The Moonshine Mission

The Rocket had been built and put on the Launchpad. Not that 35-metre-triple noodle they had used before, but another design, still about twenty-three metres long, but way more powerful. Featuring three Thuds and a Swivel on each of the outer tank stacks, this design was powerful enough to lift the one hundred and twenty ton rocket into the air. This design was inspired by early Mun rockets to land on a possible steeper slope without tipping over. This was crucial, as one oculd not determine the height and steepness of Iota. Additionaly, the ignition TWR were, with an exception to the last stage,having an ignition TWR of 1.97, pretty consistent at about 1.4 to 1.5.

They had, however, chosen a launch time a bit more carefully than with the other missions to eliminate the need for a maneuver they called 'plane alignment', as the spacecraft, called Iota I, at least according to plan, would cross Iota's Sphere of Influence, circularize, land, and then hurry away to Kerbin with the delicious Science. The already tested Sciece Collecion Device was on-board this time too.

Jeb sat in the cockpit waiting for launch. He had been sitting in there for nearly an hour now, simply doing nothing. He once again looked at the Navball reading to look for Iota's position. "Iota is now past the zenith and moving to the horizon. There won't be a better time for Launch." "Leave as you wish. Good Luck." "Igniting the first Stage." The audience clapped loud as the whole rocket slowly but steadily picked up speed. The Thud Engines, although not having the best ISP, had impressive eight degrees of Gimbal.

As planned, Jeb turned a bit pretty early on. Despite not having any fins, the craft was, due to the Thuds' large gimbal range, quite stable even over larger turns. Stage separation, planned above ten kilometres, was initiated at about 17 km. As Iota I picked up more speed with the second stage, consisting of another three Thuds and three Swivels, it headed constantly prograde to get as much horizontal speed as possible while not wasting too much to steering losses. The third stage lit it's engines at no less than 30 km. After topping out at an Apoapsis of eighty kilometres, he waited until twenty seconds before that before firing the engines again. Six hundred kilonewtons pushing him into orbit.

He waited once again, this time for the Ascending Node, if everything was to plan, he would intersect Iota near the Descending Node to get into the Sphere of Influence of the moon.

After this burn he realized that the engineers had severely overbuilt the Rocket. The Moon had a Low Orbital Speed of barely two hundered m/s so he wouldn't have any problem to land there. He got to sleep for a few days.

--Six days later--

Jeb woke up the moment his lander entered Iota's gravity sphere. He got the science from the first 'landing leg', which was a tank strapped onto an engine with some science at the top and all that bound together with some Jeb's Junkyard Space Duct Tape. He followed the protocol and burned a bit of fuel to get from a hyperbolic trajectory to an orit with periiota at just more than two thousand metres. Unforunately, while preparing for the next wait, he forgot to turn of the magnetometer and lost all his electricity. At least he was able to steer with a little bit of thrust. He collected his low orbit science and deorbited. The landing was smooth despite the lack of power. After collecting the surface science he burned, still with plenty fuel left in the landing legs, but quite some snacks science in the container. Landing at Gael was despite the need for multiple aerobrakes because Jeb had a too high periapsis pretty smooth. Everyone congratulated him as he walked back into the Astronaut complex after more than thirty days. He had to prepare for Ceti though. But then he would fly with Bob and Bill.

Mission Statistics:

• Duration: ~30 Days
• Science: ~625