Docking Adventure with Small Lander

[Ryan81873]

So I just accomplished the mission of my life today and since I can't seem to get my friends as hooked on Kerbal as badly as I am, I figured I'd share my success with you! I've been experimenting with building a ship capable of taking a minimalistic lander to take a Kerbal to multiple moons or planets and be able to return to Kerbin. After a few test launches, what I came up with was this:

I just zoomed on the payload, it doesnt matter what the boosters look like...

So I did a test mission with was to go to both Mun and Minmus and then to return home. To the Mun, I brought it into level orbit at about 40 km, detached the lander, landed, but only had enough fuel to return to about half the height of my main ship, with my blue map line of my trajectory circling only about a quarter the Mun. So I figured, lets switch to the main ship and just see what I can do about docking. However my one Kerbal was on the lander, so the main ship was nonoperational. So I switched back to the lander, disengaged my Kerbal, jetpacked about 20 km to the main ship, entered and began a heavy retro burn in the direction of my lander which was set on a collision course back to the Mun.

As I neared in on my lander, I realized I was in the Mun's shadow, so my SAS needed to be disengaged as electric power was dropping rapidly, leaving me to attempt docking without it. As this started as just a test run, I didn't think about adding lights either... just to add difficulty to an already impossible situation. As I got within good proximity of the lander, my main ship matched the lander's trajectory to crash on the moon. I began a controlled slow approach to the lander's docking port as both ships were in free fall to the moon, managed to dock at 8000 m, immediately burned perpendicular to the Mun surface, and managed to circularize my orbit at ~50 km to head to Minmus. The rest of the mission to minmus and home went without a hitch, and this ship still had over half the fuel left on approach to Kerbin, but I felt like a docking god after I pulled that off on the Mun!

Anyway, just wanted to share that, I hadn't taken any screen shots unfortunately... I was just doing a test run that turned into an epic accomplishment (in my book at least!). Any suggestions for a different design of the lander would be appreciated! Something capable of landing and leaving the Mun would be awesome, I think something capable of that could hand most other moons. Obviously I need to attach an unmanned pod to my main ship next time!

[Specialist290]

Nicely done! Sounds like a very harrowing experience, but with a quite satisfying conclusion

As for the lander: You don't even need to use a separate lander and return vehicle; indeed, with the current way science is handled, I'd highly recommend designing for a "direct ascent" profile. It's possible to construct a launcher and Mun lander using only 1-meter tanks and engines. I'm not really in a position where I can recommend specific designs at the moment, but one common Mun lander that works is often referred to as the "Toyota Corolla" -- basically a 1-man capsule, LT-400 tank, LV-909 engine, and landing legs.

[Scotius]

Or, you can build something like this:

This monster of a lander brought me a lot of science from Mun and Minmus. Only thing it can't really handle is parachute landing on Kerbin, when it doesn't have enough fuel to slow descent. Engine section will rip clean after parachutes open. Good thing i have much better design now.