AARP goes to Minmus

[Galane]

And comes back, somehow.

First there was the technology demonstration vehicle, the Mainsail Landing Demonstrator 1. Its function being only to develop an extended landing leg support to work with the long Mainsail engine. The design was a success and the vehicle retired.

That is, retired until our chief engineer and janitor decided that by substituting a Skipper engine and reconfiguring other parts it could go to Minmus!

Undiscovered until after launch was that Jeb and his two best buds had replaced the crew selected for the flight during one of the times the vehicle was wheeled back to the VAB for "technical adjustments". The original crew was found tied up behind a mop stand in the VAB. As punishment for their actions, the Minmus trip was scrubbed and the lander brought down. That proved once again AARP's maxim that "Parachutes are for wimps!".

The vehicle was reconfigured without the parachutes and stack separator then prepped for launch, with the right crew.

I'll spare you the boring, uneventful details of the to and from.

Landed on Minmus.

Flag planted.

Back home.

Sigbrett, Sambles, and Patley Kerman are happy to be back from their flight. They are rather less happy with Jeb's blog postings about how "The Minmus mission was faked!".

[Geschosskopf]

Bravo! I've never tried landing on Kerbin without parachutes .

I like your landing gear configuration. There's a mod called Escapedie or some such which provides legs that give Mainsail clearance, but they don't splay out as far as your design there.

[Galane]

The small hardpoints and I-beams also work well with the Skipper engine due to these legs being barely long enough to work with that engine. I did refuel at one of my stations orbiting Kerbin before heading out to Minmus.

All of Alan Aerospace Recycling & Packaging's rocket designs to date. http://partsbyemc.com/pub/AARP-Kerbal-Space-rockets.zip (Archive updated as new designs are done.)

Not everything is particularly great, many aren't even orbit capable. At least one is a flat out failure. Several are stages of progression in design. The stock lander has landed on Kerbin several times from orbits as high as 200 KM and has gone to the Mun and back. Could have been used for Minmus but I wanted to try the MLD-1S (S for Skipper) based on the MLD-1.