VincentMcConnell

My KSP made Titan Rocket compared with the real one.

As a veteran of about a thousand mun landings and returns, I can help you out... Get yourself into a 100KM orbit. Burn pro-grade at Munrise so that you get pulled in by the Mun\'s gravity like you said you already know how to do. Start burning RETROGRADE until your PE is at about 6KM. Now wait until you get to your PE and then burn retro again so that your AP levels out with it. Retrograde on your navball is the small yellow circle with an 'x' in it. You should get captured into Lunar Orbit if you do this correctly. I have a longer guide written here on the forums that goes into more detail about landing, orbiting, return etc.

Lunar Orbiter One in orbit around the Mun just after sunrise. This was taken at an altitude of about 8KM. Right now, I\'m about to burn to bring that orbit down to 1.3 kilometers.

Retrograde is a term that means to thrust in the direction of your travel, thus slowing your velocity. In layman\'s terms, it is pointing your engine towards your target and burning. It might help you significantly if you study up on orbital mechanics and all that. FYI, I\'d suggest only establishing an apoapsis of about 10,900KM. You\'ll get pulled into the Mun\'s gravity. Execute a Lunar Orbit Insertion (Retrograde burn) until your PE above the mun reaches only 1.5KM above the surface or so. Your retrograde indicator is the yellow circle on your navball that has an X in the center of it.

Yeah that\'s true. I\'d just choose to ignore the conspiracy theorists and enjoy looking at the images of remnants from surface level.

I\'m sure someone could easily fake that... Well... Off to my garage to build a fake moon set and replicate the Apollo 11 landing site and claim the money.. rofl

One thing I noticed about Kerbin that has always bothered me is that when you sit on the ground and look straight up, you can see the blackness of space. In real life, you cannot do that. Sure, the sky is a little darker, but for the most part, it\'s still light blue. Is there anyway that you guys could make it so that the atmosphere is a little more realistic to what we see here on Earth?

You know, I\'ve always wondered that. They\'re putting in all of this work to drop LRO over the landing sites, but they won\'t put a Surveyor next to the LM? I want to see living color images of the descent stage of Apollo 11. Up close bootprints. I want to see everything up close just as it was back then. That would scare me. But it\'s still crazy to think that through everything that has happened since 1969, all of that stuff is just still sitting there. Think about it. Years and years and years and we now have images of the LM DPS just as it was. Very, very eerie... Longest lasting man made bootprints right up there. Surveyor proved we can land unmanned probes. We need to do that.

Sure. I\'ll just create a WHOLE NEW thread to thank someone for their space station. Who cares if it\'s a few months later? Jesus Christ. Everyone needs to get over their issues. Oh no! A good thread has been revived!! The horror. Someone please call the SWAT team.

For the landing, here\'s what you should do. Get yourself into orbit around the Mun of about 1KM. (I know, really low). This way you can pick your landing site with precision and descent will take only about 40 seconds. Once you\'re about 10KM behind your landing site, start burning retrograde and follow that indicator as it slowly moves towards the right on your NAVBALL. When you\'ve killed lateral velocity, descent is a matter of watching your velocity and making sure you don\'t get anymore lateral V. Try to touch down with 4 m/s. Orbiting is easy. I don\'t know about with that little engine. To orbit, you simply do the TLI burn so that you establish a trajectory around the Mun. Get pulled in by its gravity and then start burning retrograde. When your PE above the mun is 2KM, shut your engine down. When you reach your PE, burn retrograde and it will pull your AP in until they circle around eachother at a fairly even altitude. From there, you can do orbital corrections with your RCS or engine. If you don\'t want to land -- or can\'t -- low orbit is fun too.

Johnson, I recommend modding your tanks and engines for the first time and read either my guide or watch a video on how to get the mun. Once you get the hang of it, landing is the easiest thing ever. I can do landing after landing as if it were a walk in the park just because of practice.

LOL. How did you do that?? Is it photoshop or can you actually customize crew names? I swear I didn\'t fake the last one. I\'m sure they\'re put in there because they\'re Apollo astronauts.

A priest, a liar and a rapist goes to the bar. He orders a drink.

