Help Us!

[Milford Green Bean]

Hello people! (if anyone even sees this lol) We are new to all of this and we have a few questions. First we have no idea about how these forums work so that's cool i guess. Also we were playing a while back and our favorite Kerbal (Milford) disappeared. We were going to try and get him to the moon but he is gone! We are doing this for a school project so we need help ASAP! We have never played before so its kinda difficult getting started. We even restarted our whole game and Milford wasn't there. We are playing in sandbox so it will be easier btw. We hired 548 Kerbals and NO MILFORD! We hope we are posting this in the right place. If not, sorry and  we will take it down . Anyways thanks for taking your time to help us save Milford and taking your time to read this. Have a nice day!  -Project Save Milford ( no this isnt a troll)  

[Piper]

Since Milford isn't one of the "original 4" (Jeb, Bob, Bill, and Val), his generation is completely random.  But there is another way to get him.  If he press Alt-12, it brings up the Debug Menu, in it, somewhere under the heading "Kerbals", there is an option for generating a new Kerbal, and in it you can type in a custom name, and select their characteristics.

[Milford Green Bean]

11 minutes ago, Piper said:

Since Milford isn't one of the "original 4" (Jeb, Bob, Bill, and Val), his generation is completely random.  But there is another way to get him.  If he press Alt-12, it brings up the Debug Menu, in it, somewhere under the heading "Kerbals", there is an option for generating a new Kerbal, and in it you can type in a custom name, and select their characteristics.

thank you! I will try that out soon! 

[Kernel Kraken]

What kind of school project is it? And most importantly, when is it due? It took me about 275 hours of gameplay to finally make it to the Mün. Also, you kept using the pronoun 'We'. Just an FYI, there is a forum rule about each account is only allowed to be used by one person, but I've never seen it enforced.

Oh, and welcome to the forums! 

[Milford Green Bean]

Its just us trying to get to the moon. I have 3 more days to work on it and its not looking too good lol. Thanks for the warm welcome! 

[Vanamonde]

Is the process of getting to the moons the problem? My guide is a few years old now but should still be relevant. 

 

[Kernel Kraken]

2 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Is the process of getting to the moons the problem? My guide is a few years old now but should still be relevant. 

 

Oh, thanks. I still can't do it normally and my ability to find a launch window is pitiful. This should certainly help.

[OrbiterAirFields]

press alt+f12 then locate the create a kerbal button, make a new version.

[fulgur]

1. Use a dV map to find out how much dV you have to have. I can't remember whether dV in the game is written with a 'd' or a capital Delta (looks like a triangle), but dV is basically a measure of how much you can change your velocity.

From this map, you can see that you will need 3400 + 860 + 310 + 580m/s to get to the surface of the Mun. Then on the way back, you will need 580+310m/s to get a Kerbin periapsis of about 30km, so that you will slow down. This adds up to 3400 for the launch stage plus 2700 for the orbital stage. Remember that in orbit, your engines are more efficient; the most efficient engines in the game have a dV in the hundreds on the surface, but in the thousands in orbit - I once built a craft with 10 000m/s dV in orbit while it had only 500m/s on the surface.

2. Designing the Rocket.

Firstly, you will need a large stage to get the rocket out of the atmosphere. I suggest a 'Twin Boar' or 'Mainsail' powered 2.5m (orange tank) stage, surrounded by radial 'Kickback' solid rocket boosters. This should be able to get you (most of the way) to Kerbin orbit. Remember to have omnidirectional fins on the SRB stage; KSP SRBs cannot gimbal.

Next, you will need a high-ISP (efficient) engine to get to the Mun. I suggest either using a LV-909 'Terrier' or a 'Poodle' engine. Attached to this you should have a reasonable amount of fuel, about 2-3km/s dV, and make sure (use the dV menu, select the Mun and check the advanced info box) that you have a thrust to weight ratio of more than 1. This means that if you fire the engine on the surface of the Mun, you will more than counteract surface gravity. For many ships, you should have a TWR of 3-5. Don't worry if it's lower; when you burn fuel you raise the TWR. This is why (in Kerbal Engineer at least) it has a maximum TWR value. If you add some side tanks on radial decouplers, and add fuel lines from the tanks to the main stage, you can drop these side tanks when they empty, and increase your TWR for the landing.

