Luna series

[Resender]

Hello all, I got a litlle problem with my current moon lander rockets, I use Vanila 14.1 + nova-punch only atm

Meet Lunas-II, at a launch platform during night (Launch not lunch )

Yeah, it look\'s crazy, a 2meter central stage with 2 3 meter \'booster\' stages.(I tried a detaching mechanism but the main is to heavy and there isn\'t enough room above the 3 meter ones to support any other modules to make it look cleaner.

The 3 meter ones run out at around 30-40 km but the rocket has enough momentum to keep going up on a large bertha engine, when the central stage runs out the apoapsis is at 700 km above Kerbal.

The biggest problem is that even with sas on it has a tendency to drift off course, the use of rcs during liftoff keeps it steady, but the rcs fuel used seem to come from the external main stage rcs tanks then from the 2 meter rcs on the main,when the externals are depleted it does go to the main.

Together with throwing off the main stage the second stage ignites (doing it separate causes the upper stage to collide with the main), at full trust the apoapsis is soon at the Mun\'s orbit. Slow down and save fuel.

Then its fast forward to we get there and wait for the moon to catch us. Then use the remaining fuel to get on a trajectory to the moon.

Throw of the main stage and onto the lander.

The lander consists of a command module, advanced sas, 4 landing struts (retracted) and a small but powerful engine. Lunas-I had no sas supporting it and chrashed into the moon tumbling.

I get to the moon 10 km - 5 km I start thrutheling up to decelarate lower the landing struts,1km speed down to 100 m/s, 500 meters speed down to 50 m/s,75 meters speed down to around 25-30 m/s. Getting close,at 10 meters I\'m slow enough to go for landing I turn off the engine. Landing achieved and at the exact moment I set down the engine goes back on full thruthle on its own despite it showing full stop, sas was still on.

A few moments later the lander breaks up and the command module comes crashing down to Mun.

The idea was to land, and atm I the design does not include a return to Kerbal option,so any pointers or tips.

[Mynorus]

I don\'t have any tips, but that\'s a good rocket!

Hey: who said something had to be pretty to do it\'s job?

[Resender]

The upper stage with struts down and with struts retracted.

Tried the silko patch, it has decouplers that can hold the 3 meter parts but it proved such a bad launch, nearly all momentum was gone leaving the atmosphere

[Resender]

Lunas-VII on its first run to the Mun

I\'ve experimented with parts and 7 is atm the most powerfull launcher I devised, 8 will propably see a 3 meter central launcher and 3-4 2 meter liquid fuel boosters.

[SmiteZero]

You want tips?

Work hard. Be good to your mother.

[Resender]

And for keeping the launcher stable

[SmiteZero]

Make it smaller.

[Resender]

Yeah but smaller means smaller cargo, tried Lunas-VIII with a central 3 meter and it failed, after 2 failed launches , it got stuck half way between Kerbal and the mun and it missed the moon going into a solar orbit.

[OrtwinS]

Yeah but smaller means smaller cargo, tried Lunas-VIII with a central 3 meter and it failed, after 2 failed launches , it got stuck half way between Kerbal and the mun and it missed the moon going into a solar orbit.

If you missed the moon its because you failed to time your orbit transfer (you DO go into semi-circular orbit around Kerbin before initiating a basic Hohman transfer using the visual moon rise/set clue?)

Moon-clue Hohman transfer trick, in case you hadn\'t found it yet on the forums:

Basicly, you can\'t miss the moon if you do this: when in an orbit in the (more or less) equatoral plane, @ around 150 km altitude. You wait for the moon to rise (when travelling in the 90 degree direction) or for it to set (when going in the 270 direction), and than you thurst prograde untill your apoapsis is at 11.000.000 km. (take it easy though, its easy to overshoot). No need to get into moon orbit or to chase it down, the moons gravity will catch you! (you do probably need to slow down a bit though).

Anyway, more proof we need better Spacecraft stats before we can make accurate comparisations of the Lifting power of rockets.

