Going to Mun before waypoints are available.

[0x7be]

Any good tutorial how to do Mun flyby before waypoints/patched conics are available?

Thanks in advance.

[SpeedDaemon]

The old-fashioned way: Get into LKO, then burn prograde when the moon rises (from your spacecraft's point of view) until your AP is at the same altitude as the Mun's orbit.

[Chaia]

Basicly trial and error. Probably the easiest way is to expand your apoapsis to muns orbit and wait for the mun to come by. That will take a lot of time, if you are unlucky, you will need much mun orbits to hit its SOI.

If you expand your apoapsis above muns orbit, you have two shots every round.

And if you don't care, you could do the maneuver node for it in sandbox mode and remember how and when you need to fire up

[Blu_C]

Both of these will ultimately work, however SpeedDaemon's answer is the correct one. Basically around the time the moon rises your burn will get you to the proper point. This is how I tend to do it as I like to hold off upgrading facilities until it is absolutely necessary, but it is perfectly possible to get Mun and Minimus encounters with this method, giving you access to HUGE amounts of science since both locations have many biomes.

[Harry Rhodan]

Any good tutorial how to do Mun flyby before waypoints/patched conics are available?

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:Mun_Landing

[SRV Ron]

While it is possible for the experienced player to get a flyby without the Maneuver Mode, you should easily be able to accumulate enough funds in a couple of early Career missions to unlock the LV-909 and purchase the upgrades needed. This suborbiter flight did just that.

[tsotha]

The old-fashioned way: Get into LKO, then burn prograde when the moon rises (from your spacecraft's point of view) until your AP is at the same altitude as the Mun's orbit.

This. It's what I did this playthrough and once the SOI change happened my course was going right through the center of the Mun.

You probably will require a bit more dV than you do with conics, because you won't be able to see your course relative to the Mun until you enter its SOI. Course changes that were pretty close to free near Kerbin will have a noticeable cost that close to the Mun.

[pearldrumbum]

First circularize in LKO. Then I zoom out my map view until I can see all of the Mun's orbit and spin it so that the Mun is between 1 and 2 o'clock and wait until my ship is at 6 o'clock. Burn prograde until my Ap is just shy of touching Mun's orbit. Once the SOI changes to the Mun's burn retrograde at Pe until circularized or the orbit you want is attained. Normal/Antinormal and radial burns are a little harder, but I usually roll my ship until the navball shows the horizon as actually horizontal and that helps me orient myself to figure out which way I need to burn to make small adjustments in trajectory/orbit.

[MechaLynx]

This. It's what I did this playthrough and once the SOI change happened my course was going right through the center of the Mun.

I was practicing for this mission in sandbox and this is exactly what happened to me on the first try - I just kept burning from periapsis and i got my orbit to pass right through the Mun - thankfully I had enough ÃŽâ€v to correct and get back.

Overall, I think the only difficulty in getting to the Mun or Minmus without maneuver nodes is figuring out leading angles. For the Mun its 110 degrees if I'm not mistaken, better to start your burn when the angle is higher than that if you're just eyeballing it, rather than late, since that puts you an entire orbit behind.

Definitely possible though - I've got a craft that with a lvl1 vab and lvl2 launch site can escape Kerbin if I wanted. All you need is the leading angle and you're set.