Laythe Lander?

[Kulebron]

Jesus Christ, why make such big ships?

Here's my Laythe lander. And the rocket for the whole round trip.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6721960/2013/10-15-laythe/Laythe Expedition 3.craft

The trickiest thing is to shoot back to Kerbin from Laythe orbit, without descending to Jool. But it pays off, you need just 1800 m/s.

forgot the ladder though, had to stand on the engine

If you want to know the mission limits and maneuvers, do a reconaissance mission with a probe with 6 coke-cans in Asparagus staging and small engines.

Edited October 15, 2013 by Kulebron

[Mmmmyum]

But I like big rockets! Also I like to over engineer... I've found that most of my Kerbin system missions have over 3/4 of a tank left after circularizing,and the lander returns to Kerbin also with 3/4 of a tank left. I like having a giant safety margin in case things go pear-shaped

[Kasuha]

Jesus Christ, why make such big ships?

Here's my Laythe lander. And the rocket for the whole round trip.

The trickiest thing is to shoot back to Kerbin from Laythe orbit, without descending to Jool. But it pays off, you need just 1800 m/s.

That looks like pretty optimized design, that fifth stage with exactly 7/8 of orange tank fuel is not something I'd use just for the fun of it. Did you just estimate it all or did you use mods/calculators to create and navigate it?

[Kulebron]

I'll write this in my tutorial soon.

I flew the coke-can probes to make sure I can do these orbits. I used Node Editor to hit Laythe right on arrival, without orbiting Jool. Then I just made a rocket for all these maneuvers.

2200 for return. (insertion and corrections)

3500 for landing, take off and rendezvous.

I don't remember exactly the away trip, but it took about 1950 to shoot to Jool and about 200 for all corrections with the ascent stage (plane matching, then fine-tuninng)

I fine-tuned to hit Jool, then dropped the ascent stage and corrected the orbit to intercept Laythe. Then airbraked and circularized. So this big tank on the command pod was enough for corrections on arrival and for return.

And then the takeoff stages were built to make about 4500 m/s, to be dropped back and not leave debris. (This is almost exactly the way Apollo missions flew)

An important thing was to return directly from Laythe and also to encounter Laythe directly as well. And I got into an inclined orbit aligned with islands. If you correct your path just after Jool encounter, it will cost you 5 m/s (you guess it costs thousands to change inclination when you've arrived).

If you want to know if this is doable without plugins, no, you need to edit nodes precisely. But I flew everything manually, from kerbin takeoff to Laythe landing (that's why I aligned it with islands). Getting into orbit or landing with parachutes is easy. Manual Kerbin takeoff is even easier than with MechJeb, because it shakes the rocket like crazy.

Edited October 15, 2013 by Kulebron

[Kulebron]

I'd say there's almost no room for optimization there now. Lander can't get smaller, unless you use EVA pads The narrow 215 kN engine in the middle is better than Poodle. Quads of these engines on the sides of bottom stages are better than Skippers.

[Starwaster]

I don't think this requires design improvement. Well, it may, that image doesn't tell me what happened. Or it may not. But your ship is IMO fine for Laythe.

First, F5/F9 are your friends.

Second, Laythe's atmosphere is thin. When I tried to land at steep angle from high orbit, I needed almost completely powered landing because drogues wouldn't slow the ship down enough to prevent main chutes breaking it at 500 m. So I learned to descend from ~65 km orbit and use quarter an orbit to descend through atmosphere. Yes it makes it even harder to hit land. But you can get an eye for it. For my ship it needed just a bit of thrust right above the ground to bring the speed below 10 m/s to not break the landing gear. And your ship uses even more chutes so it might be ok.

Edit: FYI, this is what I landed there. Landing as described but it didn't have enough fuel to get back to orbit. Then sent a rescue with less engines, less chutes and more fuel and it was ok.

Wow, I dunno if it's squat and ugly or simple, elegant and efficient.

Maybe all of the above...