Jump to content

I need help to get ready to go to the MUN and Minmus


Recommended Posts

Hey guys, I haven't posted a new question in a while as I haven't needed any help. Now I need help with getting innto a stable orbit and hopefully make it to the Mun and maybe even farther into the solar system. Anyone have any videos and/or help that I might need, I started on a small lander that may be able to make it back home from the Mun and back to the atmosphere of Kerbin. If any one has any info or tidbit of info that could help me that would be awesome. I will have a new post up for the ship designs that you guys used for these exploits.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Getting away from the Mun and Minus requires far less fuel than getting away from Kerbin because the gravitational pull is way lower and they have no atmosphere. My tip is to keep 1 set of fuel tanks and engine(s) just for getting back and try to land that on the Mun with the landing gear. This secures a safe way back.

 

Or at least thats how I did it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is a general flight plan for the Mun.

1 - Get in a stable low Kerbin Orbit. Try to be as circular and equatorial as possible. 80 to 120 km is a good target if you're not experienced

2 - Plan a burn to have a flyby of the Mun. Aiming for a Mun Periapsis around 100km is a good target. 

3 - Execute the manoeuver. If after the burn your Mun Periapsis is bellow 10 km, or within the Mun, you risk a collision. Point retrograde and execute a small burn to raise your Mun Pe.

4 - Cruise until you get near the Mun Pe. Point retrograde and burn until you have a stable orbit.

5 - Congratulations, you are now stranded in Mun orbit

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not really sure what you are asking. Is it about how to reach a stable Mun or Minmus orbit? About how to design your craft? About a design you have you need help with?

I do like your phrase '[...]small lander that may be able to make it back home[...]'. Maybe it works, maybe not. That's a bit the essence of KSP. It's a question I ask myself a lot when designing a vessel/mission, even after years of playing.

Some general punters:

- Mun is easy to reach, harder to land on. Minmus is harder to reach, easier to land on. When you are able to reach Minmus, you are veryvery short of being able to reach Duna.

- Have a look at:

This map was made a while ago, but even if the numbers are a bit different now due to possible changes in the last few updates, it gives you a good general idea of how much Dv (i.e. fuel) you need to pack to reach places.

- When designing your vessel, keep an eye on the ISP of the engines. Use high thrust engines for your launch systems and high (vacuum) isp engines for transfers between bodies. Mind that the TWR (thrust to weight ratio) does not really matter when you're out of the atmosphere. Lower TWR, even below zero only means that the change in velocity (Dv) is going to take longer. With very very low TWR you might need to do several burns before reaching the desired orbit/transfer...which in turn means you have to think ahead when and were to do those burns.

- In designing a complete system think backwards. What do you want to bring back from Kerbin orbit to the surface of Kerbin, how much Dv do you need to get from Mun/Minmus back to Kerbin, how much Dv to get from Mun/Minmus orbit to a landingspot and return to orbit, how much Dv does it take to get from Kerbin orbit to a Mun/Minmus orbit and finally how much Dv do you need to get from the surface to Kerbin Orbit. Use the in-game Dv calculator.

- Have a look at:

With this alarmclock you can set up alarms for ideal transferwindows from a celestial body to another. Thus taking away the hassle of eyeballing or calculating the ideal tranfer window. Offcourse if you like to eyeball transfers, like I did for a while, then you're free to not use it.

- experiment! Just go and try...anything really. Prepare for some frustration, and a great sense of achievement when all works out! Mun and Minmus aren't that far away when things go wrong. I remember the tension of going to Duna for the first time, let alone Dres or Jool. If something goes wrong in such a mission it takes a lot of time to recover, even with max timewarp (unless you use the 'revert to...' option offcourse)

Have fun and good luck on your endeavours!

