Kerbal X to the Mun... and back

[pvtnum11]

A raw look at the stats of the Kebal X stock craft shows that it will not support a return trip from the Mun, and it's a finnicky piece of kit to land on the Mun anyway. I experimented with landing it and taking off again, and it's a bear.

So, here's the challenge:

Get the Kerbal X (bone stock) to the Mun, land and post up a pic of how much fuel you have left over.

Hard Mode: Get it back into Munar orbit.

Super Uber Hard Mode: Get it back to Kerbin.

My attempt at this is shown:

[The Jedi Master]

I'll do this soon. Return might be a bit optimistic, but landing I can probably do.

[Epthelyn]

Landing is easy enough. I managed it with 4 units less of liquid fuel than you did remaining (62.87). The lander failed to reach orbit, but managed to get up to roughly 8.2km, so it was possible to save one of the Kerbals

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I'm pretty sure that if something is impossible on paper then it will be impossible when run ingame.

EDIT: Jerbin Kerman is now safely onboard my Kerbin Space Station, not floating in space forever

Edited December 30, 2013 by Epthelyn

[stupid_chris]

Yeah, the Kerbal X does not have enough delta V to return to orbit once it has landed on the Mun.

[The Jedi Master]

The JSP is short on cash, and Scrooge Kerman (creator of the Kerbal X) said he'd pay the space program if they put his company flag on the Mun using his ship and named the landing site after him. We realized that the three kerbals would not be returning for a while, but we needed the money.

Here is what the remaining fuel was on landing:

The lack of return capacity turned out to be a huge blow to Scrooge's reputation, and he is now bankrupt. Thankfully, he had to give us the money under contract, and a rescue mission will be sent soon.

[Kasuha]

118 fuel units left. Still not enough for orbit.

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[Stankleberry]

59.09 Liquid Fuels left

[Smidge204]

Experimentally (yay Hyperedit) if we allow "Get out and push" as a valid strategy, you need about 170-175 units of fuel remaining to get out of Mun's SOI. That includes one push on the way up. You can probably do a little bit less is you're willing to push more than once, but it's risky since time is limited and there is no margin for error if you want to get all three Kerbals home safely..

If you're willing to spend enough time pushing - which I'm not - then it's perfectly doable: Launch to LKO, push into higher orbit, wait for encounter, burn to capture (you will almost certainly not be able to push enough in time, but all you need is capture), push to lower Mun orbit as low as you dare, land. That should actually leave you with plenty of fuel.

Once you're out of Mun SOI, of course, pushing to lower your orbit to an atmospheric braking altitude and waiting out the deorbit is a cakewalk.

=Smidge=

[capi3101]

I've made it back from the Mün before with the Kerbal X; alas that I don't have pics. IIRC, using KER helps. I will have to try again when I get back to my main KSP box. We'll see if anybody else can do it in the meantime, I suppose.

[SpenSpaceCorp]

My first attempt resulted in a landing with 84.42 units of fuel and 103 units of oxidizer. My second attempt as shown in the photo, resulted in 94.05 units of fuel and 115 units of oxidizer. I started my Munar injection burn at my apoapse, still WELL within Kerbin's atmosphere, and managed to do a very low suicide burn skipping right past circularization which meant I had to land on the dark side (I still don;t know how my three kerbonauts aren't splattered across the Munar surface! I decided to try and get into orbit (futile anyway) but ended up with a decent suborbital suicide hop.

[British_Rover]

First two shots are just glamor shots.

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That is 105 units of fuel and 129 units of oxidizer. I also used all three RCS packs from my crew. Maybe I could get a little bit more fuel left if I used the RCS packs in a more efficient manner.

[Sirine]

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Left 104 units...1st try.

[Kasuha]

"Hard mode" completed. 131 units, horizontal landing but nothing broke - was enough to get to orbit. No EVA pushing applied.

[pvtnum11]

Nicely done! Now I know that getting into orbit again is at least possible.

[Sirine]

Nicely done! Now I know that getting into orbit again is at least possible.

There are exceptional case... Kasuha are those few with exceptional skill. Bravo!

[capi3101]

Hmmm...maybe it was another rocket I was thinking about...anyway, I'll probably have an entry for y'all in the near future.

[MajorThomas]

I think Kasuha's return to Munar orbit may well be the furthest anyone can go in this challenge. The return to Kerbin just takes too much fuel.

(I tried this challenge myself, but didn't write down the particulars. After landing I cheated, adding about 1/2 fuel tank's worth of extra fuel to the lander, and was able to just barely make it back to Kerbin. But my parachute broke off during the rough, horizontal takeoff from the Mun, so the Kerbal perished.)

[KASASpace]

I think we need a more detailed analysis. How much Dv does the first stage (boosters included) have?

How much for the second stage?

On the KSP wiki (is that reliable?) it said the Kerbal X has a total Dv of "6674 m/s"

I'm quite sure that that's enough to get to the Mun. Now to get back.........

[Woopert]

Back when I was a total KSP noob I took the Kerbal X to the Mun and on other missions to Minmus as well. Those were one-way trips, compared to the safe and reliable Kerbal space program I run now Those were also back in 0.18 and possibly 0.19 IIRC.

I'll get to this again on another save and will get around to rescuing them as well

[pvtnum11]

Back from the dead:

Long voiceless video, but this was bone stock Beta with a bone-stock Kerbal X, and it worked.

http://youtu.be/tgs80csya3Y

[zarakon]

The Kerbal X is much more capable now than it was when this challenge was new. Getting to the Mun and back with it isn't even particularly hard now

[maltesh]

Even the old Kerbal-X was fairly good at pulling off a one-way trip to any of the KSP worlds that had atmosphere. Back in 2013, I flew a Kerbal-X to Laythe with the assistance of Kerbal Alarm Clock for timing, Kerbal Engineer for delta-V, and Protractor for close-approach information.

[pvtnum11]

Looking at the Wiki, I see that the Mainsail and Poodle had their stats adjusted in version 0.24 - Mainsail's Isp jumped up a good amount, and the Poodle went on a diet. Together, these increase the delta-v of the rocket to levels that permit round-trip Mun lander missions, if a moderate degree of patience and skill is used. So yeah, not much of a challenge for the experienced pilots, but it might serve as a nice yardstick to judge the piloting abilities of relatively new players - if they can fly this okay, then they have probably achieved a nice degree of competency in efficient flying.

[GeneralMDBK]

I understand that the engines have had some work done in past updates that makes this easier but I decided to try it myself and show the results and I tend to over think my missions and end up ruining them in the process, so here it is as .90 definitely not hard at all and kinda fun for messing around.

[ScytheElement]

My first attempt kinda crashed it because i ran out of fuel but survived does this count??

Edited February 1, 2015 by ScytheElement
Wrong picture Link