In December of 2014, four aspiring Kerbonauts decided to land on the Mun. They decided to do it in true Apollo fashion as well, with the pilots limited to the views inside the ship and Mission Control telling them what to do.

The pilots in the command module, from left to right: Justin, Jenny and Derek

The rocket itself, Kerpollo 1, was designed to mimic the Saturn V. It had a command module, the Celestra, from which the pilots would be flying most of the mission; a two-stage lander, the Galileo; a very large launcher to push it all to the Mun; and, most importantly, an escape tower. The KSC did not want any Kerbal lives lost on this mission. Aditionally, we wanted as realistic a ship as possible without loading up on too many mods; so we disabled reaction wheels and used RCS for all attitude changes (except while the second stage was attached, which had Vernor thrusters). The whole mission would be flown IVA, with the exception of walking on the Mun itself, which was done in first-person using the Through the Eyes of a Kerbal mod.

In the real world, we were set up across a few rooms. The pilots communicated with Mission Control through a Google Hangout, and Mission Control received telemetry via the Telemachus mod. We had a third room, down the hall, to be used for the lander. The original plan included Dark Multiplayer and each Kerbal having their own screen, but we ran into issues that we weren't able to sort out in time for the mission.

Mission Control - telemetry on the left, procedures on the right

This being a Kerbal mission, we were well stocked with snacks. We sent pretzels, goldfish, carrots and hummus to the Mun with the pilots. Mission Control got tortilla chips and salsa. The on-board snacks were to stay in the command module instead of being sent down to the Munar surface, the rationale being that it was just a short jaunt and carrying the snacks would waste delta-V.

The flying was divided up between the crew. Derek, the commander, was in charge of getting to the Mun and flying the descent to and landing on the Munar surface. Jenny was to fly the launch and remain in the CM orbiting the Mun, taking the role of Michael Collins. And Justin would handle rendezvous and docking between the ships.

Procedures to follow

We planned out the mission in advance. I made sheets listing all procedures we'd need during the flight - except for rendezvous and docking, because it wasn't clear how to simplify that into a checklist. We made sure to have checklists for abort under different situations. This turned out to be useful; we ran a few practice missions from outside the ship, and before we realized that FAR wasn't installed we got a lot of practice with the Abort To Orbit procedure.

Finally we were ready for the actual flight to the Mun. We separated into our respective rooms, and began the launch countdown. The ascent to orbit went well, aside from ending up with an apoapsis about 100 km higher than planned. We orbited Kerbin once, burned for the Mun, and that's when our troubles started. The Telemachus mod provides no information about actual intecepts, so we were using the system of "burn towards the Mun when the ship is over the KSC". There's not a lot of visibility from inside the capsule, so Mission Control had a map to track locations.

Numbers are frustrating, sometimes you've got to just sketch the orbits to figure out where everything is.

We had pre-caclulated the required orbital velocity to end up on a Munar intercept. And the crew of Kerpollo 1 managed the burn perfectly, and set off for the Mun, but something wasn't quite right. To make course corrections, we oriented the window towards the Mun, to determine the closest point of approach, and discovered that rather than approaching the Mun, Kerpollo 1 was in fact travelling away from it.

There were a few attempts made to rendezvous with the Mun. But it was literally on the other side of the Kerbin system, and the time in space was limited. The mission was designed to be as Apollo-like as possible, and this included power - i.e. using batteries instead of solar panels. The telemetry antennas continously drew a small bit of power, which meant that any long-duration rendezvous maneuvers would drain the battery. Faced with defeat, we ran through the abort-to-orbit procedure yet again, and returned home. The reentry and landing were successful, and we decided that this mission would fill the role of the recent Orion test - to test reentry from at high speeds from near the Mun's orbit, without actually going to the Mun.

Kerpollo 2 launching

We determined that the issue was caused by time discrepancies. The mission plans expected the rocket to be launched at 0:00:00 Kerbin time, but due to the practice missions that we ran, the actual launch time was about 45 minutes later. This was combined with the fact that we launched into a higher (and thus slower) orbit than planned, and with Kerbin's 6-hour day, to make the alignment of the KSC and the Mun significantly different; so we ended up flying off into a part of space where the Mun wasn't.

It wasn't too late in the day yet, so we decided to run another mission, and actually go to the Mun this time. We prepared the space center for launch, started a new save so we could launch at the correct time, and began the countdown for Kerpollo 2. Jenny flew the launch to a more circular orbit than the first mission, and we checked to actually see the Mun appear over the horizon before beginning the transfer burn.

