Rascal Nag

Doing this now. Here\'s a pic of the circular orbit, should have a pic of the transfer orbit soon. Edit: and here\'s the transfer orbit. Also, it isn\'t that far past the Mun\'s orbit. It just is slightly above it so it gives the illusion of being 13-14000km out when it\'s only about 12000km out from Kerbin. Edit: And now here\'s a pic of it being captured by the Mun\'s gravity just to verify that.

Well getting into orbit is just go straight up with the first stage, up with the SRBs, and then wait a bit with the LFEs so you\'re closer to Apoapsis and will get the most out of the burn. Once you have a fairly good orbit, (make sure it\'s East, the planet\'s rotation helps this way), go around until you see the moon rise, then burn. I don\'t have a set distance or speed I bring my transer orbit up to, but if Apoapsis is atleast crossing the Mun\'s orbit a bit, you should be good. Now you have two choices: Orbit or fall to the surface. For orbit insertion at the mun, just do retrograde burns until the orbit is not so eccentric. For falling to the Mun... well, fall. This is only easily done if your orbit already goes through the mun without correction burns. For de-orbit if you made an orbit: If you want to look cool, make the orbit REALLY low, around a km, or even less. Then burn a little bit up and opposite your vector, so you\'re scrubbing horizontal velocity while at the same time making sure you don\'t crash while doing so. This is a difficult maneuver, but it\'s fun. I recommend doing this in one of the huge craters where it\'s flat and so there is more room for error. If you\'re playing it safe, just get in any old non-elliptical orbit and then burn yourself down, gradually scrubbing horizontal velocity and then slowing your descent. If you\'re using a wing leg lander, they\'re pretty tough so no need to slow to .1 m/s, but try to be atleast a bit below 10m/s. For take off, just gently throttle up, you don\'t need much to take off on the Mun. Aim your ship so that your orbital plane will be pretty close to Kerbin\'s. Get into any orbit that doesn\'t hit the ground, but don\'t worry about making it big. Go around the orbit and burn prograde so that your orbit will go roughly opposite the direction the Mun orbits Kerbin, a bit inwards towards Kerbin. Do not aim your orbit at Kerbin. Since the moon orbits, your orbit will follow that path (But will not rotate), so if you aim at Kerbin, when you get closer your trajectory will be way off and will get farther and farther off. Then just de-orbit Kerbin if your orbit is not already going into the atmosphere and then just make sure you pull the chute. Here\'s a picture of the mun escape orbit if it\'s confusing. The arrows represent the direction your new orbit of the Mun takes you in and how they change over time, and the green is just an approximated orbit around Kerbin. As you can see it flies into the ground. If your Mun-escape orbit points right at Kerbin after the orbit moves, you\'ll be on track for hitting your target.

Yes.

If we can get a full list of orbital velocities for the Mun, we could probably use those in combination with one of the many orbital calculators to get a good idea of how fast we need to be going in Kerbin orbit to be swung back. Edit: Also, how close must we be before getting changed to the Mun\'s gravity? That would help. Edit Again: What is the acceleration of Munar Gravity at the surface? Was it 1/4 of Kerbin? Edit Again Again: I\'m trying out a plan now. Not sure if it will work or not. Edit #3: Failed. Was too fast and aim was off, hit the Mun. Edit 4: I did much better this time. Here\'s some pictures. 1: Liftoff 2: Orbital insertion 3: Trans-munar injection 4: Escape orbit of the moon as achieved by the transfer orbit 5: New orbit around Kerbin after escaping the Mun 6. What the trajectory essentially looked like (VERY rough approximation) Not free return, but a step in the right direction.

Should be more than capable of getting you to the Mun and back. I have a video of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGd28eqWwWc

Okay, this one should be a lot easier to fly than the last vanilla one. Same idea as the old one but with wing lander legs, which are much better. The second screenshot is the full rocket, it\'s just mid-flight. There\'s no extra stuff below that LFE stage. I also made a Mun rocket in Silisko Edition 0.6. It\'ll easily get you to the mun. Unfortunately I landed on solid ground and blew up, just a few meters away from a body of water. And just in case someone here can\'t reason things out, you need Silisko Edition to use the second ship.

I think crashing three times in a row in the same fashion (SRBs just gave out on landing) has to be some sort of achievement... though it\'s not what I was hoping for. After getting in one successful mission to the Mun and back, it seems like I\'m not allowed another successful flight. I only have two of the pictures though, on the third I just ended the mission right when it fell over and started to explode. I want to get one landing in before I get some sleep. Hey, that was me! Unless someone else has a rocket of the same name. Edit: New crash to add... those 25 points of thrust would have really helped out there. Back to the normal LFE.

I\'m working on direct ascent landers so I\'m ready for the challenge of the direct ascent mission when it comes around. Right now, I have this. I orbited it at 12000km, then came back and landed in these mountains. Though the flat edge I landed on was pure luck. Even if docking is added, I\'m doing direct ascent just for fun at least once. I\'ll likely add some goodies like RCS thrusters later, but I\'m VERY happy with this. I\'ve managed to nearly perfect getting vertical on landing, and since we should get lander legs in .12, that will cut down on the weight significantly without the struts and decouplers.

Hmm... that didn\'t happen during my tests! Some struts should fix it I\'d assume.

I will test the design myself once the Mun is there. If I run into problems, I won\'t scrap it-it would be a GREAT ship for getting satellites up. Replace the first single engine stage with a space station of some sort and it would be great. If the Mun is impossible with this then the uses for it will be re-evaluated.

And this is something that cannot be tested until the Mun is up there. For now, I\'ve focused on having one stage for munar orbit insertion and descent and one for landing at getting back up. If there\'s docking, I would NEVER do this, because it would be much easier to dock and plus it\'s more fun.

