Input on lithobraking challenge?

[Dave Kerbin]

Can anyone give me some input on creating a lithobraking challenge? The challenge I’m thinking of is a flight and return and I’m a bit concerned that I’ve made it too hard. I’ll be working on some designs in sandbox mode tommorow to try and prove it is possible.

The challenge is:

Launch a rocket using stock parts from Kerbin. Mechjeb is allowed since navigation is not part of the challenge. It must contain a probe or pod you designate as the core (you can’t pack multiple little ships and hope one survives). You must fly to Minmus and setup any approach you wish.

However once you enter Minmus SOI you cannot use any liquid fuel engines, solid fuel engines, RCS or kerbal jetpacks until you have finished landing. Decoupler spam or any other sneaky source of delta-v is also against the spirit of the challenge. You must ‘land’ via lithobraking. Once you have landed (navball reads 0m/s on the surface) you should demonstrate that your ship is still functional by taking off and returning the core safely to Kerbin under your own power (you do not need to lithobrake on Kerbin). That means you cannot dock with anything you did not bring into Minmus SOI (if you find it useful it is legal to use docking ports on objects you did bring with you into Minmus SOI, so a lander might carry multiple return service modules as a shield and an RCS powered core that can dock with one that survived)

Entries are scored based on how much they weigh on the launchpad – the lighter the better. In the event of a tie then the weight of the vehicle returned to Kerbin is used, the heavier the better.

Hard mode is doing it on the Mun instead of Minmus.

It would be in the spirit of the challenge that results be reasonably reproducable - using quicksave to fly a ship into Minmus 100 times to get one lucky break is considered luck rather then skill.

If it proves 'impossible' (or at least very improbable) to complete the challenge as designed I might try to change it by reducing the distance from the SOI down to some specific altitude where engines must be shutdown.

[Toastie_Buns]

I think you're seriously overthinking this, dude.

As far as I'm aware, the rules just state that you have to be able to do this yourself. If you can; then post.

Whether people want to do the challenge or not is a different kettle of sausages.