1st Time Landing on the Mün?

[RockyTV]

I really like KSP a lot. I can setup satellites up onto orbit, as I can setup manned probes onto orbit too. It's been 3 months since I play KSP and I couldn't ever reach the Moon. Can someone help me? Tips and Tricks?

P.S: If someone could help me with the ORBITAL MAP it'd help alot, since I don't know how to use it very well...

[PaleoGamer]

I'd suggest watching this

[georgTF]

Can you lanuch sattelites into any orbit you desire or do they end up in random inclinations?

If you have trouble there it may be good to search some videos that explain how to orbit stuff and how to have greater control over it. The Mun is not easy to reach at first but it become easier once you become proficient at orbiting. I remember my first satellites were all over the place and i had no idea how to actually controll where they end up. Then i found a video that mentioned a neat little trick of leaning every rocket onto the 90 degree heading during ascent, and pretty much every launch after that ended in a nice equatorial orbit.

If you made orbit, you have succesfully overcome one of the first hurdles in KSP. Keep going at it, you can only achieve more. But a good tutorial video can be priceless when you're lost.

[RockyTV]

I admit it - my orbits are in a random inclination. I'll try doing what you meant georgTF. But anyways, I don't know if this is a bug but, in the 0.20 update, whenever I burn towards the prograde vector, I always end-up orbiting the Sun. I realised that to make a "stable" orbit around Kerbin (only Celestial Body I could test) you need to burn a little, but not too much, far from the Prograde Vector. That way I've got my orbit "working".

[T3E]

Do you use Maneuver Nodes? You can play around and look what happens when you burn "prograde" or "retrograde".

Without the nodes I also didnt manage to reach the Mun

[trippytripp]

Landing on the Mun is actually a relatively simple task, as is getting there. First of all you're going to want to make a ship capable of getting into orbit, then, fly that ship up, and try to get into an orbit with 0 inclination and that is about 100km x 100km. Then you're going to time warp until you see the Mun rising over the horizon of Kerbin. As soon as you see that, you're going to burn prograde. Press M , to look at your map and make sure you don't overshoot your target. As soon as your orbit changes to the Mun's SOI, then you're going to press X to cut all engine power. If you over shoot, don't worry, just point your ship retrograde and burn until you're back in the Mun's orbit.

[georgTF]

...I always end-up orbiting the Sun...

Check your map and see how high your apoapsis is. When it's above 69km you're in space. A good Ap is 75km, so once you have that or more, cut the engines, wait until your craft reaches Ap, then point prograde and burn. Since you're now in the highest point of your orbit, burning prograde will not raise your altitude any higher, instead your periapsis will raise, which is what you want to achieve a stable orbit. You can fly the rocket while in the map mode, all you need is to watch your navball, keep pointing prograde (engage SAS if you have it) and burn. Watch your Pe rise to about 75km and voila. You're in a nice stable low Kerbin orbit. The trick is to wait until you're at your apoapsis before burning. If you burn before, you'll unwillingly raise the apoapsis, and if you raise it enough, you'll escape Kerbin and wind up in a solar orbit. Heck if you can manage a solar orbit, you're not doing a bad job.

And don't worry about inclined random orbits. That's normal and i remember my first launches were all like that. The solution is to lean the rocket on the 90 degree "line" on the navball as it ascends. This will make your heading due west and will assure you end up on in a equatorial orbit. Leaning towards 270 is also possible but will cause you to travel in the opposite direction and since you will also fly against Kerbin's rotation it will require a bit more dV.

Maneuver nodes are wonderfull. Not only can they simulate a course change without wasting fuel, they can also be used to tweak trajectories to help intercept targets as well as easily change/match inclination. They're also usefull during orbital injection as you can ascend until you reach an apoapsis of 75km, then create a node on the Ap mark, drag the prograde handle until your computed periapsis is also 75km. A blue target marker will be added to the navball. All you have to do is point towards this marker when the timer reaches zero, engage engines and wait until the displayed delta-V requirement for the maneuvre "empties". Hey presto, you're in the orbit you wanted to be.

If the estimated burn duration is shown to be longer than 10 secons, you should start burning roughly half the time needed before the countdown reaches zero. For example if duration says 50 seconds, start burning 25s early.

[RockyTV]

Thanks for the help guys! I couldn't understand the Orbital Map, now I can!

Thank you very much! Will edit this post with mission details.