Six Moon Designs Lunar Orbiter Tent Review

The Six Moon Designs Lunar Orbiter is a one-person single-wall freestanding tent with two tent vestibules. With a minimum weight of 40 oz, it comes with two aluminum tent poles, short aluminum stakes, and a gear loft. It is made with siliconize polyester (silpoly) and must be seam-sealed before use. With two vestibules and a gear loft, the freestanding Six Moon Designs Lunar Orbiter has lots of room for gear storage and enhanced comfort in challenging weather conditions.

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• Packed Weight 2 lbs 12 oz.
• Minimum (actual) weight: 40 oz (seam-sealed tent + gear loft + poles)*
• Packed Size: 12″ x 4.5″ | 30 cm x 11 cm
• Pole Length Size: 15.5″ | 40 cm
• Floor Space: 21 sq feet |
• Vestibule Coverage: 16 sq feet |
• External Length x Width (with vestibules deployed) x Height: 90″ x 146″ x 43″
• Internal Length x Width x Height: 90″ x 35″ x 43″
• Materials: 20D Silpoly Canopy, 40D Silpoly Floor, 20D No-see-um Mesh
• Poles: 2 x DAC Featherlite NFL Green
• Minimum number of stakes to pitch: 6
• MSRP: $425 USD

Orbiter Design and Construction

The Lunar Orbiter is a single-wall tent with two crossing aluminum poles. The poles run through two sleeves on the tent’s roof, clip to the poles along the sides, and slot into PU sleeves in the corners. The tent has two vestibules that protect the mesh along the interior’s sides, with vents located at the ceiling. It comes fully equipped with all lines and line tensioners, including four partway up the corner walls. Unfortunately, there are no guy out loops at the top of the vestibules along the roof sleeves, which given the tent’s side exposure, would be useful in a gale.

The construction is more functional than elegant, with PU reinforcements and pole sleeves sewn to the tent canopy and external corners. The review sample I received had been partially seam-sealed along the roof, pole connectors, and at least portions of the vestibule seams. I don’t know if that’s included in the regular consumer version.

Six Moon Designs says that the tent should be sealed before use, but it would be helpful if they would tell you exactly which seams need to be sealed and gave you a tube or two of seam grip with which to do it. ( I’m sure they’ll get around to publishing that information soon.) They offer a tent seam-sealing service on their trekking pole tent models, and I’d advise you to take advantage of it. There are a lot of very long seams on the Orbiter, and it’d be a messy process to seam seal at home.

Tent Setup

Setup is a little fussy, so practice it at home before you try it in the field for the first time.

First, lay out the tent on the ground so the four corners form a rectangle. Assemble the poles and slide the poles into the rooftop sleeves so they form an “X” over the tent. One of the sleeves has yellow-colored fabric sewn to the ends and is easy to find. The other is not marked and is the same color as the rest of the canopy. Clip the sides of the canopy to the poles using the hooks provided. Anchor the ends of the poles in the PU sleeves at the tent corners. Stake out the corners. Finally, stake out the vestibules.

If the wind is blowing hard when you try to do this, try staking out one or two corners on the same side first to prevent the tent from blowing away.  It can also be challenging to stake out the Orbiter in a confined space, like the tent site shown here, because the tent poles are very long, and you need extra clearance to swing them around. I found it easier to insert the poles in an open area and then carry the partially pitched tent to my campsite before staking out the corners and vestibules.

While the Orbiter is technically freestanding (you really can pick it up and move it to a different location), you’ll still want to stake out the corners and vestibules, so don’t leave your stakes at home. The stakes that come with the tent are rather short, although adequate for grippy soil; I’d still advise an upgrade to longer ones: Big Sky’s Tube Stakes, available in different lengths, are a good option.

When breaking down the tent, you’ll want to carefully unseat each section of the poles to prevent the segments from snapping together and breaking a connecting piece. When pulling the segments of the poles out of the PU corner sleeves, the end caps repeatedly pull out of the poles. To prevent this, you might want to superglue the ends to the poles.

Interior

The inside of the tent is quite spacious in terms of length, width, and height, which will be a key selling point. I can sit up, easily change my clothes inside, and use an extra-wide 25″ sleeping pad. It’s also very nice to have two vestibules to store all your gear in one and use the other for a door. Alternatively, you can roll back one or both doors to offset any internal condensation, although the tie-backs are not the trendy magnets used by Tarptent and Durston Gear, but old-fashioned toggles and elastics.

The Orbiter has an optional two-tiered gear loft that connects to four toggles in the ceiling. This loft is perfect for crushable items like glasses, a Smartphone, or a headlamp and increases the tent’s livability significantly. There are also two mesh pockets along the sides of the interior bathtub floor. 

The architecture of the tent means that the end walls above your feet and head are essentially vertical, which increases livability. Being a single-wall tent, however, means that internal condensation is a virtual guarantee unless you sleep with the vestibule doors open to mitigate it. I encountered this when I used the tent, but none of it rubbed off on me because the interior space is large enough to avoid contact with it.

Comparable 1-Person Freestanding Tents

The Lunar Orbiter is unusual since it is a freestanding single-wall tent with two vestibules. Most comparable tents only have one door and vestibule. The exceptions to this are the Big Sky Mirage 1.5 (hybrid single/double wall) and the Zpacks Free Zip 2 (single wall) which have two vestibules.

Recommendation

The Six Moon Designs Orbiter is a one-person freestanding single-wall tent that weighs 40 oz (2.5 lbs). Freestanding tents are really nice because they’re usually dome-shaped with better interior livability and strength than other tent architectures. They’re also very handy to use in areas where it can be difficult to secure a tent to the ground, including rock ledges, wooden tent platforms, sand, and snow.

While I think the list price of the Orbiter is on the high side ($425), especially since you have to seam seal it yourself, it could be a good deal if you could get one used or on sale. The Orbiter has a lot of competition, though, especially with double wall tents in the same weight class, including those that can be set up to fly first, so I’d encourage you to check those out, too.

Disclosure: Six Moon Designs donated a tent for review.