in orbit around mun - how to come back? also parachutes

[draeath]

OK, so with my ship directly between Mun and Kerbin, I burned at Mun's retrograde. I only needed like 80 ÃŽâ€v to drop back down to Kerbin. I needed far less fuel for that than I thought I would!

[Felsmak]

That would depend on if you were looking at it from above the plane of the ecliptic or from below it.

Prograde/retrograde (in regards to the rotation of the object being orbited) and even easterly/westerly eliminate the ambiguity.

Ah, of course. I meant clock-wise as seen from above the ecliptic, I'll be more precise next time.

[AmpsterMan]

OK, so with my ship directly between Mun and Kerbin, I burned at Mun's retrograde. I only needed like 80 ÃŽâ€v to drop back down to Kerbin. I needed far less fuel for that than I thought I would!

Yeah, returning to Kerbin is a lot easier than it looks. Congrats on your successful return.

[Frederf]

bitbucket, thanks so much. I thought it might be something like this. For my 300km orbit (had a plane change to do) it was about 45 degrees past side position and then a burn to escape. The delay tip is indeed useful as the ejection arrow doesn't point orbit retro if you burn at the side position.

Now I just have to do the reverse to arrive at the Mun and I'll really reduce my dV requirements.

[spikeyhat09]

I just burn burn burn in any direction until i leave the muns SOI, then i lower the kerbin periapsis to about 36K and aerobrake down.

But why go to the mun when you can go to Duna!

[draeath]

I have a hard time getting anything I'd think useful into orbit with enough remaining fuel to do anything useful.

Usually about half my loss is to gravity, and a large chunk to drag.

That's OK, I'm going mod-happy tonight anyway.

[phoenix_ca]

I have a hard time getting anything I'd think useful into orbit with enough remaining fuel to do anything useful.

Usually about half my loss is to gravity, and a large chunk to drag.

That's OK, I'm going mod-happy tonight anyway.

Mods are awesome. A word of advice is to try to avoid over-engineering things. However, since you said "half your loss is to gravity" vs. "large chunk" to drag (which I have to interpret as you're actually using more to gravity than drag, even though if half your losses were to gravity, half would be to drag...), I can tell you a simple solution: Add some SRBs. Boosters (of either kind, though SRBs are balanced to provide far greater TWR, and thus suit the application of booster quite well) can get your rocket high enough so that when they burn-out and you ignite the next stage (and likely your precious liquid fuel) you aren't loosing so much delta-v to gravity.

Bottom line is that if you're loosing much more to gravity than to drag, you need to get the rocket higher, faster.

[Frederf]

I'm not sure if it is mathematically perfect, but if your gravity losses and drag losses are equal then you are probably near optimum solution. To reduce your gravity losses you have to go faster which increases drag. To decrease drag you have to go slower which increases gravity losses.

[draeath]

Hmm... good food for thought. Re: the SRBs - I usually launch with a quad of them with my main engine lit as well. Best case I simply run it at near-idle throttle until the SRBs drop.

[Aescwulf]

Hmm... good food for thought. Re: the SRBs - I usually launch with a quad of them with my main engine lit as well. Best case I simply run it at near-idle throttle until the SRBs drop.

Yeah I use 6 big SRB's to get me to 10KM before my initial 45 degree turn along 90 degrees and I keep throttle at half way due to heat build up and by the time I'm sat on Mun I have half a tank ( small tank ) left with a 909 engine and that just about gets me to areobrake at Kerbins atmosphere .