Land on the moon in career mode

[Belgiumruler]

hi,

So I have played the game for 30 hours now, but I still not managed to land on the moon in career mode. Any tips how to build a rocket able to get to the moon and any tips of getting there? And What technologies do I need? (I have lost 3 Kerbals i the progress, R.I.P.)

Edited September 6, 2014 by Belgiumruler

[Silverchain]

Can you get to orbit?

When you're in orbit, wait until the moon appears just over the horizon in front of you, then burn directly prograde (forwards!). Watch on the map and provided you have enough fuel you should see your orbit extend until it intersects with that of the Mun and changes colour. Time accelerate until you get to the point where you enter the Mun's sphere of influence (the orbit path will change to blue, and be shown relative to the Mun instead of relative to Kerbin).

When you get to the Mun, you will be on a flyby trajectory. Wait until you get to the periapsis point (it's marked on the orbital track) and burn retrograde (backwards!) until you see the orbital path change from a flyby to an orbit. Keep burning retrograde until the orbit is roughly circular.

Landing is trickier - ideally you should start from a low orbit (say 20km x 20km) and burn retrograde until your horizontal velocity drops to zero; you're now falling towards the surface of the moon. Your velocity vector will start to point more or less straight down. You can bring your ship to a dead halt (hovering above the moon) but you should let it fall downwards at a steady rate. I'd say use your engine to keep your downwards speed about 50ms-1. When you see the landscape getting close (you may see your ship's shadow) slow the rate of descent down to about 20ms-1; when you're very close, bring the speed below 12ms-1 and as you get to the landing bring the speed down to about 1 or 2ms-1 only. It's easier done than said.

A Poodle engine, or an LV-909 if you've got them, makes for a good simple Mun lander engine. You don't need huge amounts of fuel on top. Don't bother about ladders as your Kerbal pilot can use the suit's EVA fuel to fly back up to the pod.

When you take off, fly up a little way then turn the nose over to point more or less at the horizon at 90 degrees (due East) as soon as you're going to clear any mountains that are in the way.

Coming back from the Mun, wait until your rocket is on the "Kerbin" side of the Mun and accelerate prograde. It shouldn't take much before you will see your orbit leave Mun orbit and get back to orbiting Kerbin.

Burn retrograde at apoapsis and you will see your periapsis drop to intercept Kerbin. Bring the peri down to about 20 - 30 km and when you get there your ship will reenter the atmosphere in a safe way and be slowed until it starts to fall to the ground; use parachutes when you need to.

[Kasuha]

First question is, what is your tech level? What technology do you already have, is it enough to get to Mun comfortably?

There's a lot of science to acquire on Kerbin so it's possible you just need to get more this way.

Or you may need to practice orbital maneuvers and landing more. Trying that on Kerbin is easier than on Mun.

[Vanamonde]

As always, I offer my guide to getting to the moons, complete with (sandbox) downloadable trainer ship, and career mod starter ships which use parts only from tiers 0-3, the third one of which is moon-capable.

[capi3101]

We really need to know what techs you've unlocked before we can offer you any kind of sound advice.

Starting from scratch, you can in theory make the Mün with just Starting Tech, Basic Rocketry and Survivability. It's tricky but doable, and definitely easier with all three of the Tier 2 techs (Stability and General Rocketry).

A basic "Phallus 7" design will get you from the Mün's orbit, down and back up and back to Kerbin fairly easily. That's a small chute, a Mk1 Command Pod, an FL-T400 and an LV-909 with three or four lander legs. I'd put the legs out on Modular Girder Segments to widen their base and make landing a touch easier. That's about 4.5 tonnes. A Münar transfer stage from there could consist of an LV-T30 with an FL-T400 and FL-T100 attached by decoupler; that'll get you from Kerbin orbit to the Mün. So you just have to figure out how to get that roughly 8.5 tonnes of rocket into orbit.

Without struts.

No problem, right?

EDIT: That's actually doable single-stage with seven stacks of FL-T400s and LV-T30s on the bottom. The flight would be wobbly on account of the lack of struts and steering would be tricky if you haven't unlocked the LV-T45 with General Rocketry first.

EDITEDIT: If I were to expand on Kashua's earlier suggestion, make a rocket with a small chute, a Command Pod, 10-12 FL-T200s and an LV-T30 (all Starting Tech). Launch it going northward and get into a polar orbit. Once you're in polar orbit, begin making EVA reports over Kerbin's various biomes (and do a crew report for good measure too). Re-enter when you've got as much as you want. The chute will open but won't slow you down to a safe final velocity at first; as the bottom bits of the ship explode, the rest of it will finally slow to a safe speed and you'll land, at which point recover the craft and profit. There should be enough science there to unlock most (if not all) of the early techs up to Tier 2.

