Ivan Ivanovich

What seems to be the problem?

Since last time I got complaints that I don\'t include pictures with my guides, this time a full guide for a flight to the moon. It\'s nearly bulletproof (nearly, as in, this time (when else?) I managed to crash land and my rocket took off by itself... but it should still serve the purpose), and it should allow ANYONE to do a successful Mun flight. First: Orbit Screenshot72 is about where I start banking towards 90 degrees. The general idea is to achieve an orbit around 80,000 meters, so bank whenever YOUR rocket needs to, to achieve that orbit. Screenshot75 shows such an orbit, with a Perigee of 79,000 and an apogee of about 86,000. Anything will do, as long as Perigee is above 70,000 meters, you didn\'t use too much fuel and apogee/perigee are not too far apart. Preferably, the perigee is about where the rocket is in screenshot76. This is the point where we will initiate the TMI. Kerbin -> Mun In my experience, the best moment for a TMI is when you look at the overview map, put the Mun at about 30° to the right of the y axis, and when your rocket now crosses below Kerbin. As seen in Screenshot76. This is the moment to apply full throttle towards the direction indicator. Depending on your orbit, the position of your apogee/perigee and your orbital speed, you usually end up with a speed of 3000 to 3200 m/s. In the end, your orbit should look like Screenshot79. Moon insertion When you\'re close enough to the Mun, your orbit indicator will turn into something like in Screenshot80. When you reach the perigee, push full throttle against the direction indicator until you end up in an orbit around the Mun. Try to push the former perigee down to about 40,000 meters, turning that initial perigee into an apogee. Like in screenshot83. Choice of landing site You want to land inside one of the craters, and you want to land in a crater on the lit side of the Mun. Now, the Mun rotates towards the right, meaning areas at the right of the Mun will get dark while areas on the left of the Mun will become lit. It takes a few hours, but you\'ll be flying a few hours. So try to aim for a crater at the left side of the lit Mun, or at least one that\'s around the center of the lit area. You might have to incline your orbit, like I did in screenshot86. You want to avoid an oversight I made: The Mun rotates. So aim for the right edge of your target area because your orbit will move towards the left (actually, the Mun moves...). The more inclined your orbit is, the more you have to compensate for this. Descent Your next goal is to push the perigee towards your landing point. This can be accomplished by orbiting past the back of your landing point (i.e. past the point 180 degrees opposite of your landing site) and thrust. Your goal is to either reach a low perigee (like I did in screenshot89) or a flight path that ends at the far end of your target crater (i.e. you\'d crash into the wall exiting the crater if you didn\'t land). De-orbit burn When you reach the edge of your crater, or when you think you\'re about to reach an area where you want to land, it\'s time to stop. Turn your rocket away from the flight path marker on the artificial horizon and thrust. Full throttle. Your goal is to have that direction marker end up either on top of your horizon or bottom, as I have achieved in screenshot93. And keep it there! Note: If you\'re 'falling', i.e. if you see the crossed out marker, aiming your rocket towards the marker and applying thrust centers you. If you\'re climbing, aiming your rocket away from the marker accomplishes that. Landing Landing is a critical moment. It\'s easiest done by having an ASAS in your rocket and a belt of 4 or even 6 RCS thrusters. Then you simply turn SAS and RCS on and just try to keep the rocket coming down smoothly. Liftoff Also fairly easy. Apply thrust and take off. Try to head quickly towards 90 degrees and try to not waste too much fuel on climbing, just past about 700 meters once you reach the edge of your crater will do. Try to keep your orbit as circular as possible, since you do NOT want to have an apogee that points far away from Kerbin, that\'s energy you have to compensate. Try to have your apogee pointing towards Kerbin, more or less, but your best bet is still a fairly circular orbit. If your apogee 'runs away' from you, just stop thrusting until you reach it again and keep getting faster. Not higher. TKI The time to push the throttle up and head back to Kerbin is when you have circled the Mun almost once, when you cross that line that represents the Mun\'s orbit around Kerbin. Thrust towards Kerbin when it rises over the horizon (give or take, timing ain\'t critical here), the red 'home' marker makes a good direction finder. You want to push your speed to about 700-750m/s. Note that you don\'t have to push it so far that you actually 'hit' Kerbin with the escape path you will get to, the path I get in Screenshot99 is plenty. The reason for this is that Kerbin moves towards the left, relative to the Mun, since the Mun moves towards the right. Establishing Kerbin orbit You might fall into a stable Kerbin orbit, or you might end up with some abomination like I did in screenshot100. That flight pattern would have led back to Kerbin, but also to a VERY hard descent. To soften that up, I increased speed until a Perigee appeared and I pushed that Perigee past 70,000 meters. A bit more wouldn\'t hurt, since we\'ll have to slow down considerably at that height to get our apogee down from beyond the munar orbit. Your goal in your first revolution around Kerbin is to get into a stable orbit that doesn\'t suddenly make you end up in a Kerbol orbit, i.e. get that perigee to above 80,000 meters and that apogee as low as time and fuel permits. Choosing a landing site Once you reaced an apogee/perigee pair like in screenshot103, it\'s time to find a landing site. In that screenshot, that huge sea area we fly over would make a great landing spot. Generally, you do not want to end up on land. More than one great flight I did went down the drain by hitting the ground too hard, hitting a rocky area and having my capsule crash after sliding down some mountains... very frustrating. Hitting water isn\'t as easy as it first sounds, though. Kerbin rotates. Towards the right. Meaning, your orbit, your perigee, your apogee, they all move towards the left over time. If you have a highly inclined orbit, you again have to take into account that you will not fly over the same area you fly over now in your next revolution. In other words, if you choose a landing site, note that you will end up some miles to the left of it when you eventually touch the ground. Coming back down Well, the rest is fairly straightforward. At apogee, push against your flight direction, lower your perigee past 25,000 meters and you\'ll come down. Note again, you WILL end up considerably left of your perigee, depending on your apogee and hence speed.

Correction: One side will always face Kerbin. That does NOT mean that this face will perpetually be cast in Kerbol\'s light. That would only be the case if the time Kerbin needs around Kerbol was equal to one 'month', i.e. one Mun trip around Kerbin. Which isn\'t the case.

(shameless plug) you might want to take a look at http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=4137.0 (/shameless plug) Gimballing is not really an essential thing, your first step on your road to the moon should be to get into a stable orbit. It\'s far easier to go to the moon by first establishing a parking orbit around Kerbin, wait for the right moment and then burn instead of trying to get there right 'up'. Step 1: Get into a stable orbit. Step 2: Learn to adjust your orbit Step 3: Learn when and how much to burn for a trans-munar injection. Step 4: land on the Mun. Trying to start with step 4 is probably not accomlishing much but a lot of frustration.

Hmm... I tried landing on the winglets, but they proved to be quite flimsy.

