2 questions.

[rowns]

Hi all,

I m new to this game and i would like to fly to the mun but i only have the demo and i cant buy the full game because i dont have paypal and/or paysafecard . so my first question is that in the demo you have rocket called kerbal 5, can you fly with that one to the mun? second question is im not good in space things and stuff like that, but i dont think you can fly straigt to the mun, so how do i need to do that?

I hope you guys can help me with that.

Greetings Me.

[kerbomatic]

Apart from pointing you to the sticky threads with all kinds of information, I recommend playing around with maneuver nodes. Click on your orbit in the map mode and drag the symbols to see how your orbit would change. Then make it intercept the Mün and once you manage that, execute the maneuver. Hope that helps.

Edit: just to add that you can have a lot of fun with the demo so don't feel bad about that.

[astropapi1]

Follow the in-game tutorials.

[Aphox]

I don't have the demo and didn't even know it had prebuilts, hah! I don't know about the Kerbal 5, but I'm sure it's at least orbit-capable. I have no clue about Mun-capable. Mind posting a screenshot of it?

I have a well-received guide on Steam that details how I personally learned how to get to the moon thanks to the help at the forums here.

You CAN fly straight to the moon, but it's difficult and you need to know precisely when to launch, etc.

The way I learned it is by first achieving Kerbin orbit, and waiting for the moon to appear on the horizon of the planet, and then burning prograde (the yellow circle on the navball) until you have an intercept on your map screen.

[Rhomphaia]

Didn't actually know what was in the demo, and since the Kerbal 5 isn't in the full game had to download for a look-see

and it should be capable of a one way trip if you rearrange the staging a bit for a more efficient launch. Actually looks like quite a nice starter ship, since with only a little rebuilding you could make a nice mini lander.

[Jason Patterson]

With good piloting you can get the stock Kerbal 5 to Mun orbit, but it doesn't have enough delta-v to actually land. A few small changes can get it to that point though (and I suspect give it enough delta-v to return to Kerbin if flown well.)

1. Replace the upper fins with LT-1 landing struts (utility tab) to turn that portion of the ship into a lander. As it stands this has far more control than it really needs, and the extra fins don't do a lot for it.

2. You can also remove the RCS tank and thrusters if you like. This will cut a bit of mass and give your rockets a bit more delta-v. If you like having RCS on a rocket of this type, keep it.

3. Remove the bottom of the rocket by taking the stack decoupler off and replace the LV-T45 engine that is now exposed (the one that is in the middle of the rocket to begin with) with an LV-909. The LV-909 gets better fuel economy and has significantly lower mass, giving you a ton more delta-v in the end (especially if you've also removed the RCS tank and thrusters.) Put the bottom of the rocket back on.

4. Rearrange the staging a bit. Right now it has solid boosters --> liquid boosters --> launch clamps --> decouplers. Move the launch clamps from stage 5 down to stage 7 (with the solid boosters), which will become stage 6 after 5 gets autodeleted.

5. Move the radial decouplers from stage 4 to stage 5 (with the liquid boosters.) Now when you launch it will go Solid + Launch clamps, then when the solid boosters burn out, Liquid + Decouplers. There is no benefit to keeping the original staging; it's overpowered and keeps you on the ground, wasting the beginning of the liquid boosters' thrust. I also like to move decouplers and engines into the same stage so that when an object decouples it is blasted away by the engine above it. As a result I would move the LV-909 into the same stage with the stack decoupler that is directly beneath it.

