To the moon.

[Ander2]

How to get to the moon in cereer mode?

What is the easiest and cheapest way?

[James Kerman]

Welcome to the forum @Ander2.

I have moved your thread to Gameplay Questions - a place for getting advice and ideas about playing.

Do you want to flyby, orbit or land on the Mun?

[4x4cheesecake]

Welcome to the forum @Ander2

I would suggest to upgrade the Tracking Station, Mission Control and the Launchpad at least once before you try any mission to the mun and beyond. These upgrades allow you to use maneuver nodes and a craft up to 140t.

For a flyby of the mun, I would recommend at least these nodes:

Spoiler

This will allow you to build a pretty simple rocket like this one:

Spoiler

Remove all the monoprop from the command pod and almost all the ablator from the heat shield, you will need just ~60 units and everything above is just dead weight. The boosters are a bit too powerful as well, reduce the thrust to 50%. The top stage uses a Terrier engine, the lower stage a swivel engine.

This rocket is capable to carry your upper stage fully fueled into a circular 100km orbit around Kerbin. The upper stage provides ~1500m/s dV oin it's own probably a bit less for you since you want to put some science experiments on it. Don't worry if you end up with less dV, you got a huge fuel safety margin
Once you are in orbit, switch to map view and look out for the mun. rotate the camera, so the mun would be at 12 o'clock on a imaginary watch. Place a maneuver node at ~4 o'clock and drag out the prograde vector until you get an encounter:

Spoiler

If you keep this trajectory, it you'd end in a solar orbit, so let's fine tune the maneuver a bit

Focus the mun in the map view to see your actual trajectory there. A common maneuver for a flyby, would be to use a "free return trajectory" which requires you to pass the mun in front of it's orbital rotation. Play around with the prograde vector and move the maneuver node a bit around on your orbit, until you get a trajectory which passes the mun on the correct side:

Spoiler

You will notice, that the trajectory now will also bring you back to Kerbin and maybe even pretty close to the atmosphere or inside of it. It is indeed possible, to plan your reentry already by adjusting the maneuver node even more to bring the your Kerbin Pe below 70km:

Spoiler

Don't worry if your maneuver looks different, this requires a bit of practice

Well, know you just have to perform the maneuver burn as precise as possible. This craft got a fuel safety margin of ~650m/s dV so if you need to do some corrections to get back to Kerbin, you can just create an additional maneuver close to the Mun Pe.

You can also break into an elliptical orbit around the Mun but keep the Ap close the edge of the SOI. The whole craft costs 11300 funds and it is also capable to reach an low, circular orbit around Minmus and return to Kerbin but the fuel safety margin is much smaller in this case (~150m/s dV).

If you need more details on any step of the flyby mission or you actually want to land on the Mun, just ask for it

Edited May 28, 2019 by 4x4cheesecake

[Ander2]

On 5/28/2019 at 3:14 PM, James Kerman said:

Welcome to the forum @Ander2.

I have moved your thread to Gameplay Questions - a place for getting advice and ideas about playing.

Do you want to flyby, orbit or land on the Mun?

I want to land on the moon.

 

[James Kerman]

33 minutes ago, Ander2 said:

I want to land on the moon.

Good on you, Mate, landing on the Mun is a great achievement. 

I use a 'subway map' to work out how much Delta v is required to visit a planet or moon. It works by addition. 3,400 Dv to make 80km Kerbin orbit + 860 Dv for the Kerbin/Mun transfer, + 310 Dv for low Munar orbit, + 580 Dv to land (=5150 Dv). As a new player you should add a generous margin to the total (10-20%). I would recommend a budget of 6000Dv for this phase of the mission and the judicious use of quick saves.

It is easier to return because you don't have to fight the atmosphere and gravity well of Kerbin. In fact they can save you propellant by a process called aerobraking. To get back to low Munar orbit you need about 600 Dv. It only takes about 300 Dv to get a Mun/Kerbin flyby trajectory that enters the atmosphere. I usually aim to have a Kerbin periapsis at about 50,000m - when I reach it I burn until I have a highly elliptical Kerbin orbit. Each pass through the atmosphere will lower your apoapsis (because of atmospheric drag) and eventually you will end up in a sub orbital trajectory. All up 7000 Dv should be enough to perform a landing and a return so plan out your stages and I wish you good luck. 

A side note: If you would like to view this thread in chronological order select 'sort by date' on the right hand side underneath the first post in this thread.