'Mostly' only \'cause we still have no stock lander legs. I used the LEM-5 lander legs by CaptainSlug. Aside of that, stock only. It handles fairly well, just a little oscillation after tossing the first booster stage, but that recovers soon after the second booster stage gets jettisoned. Orbit is achieved by the primary lifting orbital stage, TMI and munar-insertion burn is handled by the intermediate stage and the lander stage should suffice to land the rocket and get back into munar orbit. The length of the rocket makes it highly advisable to enable SAS and RCS during landing to let the ASAS handle the balancing of the lander. The RCS return stage has enough oumph to get the rocket back to Kerbin and get a nice and soft splashdown. Biggest drawback is the overall length which leads to fairly bad pitch/yaw handling, orbital maneuvers sometimes need RCS assistance to be successful, and which can cause heavy oscillation and even structural failure if hard pitch/yaw maneuvers are attempted. Once in munar orbit, handling improves considerably and the lander has a very good response rate. Try it and come back with some feedback, looking forward to it! Enjoy!

Kerbin? I thought it\'s Kerbal? Ok, Kerbol\'s the star, I changed that now... but seriously, the planet\'s name is Kerbin?

What\'s the perfect rocket? Hell, I dunno. My rockets ain\'t perfect. But there are a few things that are simple truisms. Things that are simply correct. And while try and error can be fun for a while, sooner or later you want to get a rocket that\'s simply 'good'. Since I now have moonworthy rockets, I guess I did something right. Everyone\'s invited to add to this, of course, I do not have the monopoly on rocket design. Physics Before we get into the details, a few physics facts. Namely, center of gravity, point of action and how they matter. Center of gravity, point of action and how they demand symmetry in your rocket The center of gravity is the point in your rocket where it would be in total balance. It\'s the point where, if the rocket was resting on that point, you could give it a nudge and it would freely follow that nudge without gravity having a say, because left and right, up and down, front and back, they\'re all equally heavy and perfectly balanced on this single point. That is always one single point in space, and unless you have a very oddly shaped rocket, that point is somewhere inside your rocket. Sadly, this point is usually not the point of action, i.e. the point where your engines create thrust. If it was, that would be sweet, since we could push the rocket wherever and however we want (ignoring air resistance, of course). So the next best thing we can do is to put that point of action 'behind' the center of gravity and point its action vector towards the center of gravity. Or, simpler put, put the engine behind the mass and thrust in the other direction. What sounds obvious at first has some implications. First, your point of action, actually the vector sum of your thrust vectors, for you nitpickers, HAS to be lined up with your center of gravity. In other words, your rocket has to be symmetrical to be stable. You can try that for yourself. Get a broom. Put the endpoint of the handle on your hand, with the brush up, and you will notice that you can balance it. You will also notice two things: First, it\'s easy to balance it as long as you work hard on it, and it can very easily tilt to one side, and if it does it falls FAST. And second, it\'s surprisingly more easy to balance the broom with the brush up towards the ceiling rather than having it resing on your hand. If you would now put a lot of pressure on that handle, you could thrust that broom upwards without it falling to the side (trust me, it would work). That\'s basically how our rocket works. Now attach something to the side of the broom and see how this works out for you. If you try to balance the broom the same way, it will fall to the side where you tacked something onto it. Unless you hold it at an angle to the side... looks stupid if it were a rocket, doesn\'t it? If you would thrust that broom upwards, it would not only fall to that one side, it would actually start to spin around the x-axis and do 'loops'... or crash, which is more likely since gravity is playing in this game as well. So the first thing to keep in mind is to keep your rocket symmetrical, at least to the point where the center of gravity is always above the combined point of action (if you have more than one engine, you have more than one point of action, which can be summed up to a total point of action and an action vector). In physical terms, that point of action has to be lined up with the center of gravity, with its vector aligned with the hypothetical axis that exists between the cog and the poa. In simpler terms, the point where your rocket would be in balance has to be behind the point where the combined force of the engines pushes, and the engines have to push towards that center of gravity, i.e. their thrust exhaust has to point away from it. That also means that 'inwards' thrust stabilizes the rocket, as long as the thrust is equal from all sides. It forces the rocket to stay in its current direction, but it also means that you are wasting fuel since you have engines thrusting 'against' each other. Think of it as the toe-in of your cars steering wheels. Mass vs. weight As long as you\'re on Kerbin, they\'re interchangeable. Your mass is directly related to your weight. It\'s a bit different in space. Weight is the result of mass being accelerated, either by gravity or by movement. And while you\'re weightless in space (well, your outwards acceleration from your speed matches the inwards acceleration from gravity), you\'re not without mass. To cut the theoretical crap short, the more mass you have, the more energy you have to expend to change its speed and direction. The heavier your rocket is, the more fuel you have to spend to make it faster (or slower!), provided you do not have gravity to work for you. Usually, in this game as well as when you\'re overweight, gravity works against you. This also means, that a mass gets 'heavier' if you accelerate it faster. It doesn\'t increase its mass (unless you\'re approaching light speed, let\'s ignore that for now), but the stress weight puts on the mass increases. That\'s called g-forces. On Kerbin, you experience 1g. Which is equal to an acceleration equal to Kerbin\'s gravity at surface level. How does this affect your rocket? Well, it affects it twofold. First, the more mass you have, the more fuel you have to spend to get that mass up into orbit. Hence 'bigger' isn\'t always 'better'. We\'ll get to that in detail later. The other factor is that the faster you accelerate your rocket, the more stress you put on its parts. Some parts are able to sustain that stress. Some are not. It is, in general, easier to build a slowly climbing rocket than one that jumps into orbit at 9g or more, not only because our passengers don\'t really like having a truck sitting on their chest (which isn\'t as much an issue so far), mostly the problem now is that the acceleration you put into the rocket stresses the parts that keep it together past their breaking limit. Which means you have to add struts, which add to the mass, which cost you fuel. Thrust-weight ratio Basically, it\'s the result of dividing your thrust (in Newtons) by your weight (in kilograms times acceleration, i.e. kg*m/s², so... well, also in Newtons). Thrust is what gets you up, weight is what keeps you down. And if thrust>weight, i.e. if your thrust-weight ratio is more than 1, you go up. If thrust<weight, you can put your engines into overdrive and you won\'t move an inch. For the record, the Saturn V first stage rocket engine had a TWR of 94.1. In other words, it could have lifted itself over 94 times. Beat that! What does that mean for our space vehicle? Basically, it means that whatever we put as rockets behind our craft, it has to overcome the total weight of the craft. Which also means that, if you have multiple stages, the upper stages are just dead weight at start. Yes, yes, there are rockets in there and they might have a lot of punch, but they do not add to the thrust at start. Thrust is always only the thrust you ACTUALLY apply, not the thrust your rocket can eventually do in total. Note that every rocket engine has a TWR of more than one. By definition. Engines below a TWR of 1 need some kind of aerodynamics on the craft to get it off the ground. The question is, though, whether the dead weight sitting on top of it STILL keeps that equation above 1. The F1\'s 94.1 TWR doesn\'t mean that the Apollo craft got shot into orbit at 100g. It means that there was a friggin\' HUGE rocket sitting on top of that engine and hence it could barely get the whole behemoth up into an orbit! My guess is that Kerbin has a gravity of about 10m/s² (much like earth), meaning that a rocket engine rated at 200 max thrust (like the non-gimballed stock engine) can lift 20 units of mass (or 8 stock liquid fuel tanks). Given that a rocket of 1 stock command center, 7 fuel tanks and 1 engine (totalling a mass of 20.5, 7*2.5+2+1) can\'t get off the ground but with 6 fuel tanks it can, I\'d say that should be about right. So when