[QUESTION] How do I get more money now?

[Snark]

Just now, DaMachinator said:

I've never had any problem getting to minmus

Well, yes.  But the real kicker is, did you have any problems getting to the Mun?

If the answer is "no", then the fact that you got to Minmus isn't relevant to the OP, who does have getting-to-the-Mun issues.  It means his problem set is not the same as your (past) problem set.

The fact is, Minmus is harder to navigate to than the Mun is.  It just is.  Yes, it requires less dV, if you know what you're doing.  But in terms of "there's a target, can you hit it", it's simply harder.  It's a whole lot smaller, it's much farther away, and it's on an inclined orbit.  Someone who struggles with a Mun intercept is really going to have trouble plotting a course to Minmus.

It's a walk-before-you-run thing.  Get the basics down first.  Learn how to do a reasonably efficient Mun intercept first, then think about what to do next.

[KerikBalm]

14 hours ago, Snark said:

I will confess to a chuckle or two, but a friendly one intended to be with you rather than at you.

Yes, that's massively ludicrously overbuilt.  It has numerous problems, which we could go into one by one, but honestly it's probably not worth your time to do so-- just scrap it and start all over.

From your description, it sounds like really there are two problems here:

1. You have serious issues with your navigation:  your route to the Mun is very wasteful, so you've set yourself up for failure by requiring far more dV than you actually need.
2. You have issues with your ship design, so that you're very wasteful to accomplish a given amount of dV.

This... I knew there would be a major problem if a mun mission costs nearly a million... and I was right.

Your Mun intercept strategy is the major problem, which causes you to need to build a much larger rocket then neccessary... and I think you get a bit lost as a result.

There are issues with the TWR and the amount of fuel per engine, staging, etc etc... but at the moment, I'd consider them a lower priority than learning how to navigate to the mun.

Go to sandbox, use the stock kerbal X, and practice getting into a Munar orbit.

Going to a high retrograde orbit is certainly a creative way, one that I've never seen or heard of before.... but it is *very* inefficient.

[Zhetaan]

There's no advice I can give you that hasn't already been given, but I did want to throw some support your way anyway.  Self-taught orbital dynamics is a very ambitious goal, and you've managed quite a lot:  that list of accomplishments is something to be proud of.  We also spent a lot of launches and a lot of money in real life to figure out how to get people to orbit and back, and so long as your program still has Funds to launch things into space, you're not losing the game, which means you still have the means to accomplish all those other goals.  Yes, your rockets are entirely too expensive, but you learned something, as well, so--especially given that the money's imaginary--that's not bad.  My first munshot cost 2 million, and I thought it was a bargain because Apollo 11 cost about 350 million--obviously, I forgot that Funds are extremely strong against the 1969 dollar.

Edited May 26, 2016 by Zhetaan

[Tarheel1999]

In case it hasn't been mentioned already, here is a simple trick to get a good encounter with the Mun:

1. Get into a circular orbit in LKO (doesn't need to be perfect). 

2. In ship view, time warp until you see the Mun just over the horizon. 

3. Point prograde and burn at full throttle. 

4. Switch to map view and cut your engines when you get an encounter. 

5. Add a little throttle and keep burning to lower your periapsis to where you want it. 

This is not the most efficient way but it's close enough (within 100m/s or so). 

[KerikBalm]

Yes.... the good old "burn prograde when the moon comes over the horizon"

I got to Mun without any manuever nodes at all as part of a forum challenge... I think it was called Munshot Alpha 13 ... a play on apollo 13... using the alpha version 0.13.

When you see the munrise, just burn prograde until you get an encounter.... in the 0.13 version, it wouldn't even show you encounters... not patching the conics...

Here's a pic from that thread...

and a different one:

Imitate there trajectories, and you should get a direct encounter.

If the mun isn't low on the horizon when you're making your burn, you're doing it wrong:

 

[Deoxys_101]

Sorry for not responding as quickly as I said I would! Anyway, thanks to the tutorials, both here and in-game, I got the Mun stuff figured out. However, docking and what not is still a mess with me. I couldn't even complete the in-game tutorial on that. I'll check out some of the docking stuff you guys provided here soon.  Again, thanks; when do the tutorials (which may not be today though), I'll update on how things went.  

[Snark]

On 5/28/2016 at 8:43 AM, Deoxys_101 said:

Anyway, thanks to the tutorials, both here and in-game, I got the Mun stuff figured out. However, docking and what not is still a mess with me. I couldn't even complete the in-game tutorial on that. I'll check out some of the docking stuff you guys provided here soon.

Excellent, glad to hear it worked out! 

Docking's a whole other skill set; it's one of the big (but important) challenges in KSP to master.

Generally speaking, docking requires two skills:

1. Rendezvous, i.e. setting things up so that spaceship A will pass reasonably close (i.e.within a kilometer or two) to spaceship B, and match velocities so that they're at rest (or fairly close to it) relative to each other.
2. The actual maneuvering needed to complete the docking.

Those are two very different skill sets, but both important.

As for setting up a rendezvous, here's a nicely done tutorial that someone did back in the mists of ancient time, but is still relevant:

Spoiler

 

As for final approach and actually docking, you may find useful this illustrated docking tutorial I put together:

 

I highly recommend this mod, which adds an icon to the navball showing you the right orientation when you're targeting a docking port.  Really helps visualize the right way you need to be pointed, without having to play games with the camera.  Really oughta be stock, IMHO.

(You can see this mod in action in my illustrated tutorial.)