Depends on how ambitious you are :). I was able to do a manned Munar return mission on my second flight, with just Basic Rocketry, Stability, and Survivability unlocked. But yeah, there’s a ton of science on the Mun; every major crater has it’s own biome, so you can collect a lot just in orbit. I collected 383 points on this flight. Woulda had more if electric charge wasn’t such a bottleneck…
Right-click on anything capable of generating Science and a menu will pop up. When you recover a ship, you’ll collect all the science accrued by parts on that ship.
As Sam says, a good place to start is just to “launch” a command module on its own, get out, take some surface samples from the launch pad, make an EVA report from the launch pad, get back in and make a crew report from the launch pad, and then recover the vessel. That will get you enough science points to unlock some more parts.
I have finally performed my first interplanetary mission. I sent one probe to Eve and one to Duna. The Eve probe ran out of fuel so only managed a flyby, but the Duna probe landed safely (but fell over). I think I’ll have to redesign my probes to be less top-heavy - it makes it easier to perform retro-burns in atmosphere, but I’ve yet to have one land anywhere but Kerbin or Minmus without falling over.
Short and squat is good. If you have radially mounted tanks, try spacing them out with a TT-70 decoupler or the modular girder segments (or both!). If you can keep a rough 1:1 aspect ratio, it should be difficult to tip over.
If you have enough spare mass, you can also stick on a few extra reaction wheels. On Minmus, Dres, and some of the other bodies, you can frequently tip your lander back upright just using the reaction wheels.
Here is my current probe design. I might try putting a few RCS nozzles on it, see if that helps.
Looks good. You should be able to land that without too much issue. Is the issue that you have too much lateral velocity when landing? This is especially a problem on airless planets. Make sure that your retrograde mark (the green X in a circle) is exactly lined up with “up” on the navball once you’re close to the surface. If it’s not, point the ship past the retrograde marker and fire your engines. The marker will slide to the up point, and when it does kill the engines. Then, realign the craft so it’s vertical before firing again.
If you’re still having problems, you can extend those legs out a bit further via girders. Also, move them up as high as they’ll go–you can temporarily extend them in the VAB to ensure the legs still extend below the engine.
ETA: Oh, and you might want to add a fourth leg. It makes a pretty big difference.
The problem is that the probe bounces, and doesn’t have enough torque to right itself before landing again. I’ll try adding a fourth leg and maybe move them up a bit - it will be good if that’s all that is necessary.
Hmm–it really shouldn’t bounce much. How fast are you coming down? I generally target 2-3 m/s. The shock absorbers do the rest.
Another tip–sometimes you can retract and extend the legs to get the probe to bounce a bit. So even if it’s tipped over, you can sometimes right it (with help from the torque wheels) with a bit of finesse and luck from the legs.
As the good doctor says, short and squat, although your probe looks pretty squat.
I used to have a lot of trouble landing and would be bouncing and tipping over, a couple of things helped
- Engineer redux mod - when you look at the 'surface ’ tab it gives a break down of horizontal and vertical velocity, really helpful at nulling out the horizontal component
- make sure the nav ball says "surface’ not ‘orbit’. If it says orbit the velocities and prograde/retrograde markers are relative to orbit, and things get squirrely. Click on the nav ball until it says surface and so velocities relative to the surface.
- Gently does it, that lander is light and so you have to use very little thrust. When landing without rcs I hit the caps lock for fine control, then basically tap the shift key (throttle up) then ‘X’ immediately, so give little pulses of thrust in the various directions.
- Chase the retrograde marker to vertical.
- lots of practice.
I botched another landing on the Mun, but I’m sending probes two to a rocket so I’m not too worried. In better news, I successfully made another manned landing on Minmus, and dropped a rover down next to it. I still haven’t unlocked the nuclear reactor so the thing is only solar powered, but I should now be able to collect most of Minmus’s science without too much trouble.
Are you sure it’s bouncing? Or are you touching down with your engine running? If you do, the second your pads touch your lander will want to launch itself back up again. Get your finger over the ‘x’ button and be prepared to cut the engine just before you touch.
Oh, and use F5 before you start your descent to landing so you can reset and keep trying without having to re-fly the mission.