Edited January 22, 2014 by capi3101

[Javin]

I managed it, but I would argue that you need to first unlock at least batteries and solar panels. My biggest fight was trying to get the guy back, but then suddenly losing control of my ship because the lander didn't use engines that had alternators to replenish the energy. Once you've got those, you're golden.

So using double-stacks of liquid fuel (assuming you haven't unlocked the long one yet) here's how I set up my phases:

Phase 1: The "pod" with a butt-load of parachutes. At least 3. I've tried using 1 before, but it often doesn't create enough drag to slow down the pod enough, and the parachute gets ripped off instead. Nothing worse than losing the pod at the VERY END of an otherwise successful mission.

Phase 2: "Pod" engine. Very small fuel tank, very small engine.

Phase 3: The lander itself. A wider base made of 4 of the second to the smallest fuel cells and the smallest engines is easier to land than a tall, skinny lander. Keep the weight as low as possible, and the legs as far apart as you can. Use at least 4 or the slopes will get ya every time. ADD LIGHTS pointing down to the lander itself. This will help with landing considerably. What's more, try to put them "behind" the legs of the craft so the legs will cast a shadow.

Phase 4: Double-stack of the "medium" fuel cells, or one of the long ones if you've unlocked them. The engine I use is the second one you unlock that has the ability to much better control the craft.

Phase 5: Another of the above, but immediately below it.

Phase 6: 4 of the above, but put AROUND the rocket for phase 4 with the lateral decouplers.

Phase 7: A buttload of rockets. You'll need struts to really make this stable, but if you haven't unlocked them yet, you can be REAL careful with your throttle control and get this thing into the air till it burns out.

Phase 8: A bigger buttload. At this point, you hit the point of diminishing returns (and you'll NEED struts) so it's totally optional. I've actually had better luck with some designs without it.

Using only some of the base stock stuff, you can get there using this kinda rig, but the trick is in conserving fuel as much as possible:

* Phases through 4 will be used JUST getting your orbit around Kerbin steady, and then the remainder of the fuel in phase 4 will be used to get you to the Mun. Start by burning through phases up to phase 5 to get you to 50K (just out of the atmosphere).

* At this point, turn to the horizon line at exactly 90 degrees (270 uses more fuel) and fire through the phase. You should have a pretty decent Apoapsis near 100K now, so kill the engines and wait until you're close to it, then fire through half of phase 3 to make it circular.

* Now set up your waypoint, and play with it until you figure out the optimal position to get your Mun Periapsis AS CLOSE TO THE MUN AS POSSIBLE! (I mention this because I didn't even know the waypoint system existed until my 2nd day playing). This will not only make things FAR easier, but will significantly save on fuel. You save more fuel the closer you are to the Mun.

* When you get there, use the remainder of phase 4 to come to a screeching halt. You'll probably have to burn through it, then even use some of your lander's fuel. You want to come to as close to 0 m/s as possible so you'll drop straight down and not have to do too much correction of your lateral movement when you get close. AS SOON AS YOU get rid of phase 4, and you're on the lander phase, press "ALT + L" to "lock" your phases, so you don't accidentally hit the space bar in a panic and blow the whole mission! Turn on your lights, and drop your landing gear. (Does anyone else's game start with the landing gear "down" even though it's not really?)

* Make sure to use ONLY the navball to control it. I crashed a bazillion times trying to "control the lander" instead of using the navball. Keep an eye on the navball, and only occasionally glance at the lander to see how "close" you are. Use the retrograde marker in the navball zealously to make sure you have zero lateral movement.

* At 50K meters, do a burn to drop your speed to about 50 m/s.

* Do this again at 10k.

* And again at 4K.

* By around 2.5K, it's time to keep your speed no faster than about 60 m/s.

* As SOON as you see the lights hit the ground, you're close. You'll be making out individual rocks and debris on the ground. Drop your speed to 10 m/s and use the CAPSLOCK key to give yourself more fine-tuned control.

* KEEP AN EYE ON THAT RETROGRADE. Lateral movement will kill you. When your landing lights get super bright (you'll probably even be casting a shadow at this point, and can now use that to determine how close you are).

Using this method, I have about a 100% success rate for landings on both the Mun and Minimus. (Minimus is far easier.) But then you gotta get home.

