Got down to 605 m/s delta V. Woot! The lander tipped over, but I used the old trick of torquing and rocking the lander back onto its legs :). I suspect I could beat 600, but I think I’m hitting diminishing returns.
Hmm. How can I tell what year it is? I have the MET clock but I don’t see an absolute time.
At any rate, I finished a manned landing on Moho. I didn’t bother getting things too optimal–20 km/s of delta V was more than sufficient :). It sure took forever to brake into Moho orbit, though! ~3200 m/s of relative velocity to bleed off and only low-thrust atomic motors to do it with. I ended up just barely making a highly elliptical orbit and then circularizing it later. At least the landing went well. I think I have only a few Joolian moons left to plant flags on.
I’d still like to get a manned return from the Mun in <6 tons; maybe even <5… I have some ideas but they require some fancy staging. I’m thinking that an Apollo-like system where there’s only a minimal lander might work, but getting the ports right will be a bear.
Absolute time is visible in the Tracking Station, and a number of mods including Alarm Clock also show it.
For making an even tinier lander, I can’t imagine how adding the weight of docking ports would help out… but I’m going to take your lander design as a Challenge! So far I’ve put together a rocket with 7400 m/s that weighs a hair over 6 tons…
Cool. I have Alarm Clock installed, but it stopped working and I keep meaning to update it.
It’s definitely a tradeoff! The Clamp-O-Tron Jr. only weighs 0.02 tons, though, so if a pair of them save the weight of an engine, say, they’re a net win (depending on the staging order).
An OKTO2 + seat + Z-100 battery + solar panel + ROUND8 + Oscar-B + LV-1 engine should have enough delta V to land on the Mun from orbit and get back. In fact, you could skip the Oscar-B if you’re willing to use the EVA suit for a bit of extra delta V. That’s around 0.36 tons. If you can transport that to Munar orbit, and leave an orbiter with enough juice to get back (around 300 m/s?), then you have a net win. Then again, an FL-T200 tank only weighs 0.125 t when empty, so bringing that down to the surface may not really be so bad. Gotta think on this more.
It’s a shame that Jeb can’t strap on a parachute himself to descend from orbit :-).
YES! 4.97 tons, 29 parts (sans Jeb). To the Mun and back, though not to KSC. The final landing was really dicey, and the ship isn’t… entirely reusable. Mostly, though. And Jeb survived, which is the important part.
I may practice with it a bit more to see if I can get a smoother landing, but I’ll consider that icing.
Okay–I think I can do it with 3.25 tons (I can get a craft to orbit with well over 4 km/s delta V remaining). But I consider it a bit of a cheat–it (ab)uses air-breathing engines. I’m happier with the fully-rocket-based 4.97 t craft.
I’m getting closer to building a successful Munar lander in my testing account. This time I was able to return Jeb to Munar orbit, but only after abandoning the lander and using the rocket pack to do the rest. Now to match orbits with him so that he can climb aboard.
Excellent! Getting that last bit delta V from the EVA pack is in the true Kerbal spirit. For a true Kerbal landing, make sure you use exploding rocket parts to cushion your fall.
Been there, done that. I lost two probes that way.
My super-cheesy 3.24 ton Munar return vehicle. It shouldn’t work, but it does :).
I’ve achieved a new personal best for jet-only flight, with a couple of the new attempts reaching 230 kilometers. Unfortunately that seems to be the upper limit.
How do you both go about doing your respective thing?
I came up with much the same fan flower design as Strangelove but I haven’t been able to make it much past 100-some KMs in jet only.
Engines. Lots of engines. Sixteen turbojets and sixteen exhausts drawing from one tank of jet fuel.
With the vehicle in my screencap, the following technique works well:
- start at 40 degrees to the horizon
- at 10 km, lower to 20 degrees
- at 15 km, lower to 10 degrees
- at 20 km, lower to 5 degrees
After that, it takes a bit of judgment. You want to keep gaining altitude and speed. Keep it between 0 and 10 and watch your air meter. At flameout, I’m going about 2200 m/s and at 32 km. Apoapsis is something like 130 km, though it drifts down to 90ish by the time my vehicle leaves atmo.
Is that a suborbital hop or are you gaining decent horizontal velocity? Very good either way! In a straight-up shot I only hit 165 km.
I added more intakes, removed the payload and got 273 km :).
Woot–300.9 km! A trick:
Use the hold-down clamps on the launchpad. First, this means your engine has time to spool up. Second, you can just sit on the launchpad, burning through your fuel–my vehicle only uses 20% of the fuel on a hop and so the rest is dead weight.
I’ve found that, using jet engines, I can’t get much above 2200m/s or surface velocity (about 2400m/s orbital), are you guys getting that too?
Perhaps if I angled the air intakes so that they pointed a few degrees above where the engine points, it would be possible to point the engine downward (to avoid gaining altitude) while still aligning the air intakes with to meet the air head-on and thereby keep air supply as high as possible.
I’ve also found that the fuel tank will take many radial air intakes and that having more than 1 jet engine often decreases performances rather than increase it.
That matches my experience. Just a hair over 2200 m/s is the limit.
I did experiment with both radial and ram air intakes (spaced out with structs) and the latter seem to work better.
Good news! I was able to get Jeb back on board the orbiter, and he’s on his way home.
Here is the rocket. The combination of the X200-16 fuel tank and the atomic rocket gives it incredible range - it’s still going to have at least two thirds of a tank of fuel left after a trip to Munar orbit and back.
…and I just realised I forgot to put the RCS tank back in. So even if the lander had made it back to orbit, Jeb still would have had to spacewalk.