[Stock, 14.4] Pride of Neptune - Land on Mun, then power-landing back on Kerbal!

[frankgg]

Description:

The Pride of Neptune is a medium-sized rocket that I made that has enough fuel to fly to the Mun, land, fly back to Kerbal, then make a powered landing on Kerbal! Created on the current version 14.4

Staging:

The lift-off boosters fall off in groups of 3. All the fuel is routed from the outside boosters inward, so the outside boosters will run out & fall off quickly. If you\'re using MechJeb, you\'ll make it to the standard 100KM orbit with the middle booster still full and 3 radial boosters a little over 1/3 full.

Make your way to the Mun via the standard fashion and when you\'re doing your retrograde burn for Mun landing the remaining 3 radial boosters will run out. Toss those and you still have the full 3 tank middle booster to land with. I used it till I was a few meters from landing then tossed it (still had about 1 tank left), put down the landing gear, and touched down with almost all the lander tanks full.

When you\'re done hanging out on the Mun, lift off, get into orbit, do your prograde burn for Kerbal transfer. Get into Kerbal\'s gravity, and do a retrograde burn until the Peroapsis is about ~32KM above Kerbal. This will allow you to aerobrake and save fuel. Sometime around here the 2 small external tanks on the lander will run out, toss them and you should be in Kerbal\'s atmosphere with 3 full half tanks to land.

Let the aerobraking do its magic, you might have to do some retrograde burning here so you don\'t land in the water like I had to. Throw down your landing gear and do a powered landing on Kerbal! This was my first time landing back on Kerbal this way so I used up a lot of fuel but I still had a little left in 2 tanks!

Feel free to add to, modify, alter, whatever!

Pictures

You\'ll notice a MechJeb module on this, I removed it on the craft I uploaded so its bone stock

[antbin]

Very elegant rocket, it was a pleasure to fly.

I made a small change - I re-stacked each fuel tank with its associated decoupler. That makes Launch Control\'s user interface a little easier to read, as each stage\'s fuel tanks are grouped together. Helps keep the launch on track (and non-fatal) without having to count empty fuel tanks and memorize how many are in each stage. :

[sjwt]

Is that a non-stock part on a stock ship I see a little green glowing eye!

Other than that, its quite nice! =P

[frankgg]

Very elegant rocket, it was a pleasure to fly.

I made a small change - I re-stacked each fuel tank with its associated decoupler. That makes Launch Control\'s user interface a little easier to read, as each stage\'s fuel tanks are grouped together. Helps keep the launch on track (and non-fatal) without having to count empty fuel tanks and memorize how many are in each stage. :

Thank you for taking the time to improve upon this!

Is that a non-stock part on a stock ship I see a little green glowing eye!

Other than that, its quite nice! =P

Not just one MechJeb module, but two! (the symmetry feature always gets me when I add it last...)

But yeah, I noted in the picture section that I had a MechJeb module on it for flying but removed it before saving and uploading the ship... Can\'t live without my MechJeb accent module! : 8) (to be fair I probably got 50 rockets into orbit before I found out that MechJeb existed to make my life a little easier)