be difficult.

The Challenge

Take off from the Mun and land near or around the Kerbal Space Centre. The lowest time wins!

A screenshot must be taken before Munar launch, and after Kerbal touchdown.

RULES

No Hyperedit -you must get your ship to the Mun first. You can even add additional parts by docking on the Mun, but no hyperediting.

Stock Parts Only - mechjeb or Kerbal engineer are allowed, modded parts are not.

No "Lithobraking" - your ship must land, not crash! At least your command pod/probe must survive.

Leaderboard

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[John FX]

Good twist on a standard challenge. I will have a go with my apollo replica to set a very easy to beat first time. What was your time challenger?

EDIT: OK, I did a full launch, rendezvous, standard return and I opened my parachutes in space. I took about 3 hours

Edited September 15, 2013 by John FX

[Awaras]

3. Kerbin's atmosphere will slow you down, so far higher re-entry speeds are possible. However timing parachutes will be difficult.

No matter how fast you are going, the atmosphere WILL slow you down below 200 m/s long before you hit the ground (unless you are unlucky enough to reenter above some of the highest mountains on Kerbin) so timing is a non-issue.

[Synapse]

Awaras - what I mean is opening your parachutes too early will waste you valuable time.

[John FX]

No matter how fast you are going, the atmosphere WILL slow you down below 200 m/s long before you hit the ground (unless you are unlucky enough to reenter above some of the highest mountains on Kerbin) so timing is a non-issue.

I think the OP meant the timing so the parachutes opening did not impact your time too much rather than being able to land safely. I guess you would want to open them as late as possible, which would be made more difficult if you are still doing nearly 200m/s under 1km.

[Synapse]

I've managed 45 minutes. Pics coming.

Some discoveries I made:

You want to get up to speed quickly, so the Lv-909's I used weren't ideal. Wasted a lot of time accelerating when I should've been going fast already. A higher TWR would be better.

Put more chutes to slow you down, then cut them so your descent speed doesn't go lower than 5m/s at the end.

You shouldn't aim directly for Kerbin because of the gravity bend. A satellite on the ground serves as a good target market though.

I'm sure somebody can beat my time with higher TWR engines.

Edited September 15, 2013 by Synapse

[metaphor]

How did you get that ship to the Mun fully fueled Synapse?

I have this one from some time ago that went from Kerbin to the Mun and back. Mun takeoff was around 1:25, and Kerbin landing at 2:09, which would mean a 44 minute trip.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited September 15, 2013 by metaphor

[Synapse]

Very impressive. Here's my launch. I ditched the last stage just before landing, but I did fill up a little bit of fuel through the cfg file (I'm not entering the challenge, but I was asked to show my attempt)

I recommend you do your attempt again with something instead of atomic engines. If you use a high TWR engine you should be able to scrape time off by getting up to speed quicker. Can somebody do this in 20 minutes or so?

[1096bimu]

20 minutes or so....