Getting to Mun doesn’t seem to be a problem for me; it’s being able to land without creating a major fireball or bouncing around, and with enough fuel to get back to Kerbin. Most of the time, I use up all of my fuel just trying to land, mainly because I have to use my lander’s engine just to get into orbit around Kerbin.
What I have is:
Mk3 Cockpit with ladder
X200-16 tank (plus four lander legs) with a Poodle engine
X200-32 tank with a Skipper engine
Three Jumbo-64 tanks with Mainsail engines; the “outer” tanks feed the “inner” one.
I have a feeling one of my problems is, I’m not getting into my initial orbit correctly, and waste fuel as a result; I go straight up until reaching 10km (which is about when my big engines run out of fuel), then rotate to heading 90 and pitch +30. My second stage runs out long before I’m anywhere near a 70km orbit, so I have to burn my lander engine.
I don’t have the game handy now–how much delta-V do you have left once in low Kerbin orbit? You need around 840 m/s to get to the Mun, 230 to get into Munar orbit, 620 to land, and then another 620+230 to get back to Kerbin, for ~2500 m/s total. If you’re super-careful you can get a tad lower than that, but in practice you’ll want more margin, especially if you aren’t so practiced with landings. 3000 m/s gives you reasonable wiggle room–you should target at least 7500 m/s total delta-V from the surface.
Another thing–a craft that large is probably a tad too ambitious for 3x Jumbo-64 tanks as lifters.
I would suggest using the same booster config, but instead of a Mk3, use (top to bottom):
Mk16 Parachute
Command Pod Mk1 or Mk1 Lander Can
TR-18A decoupler
FL-T400 tank
LV-909 engine
4x LT-1 landing strut
…whatever instruments you have available. Use 2x goo canisters to keep the center of mass in the middle, since they’re kinda heavy.
That config should give you plenty of margin for a Mun landing. Once you have that working well, you can go back to the Mk3 if you want (though you’ll need more booster stages to lift it). Personally, I like going as light as possible and use the external command seat when possible.
BTW, there’s no need for a ladder on the Mun. Your EVA suits have enough thrust to get off the ground.
Damn it. My rover hit a bug and now the driver is stuck ragdolling in his seat.
You might be able to edit the save file. Yesterday I hit an issue where my rocket simply exploded after resting on the ground for a minute or two. I edited the savegame so that the rocket was a few meters off the surface and I could then land again in non-bugged fashion. It’s just a text file and is fairly straightforward. If you have problems I can take a look and give you some hints.
I say it’s not cheating if things explode due to buggy physics…
I have done “near-landings” with the Mk1 before. I was trying a 3-man craft to more closely simulate Apollo. (Of course, the lunar landers only had a crew of 2, but until KSP comes up with a 2-man command pod or a non-mod way to transfer Kerbinauts from the command pod to a lander, I’m pretty much stuck with 1 or 3.)
I have tried this, but even on Minmus, it’s hard for some reason to get the EVA suit to get to the point where you can open the hatch and get back inside.
Another question: how useful is it to try “landings” on Kerbin itself, especially in the career mode?
I couldn’t see any obvious way to accomplish this, but I’ll have another look. If that doesn’t work, I might build a new rocket with an asteroid grabber to land on Minmus and drag the rover back to Kerbin.
With enough practice it’s not too bad. Try just standing in one place and see if you can maintain a fairly constant height (don’t move laterally yet) using the shift key. After a while you should be able to tap the key rhythmically enough to maintain a given height. Once you have that down, aim your Kerbal in the direction of the hatch, rise to the hatch height, and tap the W key a bit to start moving forward. You’ll eventually run into the hatch, and you can then tap F to grab on.
It’s good landing practice, certainly. And the science points are useful early on. However, each body in the system has its own science multiplier, and Kerbin’s multiplier is just 0.3 on the surface, so gaining science this way is very slow going in the long run.
I would really go for Minmus first. It’s a lot easier than the Mun and the science is almost as good. The gravity is so low that you can really take it slow and steady on the landings.
It’s also got the frozen lakes, which are nice because you know your landing spot is going to be flat.