 

(Ps: I think this topic belongs to the gameplay section of the forum.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So for a Mun lander you want to have enough thrust to get on to the ground, enough dV to get to the Mun, and enough to get back again. Assuming that you haven't done much docking, I would suggest using a Terrier engine. The high ISP means you don't have to carry much fuel, which means you won't tip over as much. Attaching side boosters will give you enough fuel to get there. I had a go at creating a simple design which should be easy to fly and has lots of margin. The transfer stage alone has enough dV to do a Duna ejection and circularisation burn.

kAYwJdg.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/10/2019 at 8:31 PM, fulgur said:

So for a Mun lander you want to have enough thrust to get on to the ground, enough dV to get to the Mun, and enough to get back again. Assuming that you haven't done much docking, I would suggest using a Terrier engine. The high ISP means you don't have to carry much fuel, which means you won't tip over as much. Attaching side boosters will give you enough fuel to get there. I had a go at creating a simple design which should be easy to fly and has lots of margin. The transfer stage alone has enough dV to do a Duna ejection and circularisation burn.

kAYwJdg.png

Just a small thing, but...

For the Mun and Minmus, the 3 Terrier engines is overkill! Only one terrier is needed for a craft that size, which will deliver a TWR well beyond 3 on the Munar surface. the two engines on the peripheral tanks just add extra mass.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/10/2019 at 4:49 AM, Epicdreamer said:

I'm not really sure what you are asking. Is it about how to reach a stable Mun or Minmus orbit? About how to design your craft? About a design you have you need help with?

I do like your phrase '[...]small lander that may be able to make it back home[...]'. Maybe it works, maybe not. That's a bit the essence of KSP. It's a question I ask myself a lot when designing a vessel/mission, even after years of playing.

Some general punters:

- Mun is easy to reach, harder to land on. Minmus is harder to reach, easier to land on. When you are able to reach Minmus, you are veryvery short of being able to reach Duna.

- Have a look at:

This map was made a while ago, but even if the numbers are a bit different now due to possible changes in the last few updates, it gives you a good general idea of how much Dv (i.e. fuel) you need to pack to reach places.

- When designing your vessel, keep an eye on the ISP of the engines. Use high thrust engines for your launch systems and high (vacuum) isp engines for transfers between bodies. Mind that the TWR (thrust to weight ratio) does not really matter when you're out of the atmosphere. Lower TWR, even below zero only means that the change in velocity (Dv) is going to take longer. With very very low TWR you might need to do several burns before reaching the desired orbit/transfer...which in turn means you have to think ahead when and were to do those burns.

- In designing a complete system think backwards. What do you want to bring back from Kerbin orbit to the surface of Kerbin, how much Dv do you need to get from Mun/Minmus back to Kerbin, how much Dv to get from Mun/Minmus orbit to a landingspot and return to orbit, how much Dv does it take to get from Kerbin orbit to a Mun/Minmus orbit and finally how much Dv do you need to get from the surface to Kerbin Orbit. Use the in-game Dv calculator.

- Have a look at:

With this alarmclock you can set up alarms for ideal transferwindows from a celestial body to another. Thus taking away the hassle of eyeballing or calculating the ideal tranfer window. Offcourse if you like to eyeball transfers, like I did for a while, then you're free to not use it.

- experiment! Just go and try...anything really. Prepare for some frustration, and a great sense of achievement when all works out! Mun and Minmus aren't that far away when things go wrong. I remember the tension of going to Duna for the first time, let alone Dres or Jool. If something goes wrong in such a mission it takes a lot of time to recover, even with max timewarp (unless you use the 'revert to...' option offcourse)

Have fun and good luck on your endeavours!

 

(Ps: I think this topic belongs to the gameplay section of the forum.)

Well thanks, I needed advice in general as I have nil in out of Kerbin influence knowledge.

Like I said, I have a "small" lander already, I just need a lifter which I can copy off of. Also is there anyway an Xbox player can post pics?

@Epicdreamer I don't know if it will help much, im a EE player. Still thank you for the advice and I hope it finds other people like me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/10/2019 at 12:31 PM, fulgur said:

So for a Mun lander you want to have enough thrust to get on to the ground, enough dV to get to the Mun, and enough to get back again. Assuming that you haven't done much docking, I would suggest using a Terrier engine. The high ISP means you don't have to carry much fuel, which means you won't tip over as much. Attaching side boosters will give you enough fuel to get there. I had a go at creating a simple design which should be easy to fly and has lots of margin. The transfer stage alone has enough dV to do a Duna ejection and circularisation burn.

kAYwJdg.png

A variety of this style I like is to use four radial tanks half the size of those, with the landing gear mounted to the radial tanks. This makes it even less tippy. Use the fuel from the radial tanks to land, then blow them off after liftoff once empty. The material experiments can be put on top of two of the radial tanks, collecting the science from them before liftoff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Mikenike I didn't realise that you are playing the xbox version. I think that version (incl patch 6 update) doesn't have the calculator (yet). Hopefully Squad will add this in a future update. Maybe I'm wrong. If it's there, it should be at the lower right corner. One of the grey-ish buttons where also you can find craft info, mission info etc.