building your rocket, always add up the weight of the parts you assembled, multiply by 10, then divide by the thrust of the engines, but ONLY the engines that actually thrust. The more you get out of that, the faster your rocket will climb. Considering that engines seem to overheat more readily if they\'re operated at the TWR limit, try to get to a TWR of at least 1.7 in your first stage. My Mun rocket has a first stage TWR of 2.2, which is plenty but not overdoing it to the point where the g-forces become unmanageable. Also, keep in mind that you will use up fuel as you climb. Your fuel tanks will get emptier with every second your engine fires, making them lighter, meaning, less weight has to be lifted. Plus, gravity decreases with distance squared, which also makes the pull of Kerbin less and less with every inch you climb. Not as much as one would wish, though. Staging, and when to do it Staging usually means tossing dead weight. You jettison spent rocket parts to make your craft lighter. Less mass means less energy required to move the rest of the mass. The obvious choice would now be to stage as much as possible, to carry around as little dead weight as possible. This is not the best strategy, though. Staging also means that you have to carry around the weight for the staging equipment and, in case of a liquid fuel set, another liquid engine. A spent stock booster weighs 0.36. The equipment to jettison it weighs 0.4. A spent liquid tank weighs 0.3. The additional engine and the staging equipment to toss it weighs 2.8. A compromise has to be found. There is no hard limit to tell when to stage and when not to, what matters is how long you\'d have to haul around the dead weight (if it\'s just a few seconds between the booster\'s end of life and until the other engine of this stage burns out, just keep the booster attached, it\'s not worth the extra weight for another set of staging couplers. If it\'s for the rest of the flight, tossing it pays off easily), whether the spent stage prevents you from firing the next (a lower stage burned up covering an upper stage has to be jettisoned, of course) and what the stage is used for (an upper stage is usually in use longer than a stage to reach orbit that is burning at max power constantly, i.e. a fuel tank in upper stages lasts much, much longer). I find the sweet spot for liquid tanks to be around 4-5 for lower stages and about 2 for upper stages. As much thrust as possible to the bottom Also easy to see, the more thrust you apply right from the start, the less dead weight you carry around. It\'s usually quite pointless to have a lot of thrust further up if you cannot get off the launch pad. On the other hand, as mentioned above, the more thrust you put behind your crate, the more g-force it has to endure and the more you stress your parts. Not to mention the air resistance which is of course worst lower in the atmosphere. draaaaaaag While we\'re at it, drag. I hope I got that one right, it\'s kinda hard to tell how that part really works. Basically, every part you add has air resistance. Doesn\'t matter once you\'re in orbit (and hence satellites rarely look streamlined), but it\'s a big issue until you hit that magical 70,000 meters. I still have very limited data on how drag really works and what affects what, so far all I can say is that it\'s there and that you should probably take it into account, i.e. creating insanely wide rockets to cram in a lot of boosters to fire at the same time might be a drag. Literally. Especially if you try to fly such a rocket at high speeds. Funny enough, though, those wings seem to work in orbit as well. Don\'t ask me why. Where do you need the most power? That\'s a simple one again: From ground to orbit. You will NEVER in your flight have to spend as much energy as in that part of your flight. Getting from orbit to the Mun, landing on the Mun, getting back off the moon, flying back to Kerbin and landing there? Easily done with about 1/6th of the fuel spent to get into orbit. I am NOT kidding or exaggerating here. Remember that Saturn V rocket that sent Apollo to the moon? Remember how friggin\' huge that thing was? And what a tiny little bit of it actually went to the moon, with the rest being tossed somewhere along the way? And how that little service module that got them basically from orbit to moon also got them back? It\'s the same here. You will spend a good 80% of fuel and dump about as much of your rocket before you reach the Mun. Long or wide? Preferably neither. Making your rocket longer is about as bad as making it wider. For various reasons. Wide rockets tend to be bottom-heavy (because, usually, they are wide at the bottom, to maximize thrust at liftoff), making them harder to control because they sway easily, and they are prone to out of control rolling if the thrusters on the outer edges are not PERFECTLY aligned (which they are, well, never), due to leverage. Also, I\'d expect them to be very susceptible to drag, meaning a lot of power is lost due to air resistance. Wide rockets usually need quite a bit of SAS to keep from spinning out of control. And they are prone to 'flipping', i.e. uncontrollably going upside down because they are easy to tilt and bank. Think of the broom example at the beginning. Long rockets are very hard to tilt and bank, making them hard to steer and very sluggish. They also usually suffer from top-heaviness, especially after a good deal of their lower stage fuel is spent, which can result in rockets that are very hard to control and to keep from going 'keel-up', i.e. nose-down without a lot of RCS thrust. Long rockets usually need quite a few wings to keep them manageable and responsive. And even then they are very slow to react and need foresightful piloting. They usually keep their direction pretty well as long as they are balanced and there\'s a lot of thrust applied, but once you bank and tilt them, they can very easily oversteer, especially in horizontal flight with a center of mass that\'s very close to the top (as it is usually just before your ascent stage is burned up, with a lot of empty and near empty fuel tanks hanging on your tail). Still, I prefer long over wide rockets. So, with all that, what IS now the best design? Hell, if I only knew... But from these tidbits we can puzzle together a few cornerstones that give us a good idea what a GOOD design would be, and what would be a BAD one. It\'s a GOOD idea to put every engine that CAN actually thrust at launch to work right at launch. Else it\'s dead weight we first have to haul upwards. If that gives you too much thrust and your rocket starts to fall apart due to excessive G forces, slap on another can of gas for that liquid fuel rocket, or take off some boosters (yeah, right...). It MAY be a good idea to not run that liquid engine at full power if you get so fast that your friction is killing most of the power you put behind it. Actually, I usually take off with full throttle, only to ease off a little as I climb to keep the speed from going overboard and being burned in friction. But if you have a big rocket, it CAN be a very good idea to make the first stage(s) only of solid boosters, they\'re very light for their push and even with a coupler on them they have a better TWR than liquid engines. Their main drawback, the inability to control their thrust output, doesn\'t matter for the first 20,000 Meters since you actually just want to get the hell up there. Do not expect too much from that, a full complement of two solid-only stages underneath every single engine of my actual first stage only got me about half a fuel tank. Yes, half a stock fuel tank is all you get for slapping two rows of solid stages under your rocket. The diminishing returns are stunning! With bigger rockets, you\'ll run into the need to add SAS to keep them manageable. Only one ASAS module gives you any benefits, so put only one of them into your rocket. The key difference between SAS and ASAS is, as the description says, that ASAS is more like an autopilot, SAS is more like a gyroscope. In other words, ASAS only works as well as YOU could, or, in other terms, if the rocket is uncontrollable, ASAS cannot control it either. If you have wings (and, IMO, you should have some at least as long as you\'re hauling a big ass rocket about), you might even be able to forgo the normal SAS modules. My Mun rocket only has one ASAS module and no SAS modules. Your rocket should get thinner as it progresses upwards. From afar, it should look like a very steep pyramide. At least IMO. Top-heavy rockets are usually very hard to control, since their center of gravity is far from the point of action. The further away, the bigger the lever, the more wings and other control tidbits you need to keep it upright. You need most of your fuel on your way up. Once you\'re in orbit, even the trans-lunar shot is peanuts compared to the expense to get into an orbit. It\'s quite ok to create an unwieldy, but powerful lower stage and create a very manageable and precisely controlable stage for upper orbit that has rather little fuel compared to it. Try different designs here, it\'s all right to have zero control (aside of 'keep it upright by ASAS') over the rocket for the first 20,000 or even 40,000 Meters of its trip.

