A Mission to Tsiolkovsky with Realism Overhaul

[PLAD]

I consider Tsiolkovsky the most beautiful crater on the Moon. It's the mix of light and dark combined with that magnificent central peak that does it for me. I've been getting competent at missions to the Moon with the Realism Overhaul set of mods, and I finally was able to land a mission in it. Here it is.

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I vastly prefer Lunar Direct missions to Lunar Orbit Rendezvous missions because you can land anywhere without having to worry about getting back to the plane of the orbiter. And with the real Moon you also don't have to worry about the orbiter's orbit being unstable over time, if you want to spend more than a few days on the surface. So as my Kerbals continue to explore and develop the Moon I will go exclusively with direct missions. And they're only about 10-20% heavier at launch for the same cargo on the Moon as a LOR mission.

I'm using all of the required RO mods, as well as most of the recommended ones except for Engine Ignitors and Remote Tech. And about 3/4 of the suggested mods as well.

[NathanKell]

Very nice! Looks like a most well-planned mission.

Question: in your reentry pic, it shows you rotated such that the lift is pushing you sideways rather than up (and thus featuring similar G loading as a ballistic reentry). Intentional?

[PLAD]

More coincidental. When I first touched the atmosphere I had the lift pushing down because I used a vacuum perigee of 65km, the highest I've yet tried. I made sure the 1st perigee would get down to about 58 km before rotating the lift to be upward. I stay upward until around 65km then try to stay between 70 and 60km as long as possible. I took that picture while in the middle of an up-down switch.

I keep trying to lower the maximum gees during re-entry, my best is about 4.8 gees so far. Though I think the real astronauts took a less complicated path.

I love the descent mode, it's yet another nice touch of realism.