Get to the mun?

[iZINC]

Hi, Recently I've been struggling to get anywhere even close to the mun. I've gotten kerbin orbits down to a fine art with my very reliable rocket.

However my attempts at getting to the mun have all not gotten out of kerbin's orbit either I run out of fuel or lose speed and altitude.

Any tips would be appreciated.

[Tauge]

For Mun, wait for Munrise, point your rocket prograde and wait for the map to show a SOI change. Then just ride out to Mun. A similar method can be used to get to Minmus, but it requires a sharper eye to see it.

Also, what altitude is your parking orbit?

[iZINC]

parking orbit?

[Tauge]

The orbit you use before launching for Mun.

[darkwolfpaw54]

and you need firepower to make it you might wanna use mechjeb

[Kosmo-not]

Don't depend on mechjeb. It's known to screw up on things sometimes.

[Tauge]

Mechjeb's nice, but Kosmo-not's right. It can screw things up, and this is coming from someone who uses it on all his designs.

The reason I ask your parking orbit is because if you're too low it's easy to accidentally slip into atmosphere, and then you're likely never make Mun. Remember the atmosphere ends at 69k. I usually use 75k (unless there is a reason in my design not to or I'm not using Mechjeb for the launch, then it's higher so I there's more room for mistakes), but anything from 75k (probably don't want to go much lower for safety sake) to 100k is a decent parking orbit.

[Markus Reese]

The best place also to start is images of your rocket. My personal designs is of course start with a basic lander. Use the one man capsule for getting the feel since the smaller size, lighter weight etc makes setup alot easier. Basic lander generally is as follows. It is stable, and really is efficent. Can be set up as follows

• 
  Small parachute
  Small capsule
  1m decoupler
  ASAS module
  400 unit 1m fuel tank with the orbiter engine (the small one)
  

Attach to that:

• 
  Four radial decouplers
  200 unit fuel tank with orbiter engine each decoupler
  Fuel line from 200 to the 400 tanks
  One lander leg each tank
  

The basic premise of this is the most simple lander. On your landing stage, you have all five fuel efficent engines running. The lines ensure you maintain your main tank for any maneuvers or flying needed to get back to kerbin. A solid lander is needed since the rest of the rocket's design will be used to get you there. Other way is simply land on the single engine without the radials, but if you accidentally use too much fuel working on landing, things can go bad.

In your design for any rocket, the trick is to break it up into sections to perform tasks. This is how I got started. Work from the last part of the flight to the first part you add will be the last used typically. For Mun, the following list I used:

• Kerbin Landing

• Kerbin Orbit Capture
  (note, the fuel efficient way to do this is graze the upper atmosphere to slow down, not use engines)

• Munar Liftoff

• Munar Landing

• Munar Orbit Capture

• Kerbin To Mun Transfer

• Kerbin Orbit

• Launch

If you have the lander set up, then barring catastrophic failure, your kerbals can always return alive. While doing this design, you will find two things might happen. One, you don't have enough fuel or power to complete that task in the list in which case you land and head back to the hangar. (note if you are not concerned about accuracy or choosing where to land, you don't need to worry about getting an actual orbit of the Mun or Kerbin on return). Second is you have enough power or fuel to complete the task which can give you a little nudge on the next one. Use your orbit or liftoff fuel in what would be the next stage. If excessive fuel is still had, you can then trim that weight out.

On your initial liftoff, the solid fuel boosters are excellent. Your liquid fuel boosters are running less efficient at low speeds and in atmosphere. So a couple of booster stages with solid boosters can be very handy for your liftoff. Even some intermediate liquid boosters work well. Use their fuel tanks to help feed other stages. A tank that has a fuel line feed will aways have the fuel lined one drawn from first. This way you can have secondary engines drawing from a jettisonable fuel supply before using a main supply. This does twofold tasks. One, it gets you a long fuel supply time for your engines. Second is that you have plenty of thrust to help get away from the heavy gravity and atmosphere, then can just jettison the weight.

Hope this helps. This is the process I use for building my rockets, and most of the time works. Start at the end, and work your way to the start, fine tune and you will gradually keep progressing further til you are at your goal. Also be sure to read some munar landing threads, they are quite beneficial if you don't want any "fun" surprizes on your landings.