It was actually pretty easy to write, easier at least than the rocketry 101 I\'m preparing now.

'Down' is very subjective in space.

By default, the best point to apply thrust to push your apogee in any direction is to do it 180 degrees opposite that point. It\'s basically an extrapolation from the fact that you push the apogee upwards by thrusting at perigee. Pretty much independent of the orbit you\'re in. You could of course first 'move' perigee and apogee, but the energy you\'d have to expend stays the same.

Because it should be obvious what direction to burn to raise/lower the orbit... c\'mon, it\'s not rocket science to know that your orbit decreases if you get slower. When you\'re not exactly at apogee/perigee, you push the apogee/perigee away from you if you initiate a burn. So if you\'re about to reach apogee and thrust to increase speed, the apogee moves away from you, 'ahead' of you. Likewise, if you\'re past apogee and increase speed, you push the apogee away from you, 'behind' you. The effect only becomes really noticeable, though, if you have similar apogee/perigee heights, because obviously to shift a highly elliptical orbit halfway across a planet requires a DAMN LOT of fuel. But try it for yourself. Get into an orbit. Any orbit. Then get to apogee and increase speed a little to lift perigee up to apogee level. And then play with it. If you\'re right between apogee and perigee, you should be able to raise/lower your total orbit with a burn (though, of course, you\'ll have to expend as much fuel as you would have to if burning at perigee to raise apogee, then up at perigee to get the apogee up, so don\'t expect to see a lot of change for a little thrust!).

Depends highly on the rocket. Usually I start at about 15,000 Meters, reaching 45 degrees inclination at around 35,000 so I cross that dense atmosphere in as little time as possible while still gaining a little lateral momentum. When I have some time I should probably start calculating the perfect values (including speed). I don\'t have hard facts to support it yet, but it seems so far the best approach is to go vertical for a considerable amount of time and keep the apogee close to the rocket for most of the ascent, only pushing it forwards when you are about to reach the 60,000 meters.

IMO you bank a bit too early, resulting in a lot of time in the lower, denser atmosphere.

To raise/lower apogee, burn at perigee. And vice versa. Burning before apogee raises/lowers the apogee rather than the perigee and pushes it away from your craft. Burning after apogee raises/lowers it too, but pushes it in the other direction. And of course, if you burn enough at apogee, it becomes perigee, when raising the orbit. And vice versa, of course.

Ahhh... no. There\'s more than that lost, e.g. going out of Kerbals influence into Kerbols influence, it\'s fairly easy to get stranded in an orbit around Kerbol because even if you get close enough toe Kerbal to be influenced by it (and at least slingshot out of the system due to it), you remain in a Kerbol orbit. Same applies between Mun and Kerbal.

I just noticed, if you fly very carefully, my Mun rocket has even enough oumph in its first stage to last until the Mun descent burn. I almost had to dump it with fuel left before touching down.

The short answer: Struts, SAS and Wings. The long answer: Why the wobbling? Because your rocket is not stable. It\'s not 'stiff' enough, and what\'s not stiff tends to oscillate. Due to the laws of physics, the longer your rocket gets, the higher the leverage of the point of action (the engine) vs. the center of gravity. And that wobbling gets worse with more thrust. To counter this, you can attach struts to your rocket. Especially between different, horizontally connected parts (like boosters or multiple legs, e.g. when using tri-couplers) they can make a huge difference, both connected to the main trunk in the middle as well as connected to each other. Why the lack of control? Because your rocket is long. The longer the rocket gets, the harder it is to pitch and tilt. The wider the rocket gets, the harder it is to roll it. You can counter this by using wings to get more control over your rocket (for the price of more drag). Wings are not the magical solution for everything, and they won\'t let a rocket the size of a Saturn V handle like a tiny suborbital hopper, but they will keep the rocket manageable. Why the spinning and out of control behaviour? Because of the lack of SAS. SAS is what allows your auto pilot to work. The heavier the rocket, the more SAS you should be using. Think of it as a gyroscope to keep your rocket upright. Also, a lot of the addon parts have their center of gravity off center. By juuuust a tiny little bit, but given the forces we deal with here, a tiny little bit already has a lot of impact. I would recommend trying to stick with stock parts as much as you can, I usually just replace the rather weak stock boosters with something with more oumph.