EDIT: Just realized, you didn\'t orbit because you don\'t know how RCS modules work... (none on the rocket) I know how to do RCS blocks, I know about the engine and the Hohmann and Bi-elliptical transfers. The reason for the separated engines is because I have a Munar mission in mind, the first one is for getting into orbit of the Mun and slowing down, the next will be the lander once legs are out. The speed configuration would mix the two, obviously. I went straight up on the top speed bit because that\'s how I measure top speed and that\'s how the great velocity race did it too IIRC. This 12000km pic WAS an orbit, by the way. It had a Pe around 200km and an Ap of about 13000km. I use RCS modules ALOT (docking mockups, staying with jettisoned stages, messing around with them as kinds of hovercraft jets) but not when I don\'t need them. They would be useful for lunar landers, if it proved to hard to stop all horizontal motion for landing without them (From my preliminary tests with radial decoupler legged landers it\'s not that bad without them, actually). And if docking is implemented for orbit rendezvous before heading to Kerbin, then I\'ll put them on, but I refrain from doing so until the need arises. And in the case of a final stage, same thing. Only if they prove mandatory. Also, no need to assume I don\'t understand these things.

A few ways to do it. You can slowly pitch over to horizontal as you go up, get to some height and then go straight to horizontal, or, my favorite for really heavy and unwieldy rockets, go straight up with the first stage or two, then when you hit apoapsis burn horizontally. This helps because it\'s very, very difficult to get a really heavy and tall rocket to tilt the way to want. Though if you can, the best option is (99.999% of the time) the first one, a slow tilt. Also one thing I did before the orbital map was get to 1500 m/s or so, wait til I started falling, then thrusted a bit to get that little bit of height back, and kept repeating this. It got me an orbit with a difference in Pe and Ap of only about 200m, so it worked.

Everyone does that, especially with the RCS blocks now.

After half an hour of design and development, I present to you KSLS, the Kerbal Space Launch System! This new rocket sacrifices neither stability nor power, giving you a reliable rocket for even the biggest payloads or most challenging deep space missions! 12 Liquid-Fuel engines roar at full thrust to lift the rocket skyward, and have 3 tanks of fuel each. All this burn time gets you to 48km high only on the first stage! Then, as the Liquid engines fall away after staging, 9 Solid rocket boosters flame up, intended to give the rocket some lateral velocity. In the third stage, three Liquid fuel engines power the ship to orbital speeds, and still have enough fuel and then some for circularizing the orbit or initiating transfers for deep space missions! Next, a single Liquid Engine is used to finish the job of whatever you were doing if the third stage is not sufficient. We guarantee you\'ll think you have too much fuel! The last stage is very versatile! On Munar missions, it could be a lander! On orbital missions, it could be for de-orbit! On flybys it\'s perfect for adjusting trajectory! And if you fly straight up non-stop, top speed is 5822 m/s! Sure, it doesn\'t stand up to all the 10000 m/s rockets and their speed right now, but this is on the default configuration of the rocket! Yup, the immense lifting power of this rocket almost screams for you to make a speed configuration! Tradition is a part of the KSLS project, and so all parts are vanilla, too! Attached you\'ll find the KSLS on the pad, the final two stages at approximately the position of the Mun (With pretty much an entire can to work with on the current stage!), and the top speed of the default configuration! Happy flying! Edit: Picture of orbit.

The best way to stop it is just not mention it. At all. It doesn\'t exist. Wipe it from the records. The Krussians must not know.

Was experimenting with multiple designs for a Mun ship, and I think I found a good one. It\'s really tall too, so that\'s bonus points, right? Here\'s a picture at the launchpad and one at about 12000km out, or the Mun\'s distance. Still got a whole stage left after this!

For now I think it\'s best to keep everything in metrics. It\'s MUCH easier to calculate how many km you are high than miles and much easier for speed calculations, too. I doubt there are many imperial users who can in a few seconds calculate their height in miles from feet and calculate miles per second from their feet per second. Even though I\'m American, the imperial system is just stupidly arbitrary and unwieldy. Maybe as an option one day, but I think for now that would be unnecessary weight on Harv and his team. Plus, people who don\'t really know metrics can find out how quickly you can learn it. I have no idea why we haven\'t made an attempt here to switch to metrics.

Try using something else as the base for the lander so it\'s not so heavy. Or else you\'ll pancake on the Mun\'s surface without an atmosphere.

I\'ve been practicing with this guy. Though it\'s a bit bulky and hard to slow down, you waste a bunch of fuel slowing your descent.

Everything went wrong.

Has gotten me to a near circular orbit at 35700km. With plenty of fuel to spare. A few tweaks... and it will be ready for Mun.

I tried it, got the same results as horizontal. Came close at first, then drifted further on every orbit.

Yes, I did. That\'s probably why the paths got so different each time, because warping seems to screw with the velocities a bit. If I waited out the entire orbit without compression, I could probably get them to be a lot closer, but maybe not. Might just be simple precision and I\'m just not quite accurate enough to keep the orbits close. Edit: Also, I think I\'m going to try again, but shoot it off vertically. Pinpointing where exactly the horizontal midpoint between pro and retrograde for perpendicular deployment is difficult with no marker, but since I\'ll have the dot on the navball with vertical deployment it should be easier. They should, like horizontal deployment, meet up at two points, so it may be just as, if not more effective.

I did it! The trick was to make the other part head a bit downwards. Otherwise it gets way too high. I didn\'t get the release picture, but here are two points where we met up. Edit: it seems though that the two orbits get farther and farther from each other every time they meet up. I added another picture, now the piece is below me and pretty far away...