[Resender]

Lunas III & IV didn\'t need to get into orbit around Kerbal, the heavy lifters provided enough momentum to get a small/medium lander to Mun.

Biggest problem I have is running out of fuel trying to get into the orbit

[SmiteZero]

Lunas III & IV didn\'t need to get into orbit around Kerbal, the heavy lifters provided enough momentum to get a small/medium lander to Mun.

Biggest problem I have is running out of fuel trying to get into the orbit

Then you need to fly more efficiently. Launch>Orbit>Transfer>Orbit>Land. Direct ascent is what\'s killing you.

[Resender]

Problem I have is getting the right orbit, I usually end up in one where I \'ll never be able to intersect with the moon.

I managed to get with a reconfigured Lunas-II into the right orbit around Kerbal, the main stage ran out before I got into a full orbit tough, the second stage got me into the full orbit and then onto Mun. Got into a new trajectory by Mun\'s gravity, used the second stage to slow down and get into Mun orbit and at that moment my office lost power and the effort was gone

Second stage on it\'s way to Mun

Current orbit (a lot of debris in orbit around Kerbal, some of it even has orbits allowing them to change due to Mun gravity)

[Resender]

Ok, I have been testing new stage ideas

Testcraft-IV, the idea her would be to test encasing the lander in a shielded compartment making the rocket more stable during lift off.

The cap jettisoned ok, when the 2 stage was done but took a while before i could get the manned section out.

[Twinky827]

I see your problem, press a for the controls and get it into orbit using that, the. Grow it into a transfer orbit.

[Resender]

Reached Lunas-X, so moving on.

Tecraft-V was a whole failure, so the concept needs fine tuning.

Meet Lunat-IB

The lander did make it Munar orbit, but when I reloaded the save the lander was back in a very high Kerban orbit.

I noticed that aiming east (the way the Kerbian sun rises) makes it easier to get into orbit, like in real life.

Lunat-II

[Resender]

Luck is not with me

So when the lander touched Mun, the asas trigged a short rcs burst, causing the tipping over from landing on a slope worse.

An attempt to correct using rcs failed cause the connection between the lander and the command pod failed, as seen in the picture, I could use the controls to get the pod upright.

It was a one way trip, since the lander did not have enough fuel for a return journey but I had preferred the entire lander to have been intact upon landing

[Mynorus]

Yikes. That\'s why I don\'t aim for hills. Remember: Flat plains are your friend!

[Resender]

Yeah had little choose, when I was playing this I was on a laptop and i can lag kerbal so I missed the opportunity to go into munar orbit or change location much

[Mynorus]

Ahh.

[Resender]

Biggest problem is next version, I found an engine that would be perfect for the stage to get my lander from Kerbal to Mun.

The biggest problem is the engine falls off the tank every time the stage underneath it seperates or the rocket slows down due to the solid fuel boosters stopping

[Resender]

Liquid fuel stage and lander shortly after ejecting the last solid booster

[Resender]

So the Luna series is continuing, at the time tests are under way using the Luna-CII launcher.

Successful in bringing a lander to mun, mun landing ended in failure because lander was still going to fast when touching Mun surface.

Luna-CII, shortly after leaving atmosphere.

Prototype lander

Luna-CII, is a 3 stager.

First stage lifts off ground and gets into right orbital angle, stage 2 brings lander to mun and into Mun orbit.

Stage 3 the lander itself.

Latest launch resulted in failure when last acceleration of first stage caused an explosion. Both engines on the lander part destroyed, and the explosion pushed it into an permanent orbit with no means of recovery by own power.

[Resender]

Now testing Luna-CIII, the C-III has a second stage in the ascent part of the rocket. Early test have show a slower liftoff but a more enjoyable merge into an orbit.

Luna-CII

These show the C-II upper stage with the nosecap ejected. The craft is pointing towards Kerbal since I had to decelerate, to prevent getting a slingshot out of the Kerbal-Mun system.

The C-series have unfortunately brought a great deal of debris in various Kerbalian orbits

[asmos]

only needed two soled fule rockets to get me up to 6k m to save on fuel

[Resender]

The Luna-FIIC