To the Mun Ok, now\'s the big moment. The goal our nation has worked for so hard that last ten or so hours. Included you find the Stock Mun craft, the mother of all rockets. It\'s now a stock only design, thanks to the changes of version 0.13. If you have a hard time landing on those fins, download some lander legs from the mod page and attach them instead. To orbit This rocket handles a lot worse than the ones before and it requires quite a bit of practice to manage it. Again, try to get into orbit as quickly as you can, straight up first, then bank at about 32,000 meters and aim for a stable orbit at about 70-90,000 meters. Jettison the attached legs as soon as they get dry (you\'ll notice it when the three outside engines shut off, listen for the shutoff 'whoosh'). Any stable orbit will do, but try to spend as little fuel as possible. You probably have tossed the first stage by now and are burning through the second stage fuel, that\'s ok. TMI Once you\'re in an orbit around Kerbin, relax. You have almost a full orbit time before we do a TMI (trans-munar injection). To find the right time for the TMI, go to the overview map. Turn it so that you look at the Kerbin/Mun system from the top, with your rocket describing a circle around kerbin. Now turn it until the Mun is at about 60° right of the middle line (i.e. about in the direction of the right upper corner of your screen). Now wait until your rocket is 'below' Kerbin in this picture, then apply full throttle towards the orbital vector. Switch back to the overview map and watch your apogee rise. When it gets close to reaching the Mun orbit, slow down. You do not want to overshoot, your goal is to have an apogee that\'s just a little inside that Mun orbit. This maneuver will consume about all of your remaining fuel in the ascent stage. There should be a little left. No biggie if not, we don\'t need a lot of fuel for the rest of the flight. Munar correction burn Now it\'s waiting time. To shorten it, pump up the time compression but be ready to instantly cut it when you\'re in the gravity of the Mun. You will most likely end up a little 'ahead' of the Mun, with a vector that will probably intersect with it. In other words, unless you do something you would crash. So we do something. Point your ship towards the side your vector is already pointing (i.e. either 270 or 90 degrees, depending on whether you would hit the left or the right side of the Mun) and thrust. Not too much! Careful with the throttle, you have a rocket underneath you that can escape the pull of Kerbin, a body that\'s by some margin heavier than the little piece of rock you\'re heading for! In a nutshell, 1/4 thrust is about the maximum these engines will ever see in the rest of their short lifetime anymore! Once you have a perigee that\'s above the Mun surface (about 1000 Meters will do, more doesn\'t hurt, though), we\'ll wait again to reach that perigee. Be prepared to align the rocket away from the thrust vector. If you already see a 'PE' marker when you get into the gravity well of the Mun, you could have skipped that last section, all you have to wait is to reach that 'PE' marker. Munar orbit insertion Once you\'re at Perigee, thrust against the speed vector to get into orbit. Ok, I lied, you can now go full throttle again. Push that damn thing! Just be careful to not jump the gun and thrust too early, at least if you\'re at a fairly low perigee. That might not be good for the health of your rocket! Maybe it\'s not a bad idea to even wait until you passed perigee if that perigee is below 20,000 meters. Your goal is to lower the speed to about 600m/s, give or take. Check the overview map every now and then, as soon as you\'re in a stable, ellyptical orbit, you\'re good. Aligning with a landing spot Now, first of all, you want to land in a crater. And preferably in a crater on the light side of the Mun so you can see what you\'re actually doing. That shadow you cast is a really neat way to tell how far away from the ground you are, and since we do not have radar height sensors (at least not yet), it\'s your best indicator to avoid that 'oops, ground already?' moment. There are no craters at the Mun equator. At least not on the lit side. Now, you could of course wait a few days or weeks for the Mun to circle Kerbin and make the other side lit... I frankly don\'t know for sure if that works, I never tried it... or you could change your orbital plane to cross over a crater in the sunlight. Note, though, that the Mun moves a little while you wait, i.e. that craters on the 'left' side get lit while craters on the 'right' side will move into darkness. Depending on just how ellyptical your orbit is, and hence how long an orbit takes, this might be a problem. When you decided for a crater, do an inclination change, just as you did during the second phase of the missions around Kerbin. Keep an eye on the overview map to see whether your inclination change works out. Try not to burn the whole fuel in that second stage, but even if you do, no big deal. When the outer tanks go dry (they get used up faster since the gimbaled engine in the center uses less fuel) you should be ready for the descent burn, so try to time it so that your fuel runs out when you\'re actually about to touch down. Keep in mind that the Mun is rotating. It will move towards the right, so if you incline your orbit, aim to the right of your target or it will move out below you! That also means that areas that are at the left side of the Mun will come into the light, while areas on its right side will soon see sunset, choose a landing spot rather at the left side of the lit side. Descent initiation That happens on the point roughly opposite your landing target. If you do not know where exactly, you did not practice apogee/perigee changes often enough. Your goal is to reach an orbit endpoint at the far end of the crater, or a bit behind that crater, so that we would cross it and crash into the far side of it if we didn\'t land. If you can\'t get that, just get a Perigee that\'s above the crater, anything\'s going to work as long as we\'re not about 20,000 meters above our target crater. And now, it\'s waiting time again. Landing on the Mun Now\'s the moment to get your blood pressure up to 180, now everything stands and fails with how well you fly that last few meters. Until now, mistakes could be corrected. Now there is very, very little error margin. As soon as you cross the edge of the crater, keep your eyes peeled for a spot that looks flat, then start thrusting. Your goal is to get to zero horizontal movement (turn the artificial horizon back to 'surface speed'!), your vector indicator should point exactly down (or, if you\'re getting too low, up) until you are PERFECTLY hovering. Do NOT attempt to land while you still have lateral movement, the rocket is very top heavy and it WILL tumble and crash if you have too much sideways movement. The RCS thrusters help a lot here. When your speed indicator points down (i.e. if you\'re 'falling'), thrust the RCS TOWARDS that marker. I.e. if the marker is right off center, push right. If it\'s above, press 'k' (i.e. 'pull' the steering lever to go up, like in a plane). If you\'re climbing, it\'s AGAINST the marker. Remember that! Turn that SAS control system on when you\'re aligned vertically. It keeps you upright and especially it keeps you from going out of control if you have to change the attitude of your craft. There is a REASON I put that heavy ASAS system into this rocket! Your descent should be slow. Less than 10 m/s is preferable for the touchdown. Try to aim for a flat surface. Once you touch the ground, cut engine power but keep RCS and SAS on! They will aid you a lot in keeping your rocket upright! Once you\'re halfway certain that the rocket won\'t fall over, cut RCS and SAS. Welcome to Mun. Launching from the Mun Getting there is only half of the ticket, our Kerbonauts have families, ya know? They want to see them again. Let\'s get them back home. You should have a few drops of fuel left in that descent stage. Use them to take off, don\'t bother going too high, just stay above the ground and head towards a 90 degrees orbit. Since you are not on the equator (at least most likely you\'re not), this will end up in an inclined orbit, but that\'s no worry right now. The worry right now is to get that vessel up to speed again and keep it from falling down onto the Mun. Try to get to about 400m/s before even considering anything else. Your rocket will probably run dry before you reach that speed, dump it, turn RCS on and use RCS to build up more speed. As we have learned, it\'s best to thrust at apogee to raise the perigee. Since we\'re not aiming at a high apogee, just one that keeps us from crashing, take a look at the overview map. Note that your RCS thrusters have precious little thrusting power, so waiting right for apogee is probably not an option, but you shouldn\'t burn much earlier than reaching it. Also, we actually needn\'t get into a stable orbit. Just one that takes us once a bit more than half around the mun and still keeps us above ground when we cross that white line on the overview map that indicates the Mun\'s orbit around Kerbin. This is where we\'ll thrust for a TKI. Actually... try to aim for a flight path that keeps you above ground for a little longer than just that line. We\'ll thrust normal to it, and you don\'t want to crash into the Mun just because there was juuuust a little too little orbital speed. TKI The trans-kerbin injection happens at or about at the moment you cross the Munar orbit around Kerbin. Aim towards the thrust vector indicator and apply thrust. You\'re aiming to reach about 800m/s. Once you have that speed, it\'s waiting time again. time compression on and let\'s wait for us to end up in an orbit around Kerbin. Yes, I know that we aim 'left' of Kerbin, don\'t worry, it will be there by the time we get there. Return Once your overview flight path indicator changes from a Munar to a Kerbin orbit display again, it\'s time to check our stats. You should NOT hit Kerbin right away. You should be able to get around it, no matter the height of the Perigee (it is probably going to be something like 400k Meters), with an apogee just outside the Mun orbit. That\'s fine. If it\'s not, and you would hit Kerbin, pick up some speed. Lithobreaking at this speed is most likely lethal. If not now, then when g-forces and heat are in. What happens next depends on the fuel you have left. If there\'s plenty, you can lower your apogee a bit when you\'re at perigee to ease the descent. If there\'s not, wait for reaching apogee again and lower your perigee enough to hit the atmosphere (30k Meters should do). Aiming for a nice water spashdown is probably not an option if you\'re low on fuel, but if you have some, try to get your apogee down to something sensible (about 400k Meters) before lowering your perigee into the atmosphere. Have a nice flight!

