[Guide] Fly me to the Mun

[Artlav]

0.12 finally added a destination - the Moon Mun!

Now, how do we get there and back?

This is a pictorial guide on how this can be done easily.

Runs on all-vanilla parts, except for a landing plate strut - the thing below the RCS tanks.

Without it, landing this is nightmarishly hard due to RCS tanks explosivity.

First off, the vehicle:

Top stage is 2 RCS tanks with 4 and 6 RCS on them.

Everything below is apparent on the screenshot:

Boosters get you up, they you throttle up and start ascending to orbit.

We must go towards 90* on the ball.

Rule of thumb: pitch to 80 once you reach 10000m (toggle SAS off for that to work), pitch all the way to 0 once you go over 20000 and before 40000.

Wait till apoapsis and boost the periapsis above the atmosphere.

150x70 is about the perfect parking orbit

Once the time is right, we boost towards the Mun.

Rule of thumb: Aim 45 degrees ahead of the Mun, with apoapsis at it\'s altitude (hohmann transfer).

The speed at the end of such manoeuvre should be about 3100.

Arriving at the Mun.

Once at the Pe, lower your orbit till the periapsis is near the surface.

Rules of thumb: decelerate to 128 m/s, lowering the Pe to 20 km above the Mun.

Once at the Pe, begin braking into descend trajectory.

Rule of thumb: Aim for a crater - terrain is smoother there, low orbit is about 550 m/s

Kerbinrise...

Kerbolrise...

Once close enough, begin deceleration.

Rules of thumb: decelerate at about 2 km, kill horizontal velocity and leave about 30 m/s of vertical.

Descent vertically, use the engine to maintain constant descent velocity, should be enough fuel for that.

Once you\'re near the surface, selected the landing spot and killed all horizontal velocity (or plain ran out of fuel), flare up for a couple m/s and detach the cruise stage.

Don\'t forget to arm the RCS.

Rules of thumb: stay away from the fireball and ignore the screams of your crew.

Descent on RCS, be careful to kill all horizontal velocity.

If you don\'t want to use plate add-on, then the touchdown should be very precise or the tanks would blow up.

With the plate, just touch down carefully.

Welcome to the Mun!

Let\'s go home.

Once again, we aim for 90* direction.

Give it some time in suborbital to rise to a respectable altitude.

Rule of thumb: 10x10 orbit seems about right.

Scenery of the Mun.

Time to depart.

Rule of thumb: start the burn at the front of the Mun, where the line 'enters' it, burning towards Kerbin.

This way you\'ll be cancelling most of it\'s velocity.

Accelerating away during another kerbolrise.

Rule of thumb: leave the Mun at about 900 m/s to go straight home.

Thus leaving like this:

And ending up like that:

Reduce speed a little to get the Pe below ground, speed should be 500 m/s give or take a dozen.

Ocean makes for perfect target, land can be tricky especially if there is no fuel left - parachutes are barely strong enough.

Approach...

Re-entry...

Parachute deployed.

Just before you hit, use the remaining RCS propellant to slow down your descent.

Irrelevant over water, life-or-death over land.

Welcome home.

Feel free to find this post useful or provide feedback.

[Scruce]

That was...brilliant!

One of the best tutorials I have seen on here. ;D

[tsoramaki]

Is it just me, or does the liquid engine and fuel tanks exploding under the lander before the actual landing seem odd?

Other then that, awesome tutorial. I dont think you need that many fuel tanks/engines though. But that does not really matter too much.

Nice tutorial 8)

[astrosammy]

Hey! It\'s Artlav from O-F!

Nice way to get to the moon. I always tried to land two fueltanks + engine on the Mun, but was unable to build a good launch vehicle with vanilla parts. I didn\'t think about just using RCS. Very usefull!

And I never got that return to Kerbin right, nice rule of thumb.

Maybe even the landing plate could be replaced by a SAS or fins to make a 100% vanilla vehicle?

[semininja]

Brilliant tutorial, and there are some beautiful screenshots here! I love the \'reentry\' pic, the wide expanse of ocean.