6. If you'd like to get a teeny bit more out of this rocket, you can delete the upper decoupler as well, as it really doesn't serve a purpose on this rocket. The parachute is more than strong enough to bring the entire upper stage down safely, and more importantly, the ASAS-command module connection is very weak, so when the parachute deploys it's very likely just going to break off there anyway. There's no sense carrying along a decoupler to do something that is inevitably going to happen on its own. If you do this you'll have a rocket with 4 stages: launch clamp + solid booster --> decoupler + liquid booster --> decoupler + LV-909 --> parachute

With these changes the rocket will have enough delta-v to get to the Mun, land safely, and return to Mun orbit. I'm a fairly good rocket pilot, and I wound up 124 m/s short of being able to get back to Kerbin. It's very likely that I was off of the most efficient flight possible by more than 124 m/s, but it's not particularly realistic to assume that a novice pilot will be able to get a run that clean. If you can land safely on the Mun after making the changes I outlined, you're doing reasonably well. A rocket that was designed for this purpose would likely have another set of liquid booster stages rather than the solid boosters, and the outer boosters would feed fuel in to the inner boosters.

Here is a screenshot of the ship I wound up with, including the staging. The LV-T45 engine that I replaced with an LV-909 is immediately below the lander legs.

[rowns]

With good piloting you can get the stock Kerbal 5 to Mun orbit, but it doesn't have enough delta-v to actually land. A few small changes can get it to that point though (and I suspect give it enough delta-v to return to Kerbin if flown well.)

1. Replace the upper fins with LT-1 landing struts (utility tab) to turn that portion of the ship into a lander. As it stands this has far more control than it really needs, and the extra fins don't do a lot for it.

2. You can also remove the RCS tank and thrusters if you like. This will cut a bit of mass and give your rockets a bit more delta-v. If you like having RCS on a rocket of this type, keep it.

3. Remove the bottom of the rocket by taking the stack decoupler off and replace the LV-T45 engine that is now exposed (the one that is in the middle of the rocket to begin with) with an LV-909. The LV-909 gets better fuel economy and has significantly lower mass, giving you a ton more delta-v in the end (especially if you've also removed the RCS tank and thrusters.) Put the bottom of the rocket back on.

4. Rearrange the staging a bit. Right now it has solid boosters --> liquid boosters --> launch clamps --> decouplers. Move the launch clamps from stage 5 down to stage 7 (with the solid boosters), which will become stage 6 after 5 gets autodeleted.

5. Move the radial decouplers from stage 4 to stage 5 (with the liquid boosters.) Now when you launch it will go Solid + Launch clamps, then when the solid boosters burn out, Liquid + Decouplers. There is no benefit to keeping the original staging; it's overpowered and keeps you on the ground, wasting the beginning of the liquid boosters' thrust. I also like to move decouplers and engines into the same stage so that when an object decouples it is blasted away by the engine above it. As a result I would move the LV-909 into the same stage with the stack decoupler that is directly beneath it.

6. If you'd like to get a teeny bit more out of this rocket, you can delete the upper decoupler as well, as it really doesn't serve a purpose on this rocket. The parachute is more than strong enough to bring the entire upper stage down safely, and more importantly, the ASAS-command module connection is very weak, so when the parachute deploys it's very likely just going to break off there anyway. There's no sense carrying along a decoupler to do something that is inevitably going to happen on its own. If you do this you'll have a rocket with 4 stages: launch clamp + solid booster --> decoupler + liquid booster --> decoupler + LV-909 --> parachute

With these changes the rocket will have enough delta-v to get to the Mun, land safely, and return to Mun orbit. I'm a fairly good rocket pilot, and I wound up 124 m/s short of being able to get back to Kerbin. It's very likely that I was off of the most efficient flight possible by more than 124 m/s, but it's not particularly realistic to assume that a novice pilot will be able to get a run that clean. If you can land safely on the Mun after making the changes I outlined, you're doing reasonably well. A rocket that was designed for this purpose would likely have another set of liquid booster stages rather than the solid boosters, and the outer boosters would feed fuel in to the inner boosters.

Here is a screenshot of the ship I wound up with, including the staging. The LV-T45 engine that I replaced with an LV-909 is immediately below the lander legs.

Hi again,

First i want to thank everybody who helped me im gonna try it out, second i dont know what delta-v means but it sounds good . third does somebody know how i can buy the game without paypal or paysafecard?