Some advanced maneuvering and transfer orbits Now that we managed to get into an orbit, let\'s try to get more control over our craft. A Mun shot will require us to change our direction a few times, and since fuel is precious in outer space, we\'ll want to use as little as possible of that precious fluid to get as far as we possibly can. Below you find my standard orbiter. It\'s a bit bigger than the basic orbiter. And with bit I mean a damn lot. Hence it has an Advanced SAS module to keep it manageable. It also features a gimbaled engine at the center of those first stage fuel tanks. Both will come very handy. But you\'ll quickly see how 'more fuel' doesn\'t necessarily also mean 'more fuel to spend'. Because most of the rocket will be gone when you finally manage to get into an orbit. The 'normal' engine powered legs of the rocket will be spent before the gimbaled engine in the center will eat through its fuel, so be prepared to get rid of those radially coupled tanks when they\'re dead (you\'ll hear a 'whoosh' sound when it happens, and the push suddenly falls to 1/8th of its original thrust). By then you should be in orbit, or almost there, so it\'s no big deal. This rocket is meant to be my 'Gemini Project' of KSP. As soon as docking gets into place, this rocket is probably the one that I will use for docking practice. You can actually try some 'pretend docking' with it, I\'ll get to that later. Liftoff The rocket handles fairly well for its size. Turn SAS on (hit T), push the throttle to the top and launch. Separate the boosters as soon as they\'re spent, else there\'s usually little to do, the rocket is really stable and needs little input. Keep the speed at the maximum (I found out air resistance holds no candle to the impulse gain by thrusting at max power). As soon as you leave the denser parts of the atmosphere (around 32,000 Meters), start banking towards 90 degrees like you did previously. At about 45,000 Meters you should slowly start to level out, for a stable Orbit around 70-90,000 Meters, you\'ll need approximately 2200-2300m/s orbital (!) speed. The outer rocket legs should take you to orbit, leaving the inside stage for maneuvering in orbit. In Orbit That stage 'inside' the circle of six fuel 'legs' is meant to be the orbital maneuvering stage. I recommend using it to get a feel for how orbital mechanics work, how transfer orbits work, how to change inclination, and most of all, how to do all that while spending as little fuel as possible. Transfer Orbits A transfer orbit is, simply put, the way to change your apogee (highest point in your orbit) and perigee (lowest point in your orbit). As you see, an 'orbit' isn\'t necessarily circular. It can be highly ellyptical without failing to be an orbit. It only fails as an Orbit if your perigee is too low (and you hit the ground when you\'re at the 'bottom' of your ellypse) or if your speed exceeds escape velocity (i.e. if your apogee is 'too high', or rather, your speed too high to result in an apogee and forcing you eventually to fall back towards Kerbal. The laws of physics also dictate that you\'re fastest while at perigee (closest to the planet) and slowest at apogee (farthest away from the planet). Which makes sense, to get to perigee, you 'fall', to get to apogee, you 'climb'. If your goal is only to reach a certain height at one point in your orbit (as we will when we try to get to the Mun), the most fuel efficient way to do that is to thrust at Perigee. Thrusting towards the movement vector of your vessel will lift the apogee while not changing the perigee. Thrusting away from it lowers the apogee while not affecting the perigee. All of that of course considering that you\'re EXACTLY at perigee. Since perfect, unlimited thrust does not exist, your perigee will be changed ever so slightly by that maneuver as well. The opposite applies to thrusting at apogee. Thrusting towards the vector at apogee raises your perigee. Thrusting away from it lowers it. This is very convenient on your return trip, since you\'ll only need a little fuel to lower your perigee enough to get back to Kerbal, which will be very useful due to us not having a lot of fuel left when we get back from the Mun. Try it! Thrust at perigee and apogee to lower and raise your orbits. Try to get into a circular orbit by thrusting at the right times in the right direction. Try to get into an insanely ellyptical orbit without going over the escape velocity (you\'ll see if you do on the map (M), if your flight path has a beginning and an end, and isn\'t an ellypse no more, you are too fast to ever return to Kerbal). Find out what happens if you thrust while you\'re between apogee and perigee. Always remember: Only thrust towards or against your speed vector to affect your orbit height. Never up or down. Orbit inclination changes Sometimes you don\'t want to rotate just east-west. Sometimes you\'ll want to have an inclined orbit, especially when we\'re going to the Mun, the best landing spots are unfortunately not at the equator. We\'ll have to tilt the orbit a little. Now, this will of course cost us fuel. But how much? And how to consume the least fuel? As said before, your orbital speed is lowest at apogee. That also means that speed changes at apogee have the most impact. Or, in other words, if you want your orbit to change inclination, you should do that change at apogee where a little thrust is all it takes to change a lot of inclination. Try it. Get into a highly ellipitcal orbit (with a high apogee and a low perigee). When you\'re at apogee, thrust towards the north. You\'ll notice your orbit changing direction considerably. Count the seconds you\'re thrusting. Now do the same towards south at perigee. You\'ll notice that the effect is by far less. Be careful when thrusting, though, since if you\'re not pointing exactly 90° away from your orbital vector, you\'re either lowering or raising your perigee. And since you\'re changing your orbital vector when changing orbit inclination, that means that you can\'t simply keep thrusting towards north or south without eventually not being at 90° towards your orbital vector anymore. Don\'t forget to check your perigee and apogee when you\'re done and correct it. Now, at apogee, you can correct it for just a few drops of fuel. When you\'re down at perigee, it\'s a titan\'s work to keep the capsule in orbit if your perigee got too low. Docking practice and RCS thrusters When your second stage is burned up, you can use the rest of the time for some docking practice. Don\'t worry, that final stage should have more than enough juice to get you back from pretty much any orbit within the Mun orbit. That spent second stage makes a beautiful docking target. Get into a stable position (i.e. no banking/tilting), putting the game into 5x speed acceleration for a moment to put the rocket on rails helps a lot here and turn on the RCS control with the R key. Separate the stage and immediately put some backwards thrust onto the RCS to stop moving away from the jettisoned stage. Now turn your capsule around and pretend your nose cone is a docking adapter. Try to hit the side of the stage with your nose in an angle that would allow a docking adapter to 'lock'. The RCS control allows you to move your capsule sideways (with the i,j,k,l keys, and h and n for forwards/backwards thrust), which lets you align it perfectly with the stage. Try to move away for a bit, then approach it again. Eventually we\'ll get some docking in place and you\'ll want to be able to do it! Chances are that we\'ll get some kind of additional aiming equipment, but being able to do it without cannot hurt, can it? But no, it doesn\'t aid you in your trip to the Mun and you can skip that part if you ain\'t as much a fan of docking as I am. Back to Kerbal The docking maneuvers should only consume the fuel in your RCS stage, so you have a full tank for your retro burn, that\'s more than enough for this. The procedure is straightforwards and not much different from earlier. Wait until you\'re at apogee, then thrust against the orbit vector to lower your perigee to 30k meters or below. Depending on your apogee, it might be a good idea to first lower that, in case you went for an insanely elliptical orbit (or, later, return from the Mun and are in such an orbit). The atmosphere might not be enough to lower your speed so you don\'t get back into an orbit. So far we do not have heat friction and G-forces in effect, but I guess it\'s not a bad idea to prepare for that time and try to neither enter the atmosphere at some 5000m/s, nor at g-forces that liquify our Kerbonauts.

