Clockwise Or Counter Clockwise Kerbin's Mun Orbit

[Castille7]

Are there any advantages of Orbit direction at Kerbin's Mun? If yes please explain why

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Thank you all for the help and all answers are good ones, I think we have enough here to satisfy the question given.

 

Edited September 30, 2016 by Castille7

[GDJ]

25 minutes ago, Castille7 said:

Are there any advantages of Orbit direction at Kerbin's Mun? If yes please explain why

Well, taking off from the Mun, yes. You can use the Mun's rotation to help you get into orbit easier (albeit a little bit). Same with liftoff from KSC.
If you're just orbiting and planing to return to Kerbin, not really. Any direction will work.

Actually I prefer a polar orbit around planets and moons. Makes doing orbital surveys alot better and more complete.

[DD_bwest]

Im pretty sure going counter to its rotation will add its rotational velocity to what you have to kill in order to land.

That being said, im pretty sure the muns rotation is rather slow.  I think its around 10m/s

[Superfluous J]

Forwards: (West-to-East, entering Mun's SOI on the "right side" and slowing down behind it in its orbit) You save about 20 m/s of dV when landing (its rotational velocity is 9m/s, so you save that 9 plus the other 9 you'd need to go the other way).

Backwards: It's what NASA did, because they ejected to the Moon in such a way that they could get a free return trajectory. That way, if anything went wrong on the way out (as it did to Apollo 13), the astronauts would have a fighting chance of not dying.

[moogoob]

@5thHorseman has it right. The direction you approach the mun could allow you to do a free-return, if needed. The opposite direction wouldn't work - it would sling you out to Minmus or beyond.

[Norcalplanner]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

Forwards: (West-to-East, entering Mun's SOI on the "right side" and slowing down behind it in its orbit) You save about 20 m/s of dV when landing (its rotational velocity is 9m/s, so you save that 9 plus the other 9 you'd need to go the other way).

Backwards: It's what NASA did, because they ejected to the Moon in such a way that they could get a free return trajectory. That way, if anything went wrong on the way out (as it did to Apollo 13), the astronauts would have a fighting chance of not dying.

There's an additional benefit to going backwards - actually sort of a backhanded compliment - in that it takes more delta V from LKO to do so.  Meaning that not only do you get a free return trajectory, you also get there quicker, which can be important when you're talking about things like life support, whether in game or IRL.

[Norcalplanner]

Plus you get pretty pictures like this if you go backwards.  From my Apollo Applications Program challenge entry:

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, Norcalplanner said:

There's an additional benefit to going backwards - actually sort of a backhanded compliment - in that it takes more delta V from LKO to do so.  Meaning that not only do you get a free return trajectory, you also get there quicker, which can be important when you're talking about things like life support, whether in game or IRL.

Yes and it power run out you still end up back home, this is useful before you get solar panels. 

[ajburges]

A little known advantage of a retrograde Munar orbit is that a retrograde ejection is fairly close to the gate orbit altitude for Duna and Eve. This means you can get to these destinations with a dV capacity of about 1300 m/s if you have Munar mining set up. Not much savings, but it's there. Certainly can help in delivering large stations and Eve landers.

Free return trajectory is easily the biggest advantage though.

Ground resonance orbits would also change. Not something I think about often, so I don't know how that would be an advantage. It also requires non-polar inclined orbits. Maybe it could get you a better station orbit radius for a high/low latitude mining base. While we are thinking of mining, a retrograde orbit could give you a safer approach/departure from a mining outpost.

Edited September 30, 2016 by ajburges