First Attempt at a Mun Encounter

[CatKnight]

Well, I succeeded. Gonna lose a few points for grace though.

The second and third stages are probably pretty standard for 'early' flights. Since this was my first attempt I chose not to risk any Kerbins. The probe therefore has a generator, panel, and a battery for energy, and I thought I'd be clever and give it an ion engine just in case. In space it has a basic liquid engine and two tanks.

I still have a tendency to overpower my first stage, which consisted of seven Rockomax tanks with liquid sail engines, then just to prove I could, six solid booster rockets which probably accomplished nothing. All that power made the top of my rocket swing about like a top. I'm a little surprised it didn't snap off.

So I use the maneuver tool to figure out how to arrange an encounter with the Mun, but I decide it's too far out to really count, so I add a second maneuver. This is the result.

Close enough.

Now, let's hope there's enough fuel in those tanks so I can actually land on the return. 966 km is a bit of ground to make up.

[Vanamonde]

Congratulations on using a sanely small rocket, and not risking a crew. Most new players are much less patient than that, and you will experience less frustration if you continue to play methodically like this.

[Sovek]

Nice, just wait till you can figure out how to set up a free return trajectory (a REAL FRT, looks like a lopsided figure 8), I did a couple earlier today with a 3 man pod, still had 3K ÃŽâ€V left when I hit Kerbins atmosphere LOL...

[CalculusWarrior]

That looks great! Most of my early encounters were barely inside the Mun's sphere of influence, and I had to do a lot of mid-course correction burns. I'm still not quite sure how to do a FRT, but I think I'll check out the wiki; I believe there's a tutorial there.

[halocon720]

How to intecept Mun:

1. Achieve orbit.

2. Wait for the Mun to appear above the horizon.

3. Fire in the direction of the Mun.

4. Once intercept is achieved, and if fuel allows, burn retrograde to achieve LMO.

[Finnerty]

Here is my first Mun Encounter and Orbit. Barely did get into a orbit with the small amount of fuel I had. This is the largest single fuel tank /w largest engine to boost to Kerbin orbit, then to the Mun with the small single tank and small engine. But I did get a Sputnik satellite into orbit. Tried to use this same setup to get to Minmus and its just not enough fuel.

Edited May 6, 2013 by Finnerty

[magnemoe]

Remember my first Minmus encounter, I had already put an probe in Mun orbit and tested how low I could get

However Minmus has an smaller SOI so getting where was more of an problem. Probe core, medium 1.25 meter tank and LV-N, probably an RTG.

I understood how to use the maneuverer nodes to increase and decrease speed, so I planned an burn, did not know how to plan sideway movement so I did small sideway burns on random to try to get as close as possible until I was on collision course, I had probably not figured this out as the orbit continued and was changed by Minmus so I believed I was safe. As Minmus became larger and larger I realized something was wrong, the orbit also passed inside the moon so I did not like the look of this.

At this point my small random burn did not change stuff much so I gave up, Found I could just as well burn retrograde to get an better view of Minmus before crashing. I went lower and lower and was at the height of the surrounding mountains then I noticed I was going up not down. Switched to map view and found I was on an suborbital path so I was able to get into orbit.

by trusting some more and then circulate.

[Hrdina]

Funny, I just posted about my first Mun encounter yesterday in the "Show off your awesome KSP pictures!" thread.

Basically, I got there, and was able to (eventually) establish a 25 km circular orbit, but it took multiple periapsis burns, and the orbit is retrograde.

I plan to send a few more probes there, until I learn to establish better orbits, before sending any Kerbals.