That's no Mun... (3)

Week 2: Minmus Mission

After making it to the Mun last week, I thought I could do this week's mission to Minmus (the other moon) without re-watching the tutorial, and I was right, mostly. Though I was able to make it to Minmus from an orbit around Kerbin, land on Minmus, and return home without it, I forgot how to get into orbit. Because I had made a few changes to my design from last week, I thought maybe they were causing my problem. I then spent about an hour making small adjustments to my rocket, and none of them worked. Eventually, I decided to re-watch the tutorial and I realized that my problem was that I was firing my second stage engine way too early, and while pointing in the wrong direction. 

Final Rocket

Once I figured out how to get into orbit again, I made it to Minmus pretty easily. This surprised me because Minmus has an angular orbit around Kerbin, and I had to add an extra maneuver to compensate. Another problem I expected to have was finding a good landing site, and of course landing in it (preferably not horizontally this time). I knew there were a few large flat areas at sea level, which would be ideal landing sites because I would know exactly how far above the surface I am while trying to land. However, Minmus also has very high mountains, so my orbit around Minmus would have to be higher to avoid crashing, and my descent would have to be steeper because my target was at a lower elevation

Minmus

 Fortunately, My orbit lined up with one of these flat areas, and I was able to land pretty easily, and I even managed to stay upright on my first try.

Landing on Minmus

Once I landed, I had Jebediah get out to look around, and even he landed upright on his way out of the lander. Because I was in the middle of a completely flat area, there wasn't much to explore, so I decided to do some experimenting, and I found out that he can jump slightly higher than 10 meters with the decreased gravity, and he can walk slightly faster than on Kerbin.

Falling With Style

Unlike last week, the return trip was more difficult than getting to my destination. The first problem was that I messed up my escape from Minmus, and ended up going about 30,000 kilometers in the wrong direction. My second problem was that this time I had to cross the Mun's orbit, and the timing worked out that I almost got caught in its sphere on influence and thrown even further out into space.

Oops

Once he returned, he confidently got out of his pod, looked around, and started to take a few steps... then he fell on his face. Nobody knew 70 days in a tiny capsule with only a few minutes to get out and jump around on Minmus can be a little bit exhausting.