[Guide] Fly me to the Mun

[rdfox]

As a side note, after my first successful Mun landing and return (and not even with my own design--shut up, I\'ve been distracted by Arkham City!)...

If you want to fly a direct-entry profile that\'s a bit more gentle, to reduce the odds of the recovery crew opening the hatch to find Salsa Verde, you can have the perikee on your mid-course correction be *above* the surface and still land. I tried a perikee of 30km on my return trajectory, and had a nice splashdown about 60 degrees beyond where perikee was shown, with maximum gees below the 4.2 experienced during TMI. From that, I\'d say that a 20km perikee would *probably* net you the approximately 45 degrees-past-projected-perikee splashdown and ~10g acceleration that the actual Apollo missions generated.

Personally, I think a 4G re-entry is perfectly reasonable--a lot of my entries from LKO have been higher than that--and it\'d keep the TPS requirements to a level comparable to an LKO re-entry, once we have an atmospheric heating model.

Beyond that, all I\'d add is that if you manage to end up in some screwed-up orbital inclination, you can still recover fairly easily at TMI and TKI. Rather than thrusting directly towards the TVV, aim off to the side so you\'re aligned with the Mun/Kerbin instead. This results in completing a plane-change transfer, where you combine the transfer orbit with the plane change maneuver. (My launch to Kerbin parking orbit was all screwed up, and I didn\'t correct at TMI; fortunately, once I passed the equigravisphere, I was close enough that I could plane-change as part of MOI1. It resulted in about a 45 degree orbital inclination in my Munar orbit, but I still landed, and after liftoff and reinserting myself into munar orbit, I was able to combine my plane change with TKI... combined with the midcourse correction burn to put me on my entry trajectory, I ended up in a precisely equatorial descent trajectory over Kerbin!)

[Galaxy613]

Thank you so much for this guide, it gave me the confidence to go for an actual Mun landing and return!

Posted below are the ship and what it looked liked when I landed, I still had one tank of real fuel left when I landed xD Of course I\'m using some choice non-stock parts that help a bit.

[Gojira]

How do you get such perfect orbits around Kerbin and the Mün?

[Saaur]

How do you get such perfect orbits around Kerbin and the Mün?

RCS is very handy for minute orbital velocity adjustments.

[Tim_Barrett]

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)

Well I guess it was for the best because there was pretty much no fuel left. How that weighed on more efficiency over the risk on landing and tipping over really doesn\'t matter since the return vehicle was so small and powered by RCS modules (which was fairly effective, by the way)

And I forgot to mention, why don\'t you use ASAS? Did you manually control it or am I not seeing something?

[Mirage]

to get to the moon without any lunar orbits at all, go for a Kerbin orbit that goes just past the mun\'s (before going to about 100k from Kerbin). This can be done in one shot.

If this is done right, on the second orbit of Kerbin, you will get near the perikee and then fall towards the moon, almost straight down.

[SkyRender]

Someone really does need to make a comparison video of the efficiency of various transfer orbit and straight-shot techniques. As it stands now, it\'s difficult to see what the advantage is of a Hohmann transfer orbit over the quick-and-dirty failsafe of just aiming at the Mun and firing \'til you hit 12,000,000m.

[Ivan Ivanovich]

I tried both, personally I find the Mun-orbit version much more reliable and more controllable. A direct-descent approach pretty much means that you have to land wherever that TMI puts you with little chance to choose your landing spot.

[Saaur]

Unless you miss the mun. At which point you\'re in for a LONG trip out of the Kerbolar system.

Also, many of us use vanilla or SE parts and can\'t carry enough fuel to burn straight at the mun.

[Mirage]

If you use the method I described before, but aim higher, say 12,000,000m then you can enter orbit.

[Causeless]

Hey, I know this is a bit of a bump, but for anyone wondering how to land without mods, and without wings (which really unbalance the craft), then instead of putting the RCS tanks and thrusters below the capsule, place them on top, and pop a parachute on top of that. I\'m surprised no-one thought of this before.

[Grakiao]

Well, I didn\'t completely follow this tutorial, so I got to the mun...

...but I didn\'t quite make it back

BUT, (Using stock parts) this was my 3rd or 4th flight and my first spaceship so yeah.

[Mirage]

Hey, I know this is a bit of a bump, but for anyone wondering how to land without mods, and without wings (which really unbalance the craft), then instead of putting the RCS tanks and thrusters below the capsule, place them on top, and pop a parachute on top of that. I\'m surprised no-one thought of this before.

oh we did, but then there is nothing to break the spacecrafts fall

[Xivios]

If you strap an ASAS to one of the lower stages (though mine actually has an ASAS in the lander module) and use the moving fins, the fins themselves and ASAS will largely deal with the aerodynamic instability they cause, and if you ditch the ASAS on a lower stage, you won\'t be lugging the weight of it all the way to the Mün.

[Polecat Industries]

No spoilers? *twitches* That was 30 seconds of scrolling, almost!