I\'m glad this was focused on Apollo 12. I like Apollo 12. To come right off of the bat, I firmly believe man landed on the moon 6 times, just as NASA said they did, but it won\'t be difficult for conspiracy theorists and hoax believers to find ammunition. Coming from a perfectly logical standpoint, these images could be easily photoshopped -- again.. not that I believe they were -- but I don\'t think they\'ll be sufficient proof to change the mind of anyone. What conspiracy theorists really need is a knowledge of physics. Then let them watch the Apollo EVA footage and ask them how NASA was able to fake the regolith following properties only possible in 1/6th G in a vacuum: Lightweight, flies far at just the smallest kick, demonstrates the proper parabolic flight pattern and particle ballistics that are accurate with the moon, not a singly dust cloud in days of footage, no heatwaves on the horizon, remarkably SHORT horizon, no faded cloudy look to the images as if they were taken while there was a dust cloud, flags standing perfectly still for 2 hours while Armstrong and Aldrin run around it. The list goes on and little by little, we lose hoax believers. By the way, hoaxers have already challenged LRO. Go watch, 'MoonFaker: LRO at 25KM'

Sure. I\'ll give it a go.

I like this. All three of my Kerbalnauts on the MUNLAB station I have orbiting the Mun are named after four Apollo astronauts. What are the odds?

The Apollo 12 crew was traveling in cis-lunar space when a solar flare struck.

I have three in space right now. Two in Kerbin Orbit and One in a 20KM orbit around the Mun. Thank you very much. I had NO difficulty lifting these things off of the ground...... With modded engines.... MUAHAHA

I did exactly what you have done. My gosh you should see how I\'ve colonized the Mun. I have a space station in a 20KM orbit, three capsules (two in the same place) on the surface and two capsules orbiting at other altitudes. My final mun base will house over 100 Kerbalnauts and have the ability to launch from it to other locations on the lunar surface, stay there for a predetermined duration and then return to the base.

My First Lunar Surface Rendezvous. Well I landed these two LM\'s right next to eachother and got within about 2 meters before I accidentally folded my landing gear back up. The Command Module survived, but the rest of the stages exploded on the Explorer One. I had no intention of returning anyway. It\'s going to be a permanent Mun Base. I plan to land larger craft in this area and build a colonized little base.

It\'s a method for both. A burn on the far side causes a landing trajectory on the near side. An even safer method is to sit in a 1KM orbit around the Mun and fly directly over the place you want to land. About 400 yards before it, burn and start descending. RCS helps wonders, even after you\'ve landed, to put you in a place of your choosing within only a few meters.

It can, but direct approach is commonly associated (As I have noticed) with a direct collision trajectory and not a Munar Orbit insertion and then landing. Collision trajectories require you to kill thousands of meters per second.

You\'re welcome. Glad I could help. Remember, if you\'re coming down over a mountain, your Reaction Control Thrusters (RCS Thrusters) can maneuver you out of harm\'s way and out onto a lunar plain.

[move][/move]Yes, that\'s correct. A direct approach is a quicker method, but you have thousands of meters per second to kill before you get down to the surface and that number grows as long as you aren\'t burning your engine. If I were you, I would get into an orbit of at least 1KM, though. 500 is very low and I have seen people crash with that low of an orbit. I was passing over some mountains yesterday and felt unsafe in some areas even at 1KM. And of course, from 1,000 meters up, you\'re more likely to have enough time to be able to get rid of all your orbital velocity and come in for a straight descent.

Sure. Here is my advice. Build a base in a Maria Region. They are the large basaltic, dark gray impact basins that were formed billions of years ago. Establish an equatorial orbit of about 1.5 - 3KM (depending on how comfortable you are that you can kill 500m/s). When you get to the dark side of the moon, use the RCS to thrust retro and pick a very precise landing site inside that crater. Your trajectory will end where your landing site is. Drift until you get directly over it and then burn your descent engine at 100% at retrograde. Keep following your retro indicator to slow your velocity. Like I said in the guide, my ideal touchdown recommendation for velocity is 4 meters per second with no lateral velocity. If you initiate the powered descent too soon, you\'ll land short. You have to burn the Powered Descent Initiation (PDI) right over your landing site. From there, landing is as easy as it always is.