Use the lander's fuel to jet you into the air, and get you moving around the Mun. You don't really need an sort of fancy maneuver here, as pretty much ANYTHING that gets you away from the Mun's orbit is going to catch you in Kerbin's orbit. You'll probably run out of fuel and have to dump the lander parts at this point, but you'll be good with just a minimal engine and amount of fuel. Once you're in a massive, wide orbit around Kerbin, you don't even have to wait until you're at any particular position to start a retrograde burn. Zoom in on Kerbin's Periapsis side, and once again, using the CAPSLOCK to give you fine tuned control, slow yourself down until you're within about 35K meters of Kerbin's surface with your Periapsis. This will cause you to do an "aerobrake" (using the friction from Kerbin's atmosphere to slow you down). After passing through the atmosphere about 3 times you'll slow down enough without having to even use the engines to start a final descent. At this point, if you want, you can use the remaining fuel to try and control the general area you land in. Oceans are better, because you get further to fall meaning more time for the drag on your ship to slow you down. Dump the rest of the rocket, and deploy all the chutes on your pod when you're down to about 700k (keeping the ship together until then will provide more drag, though I'm not sure if the mass negates that). Popping at least 3 of them when you're down to about 700 m/s should provide enough drag to get you into the "safe" zone before they fully deploy.

So I'm sure someone else has written a far more concise and understandable "tutorial" but that's my 2 cents from another newbie!

Edited January 23, 2014 by Javin

[tanelorn]

1. Engineer redux and precise node mods are your friend. It's not cheating, it's just info that you would expect to be available.

2. Get into 100km equatorial orbit. From there you have infinite time to plan and be comfortable.

3. Set to 800-900m/s prograde. That will put your periapsis at the muns orbit. Then, tweak your node start time by dragging it along your orbit. At some point you will see a mun intercept. Tweak it a bit to idealize your velocity. Don't correct any vertical offset yet. Exit orbit at the appropriate time.

4. Make a mid flight correction to fix any vertical offset and set your munar periapsis to approx 100km

5. On entering munar SOI put a nav node on the periapsis and retrograde to a parking orbit.

6. At the time of your choice, set up a retrograde node to put you on the surface. Don't shallowly skim it or you may hit terrain. Come in between 45 and 15 degrees to the landing point.

7. DO NOT waste fuel slowing your vertical decent at high altitude. You are constantly falling. Any velocity you cut will be regained over time. Save your vertical thrust action for low altitude.

8. Use the retrograde icon on the navball to guide your decent to the surface. Get that gear down early. Cut all horizontal velocity before you're close to the ground. Use spurts of vertical retrograde to get a measure of how quickly you can slow your decent.

9. Land on a flat surface. Keep horizontal speed at zero (retrograde icon centered on top of navball). Be very vigilant on your vertical speed at the last 100m. This is when you can burn your engines constantly on low power to keep it comfortable.

10. Cut engines immediately on landing (or a few meters above). Hopefully you have the 800m/s of fuel to get back home.

[SRV Ron]

Rather then going to Mun, Land on Minmus first. Then, go for Mun. The same ship design should work for both missions.

This was done in the demo. It should be easier in Career even without batteries or thrusters. Just manage your power use. I have done orbital and return with plenty of power left. The trick, only use SAS during powered flight and remember that the LV-909 has no generator.

[Lohan2008]

Nice design there Ron. Wow ! Looks like I am going to have heaps of fuel to get back !!

Edited January 23, 2014 by Lohan2008

[Javin]

@ SRV Ron

LOL! Your lander design is almost EXACTLY like mine, but the ship I used to get there (with less fuel, even) was far, far more convoluted and with way more stages. I'll have to give your design a try!

[SRV Ron]

@ SRV Ron

LOL! Your lander design is almost EXACTLY like mine, but the ship I used to get there (with less fuel, even) was far, far more convoluted and with way more stages. I'll have to give your design a try!

Replace those explodeable SRB pairs with single Rocomax SRBs. It will make things easier to build and fly. Asparagus staging was used on that demo ship which with parachutes on the desent stage, should be capable of landing on Duna and returning. It is even in use on the lander which will have more then enough fuel to land and return.

This is what made it into 100k orbit on that demo design.

[SRV Ron]

This early Career ship did the orbital Mun mission with fuel and power to spare in 0.22

A similar design with an extra SRB, a second FL-T400 fuel can on the upper stage, and a pair of Goo canisters, did the Mun orbital mission last night and netted enough science points to start unlocking a bunch of tier three parts.

Edited January 23, 2014 by SRV Ron

[Belgiumruler]

thanks for all the answers! Going to give them a try now.

[Belgiumruler]

okay, I failed with several designs (I can't get into a proper orbit). But does it makes since that I use an unmanned rocket? I already lost 3 kerbals and I will go unmanned first. About the Technology, I have tier 2 +electrics. Any ideas?

[Vanamonde]

Where and how are you going wrong? And did you read over the walkthrough I offered?

