Munar Misers - a Stock 0.23.5 Challenge

[Concentric]

Dirt cheap.

If you've been reading the "What did you do today" thread, you may have seen my reaction to the upcoming introduction of budgeting. If you haven't, I've been progressively cutting costs on a simple Mun mission to get myself thinking about mission costs, cost-cutting and necessity... so the challenge is simple.

The Mission

Simply land a Kerbal on the Mun, plant a flag and get home safely. However, the goal here is to do it as cheaply as possible.

The Rules

To avoid possible issues with mod parts having strange costs, and the upcoming reworking of the funding system, this challenge is for stock 0.23.5 KSP only.

You must plant a flag on Mun.

Your Kerbal must survive and be recovered.

The Scoring

Your score is the cost in funds of your rocket. No recovery bonus value, or bonus for leftover fuel etc. Lower scores are better - obviously. This is an "as cheaply as possible" challenge, after all.

My first entry

An all solid lifter, two boosters at .66 thrust limiter, one at .33. So, compared to my 6262 from the "What did you do today" thread, I removed the solar panels and the landing legs, and the radial decouplers were replaced with tiny docking ports at the top of the central booster pointing down.

Over half the charge was used in atmosphere on the gravity turn.

Transfer stage ran dry at about 500m AGL.

Naturally, without landing gear of any sort, the ship must lie on its side when landed. Then, liftoff and escape:

At this point, no further charge or fuel is used. The parachute had been triggered, and deploys at 0.33 pressure, then fully at 500m AGL.

Just a safe return to Kerbin.

That's cheaper than a Z-4k. I'd like to see cheaper, of course. That's why I made this challenge.

The Scoreboard

1. Concentric - 4262 funds
   
2. 
   
3. 
   

Pictures are nice, too.

[mr_yogurt]

I can smash a kerbal into the mun for pretty cheap. I don't know about landing one there, let alone landing and returning.

I have a video of a spacecraft that could smash into the mun that cost less than 1,000 kerbucks. (I made a challenge a while back). But it was probe powered.

But since the probe I attached has the same weight and higher drag than the seat, I should be able to smash a kerbal into the mun for 1830 kerbucks (sadly seat is pricey).

video -

This is not a submission, obviously.

[Pecan]

That really is very, very cheap; well done. My mission vehicle costs more than twice that, without the launch vehicle. Probably too busy to participate but I look forward to seeing other entries.

[Jasonden]

Looks like you used part-clipping, concentric, which is a critical feature of your design in that it allows the placement of decouplers that you used. So is part-clipping kosher for the challenge, then?

I do like the idea behind the challenge, in that this type of min-cost designing will be of great relevance "soon" when 0.24 comes out! We had a similar thread, Duna for Less back in 0.23, but the 0.23.5 ARM parts are super-cheap in addition to being overpowered, so they change the equation!

[Concentric]

Looks like you used part-clipping, concentric, which is a critical feature of your design in that it allows the placement of decouplers that you used. So is part-clipping kosher for the challenge, then?

Yes, part-clipping is fine: it's not as though you don't have to pay for all the parts, after all.