Shoot for the Moon?

[Endeavour]

So today, somebody said the common saying 'Shoot for the Moon, even if you miss you\'ll land among the stars.' And it got me wondering.

If I was to shoot for the Moon and miss in a conventional rocket, on a normal trans-lunar trajectory, would I orbit the Earth? Or would I have reached escape velocity and be orbiting the Sun, thus among a star?

[LukeTim]

So today, somebody said the common saying 'Shoot for the Moon, even if you miss you\'ll land among the stars.' And it got me wondering.

If I was to shoot for the Moon and miss in a conventional rocket, on a normal trans-lunar trajectory, would I orbit the Earth? Or would I have reached escape velocity and be orbiting the Sun, thus among a star?

Surely that depends on how you shot for the moon. If you went for the moon by reaching earth escape and hoping you meet the moon along the way, then yeah... you\'d just orbit the sun.

However, if you went for the moon by raising your apo to moon orbit altitude, then you\'d just end up orbiting earth in a highly elliptical orbit.

I think raising apo to moon orbit altitude is a more likely approach, since it presumably requires less delta v, and it\'s easier to make it back if something does go wrong.

[Endeavour]

I was actually thinking of Apollo. I should\'ve been more specific. How did they do it?

[LukeTim]

I was actually thinking of Apollo. I should\'ve been more specific. How did they do it?

I would think that they did it the way I suggested...

However, I don\'t know for sure, so I guess someone else would have to confirm.

[Johno]

For the first three Lunar missions, Apollo used a free-return trajectory - a figure-of-eight loop around the Earth and the Moon that brought the spacecraft back. That way, if something had gone wrong, the spacecraft would have been brought back into the vicinity of Earth.

After Apollo 13 (which started on a high elliptical trajectory but had to be brought back to a Free-Return), the later missions used an elliptical trajectory (which was free-return to the Atmosphere but fell short of the Moon) followed by a mid-course correction burn to put the spacecraft into Lunar orbit.