[Belgiumruler]

Where and how are you going wrong? And did you read over the walkthrough I offered?

I did, after another try, I managed to get into an orbit, but I am already using my lander fuel, so, I am going to try building a bigger rocket.

[capi3101]

Hmm...let's take a look at your piloting during launch. Assuming you're using SRV Ron's design, you've definitely got a craft that can do the job.

Here's how I typically do one stock: straight up to 10,000 meters, turn 090 at 45 degrees elevation, stay there until you're 35 seconds from Apoapsis, then turn and follow the prograde marker. Return to 45 degrees if you fall below 30 seconds to apoapsis. If you go over a minute to Apoapsis, turn and fly along the horizon. After the turn at 10k, keep your gee meter right at the top of the green zone and throttle back if necessary. Stop your burn when the Apoapsis reaches 100,000 and your altitude is at 60k, 110,000 at 50k at 130,000 at 40k or 200,000 at 30k. Set up a maneuver node at the Apoapsis once you're in space (above 70k), and perform your circularization burn such that half of it happens before the node and the other half happens afterwards.

Is that close to what you're doing?

EDIT: Nothing wrong with unmanned flight - the only thing I'd suggest is if you decide you want to use the same design for a manned flight later on, you should add some ballast to offset the difference in mass. For example, a Mk1 Command Pod has a mass of 0.8 tonnes, a Stayputnuk 0.05. So you need to add 0.75 tonnes of extra weight to ensure it has the same flight characteristics. Five Goo Containers weigh that much.

Edited January 23, 2014 by capi3101

[Belgiumruler]

okay, after another try, I missed the moon by, let's say 2 million km and, now I am in an orbit around the sun....

[Kasuha]

Maybe you could try this:

With your tech level you might need to use a few different parts but it should be possible to do.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Kasuha

[Javin]

okay, after another try, I missed the moon by, let's say 2 million km and, now I am in an orbit around the sun....

LMAO! I've got another Kerboid in the same predicament. I'm going to try and rescue him tonight.

I find that it's ALWAYS prudent to do a couple of corrective burns after the initial waypoint burn to get my distance from the moon just right. And always come in IN FRONT OF the moon to take advantage of the slight slow-down it will give you. (Coming in behind it will speed you up.)

[EtherDragon]

Hey, you're not alone in this - I'm an "expert" with my own dedicated KSP YouTube Channel and everything! And I still managed to strand Jeb in orbit around Mun (this episode will be posted on Friday, the 24th).

Basically, I still fudge my own rule:

If the stage is not able to complete it's assigned task - abort the mission. Munar orbital insertion is where my mission started falling apart - using fuel from future stages. I should have stopped, let my ship fly-by, and taken Jeb home. But no, I went ahead and landed - He managed to get into a 20kmx6km Munar orbit, and is awaiting rescue. 'Course Mission Control is saying "Screw Jeb, rescue the Science!" =p

Landing on and returning from Mun, takes a good understanding of how to properly stage your mission to minimize the amount of useless mass you carry with you. If you have an empty fuel tank during any of your burns (Not counting Ascent to LKO) - find a way to redesign so it can be ditched as soon as it runs out of juice.

Edited January 23, 2014 by EtherDragon

[SRV Ron]

LMAO! I've got another Kerboid in the same predicament. I'm going to try and rescue him tonight.

I find that it's ALWAYS prudent to do a couple of corrective burns after the initial waypoint burn to get my distance from the moon just right. And always come in IN FRONT OF the moon to take advantage of the slight slow-down it will give you. (Coming in behind it will speed you up.)

Are you using the Add Maneuver tool in map mode to plan your burn? Here is the ideal NASA figure eight maneuver. (Extremely difficult to set up.)

Otherwise, set up a maneuver like this;

Note, the return path in case you miss the orbital insertion burn will being you back home to an aerobraking landing.

[match]

I did, after another try, I managed to get into an orbit, but I am already using my lander fuel, so, I am going to try building a bigger rocket.

I do believe you have a firm grasp on the game's first tenet... More Boosters!

Which inevitably leads to the next tenet... More Struts!

These guys have got you pointed in the right direction, you are so very close.

Only thing I can add is to be both patient and deliberate with your burns during final approach, over-corrections can be quite frustrating. Control trumps efficiency until you can stick the landing.

Don't forget to take a screenshot once you make it!

[OptimusNog]

Can someone post a lander design that includes a science jr. and uses all tech up to tier 3?

Edited January 24, 2014 by OptimusNog

[Belgiumruler]

sniff, almost, 7000 meters close to the surface, but then, I ran out of fuel.... No way I can land now