How can I make it to the mun?

[MineOfTheCrafts]

Iv been playing KSP for about 2 months, and I havent made it to the mun or minimus yet. I have amazing rocket designs that could take 3 men around the sun and back, with plenty of feul left. But the problem I have is, I SUCK at controlling the rockets. Iv looked at tutorials and read articles, iv tried at least 30 times. I cant even do it with MechJeb. The way I usually try, is by getting into prbit with Kerbin (Which I usually fail at), then I try to thrust towards the mun when I first see it come over the hurrizon. Once I made it close to the mun, about 200,000 meters away, and I lost controll, using advanced + normal SAS, and I ended up falling apart. Please, if anyone could make a video or something, please tell me. D: Im so bad at this game...

[NuclearWarfare]

Don't worry my friend! Neither have I made it to the Mun, but practice makes perfect. Pointing your rocket, thrusting, and making the rocket head towards the Mun isn't a good way to get there. I can't explain this much at all, but please look at these great tutorials for an in-dept explanation of how to get to the Mun, and all kinds of other tutorials as well. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/15652-Orbital-Mechanics-101-A-Kerbal-Space-Program-Tutorial

[Giggleplex777]

You're kind of like me when I first started trying to land on the mun. I got so frustrated that I almost went crazy (okay, maybe not crazy). Now I use the mun (and minmus) as test beds for my crazy designs. The trick of beginners is to make a stable lander by putting rockets around the lander like my Mun rover which you can check out in my sig. But before the landing part you have to get to the mun. The easiest way to do this is to tilt to the 90 degree mark after your rocket is above ~80 km, then you burn until your apoapsis is slightly pass the Mun's orbit. Now comes the boring part: time accelerate and orbit a few times until you see the yellow line. After you pass the Mun encounter, you wait 'til you reach periapsis. This is when you align the orange dot on the nav-ball with the center of the green circle with a "x" in it. Burn and follow the green circle and watch your speed and altitude. The surface is usually at about ~1750 m. Make sure you land slower than 6.5 m/s. Hope this helps!

[willitstimothy]

Thrusting towards anything in space is one of the surest ways of never getting there.

Reason: Your rocket engines(s) are no where near being the only things pushing (or pulling) on your rocket.

Fortunately for you, in KSP, there really isn't much other than one thing actually influencing your rocket, but there is one thing for certain and that is the celestial body you happen to be in the SOI of. (Yeah, I know, I ended a sentence with a preposition...) However, that celestial body that is pulling on you is making it so that you cannot easily go anywhere else by simply pointing and shooting. If you want to have a good experience with this game you will need to understand and use orbital mechanics (at least the essential basics).

With your orbiting, basically, you need to:

Climb high enough - 35-40km is minimum, but I usually aim for an apoapsis of about 70-100km (use the map view and mouse over the Ap marker that shows after you have started climbing)

Achieve a proper velocity - A velocity is both a speed and a direction, hence you will want to determine the angle of your orbital plane relative to the equatorial plane (though technically your attitude indicator is relative to an ascending polar orbit), and then burn horizontally (parallel to the surface, or roughly thereabout) until you have attained a horizontal velocity component of about 2200-2400 m/s, or until you have a visible periapsis in the map view and you have moved it above the atmosphere of Kerbin.

This simple component-wise procedure should reliably get your working rocket into orbit on every attempt.

Beyond this, you will almost always use burns that are in directions that are horizontal to the surface of the celestial body that you are orbiting.

In other words:

If you want to raise or lower your periapsis or your apoapsis, you will perform burns at the opposite apsis (for periapsis burn at apoapsis and vice versa) that are in the direction of motion (the heading bug, or icon, with the circle and lines on the outside of the circle) or in the opposite direction to your rocket's motion (the bug that has an x on the inside). This is, basically, how you get to places such as Mun, Minmus, or Kerbol.

If you want to change your orbital plane, as Minmus requires you to do, then you will perform burns at the nodes of your orbit and the orbital plane into which you are transitioning (currently you have to eyeball this stuff with the map view). To do this, once you have determined where the next node is located you must wait (and hopefully recheck the location of the node) until you are nearing the node. Before you reach the node (well before) you must orient your spacecraft perpendicularly up or down with relation to the orbital plane that you are in (if you are in the equatorial plane, all you have to do is point your rocket North for up or South for down), depending on whether the orbital plane that you are going to transition into will be above the plane you are currently in or below it. If it is going to be above then you need to burn up (North, if you are in an equatorial orbit) and if it will be going below then you need to burn down. When you burn, which you should do at or shortly before the node, you should do so carefully so as to not overdo the changes. If you over, or under, burn then you will need to fix that at the next node (on the other side of your orbit).

Do remember that the directions in the above description are with respect to the orbital plane and not the surface of the celestial body.

The only time that you should be burning toward an object is if it is a few kilometers away or less (for orbital rendezvous or similar). In such situations you should only use your rcs, and you must be careful to not use too much as doing so may cause you to go speeding by your destination, and thereby wasting lots of fuel and maybe even wrecking your rendezvous altogether.

[TheMunRules#1]

When you're in a low orbit around kerbin heading 90 degrees wait for the Mun to come up over the horizon. use SAS to lock onto 0 degrees pitch heading 90 degrees on the navball. or if using mechjeb use smartass to lock on to prograde. push 'm'. turn on full thrusters until your orbit elongates and the patched conics show you will enter the mun's sphere of influence. Once you're in the mun's sphere of influence face retrograde (the circle with an X in it on the navball) and push 'm' again and thrust until you're in an orbit around the mun. Thrust prograde some more to get a trajectory to the surface if you want to land. It's pretty simple once you get the hang of it. In other words, quit trying to move in a straight line to the mun, and instead think about how to manipulate your orbit to get where you want to go.

[bsalis]

...I cant even do it with MechJeb...

My suggestion is to work on doing it with MechJeb so you can see first hand how it is done, from beginning to end. If MechJeb loses control on any maneuver then the rocket needs some work, such as it might be too large. Or you could get a hold of a craft file that is known to work.

[1of6Billion]

It works for me with Mechjeb. Came here to see if it could be done better.

* Lift-off with "ascent mode". I set apoapsis to 100km.

* Circularize orbit with "orbital operations"

* Than transfer to Mun

* Set orbit to 15km

* Land near desired location

There probably is room for improvement, but it works

[LaydeeDem]

It works for me with Mechjeb. Came here to see if it could be done better.

* Lift-off with "ascent mode". I set apoapsis to 100km.

* Circularize orbit with "orbital operations"

* Than transfer to Mun

* Set orbit to 15km

* Land near desired location

There probably is room for improvement, but it works

Now try it manual.

[Legal2k]

I can only suggest a bigger Mun orbit, if you land manually then it's not so hard to kill horisontal velosity, and to select landing site.

[1of6Billion]

Now try it manual.

I should, shouldn't I...

[Sbowyer28]

Basicly what I do is I wait till the mun starts rising over the horizon and point my rocket at it and burn till the orbit intersects, Works and is pretty easy. An orbit of 100,000m is suggested for this though.