[Artlav]

Is it just me, or does the liquid engine and fuel tanks exploding under the lander before the actual landing seem odd?

What is odd about it? It falls engine-first from considerable height.

And only the engine blew up, the tanks are intact.

I dont think you need that many fuel tanks/engines though. But that does not really matter too much.

Sure, you can get away with less tanks and boosters. But the less you have, the less margin of error will there be.

As it is, there is enough reserves to make a few mistakes.

1 RCS tank won\'t be enough even if you do everything very precisely.

SRBs can be removed with little penalty.

Haven\'t tried reducing tanks in ascent or cruise stages.

Maybe even the landing plate could be replaced by a SAS or fins to make a 100% vanilla vehicle?

Three winglets should be light enough.

SAS is too heavy, an empty fuel tank might cut it, but they are not spawned empty.

[Saint]

I made it to the mun, lander was kerbin landing tested to work, and then I finally get to the mun after 4 hours of trying.

It bounces off the ground, dives and explodes, stranding the poor fellows with a non functional return system on the mun.

not even close to enough RCS fuel to make it home, I tried to slingshot back to kerbin with the mun\'s orbit using just the limited RCS fuel left for escape, it almost worked, but upon re-entry to kerbin we found out the hard way that the parachute didn\'t survive the crash.

[RedRockets]

Are using the 'Shotball' Liquid Boosters considered cheating?

[ping111]

Are using the 'Shotball' Liquid Boosters considered cheating?

I\'m starting to think you\'re spamming.

This question is on EVERY CHALLENGE AND TUTORIAL ON THE FORUM.

Leave us alone.

[pushingrobot]

You can definitely accomplish this with stock parts; I designed a very similar rocket yesterday for moon landings:

While the first stages have just enough power to get you into the Munar orbit of your choice and safely to the surface, it\'s a bit of a pain to fly; you may want to add another layer of fuel tanks, more fins, a SAS module or two, or even just a few more struts to make it more forgiving.

It *does* get the job done, though. Here\'s some pics of a successful moon landing with a slightly earlier version of this ship.

The downside to the RCS lander is that you really don\'t have much room for error on your trip back to Kerbin. Try to land on the trailing side of the Mun, so that your escape trajectory sends you in the opposite direction the Mun is traveling. This will set you up perfectly for your journey home and save you precious RCS fuel. If you happen to land on the leading side of the Mun, get into orbit as quickly as possible and follow Artlav\'s guide to swing yourself in the right direction.

Also, I\'d suggest using 9-12 RCS thrusters; the extra mass is minimal and more thrust means you spend less time and waste less fuel stuck in the Mun\'s gravity well.

When you\'re lined up for Kerbin, try to adjust your trajectory so you go no lower than ~40000m the first pass; it\'s better to bleed of velocity over several orbits than to go smashing right into the planet. Your lander is heavy and takes a while to slow down, and if it\'s going more than ~100m/s when your parachute fully opens you\'ll probably break a connection somewhere. If you\'re lucky, the command capsule will stay attached to the chute and the rest of the lander will plow into the ground below; if you\'re not, the entire lander will break free from the chute and splatter your crew across the countryside.

Finally, be sure to burn off most of your remaining RCS fuel (if any) as you re-enter Kerbin\'s atmosphere. Extra fuel means extra weight, and you\'re already pushing the limit of the parachute. Save a tiny bit of fuel, though, for your final approach; a short burst before the parachute opens and another just before you hit the ground should ensure the lander touches down intact. Fortunately the crew capsule itself is especially sturdy, and the fins and empty fuel tanks absorb some of the impact, so the crew should survive even an uncontrolled landing...but watching your lander collapse into a heap of debris seems a rather inauspicious end to Kerbal\'s first successful Mun landing.

[RedRockets]

Not spamming just getting the widest and most varied opinions.

I will post only to one thread next time or different versions of the same question.

[Inbrainsane]

I designed a slightly bigger rocket to accomplish the same goal. I feel ashamed now.

