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[alway]

Might help if you deployed that landing gear...

It was deployed. That was the unexpected funtimes.

It was installed upside-down, and so was entirely non-functional. I didn't discover that until about 3km from the surface of Minmus.

[BigD145]

Let the Rescue Pile commence!

Broken parts across the solar system! I'm glad I unlocked unmanned stuff. Might put a space station around Eve to listen to the screams. I can build something that mechjeb can fly and it works without cheating fuel. That alone makes me happy.

[MarcAFK]

So I only bought KSP a few days ago and didn't ever manage to land anything on the mun with the demo, but I have to say I am really enjoying the science, it adds roleplay value to every launch, there's more planning now than just what's biggest/gets the most fuel up. I'm playing gradually and gathering science at a crawl, but I'm loving it, each launch I'll try something new, a new component I've never had access to, or a new type of science I've not used yet, or a launch somewhere completely new. I'm not even spending the science I've gathered, because there's so much possibility for different missions even with just the first upgrade.
However I find myself wanting one minor improvement, It would be nice if the science center/R&D had somewhere that listed what science had been collected, so I could see at a glance what data was missing from each body, It would make planning new missions rather easier.

[My Name is Immaterial]

At the end of two days, the score is: four probes orbiting Kerbin, only one of which was supposed to be there. There had been only one fatality so far, but it was quickly reverted. The most interesting thing I've accomplished was crashing a probe into the Mun at 90+m/s.

I'm just not getting how to land on the Mun. Any advice on properly transferring orbits, designing landers and not exploding into a firey ball?

[Leonon]

I used Kerbal Engineer flight chip to see the actual distance to the ground instead of the distance to "sea level" that the altimeter shows.

I still bounced around and ended up with my probe on its side, but it still got that data sent home.

If you're similarly bad at sticking the landing as me and want to return your craft you can put landing gear on in such a manner that it will always upright your craft or at least get it off the surface enough to do a skidding start.

[Lightningfalcon]

At the end of two days, the score is: four probes orbiting Kerbin, only one of which was supposed to be there. There had been only one fatality so far, but it was quickly reverted. The most interesting thing I've accomplished was crashing a probe into the Mun at 90+m/s.

I'm just not getting how to land on the Mun. Any advice on properly transferring orbits, designing landers and not exploding into a firey ball?

I still can't land on the Mun for my (Kerbal's) life, but I have gotten good at transferring orbits.  First set the Mun as your target.  Shift your apoapsis  to the other side of the ascending node.  Then, about a minute or two before you reach the ascending node, go full burn until you your path intercepts the Mun.   Landing on the Mun... I can't help with that.  Every time I touch the ground the entire lander either explodes or I still have horizontal motion and I can't land properly, tip the lander over, and destroy my any comms I have preventing science from being done. 
It helps if you play around a bit with plotting manuevers

[Sean Mirrsen]

Here's a trick for Mun landing.

First, you really want to get a direct intersect with the Mun when you leave Kerbin. Orbiting and then landing takes too much fuel, just make sure you're not flying into it head-on (that would take orbiting in the other direction).

Then, when you're in Mun's SOI, zoom in on the bit of your orbit that intersects the Mun's surface, aim as closely as you can and plop a maneuver node down. Now pull the retrograde marker on the node until it won't go no more. You now know how long you have to burn to decelerate for landing, plus/minus some tens of m/s, and how long you have till then. If you already have a landing trajectory, don't waste fuel altering it unless you really want to land somewhere else. Just take note of how long you need to brake, and keep an eye on the approaching node timer. Start decelerating at half thrust when your projected deceleration time and time to node feel near enough, and adjust as you see fit. Since there is no air, the node's data is relatively accurate as long as you don't steer sideways too much, but you should only really use it to know when to start slowing down - once you're past that point it's better to throttle up and remove the node, watching only the retrograde marker, your altitude, and speed. Once you've started slowing down, keeping at around half thrust should ease you into a position where you can make a better decision on how to proceed just by eyeballing the remaining distance.

[LoSboccacc]

Even more empiric, at 50000 altitude slow at 500m/s top

At 30000 slow at 300m/s top.

At 15000 slow at 100m/s top

At 10000 slow at 50m/s top

Save

When you are close to the surface (altitude may vary!) drop to 20m/s

When you see the shadow closing drop to 10m/s

When really close maintain 5m/s throttling with the engines.

Protip: keep the nose on your reverse velocity vector, it will magically zero your lateral speed without need for manually messing with rcs.

[forsaken1111]

Minmus really is easier to get to, both for intersect and for return. Try that before the mun.

[Putnam]

Landing, too. And getting off. Minmus is just easier in general.

[forsaken1111]

The craft I used to barely make it to and back from the mun landed on minus and returned with enough Dv to orbit kerbin and choose a nice landing site. Its eazymode.

[da_nang]

Bill had a harrowing experience recently. Landed on the Mun, took some samples and stuff but decided to head up and land in a crater. Sampled again and took off. He realized too late that he didn't have enough fuel to make orbit. Turn on all RCS thrusters! Thrusting his way out of Mun's SOI and into a Kerbin orbit he thought he was safe. But NO! RCS fuel is all gone. He had no other choice.

KERBAL POWER.

He ditched as much mass as possible and suited up. Science had provided him infinite RCS in a bottle and by Science he would reach Kerbin's atmosphere. After multiple attempts blasting the rear with RCS he lowered his periapsis to 40 km from 1.1 Mm. Finally he could return home and let Jebediah do the flying.

[Girlinhat]

Landing is pretty easy when you realize two things.  You want to come in as shallow as possible, skimming over the surface rather than diving straight down.  And you want to burn retrograde.  The basic rule for burning is to get to a reasonably low speed, such that your engine could prevent you from crashing, and then wait to about 500m before you use a 'suicide burn' to kill as much velocity as possible - make sure you're going slow enough that you can actually make the stop!

Performing this in capsule view can be easiest.  The "radar altimeter" in the lower right is more accurate to the actual surface level, and the navball and speed are right beside it.  Just ease it down to less than 1 m/s when under 100m.

[Rose]

Actually, skimming across the ground and going straight down use the same amount of fuel from orbit.

They only make a difference in atmo.

[alexandertnt]

I landed Jeb on Minmus, and by land I mean crash. He survived, but was stuck. So I planted a flag and used what remaned of the rocket to do science and transmit it back until the battery died.

I sent a rescue party a fair time later after getting better parts, and actually managed to land near the flag he placed. I couldnt find him anywhere.

Then I realised that I had landed next to the flag he placed on the Mun. I landed on the wrong moon...