[Finnerty]

Hi all, I m new to this game and i would like to fly to the mun but i only have the demo and i cant buy the full game because i dont have paypal and/or paysafecard

I hope you guys can help me with that.

You don't have to have a PayPal account to buy KSP. If you have debit card you can click on PayPal payment option, and it will give you other payment options.

[Aphox]

Hi again,

second i dont know what delta-v means but it sounds good

Delta-v is a number representing how much velocity your ship can produce, to put it simply. For reference, an ascent profile with 4000-5000 delta-v is required to orbit Kerbin, and 700-800 is needed to intercept the Mun, with 200-800 more to circularize and land, depending on how you do it.

[Jason Patterson]

Getting to the Mun and back efficiently:

We'll assume that you want to go Kerbin Surface --> LKO --> LMO --> Mun Surface --> LMO --> Kerbin Surface. Each one of these arrows has an optimal flight plan (and a whole ton of suboptimal plans.) I am just going to give you my basic way to get through the trip in one piece without overspending on fuel by too much. There are some places that you can shave a bit more delta-v, but I wouldn't worry about optimizing the mission until you're more experienced in doing the planning and building that gets you there in the first place.

Kerbin Surface --> Low Kerbin Orbit

Low Kerbin Orbit is any orbit that is near the upper limit of Kerbin's atmosphere, or roughly 70-100km. The lower the orbit you can get into, the more efficient your flight will be, but at the same time, you've got to make sure you get clear of the atmosphere.

1. Turn on ASAS (T key) and throttle up all the way (left Shift.) The throttle won't do anything until later in the flight, but having it preset won't hurt anything either. Switch to map view (M key) and press the keypad . button to bring up the navball, then toggle the map back off to switch back to the vessel (M).

2. Press space to engage your first stage, the solid boosters and the launch clamps. The solid boosters can't be throttled or turned off, so just watch the ship go up while they burn. This is a good time to find the 90 degree direction on the navball (east.) It ought to be on the right side.

3. When the solid boosters burn out, press space to engage the second stage, dropping the solid boosters and lighting the liquid. You will want to throttle back a bit (left control) shortly after turning on the liquid boosters; they are somewhat overpowered for this job. Ascending too quickly wastes fuel fighting air resistance, and ascending too slowly wastes fuel by fighting against gravity. A slightly suboptimal, but easy to remember strategy for managing your speed is to try to keep it at around 100 + 10 for each kilometer of altitude. So at 1km you'd want to be going 110 m/s, at 2km 120 m/s, and at 10km, 200m/s. This is a bit slow, but it's easy to keep track of. Closer to the ideal would be to hit about 250m/s by the time you get to 10km.

4. When you reach 10km, turn off ASAS (T) and begin turning toward 90 degrees. The beginning of the turn can be done fairly rapidly - you want to get to a 45 degree pitch pretty much as fast as this rocket will let you turn (drag will keep you from yawing as fast as you might like.) Once you're at least to 45 degrees, engage ASAS (T) and switch to map view (M). Zoom in to get a better view of your vessel's orbit (scroll up). Ideally you want to keep your apoapsis 20-40 seconds ahead of your ship as you ascend. It will eventually get away from you, but while you're able to control it, that is a reasonable time limit. The way that you control the distance that your apoapsis is ahead of your vessel is by pitching up or down (always staying on the 90 degree, east, line.) If you pitch down you will decrease vertical thrust and so you will get closer to apoapsis. If you pitch up you will increase your vertical thrust and so your apoapsis will get farther away. At near orbital speeds simply going forward will also push the apoapsis away from you, which is to be expected. Never pitch below horizontal unless you have a good reason to do so; you'd be countering the effort you've made to get going up in the first place if you did. You can also increase your throttle to the maximum once you're above 15km or so.