[PeriapsisPrograde]

I am capable of getting TMI, munar orbit insertion, and then either attempting a landing or returning to Kerbin.

Any tips for landing and making it back?

[Polkavenger]

Great tutorial Artlav. I managed to land on the Mun on the first try with that rocket and guide. Didn\'t quite get back, since I had a SAS module to protect the RCS fuel tanks (don\'t have any mods or extra parts). But I did get back into Munar orbit after landing, just not far enough to fall back into Kerbins gravity well. I think I\'ll try the winglet-solution next.

[groovington]

I have to give a massive thumbs up to Artlav for this tutorial, it made my first few moon runs easy as pie!

I havent as yet attempted to land on the Mun, but i have successfully managed several lovely circular orbits of Kerbal, then tranfer to the Mun. After a few more nice circluar orbits of the Mun (I am obsessed with perfectly circular orbits!) I then returned safely to Kerbal!

Oh, and as an added bonus, i managed all that, and landed within spitting distance of the launch site!!!

[Kaboom]

I\'ve been trying like a mad man to get to the Mun, last night after 30minutes of flight time I got within a stones throw of Mun only to run out of fuel, I shot my boosters way too soon, I forgot to include a stage to dump them so I carted them out to 300,000m ???. After tweaking a few things I launched her again an hour later I finally got to the Mun only to over shoot it by 2 hours. :-[ I never achieved orbit, when i got into space I looked around and Mun was right there looking at me... :w00t:

Its nice to see (pics help) simple ships getting that far.

[defiler86]

You can definitely accomplish this with stock parts; I designed a very similar rocket yesterday for moon landings:

Wings as lander legs... BRILLIANT!

Kudos, man. That is a perfect use for wings now.

[candytaco]

I found a nice tutorial on how to get to the Mun, especially with when to make the burn to get to Mun. The key is to get into a circular parking orbit at ~100,000 m (heading 90, of course). Initiate the escape burn right when you see Munrise and raise the apogee to ~12,000,000 m. Guaranteed to get you to the Mun (though you\'ll still have to do a deceleration burn after you get to the Mun).

[JimmerUK]

I\'ve been trying this for the past two days, and I can happily get into munar orbit 99% of the time, but I just can\'t slow down enough to make a landing. Well, I land, but in pieces.

Any tips for landing from munar orbit?

[Rico88]

I\'ve been trying this for the past two days, and I can happily get into munar orbit 99% of the time, but I just can\'t slow down enough to make a landing. Well, I land, but in pieces.

Any tips for landing from munar orbit?

When you start descending switch your speed indicator from orbit to surface. There is a green circle with an X on the nav ball. Match your ship\'s direction with it and fire your booster. As you slow down, the circle will move on the navball, so you have to always correct your direction to match witch it. The trick is, that your speed musn\'t be greater than 7 m/s when you reach the surface. If you don\'t use lander legs, try to bring your speed between 1 and 4 m/s.

The safest method is that you never let your speed to be greater than 250m/s during descending. Make sure that when you are at 2000 meters from the surface your speed is around 100m/s. Then you will have enough time to slow down even if you don\'t have a strong engine.

[Akyho]

Its easy for me to create any rocket that gets on the alt of the moon....I just cant fire into the right direction. I am far off and cant even hit the rough area.

[Dun Kirk]

I finally got a rocket Mun III that can get me to the moon with >2 spare cans to retro onto the surface. But really struggling to land without breaking up. ???

[Gojira]

I made it to the Mün... but I blew up on impact. The engines I had could maaaaaybe have slowed me down from 100m/s, but not 600m/s.

[Mirage]

thanks for the tip, the RCS system works a treat on my Moonraker 8.

BTW, fins work very well for lander legs.

[Alchemist]

My first landing without breaking anything.

I didn\'t even deattach the orbital stage (it was enough to fly from Kerbin suborbital trajectory to the Mun\'s surface)

Still this Pisa tower started falling several seconds after stabilization deactivation, so I had to fly away. And the lander made semipowered splashdown east of KSC