View of Kerbin receding on the way to the Mun

The last mission hadn't gone anywhere near the Mun, so we were still working on the assumption that one of the metrics of Telemachus would tell us when we got an encounter. It didn't show anything, which was worrying. We were still unsure of whether the trajectory would intersect the Mun, so Derek re-oriented the ship several times on the way there to keep the Mun in view and confirm it was still getting bigger. After a few minutes, the SOI changed, surprising us somewhat. We had held off on decoupling the 2nd stage of the launch vehicle, which was supposed to happen right after completing the transfer burn, until we were sure that we had an intercept, so at this point we separated from it and Justin took over.

Another shot out the window

The command module needed to be separated from the rest of the ship, turned 180°, and re-docked with the LEM. This proved to be more difficult than expected, for two reasons: one, the docking alignment indicator mod wasn't working for some reason, and you couldn't see out front window while seeing the navball indicator; and two, the LEM picked up some rotation, requiring the CM to basically orbit it before docking. Additionally, the docking ports were Clamp-o-tron Jr's, to make the escape tower fit better (this was in 0.25, so no gizmos). However, Justin accomplished it successfully in about two minutes, eliciting a cheer from everyone.

The second stage booster floating away

After docking with the LEM, we decoupled the 2nd stage booster. The original plan called for this to be done while on a collision course with the Mun, and then for the periapsis to be raised after the maneuver; however, due to having waited until Kerpollo 2 was in the Mun's sphere of influence to perform the docking maneuver, it was decided that it would require too much fuel to place it on an impact trajectory, so it was just left to slingshot past the Mun out of the Kerbin system.

At periapsis, the Celestra was oriented retrograde, and Justin performed the insertion burn, placing the ship in a 36 km x 22 km orbit. We made the necessary preparations for a Munar Landing: Derek and Justin went to the "lander", i.e. the room down at the end of the hall, and we transferred their Kerbals over.

The surface of the Mun, floating past just 30 km below

Derek took over for the landing. We had a target landing site, a nice flat plain in the middle of the light side of the Mun; however, the original plan had a prograde orbit around the Mun, and Kerpollo 2 ended up in a retrograde orbit. Telemachus has a bug where if you are in a retrograde orbit, it displays longitude as negative. The result of this was considerable confusion between Galileo and Mission Control, and an inadvertant landing on the dark side of the Mun. Despite being unable to see the terrain, Derek was able to find a relatively-flat spot, and soon reported to Mission Control that "Galileo has landed!". He went on EVA, stepped foot on the surface of the Mun, and uttered the soon-to-be-immortal words: "It's one small step for a Kerbal, and a pretty small step in general. I guess."

The Galileo on the surface of the Mun, seen from Justin on his jetpack.

Justin got out and joined him. We had installed the Through the Eyes of a Kerbal mod to give everyone first-person views, so this was the only time the brave kerbonauts got to see the lander from the outside. One thing that we only realized after landing on the Mun, however, was that with this mod there was no way to plant a flag. After trying unsuccessfully for a minute or so, we gave up and decided to tell the Kerbals back on Earth that it got blown over by the rocket blast from the ascent stage.

After re-entering the lander, they waited for the Celestra to appear over the horizon, and then took off. And immediately realized that something was wrong; the ascent tanks were far from full of fuel. The lander ran out of fuel while still on a suborbital trajectory, and as they would be unable to soft-land with no fuel, Mission Control made the decision: "Everybody out!" Derek and Justin had to go EVA and try to get into orbit, using only their jetpacks, and switching back and forth between kerbals to ensure they didn't drift too far apart, while the Galileo was left to fall back to crash on the Munar plains. They were successful in reaching orbit, but without map view and with no telemetry (there is none from the EVA suits), there was no way for them to rendezvous with the Celestra, which meant that it was left to Jenny, who had the least experience with KSP, to rescue them.

The first Kerbal targeted was Derek Kerman. He was in a 40 km x 260 km orbit. Mission Control made some guesstimations about the required orbit to end up near him, and Jenny ended up within about 70 km, from which she was able to fly in in a few steps, until Derek was within 2 km and could fly himself aboard.

Next was Justin. He was in a slightly more eccentric orbit. Mission Control got confused while trying to set up a rendezvous and accidentally ended up with the Celestra on a Munar escape trajectory. At this point, a hard decision had to be made. The Celestra was essentially out of RCS propellant, and was down to less than 13% of its fuel. From outside the Mun's sphere of influence, the telemetry no longer had any useful information on the relative orbits of the Celestra and Justin. If the Celestra had tried to go back and rescue him, it would most likely have ended up stranded in Munar orbit itself. So the decision was made to abandon Justin in orbit around the Mun, and return to Kerbin.

The return was uneventful. The command pod landed back in Kerbin's oceans; but it was a hollow victory with Justin stuck in space.

The next mission will be a rescue mission!