5. Since we're shooting for LKO, if your apoapsis gets above 85km or so, turn off the engines (X key cuts the throttle.)

6. Coast to just before the apoapsis and then burn at 90 degrees with 0 pitch until your orbit's periapsis is above the atmosphere (70km+). You can circularize if you like, but it really doesn't matter. If you're flying the Kerbal 5 (or my Kerbal 5. then you will run out of fuel before you reach orbit. You'll know this happens when you lose power (yeah, duh, I know.) Toggle the map off (M) and drop the liquid booster stage. This will also ignite the LV-909 engine and let you finish getting to orbit.

LKO --> LMO

Unlike LKO, the only lower limit for Munar orbit is the surface of the planet itself. In this process you want to get the lowest Munar periapsis possible (we'll shoot for 5km) while spending the least amount of fuel possible.

1. Set up a maneuver node roughly 90 degrees away from the Mun's current position (if the Mun is at 12 o'clock, put your maneuver node at 3 o'clock, not 9.) (Left click on your orbit in Map View and choose Add Maneuver.) If you mess up the maneuver node, or if you want to delete it later for easier viewing, you can right click on it while it is closed and click the red X.

2. Add prograde velocity to the node by pulling out the yellowy green handle with an open circle. Keep adding velocity until your orbit's projected apoapsis is near the Mun's orbital altitude. You should get a Mun encounter right away doing this, since the Mun is a big target.

3. Slide the maneuver node along your orbit (grab the blue, central circle with the mouse to move it) and try removing some prograde velocity (pull the green handle with a circle + X.) Fiddle around with the position of the node and the amount of prograde/retrograde until you can get a projected Munar periapsis that is very low and so that you've also used as little delta-v as possible. Your orbit should not go out beyond the Mun's and back in order to reach it.

4. The navball tells you how long the burn should take and also how much time there is until the burn should be made. There is also a now a blue reticle on the navball that shows you the direction to point your ship to make the burn. Get oriented in the right direction, then timewarp until you are about half of the burn's duration before the burn is supposed to take place. (So if the burn is supposed to take 60 seconds, start burning 30 seconds before the maneuver node.)

5. Burn full throttle in the indicated direction. I personally like to delete the maneuver node shortly before it is finished (right click the node, click the X button to delete.) This allows you to see what your actual orbit is doing more clearly, rather than relying on the projection. Throttle back at the end of the burn and gently adjust your periapsis at the end. Try to get it to between 5 and 10km. If you accidentally go below 5km, turn your ship toward 270 degrees and burn just a smidge to correct the error.

6. Timewarp until you enter the Mun's SOI. You will either be going prograde or retrograde with respect to the Mun's rotation. Figure out which by seeing whether your velocity marker is along the 90 degree line (prograde with respect to rotation) or 270 degree line (retrograde wrt rotation.) If your periapsis is above 10km, now is the time to correct it. Turn in your vessel's retrograde direction (if your velocity marker is along the 90 degree line, turn to 270 with no pitch, if it is along the 270 line, turn to 90 with no pitch.) Burn gently until your periapsis is at about 5km. You can go a bit lower, but there's no sense overdoing it.

7. Timewarp until you are just before periapsis. Turn your vessel to point in its retrograde direction (again, if your velocity is pointing toward 90, turn to 270, and vice versa.) Burn in map view until your orbit is roughly circular.

LMO --> Munar surface

Now that you want to land you need to find a good landing site. Don't try to land on the night side just yet, and I would avoid landing on the side of a hill or mountain. The large dark craters near the Mun's equator are good sites; they are easy to see and flat. It's important to note that the altimeter gives your altitude above datum (sea level, basically) not the height above ground. Once you have found your ideal site, hit F5 to quicksave. You're probably going to wind up making a new crater on the surface once or twice before you get it right, so be ready to press and hold F9 to quickload. If you do want to quickload, try to do is as soon after crashing (or realizing that you're about to crash) as possible, because sometimes the game can be a pain about letting your quickload once the Mission Ended screen comes up.

