Orbit Tutorial Visual Guide

[grimkriz]

Hi all

I made this guide for a friend who was troubled getting into space and a lack of visual guides makes it hard for the beginner.

I suggest to anyone who has trouble getting anywhere to use this method as a starting point. There are other ways to do it and predicting the average KSP contraption is challenging but this is a tried and tested way to get into orbit without too much inefficiency regardless of ship design.

Imgur upload all thanks to CoinSlot on Reddit

One last thing, if your ship doesn\'t make it to orbit using this method then take note of where it went wrong and modify your design. So long as you always use the same flight path you can easily identify which stages are underpowered/overpowered.

[Kizarvexis]

Bill, Bob and Jeb thank you. Alot. I have the demo with no mods and getting an equatorial orbit hasn\'t been working.

Except for my first orbital flight (which was an accident), all of my successful orbital flights have been some type of polar orbit. Which makes getting to the Mun harder (right?). I have made one Mun orbit transition and was able to soft land with a Munar Lander I found on a youtube video. Unfortunately, our Kerbal heroes had to wait for rescue as I screwed up the return and eventually ended up in a 54M km/24M km ellipitcal orbit around Kerbin and the Mun. (Since the demo doesn\'t have persistence, I have told myself that the Kerbals were rescued by one of you Rocket Scientists, so I don\'t feel bad about leaving virtual Kerbals in orbit forever.)

So, will this also work for getting into an equatorial orbit around the Mun, but with much, much lower altitudes?

Mun Landing Photo

[KevinTMC]

So long as you always use the same flight path you can easily identify which stages are underpowered/overpowered.

What is this 'overpowered' of which you speak?

Eh...no mind. Whatever it is, the kerbal solution is the same as it always is: MOAR BOOSTERS!!!

[UmbralRaptor]

Looks like a good tutorial and a reasonable starting point for getting to orbit.

'Overpowered' meaning too much thrust in some situations?

[MarkoRagnos]

@Kizarvexis Yep, the same idea can be applied to any planetary body in game, though, you can start turning towards 90 etc almost immediately as you don\'t have to worry about trying to break an atmosphere.

Good guide, next step, how and when to do a transfer burn to the mun based on a 90deg circular orbit.

[grimkriz]

heh I suppose \'overpowered\' is a term most kerbals don\'t know.

My point was that if you reach orbit with a spare fuel tank left over then you may gain more speed with 1 less fuel tank as opposed to 1 more engine due to the almighty struggle of Power vs Weight.

--For getting to orbit from the Mun\'s surface--

you can safely orbit as low as about 10,000m so get the Ap there by aiming your ship at the 270 mark (West) and watch the map until you get an ap of 10,000m. kill the engine and wait until you get close then burn towards the green circle again until you get the circular orbit as you did on Kerbin but at a lower altitude. Now wait until Kerbin is on the Mun\'s horizon to the West (should be in front of you) and burn towards the green circle until you see the map change again so you are going to be under Kerbin\'s gravity again. Should be simple from there.

To get to the Mun you should head to the East as any other direction makes it very difficult because...

1. The Mun orbits Kerbin to the East

2. It gives you the largest window to get into the Muns gravity

Edit: formatting