Finally, you will need a Mk1-3 command pod. On the top you should have a parachute, on the bottom you need a heat shield. If this is your first Mun mission you should probably keep it full, just in case, but you can half-empty the heat shield's Ablator tank.

IMPORTANT! Check yo' staging! Many a fine rocket has been lost due to improper staging and decoupling in all the wrong places! Remember the important bits of the craft! Many a not-so-fine rocket has been lost due to forgetting parachutes, solar panels and landing legs. Use struts! Many a really not that fine rocket has wobbled itself apart because you didn't use a hundred-root piece of metal wire to connect the boosters to the main stage!

3. Flying the rocket!

You should fly a gravity turn. This means that you pitch over, and gain horizontal speed as well as vertical speed, while low-ish in the atmosphere. Then you should not have to use as much fuel to get to orbit. You should definitely try this with other rockets first, as gravity turns are notoriously hard to get right, which is why a few people (me included) prefer spaceplanes.

Once in an orbit of 75 to 100km, you should go into map mode and select the Mun as your target. Then create a maneuver node on your orbit, and drag the prograde marker until it intersects the Mun's orbit. Assuming you are equatorial (you launch from the KSC and followed a heading of 90 degrees) you should see a pair of blue arrows. Move the node around your orbit until they are near each other, and you should have a Munar periapsis. Left-click the information for it to stay on screen when you are not hovering over it. Now move the arrows until the periapsis is around 50km. Then click a part of the orbit after the node, and select 'Warp to Next Maneuver'. This node should take 800-900m/s; if it takes much than that, you're doing it wrong. If you are too far prograde, you'll need more dV to slow down as you pass the Mun.

You should then point towards the node, and when the in-game counter (you can turn it on in [ESC] -> Settings -> Extended Burn Info) says to start burning, press [Z]. When the counter reaches a low number, you should use [CTRL] to throttle down. Stop burning when your Munar periapsis is near 50km; you can see that in Map mode. Or stop when the node displays less than 1m/s.

Timewarp to the Mun. You should probably stop when you enter the Munar SoI (sphere of influence) as marked in the map mode, or the Kraken can strike. This is a good time to make your insertion burn. Press [TAB] until you've selected the Mun (this makes it easier to see your periapsis) and create a node at periapsis. Then drag the retrograde marker until you've got a circular orbit. Execute this node in the same manner as above.

4. Landing!

Landing is quite difficult. The first and easiest bit is to burn a couple of hundred metres per second retrograde, so that your orbit intersects the terrain.

Then you should use this formula (it's in kOS computer programming form):
 

DECLARE FUNCTION altOfSuicide {
    DECLARE PARAMETER twr.
    LOCAL timeToStop IS shipVelocity / twr.
    LOCAL altToStop IS (shipVelocity/2) * timeToStop.
    RETURN altToStop.
}.

Essentially, what this function does is a rather simplified version of the complicated mathematics behind suicide burns. Firstly, you need to know your velocity; it's just above the navball. Then you need the TWR: this is in the delta-v section I talked about earlier. Then you can plug it into this function:

altitude = (velocity / 2) * (velocity / twr)

So now you know this, you should have a rough estimate of when to begin your burn. This is not using the blue, sea level altimeter; click on the wave-like icon to change it to a mountainous, terrain-level altimeter. When you are within a hundred meters of this altitude, begin your burn on full throttle.

You should slow down almost to a halt, just short of the terrain. Then you should throttle down, so that you don't go shooting off into the sky, but also so that you don't plummet like a... gigantic heavy lander full of mono and ore and snacks and fuel and every other resource in existence.

Eventually, you should be a couple of hundred meters above the terrain, at a speed of less than 50 m/s. You should extend your landing gear and increase the throttle so that you slow down to ten meters per second, about a hundred meters above the terrain. When you get lower, you should decrease your speed to under 5m/s, and go in for a soft landing. When you are at barely 2m/s or so and 5m above the surface, cut throttle with [X] and drift slowly down. If you aren't in a flat-ish area and your rocket is unreasonably tall (store extra fuel in side tanks, don't extend upwards!) make sure to use SAS and the built-in RCS in the Mk1-3 pod to keep the ship upright as you descend, using your [R]-activated jetpack and the arrow, shift and control keys down onto the surface, to right click on your kerbal and plant a flag.

Now for the most important bit of the mission: use the [F1] key to get a picture (or lots of pictures) of this, upload them to Imgur and post them on the forums, where we could rep them if that wasn't disabled.