1. In map view, timewarp until you are a short distance before your chosen landing site. You're not moving very fast at all, so there doesn't need to be much of a lead. Click your velocity reading on the navball to switch to surface mode. Orient your ship so that it is facing in your vessel's retrograde direction and burn to slow down. You should see your orbit sink into the ground, meaning that you're going to land (or impact anyway) when you get there. Switch back to vessel view and deploy your landing gear (G key.)

2. Keep burning retrograde, turning your ship so that you are always pointed at or slightly below the retrograde velocity mark. It will move up toward the zenith as you kill your horizontal velocity. In a perfect world the velocity would turn vertical at the exact same time it reached 0 m/s and you landed. In practice it never works out that nicely. If you are still well above the surface and get to 100 m/s or so, cut your throttle and fall some. Stopping completely (0 m/s) is a terrible waste of fuel. If you're comfortable with IVA, you can press C and use the radar altimeter to monitor your altitude above the surface once you are within 3km.

3. In any case, you want to burn retrograde until your velocity marker is pointing straight up (and so is your vessel.) Descend and try to use available visual cues (or the IVA radar altimeter) to monitor your height. When you see the vessel's shadow on the ground you are within 100-200m of the surface and should probably be thinking about getting yourself stopped. Again, ideally you'll be able to kill your velocity just as you touch down, but more realistically you can come to a hover shortly above the surface then drop down in several small steps until you land safely. As you land, ASAS can help keep your vessel upright if you bounce.

Munar surface --> LMO

1. This is the exact opposite of an ideal landing. Find the 90 degree marker on your navball. Throttle up to launch and immediately turn toward it as much as possible, with no more than a 5 degree pitch. Switch to map view and get yourself into a low Munar orbit in much the same way that you did on Kerbin.

2. Once your apoapsis is above 5km and no part of your orbit shows you going through the planet, timewarp to apoapsis and burn to circularize.

LMO --> Kerbin Surface

1. Set up a maneuver node on the side of the Mun that points toward Kerbin. Add prograde (green handle with an open circle) until your rocket shows a Munar escape. Adding a bit more will get you into Kerbin's atmosphere for an aerobraking maneuver and landing. This maneuver should only take 300-350 m/s, so if you've used more, slide the node around and try removing some velocity.

2. Make the burn as indicated by the maneuver node. If your projected Kerbin periapsis is below ~40km you will most likely wind up landing in one orbit. If it's significantly higher, you might need to orbit several times in order to land without using additional rocket power.

3. Don't forget to deploy your parachute (press space to use the last stage.) It will partially deploy at about 20km altitude and fully deploy 500m above the surface.

[Jason Patterson]

Hi again,

First i want to thank everybody who helped me im gonna try it out, second i dont know what delta-v means but it sounds good . third does somebody know how i can buy the game without paypal or paysafecard?

You can get a prepaid debit card from Walmart or similar and use that via Paypal. I don't know about your particular situation, but if you're young, you can likely convince the parents to pay $20 or so in order to let you spend hours playing a game that teaches you all about physics and orbital mechanics. I'm a physics teacher, and honestly, this game is just great for gaining an intuitive understanding of things like gravity, momentum, forces, and the like. Also things explode. Odds are good that at least one of your parents spent a not insignificant piece of their childhood dreaming of being an astronaut too, which won't hurt. Get your dad or mom (whichever hasn't been turned into a hollow shell of a person in the decades since their childhood) to fly a rocket. They'll buy it for you. If you're not young, well, the Walmart debit card option is probably the easiest. Also, congrats on that whole not-having-been-turned-into-a-hollow-shell-of-a-person thing. Best of luck.

Let us know how your Mun landing goes. Success or crater, both make good stories.

[rowns]

You don't have to have a PayPal account to buy KSP. If you have debit card you can click on PayPal payment option, and it will give you other payment options.

Oke thank you,