From your first launch to a Munshot - the complete tutorial It\'s not easy coming into this game anew and expecting a Munshot. We, the players who spent our time growing with the game, are of course hungry for every 'next' feature, but for someone who might come in late it could well be overwhelming. Allow me to be your guide into this game and lend you a hand on your quest for the Mun. My rockets, my strategy and even my approach ain\'t the only ones that lead to success. Many others have very different styles and they all can be successful. Take a look at the various threads and especially the different space ship designs people built. Some are mostly for fun, some are just hilarious bombs, but there are also a lot of very sophisticated and successful designs. Try them! Play with them! Find the ones that fit your style best. One thing I want to suggest right away is to avoid the temptation of taking a shortcut. Do the 'missions' step by step. NASA didn\'t simply slap together an Apollo rocket when Kennedy said we\'re going to the Mun, so why should you? Although, instead of 10 years it\'s more like 10 hours from the first flight to the Munshot. Parts and player made parts Let\'s get this out of the way first. There are quite a few player made parts and packs to be found at http://www.kerbalspaceprogram.net/kerbal-space-program-mods Some people consider this cheating, wanting to rely on the 'pure' and 'original' parts. But some of these parts make life a lot easier, they add flavor and some parts (like those lander legs) are only available from mods. As of 0.13, when we were finally allowed to attach liquid tanks radially and hence we can now build rockets that can stand on more than just three legs sensibly, it has become possible to do a Mun shot on vanilla parts sensibly. Earlier, it was mostly a rather unwieldy monster made of boosters, some boosters and more boosters. The Stock craft attached is a vanilla-only parts Mun craft. But we\'ll get to that. Parts and what they\'re good for Try to resist the temptation to go to the page I just mentioned and download everything. You\'ll be overwhelmed by the amount of parts and you\'re in for a quite frustrating experience if you do. Plus, the more parts you have in your stock, the longer it takes for the game to load (not as much as it used to, but it\'s still going to increase your loading time by some margin). For now, I\'d suggest staying away from them and just use vanilla parts \'til you\'re comfortable with them, then add some mods for flavor. Let\'s take a look at the various different parts and their meaning. Start the game, then go to the vehicle assembly building (the big one on the left). As of version 0.13, you\'re presented with a selection of capsules to use. For now, the only one you have is the stock one so take that one. Take a look to the left of the screen. On top, you have six ledgers that we\'ll now discuss in detail. Propulsion The stuff in propulsion is what moves your rocket. It contains fuel tanks, rocket engines and solid boosters. For now, this is the standard fuel tank, the two different rocket engines, the RCS fuel tank and the stock solid booster. Liquid fuel tanks and rocket engines Since they belong together, they can as well be handled together. Every engine needs at least one fuel tank to work. Without, it\'s just dead weight. You can use two, three or even more fuel tanks for a single engine, likewise you can use couplers (we\'ll get to that) to fuel multiple engines from a single tank. They\'re quite a bit heavier than the solid boosters, but they can be controlled. You can decide to run them at half power, or shut them off and power them back on. You\'ll notice that you have two different engines to choose from. One is a more powerful one, the other one gives you more control. Solid boosters Solid boosters have two settings: 100% throttle and burned out. The moment you start a booster, it will burn for its allotted time and then simply shut off. No control, no way to turn them off aside of jettisoning them (and then it\'s a gamble whether they may hit your rocket on their uncontrolled flight path...), but they\'re cheap and lightweight compared to their thrust and power. RCS fuel tank RCS fuel tanks are for position control. These are the tanks for the thrusters that offer you lateral movement and a lot of control, for the price of being fairly weak. We\'ll get to them when we need them, for now, let\'s ignore them. Command & Control Basically, things that let you control the craft better. In here, you\'ll find two different SAS modules and the thrusters for the RCS tanks. SAS modules make flying the craft a lot easier, so it\'s usually a good idea to have one of those on your rocket, especially if it\'s a HUGE rocket that is hard to control otherwise. For now, we won\'t really need them. Structural & Aerodynamic Basically couplers, struts and wings. There are three couplers in the fold. The radial decoupler, to slap boosters to the sides of your craft. The stack coupler, to throw away lower stages that are spent. And the tri-coupler to have three instead of just one leg to stand (and thrust) on. As for wings, they let you turn the rocket more easily. If you notice that turning your rocket becomes near impossible, this is what you want to add to your craft. Struts allow you to make your rocket more sturdy. If you rocket wobbles and looks like it\'s falling apart, if your outer boosters look like a cheap chairoplane, this is what you want to use. And new in 0.13, the fuel lines. Fuel lines allow you to connect tanks that are, for example, attached radially to funnel the fuel in them to the main tanks. I\'ll get into detail with them in a separate tutorial... when I finally figured out reliably how they work. For now, attaching them is simple. Take one, attach it to the tank FROM which the fuel should be flowing, then attach the other end to the tank TO which you wish to draw fuel (in 0.13.1 it got turned around, in 0.13.0 it was attach TO tank first, then FROM tank). Utility and Scientific Just the parachute in here for now, but it\'s essential. Without, landing might be a tad bit hard on your kerbonauts. In various player made packs you\'ll find satellites, more parachutes and various other tidbits here. The rest Not so important for now. They are empty anyway. To orbit Getting to orbit is fairly easy, once you know how to do it. A common misconception is that you just have to point your rocket upwards and then somehow you magically end up in an orbit. That\'s not the case. To get into an orbit, you have to get some kind of horizontal momentum. In other words, fly to the side instead of up. The only reason we fly up first is, obviously, that it\'s kinda hard to do an orbit while your rocket is dragging on the ground, but also to overcome air resistance. Air, and hence its resistance, ends at about 70,000 Meters on Kerbin. Our first goal is, hence, to get to an altitude of over 70,000 Meters. But while we\'re doing that, we also must somehow reach a serious amount of lateral movement. At 70,000 Meters, we\'ll need about 2200m/s horizontal speed to stay in an orbit and not fall back onto Kerbal. Our first goal is hence to combine those two. Our orbital rocket First, let\'s build a rocket. We want a rocket that can reach orbit and return our kerbonauts safely back to Kerbin. Put underneath the capsule a stack decoupler, so when we return we can throw away any useless weight. On top of the capsule, put a parachute. Now put 4 fuel tanks below the decoupler, and one of the powerful engines underneath. Put 6 radial decouplers around the rocket. For symmetry, you can use the tool at the upper left corner of the hangar, to make six instead of just one decoupler. Put a solid booster on every decoupler. Now it\'s time to mess with the staging. We want the boosters and the liquid engine to fire at the same time. Simply grab the engine and its fuel tank on the right hand side staging display and pull them down into the lower stage. Liftoff! Hit the launch button (upper right corner in the hangar) and let\'s see how she fares. To launch the rocket, hit space and be prepared for a rocky ride! We have no SAS modules, so you will have to do some serious steering. Get used to it! Your first goal is to keep the rocket upright and pointing towards the sky. It will spin a little, correct that! The boosters will eventually burn out, jettison them as soon as they no longer provide thrust. The key to success is as little dead weight as possible. Around 10-15,000 meters it\'s time to start banking towards the direction we eventually want to go. Since it\'s a good idea to make use of Kerbin\'s rotation, try to fly towards 90 degrees. Now is also a good time to introduce you to the different speeds concerning orbit and surface. If you click on the speed indicator above the artificial horizon, you can see it. Orbital speed is the speed relative to the center of mass. It WOULD be equal to surface speed if Kerbin didn\'t rotate. Surface speed is your speed over ground. For now, just remember that surface speed is what matters during landing, orbit speed is what matters during orbiting. Ok, back to our flight. Bank slowly. At about 30,000 Meters you should be aiming at about 45 degrees up. In a perfect world, you should hit the 70,000 Meters about the same time as you hit the 2300m/s. Since few things in this world are perfect, try to get a bit higher. We can use that hight soon. Attaining orbit Once you hit about 70,000 meters it\'s time to check the overview map. Hit M and let\'s take a look at our flight plan. Most likely, your flight curve indicator (the blue line) will show that you\'re in for a short trip. Aim towards the direction you want to go (90° if you followed my suggestion) and keep the throttle up \'til the apogee (labeled AP on the flight path) is a few kilometers ahead of you. In a perfect world, you\'d want to apply thrust ONLY while you\'re at apogee, to maximize your fuel efficiency. Since you probably won\'t have the luxury of that much thrust, you will have to start thrusting a little earlier than that. With time you\'ll get a feel for how much thrust your rockets can muster and how soon or late you may fire them to achieve best fuel efficiency. Your goal now is to lift the perigee of your orbit (the PE on the flight curve, which is right now still probably below Kerbin\'s crust, i.e. on or 'in' the Planet) to above 70,000 Meters. Once you\'ve done that, congratulations, you\'re in orbit. Note: You only thrust towards 90° (i.e. in the direction of your flight) to raise your orbit and towards 270° (away from your flight direction) to lower it. Don\'t thrust up (away from planet) or down (towards planet) once you\'re almost in orbit. Staying in orbit is a matter of horizontal speed. Not a matter of 'flying up'. Getting back down Getting back down is fairly straightforward: Aim your rocket against the flight direction indicator (the green thingie on your artificial horizon, it should be pointing towards 90°, i.e. aim your rocket to 270° on the artificial horizon where that green thingie with an X inside is located) and thrust. Your goal is to come down in water, for an obviously softer landing than on land. You needn\'t lower your perigee to the ground, getting down to about 30,000 meters is enough, the air drag should do the rest. Don\'t forget to jettison the rocket and deploy the parachute (i.e. hit space often enough), and welcome back to Kerbin.