5. Return

Lift off and almost immediately pitch over until you're almost horizontal, at a heading of 90 degrees. Ascend into Munar orbit. From here, create a maneuver on the Kerbin-side of the Mun, and burn prograde until your periapsis is at around 30-40km in the atmosphere.

Now time-warp until you're at an altitude of a couple of hundred kilometers, before (re-)entry. Stage off the empty-ish tanks (or burn the fuel to decrease velocity) and orient retrograde (heat shield forwards). Timewarp until you're in the atmosphere, and then wait for the flames to die away. You might have to go around again, if you didn't re-enter low enough on the first pass; that's fine. Then, when you're at two hundred-odd m/s and below ten kilometers, activate your parachutes and drift down to a soft landing, hopefully in the sea.

About Engines

What are the best engines to use for this?

Terriers or Poodles.

Are they the most efficient?

They're fine for this application.

They're not the most efficient, are they?

Fine, no. The most efficient engines are ion engines, but they don't have much thrust. Also they use lots and lots of electric charge. The next best are nuclear engines. You can build a nuclear powered mun lander, but while you have lots of spare dV, you also have to be much more careful as you won't have much TWR. It's possible, and people do it for faraway places like Ike or Dres or Eeloo, but the best lander engines are Terriers, or Poodles.

If you really want to, you can add a nuclear stage to the rocket before the lander. This will be enough to get it to the Mun; if you want to use docking ports and all that fuss they can even take you back. But for a cheap (in terms of fuel) mission like this, you can go there on a Terrier and a launch stage alone, if you're good at piloting.

TL;DR Pack lots and lots of fuel, and make sure you have a Munar TWR above 1.

Edited October 1, 2019 by fulgur

[vossiewulf]

11 hours ago, Kernel Kraken said:

Oh, thanks. I still can't do it normally and my ability to find a launch window is pitiful. This should certainly help.

The below will give you the launch window to any body in the system. From the space center view, open Astrogator, it'll be a button on the bottom right toolbar. It will show you the time to the next launch window for all bodies starting with the moons. Click on the fast forward icon next to whichever moon you're going to and it will take you quickly to said launch window. Click on launch pad, select your rocket and crew, launch. Wipe hands on pants.

To install this (or any) mod, download the zip, open it, then copy the Astrogator folder. Go to <your path> Kerbal Space Program\GameData and copy the Astrogator folder into the GameData folder. Restart KSP and you should be able to access it from the toolbar.

[fulgur]

Here is something I made earlier. These launched on separate, early Career (not all parts unlocked) rockets and docked together, but if you're in sandbox, you can just put them together - without the need for vast quantities of monoprop and a separate cabin for crew return (to reduce, reuse, recycle the mun lander) you can stack them on a large 2.5m rocket.

Seriously. The fuel in the right-hand ship can push the left hand ship into low Munar orbit, and from there the left hand ship can descend onto the Mun and re-orbit with fuel to spare. Also, you don't actually need two kerbals in sandbox. Nor do you need cans of Goo and Science Juniors. Those are for collecting science. Also since you are not doing docking, you don't need any monopropellant (in the white tanks) or any RCS to maneuver with.

Edited October 2, 2019 by fulgur

[Zeiss Ikon]

For whatever it's worth, you don't really need a "launch window" to the Mun.  It passes directly over KSC every Kerbin day, and once you're in an equatorial orbit around Kerbin, you''ll be in the right position for an efficient transfer every half hour or so (and you can time warp through most of that).  For Mun and Minmus, launch and transfer windows are trivial compared to dV requirements and the techniques of landing, docking, and so forth.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Zeiss Ikon
Autocorrect

[Kernel Kraken]

7 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

The below will give you the launch window to any body in the system. From the space center view, open Astrogator, it'll be a button on the bottom right toolbar. It will show you the time to the next launch window for all bodies starting with the moons. Click on the fast forward icon next to whichever moon you're going to and it will take you quickly to said launch window. Click on launch pad, select your rocket and crew, launch. Wipe hands on pants.

To install this (or any) mod, download the zip, open it, then copy the Astrogator folder. Go to <your path> Kerbal Space Program\GameData and copy the Astrogator folder into the GameData folder. Restart KSP and you should be able to access it from the toolbar.

Oh nice, I guess I finally have a reason to update from my 1.3.1!