I could give you a description of a 1.25m rocket that's able to get to the Mun or minmus as in "get this or that tank, add this or that engine, add decoupler etc...to get you on your way. But I'm not running KSP right now. Need that for a good description. So if you're interested I'll write up a little recipe for a Mun/minmus capable lifter-system at my next KSP session. Unless someone beats me to it ;). And to be more helpfull, i'd like to know what nodes within the techtree you have unlocked, and what the mass of you lander is.

Main thing is try to get a grip on the meaning of Thrust and ISP (specific impuls) of engines. Good luck!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Mikenike A Little recipe for an EE  and pc-vanilla sandbox game:

Mass of the lander I used: 3.790 t

Below the lander in building order:
TD- 12 Decoupler, FL-T800 tank, Terrier engine, TD- 12 Decoupler, 2x FL-T800 tank and a Swivel engine, TT-38K Radial decoupler attached to the side in 2x symmetry, SRB Kickback on the decouplers, tail fin in 4x symmetry just above the Swivel engine. Its a basic formula that gets you to the Mun with a good attitude control and a little extra Dv for some correctional burns if neccesary.

When built in this order, the staging sequence is in the right order as well, you might want to cut down the srb's power limit to 75-80%. No need to autostrut this system, it's stable enough without.

I just flew this one to the Mun, landed and returned to Kerbin. The lander/return vehicle was a simple Mk1 command pod, FL-T400 tank with landing legs, (another) Terrier engine and some solar panels. If I add a FL-T100 tank to the lander a Mun return mission can be done quite casually with Dv to spare. I didn't cover any other stuff in this design (science, comms etc), just a functional Mun capable craft. Adding stuff will lessen twr and Dv, but that's up to you. 

Good luck! 

 

Edited by Epicdreamer
Added bit of info
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is what I would recommend: A wide lander for beginners and at least 1200 meters of Delta V. Use 1.6 and 1.7 to your advantage. I would start burning went the mountain icon on the left of the surface measure is 25000. Then I would get it too 200 meters per second. Finish it off near 2500 meters to surface then slowly descend to the surface. I landed just 10 hours ago with a very huge lander! (Like it couldn't fit in a fairing!) I would click on your stage bar and mixture that your TWR is at least 2.4 I would recommend though 3.4 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Haha don't push the throttle button? Or look at the Mun encounter node, see how much time it still takes to reach the encounter, set an alarm in your mobile phone and make yourself a cup of tea? ;)

@The Doodling Astronaut mind that EE (xbox/ps4) players, as the op-er is, do not have TWR and Dv readouts. It's like playing the pc 1.5 version. Hopefully Squad will add these in a future EE update.

And a TWR of 2.4 - 3.4 for a Mun lander means you can go bigger even! As long as the TWR is above 1 you'll be able to lift off the surface. This in turn means you can pack more mass (fuel) and go Munhopping!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Epicdreamer said:

 

@The Doodling Astronaut mind that EE (xbox/ps4) players, as the op-er is, do not have TWR and Dv readouts. It's like playing the pc 1.5 version. Hopefully Squad will add these in a future EE update.

Oh Enhanced Edition! Yeah can't help you out there :sealed:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Mikenike:

Aside from the advice given above, there are literally dozens of tutorial videos and threads on getting to the Mun; it's probably the most-asked question after how to dock (or maybe it beats docking; I'm not certain).

However, for your purposes, I think you would benefit more from a general theory of how lifters work so you will be able to play with your own designs rather than copy someone else's and wonder how it works.

To that end, I think that you would actually benefit the most from the old, otherwise outdated tutorials.  Look for anything from 2014 or before.  Don't pay any attention to the numbers--they've all changed--and don't look at how the rockets are flown--that's changed, too--but do pay attention to the ideas behind why the designs are made in a specific way and understand that you are probably going to need a calculator to figure out your own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...