Help with a Muner orbiter

[glugg23]

I need help making a good stock 0.13 Munar orbiter (I have not yet bought the full game ), that can get to the Mun and back. My last design did not have enough fuel. Any ideas (preferably with a .craft file ) would be nice.

[sal_vager]

Hi glugg23

There are many craft in the Stock repository that work in the demo of KSP, you are free to try any of them, but I recommend my own Stocket Pocket Rocket

Have fun flying

[glugg23]

Thank you for the quick and good reply.

[Stevenator1]

Though sal\'s reply was great, I\'ll go through a quick and easy tutorial on MY personal way of getting to the mun and back, by stages and rough generalizations - I will let you build your own ship.

My stages go from LAST to first - from top of the rocket, to bottom. It is always much easier to work in this backwards order.

1. Just the command pod and parachute, then a decoupler. These 3 things should ALWAYS be your top 3 things.. pretty much every time.. This is for entry back onto earth.

2. Munar landar. I usually just have an ASAS, RCS with a few RCS thrusters, and the smallest liquid fuel tank and really small liquid engine, and landing pegs. This is for your final Munar decent, as well as your lift off of the Mun and escaping into Kerbin\'s orbit.

3. Orbital corrections phase - put simply, the phase that finishes up establishing your original Kerbin orbit, and Mun orbital insertion. This is usually simply 3 liquid fuel tanks, and a vectored liquid thruster.

4. Main Kerbin Escape phase - Fairly simple phase - get you out of the atmosphere and into a partial orbit. I usually use 4 radial decouplers and then put 3 liquid fuel tanks on each decoupler with 4 non-vectored liquid thrusters.

5. Lastly, your get-the-hell-off-the-ground phase. I\'m fairly sure you can tell what this should be. Usually for me this was just a bunch of solid boosters on radial decouplers at the bottom(I mean a lot, like, at least 30). Recently I have been using these RAM jets, because (until they get fixed) they have LOTS and lots of power at low atmosphere to push the rocket off the ground.

I\'ll link you a nice .craft file of mine when I get home, following this design.

As for the general flight plan:

Activate SAS, ignite first stage. Fly upwards until either your solids run out, or your jets can no longer INCREASE the velocity of your ship.

Fire 2nd stage, at full throttle. At 20km altitude, drop spacecraft to 45 degrees pitch at 90 degrees angled. (Going east, 45 degrees above horizontal). Slowly decrease the angle. You should end up at 60-70km, moving horizontally east. Continue to pick up speed.

Fire 3rd stage. At this point you should nearly, or already have, an orbit around Kerbin. Continue to increase speed horizontally until you achieve one. Turn off all thrust. You should still have lots of fuel left in your 3rd stage liquids.

Go into map view. You are going to want to fire your rockets in the direction of your velocity when the moon comes over the horizon of Kerbin. If you fire them in that direction, your orbit should extend out to the Munar orbit distance, and you will be on an intercept course.

Time warp, and wait until you are on an intercept course with the moon. When you are at 37,000 meters altitude on the moon, aim your rocket straight in your reverse-velocity direction, and fire what is left of the liquid fuel in your 3rd stage to get rid of ALL velocity.

Continue to use the 3rd, and fire the 4th stage when the 3rd runs out, to keep you moving VERY slow on your decent to the moon. Extend your landing pegs, use rcs translational movement (kijl) to keep your decent vertical only. Land!

To take off, go east, and stat moving fast enough that you get an orbit around the Mun. Extend this orbit outwards toward earth. Only a few million meters should be fine, you will be captured by Kerbin\'s orbit.

Once you are captured, wait until you are at the pariapsis of your orbit (because you are moving the slowest then), and fire in your reverse-velocity direction until your orbit is planned to actually HIT kerbin. Then just time warp it out, and dont touch anything. You will hit the atmosphere, and the atmosphere will slow you a LOT. Then just jettison your pod out, deploy parachute, and just drift to a landing!

I know there are a billion tutorials of this out there, but I was in class and really bored.. I needed something to do... SO I wrote this massive wall of text instead of working on, you know.... Physics.. (Irony huh?)