May I present, the Mun Shot. It\'s a rocket made mostly of stock part with a few nonstandard bits to make the whole deal possible. Nonstandard parts used (if not noted else, it\'s from NovaSilisko\'s pack). While the list looks long, most of them are used once. Nano SAS Mk1 TD-M3 Mechanical Decoupler Mk3 Parachute TD-M9 Mechanical Decoupler Mk. 3030302 Hollow Stage Decoupler LM-00 Support Structure LM-00 Descent Engine AA-BB Linear Decoupling Strut KW-LFC 1x2 Meter (Kyle & Winston) KW Series Globe V-L Solid Fuel Motor (Kyle & Winston) I did about 30 screenshots, attached you find the ones that actually don\'t suck. I\'m not really a photographer.

Here\'s my standard orbiter. Stock parts only, plenty of oumph to get into nearly any orbit you\'d want to get into and a rock solid climber, turn SAS on, launch it and just hit space twice when the time is right \'til you leave the atmosphere. Usually the first stage burns out just as I am about to hit a circular 70-80k orbit. Second stage is usually plenty to get around in orbits as you please, last stage is RCS only, with plenty of juice to get back from nearly anything but an escape velocity trip, and very lovely to practice docking with the burned up second stage as a docking target after you jettison it, just in case you want to fool around a little before heading back home to base. Good fun all \'round, and maybe even enough of a push to be a Mun rocket. Now including a pic of the orbiter just after jettisoning Stage 1 in a stable, circular 71571m orbit (and about 1:45 hours time warped to show you that I\'m indeed in a stable orbit and not just barely hitting the 71k).

Also, to save power when lowering your orbit back to circular, dip the perigee to about 65,000 meters. You\'ll notice that you will get slowed down a little by the atmosphere and hence lose a little of your perigee, but at the same time your apogee gets lowered considerably. Usually, the power to push the perigee back up to 65,000 meters, which is done when you\'re at apogee again, is less than trying to do a retro burn to lower your apogee 'manually'. When your apogee is back to an agreeable level, push the perigee back up when you\'re at apogee and you\'re set. The fuel consumption is lowered considerably that way.

Well, right now the solution is rather simply, albeit cheatin: Time warp to 5x, that eliminates any kind of pitch/roll/tilt, then return to 1x and have fun. Yes, it\'s cheating, but \'til we get some kind of fine tuning control, I\'ll consider it legit.