SiliconPyro

Okay, please forgive my ignorance, but is the m/s in your HUD your actual speed? For some reason I may have misread a post and thought it was your relative speed perpendicular to Kerbin/Mun. I don\'t know where that idea came from.

Building a space station will be bad, but a proper mun mission with an orbiting return craft and the ability to assemble a base over multiple missions . . . that\'s just not going to be good at all.

Part of my problem is skill, I\'ll work on that. The other part is knowing exactly where and in which direction to burn. Also, is it sometimes better to burn at less than 100%? So I don\'t get vague answers, I\'ll be more specific. During initial ascent, at what point is it best to turn for a 100km equatorial orbit? I think on my first successful orbit I just waited until I was at about 35-40km up, turned to the horizon and burned 100% until I had an orbit. Of course my momentum contributed to carry me away from Kerbin. It worked, but was it efficient? Also, at AP, is it more efficient to burn toward the (artificial) horizon or directly prograde to expand your Pe?

On Sunday night, my friend sent me an email about KSP. Monday I downloaded the demo and made a successful orbit pretty quickly. It has been downhill from there. I have a tendency to get caught up in a game and head to bed a little late. Portal 2, Skyrim, Civ 5 and others have all resulted in occasional late nights. None of them compares with KSP. Call it a game or a simulator or whatever, it has gots its hooks in me good. God help me when docking becomes a reality.

Well, as it turns out, I am an exceedingly poor pilot. I made it to the moon in your lander, but didn\'t have enough fuel to land. I was making a clean controlled descent, but just ran out of fuel. I separated and left the Mun\'s gravity, but burned a lot of fuel doing that and ended up in an orbit that would only get me within 200km of Kerbin. Miraculously, the Mun caught back up to me and altered my trajectory so my boys made a safe splash down on Kerbin. They all agreed that an abort is better than a funeral! Lessons learned . . . learn to leave the surface and achieve orbit efficiently. Know when and how to burn to get what you want done efficiently. Those two things are what killed me. After descending with your lander though, I feel fairly confident that I can do the same with my own design, I just need to become a more efficient pilot. I did get a nice picture for the kids though.

Well, I achieved equatorial Mun orbit and so I started to burn retrograde. I watched my orbit line start to intersect the Mun, but I was moving way too fast and even continually burning retrograde I just slammed into the Mun. I knew it was doomed and it started to lose control a bit, but that might have just been my lousy piloting. I\'m attaching the rocket I used. It was renamed the 'Giller 1' after my first Kerbanaut on the Mun . . . he was the commander so he would have hit the planet first.

Can you walk me through you munar insertion and landing with RCS only? At what point do you ditch everything that got you there? I think I would have been okay if I had ditched my transition stage while I was in orbit, but I thought I would use it on the way in and that was a HUGE mistake. I should have just ditched it and continued on with my RCS, which had two full tanks when I was in orbit around the mun. I was just worried I wouldn\'t have the juice to land and make it back to Kerbin.

Use this guide: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=7787.msg114042#msg114042 Party careful attention to the mun landing part. I didn\'t.

It was. R.I.P.. three brave kerbanauts.

Too impatient and I hope my Kerbanaughts don\'t pay for it, but I had to do it. Wish me luck!

Well, I just reached Kerbin orbit at a little over 100km. The beauty of it is I have a ship with about 2.6 full fuel tanks pushing a lander with two RCS tanks. I was only attempting stable orbit, but I might send this puppy to the mun! What do you think, should I go for it?

Thanks for the replies. Hopefully I can make one of these work for me. I\'d hate to make the trip a one way!

I\'m just learning after making a few successful orbits and returns around Kerbin. I want to progress toward a Mun landing though and in order to do so, I\'d like to use a complete Munar lander at every test phase. Therefore, I\'d love to see the designs others have used to land and return successfully. EDIT: I\'m playing purely vanilla, but feel free to post anything you want as long as you mention what mod pack you\'re using and why. My intent is to complete these steps before adding any mods though.

Thanks, that\'s a great guide. I\'m going to take steps to get there for now. Next step is a 100km equatorial orbit as perfectly circular as possible, then release stage and return. Next phase is a rendezvous with what I left in orbit, hang out for a photo op, then return home. Then, I\'m shooting for the mun. If I make a clean orbit with enough fuel, I\'ll attempt to land. Otherwise, I\'ll just take it as experience in orbital transition and head home. Of course docking would make everything easier, since we wouldn\'t have to take as much to the surface of the moon. Have to make due though. Once I\'ve done all that, I\'ll have to think about a mun base. I would really love to establish a space station, but again, docking. In all honesty though, we will probably have docking by the time I\'ve completed all this, haha.

Good advice. I think I\'m actually going to bring Orbital Two home, add RCS then send it back up into a better orbit, then attempt a rendezvous. Achieving that will be a milestone on my way to the mun.

I think I have some of the basic concepts down after some experimentation. I didn\'t get my lunar Lander into orbit (not enough lift), but I was really just making sure the stages were correct. Maybe I should bring home Orbital Two and add RCS so I can establish a proper orbit. Once I\'m more comfortable manipulating my orbit with RCS, then I\'ll continue my work on the mun mission. Any idea how much rocket you need to escape the mun?

I just started experimenting with RCS on my last flight as I\'m starting to experiment with hopes of a mun mission. I can definitely see the advantage. I made that orbit I posted with only a liquid rocket engine. What do you mean by 'WEAK' RCS? I only see one option. I\'m playing 100% vanilla.

They aren\'t impressive at all really. Ae was just over 100km, Pe was around 84km. It\'s my second time making orbit though with fuel enough to bring it home safe. I\'m narrowing that right now, but man I suck at fine controls.

Not a bad orbit if you ask me:

Well, we all know where this is headed. Guess I\'m going to shell out 15 bones as soon as I get home from work! Thanks.

The website says 13.3 is current, or is that just the demo and 14.1 is the paid version?

I was wondering, why do I get a message saying there is a new version when (as far as I know) I have the latest release. Isn\'t 14.1 closed?

The real danger is if I start learning C# (currently I only use Python) and modding. It\'ll just be downhill from there.

So my friend sent me an email yesterday titled, 'I\'m terribly sorry.' I open it to see, 'What I\'m about to show you is something that will literally eat hours upon hours from your day. All I can say is that I\'m sorry.' Well obviously he knows me pretty well and I downloaded the game as soon as I got home, walked through the tutorials and graduated on to making some magnificent ICBMs. I lot of brave Kerbals died yesterday. But I finally made orbit with a gloriously stable rocket, which only tightened the addiction. Of course I ran out of fuel before I could get my orbit back into the atmosphere, so there are three proud Kerbals still taking laps up there, but I know what I was doing wrong. Of course after I successfully orbit then return (which I\'m fairly confident my current design is capable of if I make better burns), I have my eyes and my heart set on the mun. I suppose that means mods too. Yeah, y\'all will see me around here, that\'s for sure.