Shooting for the Mun for the first time with questions

[Turk_WLF]

I haven’t attempted to leave Kerbin’s orbit yet, because I have working my docking and rendezvous but I have a number of questions. (in the Sandbox Mode)

1) As I understand it, KSP only allows 1 Pilot per Launch/mission. I’m just wondering if this means that the Apollo Style of the Command Module and the LEM is completely out even if I add a remote control to the Command Module, while I fly the LEM down to the Surface. If this true do you build an all in one Spacecraft?

2) Could someone please explain to me on this Delta V chart (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/w/images/7/73/KerbinDeltaVMap.png), whether the number like (4550 m/s) is the amount of thrust needed or the speed needed?

3) If there a mod or a way I can get a scanning (for 24.2) of the Mun surface so I can I pick the best landing spot. Like launching probes etc

4) From what I gather in KSP we don’t need to do the Figure 8 maneuver in between the Kerbin & the Mun, I just extend my orbit to the where I want to go, right?

Thanks,

[Moonfrog]

1) you allowed as many kerbals as you have seats. Command pod one has 1 seat so one kerbal. If u use two command pods, u can have 2 kerbals. If u use a lander can and command pod u cna have two kerbals. Mk3 command pod can store 3 kerbals. mk2 lander can can store 2 kerbals.

2) 4550m/s refers to the amount of Delta V, in essence your effective fuel. It does not refer to the amount of thrust or speed.

3) I think there is, but i do not know offhand, may be something called scan sat, not sure, or u can just go into low orbit and look at it.

4) yes, u can select a target , but i assume you know this. You can move manevour nodes, by dragging them from the centre. This is useful for intercepts, in finding the right angle to start your intercept of the Mun or Minmus, also handy for docking intercepts.

your welcome.

[Godot]

1) There is only one active command capsule per spaceship .... but by having multiple capsules and undocking them you can have separate landers .... also later capsules allow to house multiple Kerbals).

Here my Minmus mission as example for a Minmus mothership/lander combination:

2. It is the amount of fuel, measured in the capability to give your ship a speed change (delta V) measured in m/s. Instead of giving you lengthy explanations, I better refer you to the part of the KSP-Wiki where it is described in detail: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:Advanced_Rocket_Design

4. Basically, yes ... as you are in 3D space, you also have to care about the angle of yoru orbit, however (important for minmus .... and even moe important for flying to the other planets)

[capi3101]

1) Folks have answered this one already. For a quick and dirty 3-Kerbal with 2 landing Apollo-style mission, try http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:_Apollo_11 . It's a tutorial from an older version of the game, so you'll want to add a Z-4 battery to the service module and maybe a quad of OX-STAT panels. Same goes for the LEM. The Skipper is also advisable for the third stage engine, second stage is iffy. I would suggest going through all of the Real Life Missions, but they're all somewhat out of date at this point (though mainly all they need is adjustments for power requirements).

There is also a challenge called Doing It Apollo Style that went on last year; don't know if folks are still doing it or not but you can get some ideas from the entries.

2) The Delta-V map tells you how much delta-V you'll need to complete certain phases of your mission (i.e. the amounts by which you'll need to change your velocity). You see, a rocket doesn't have a range; the limits to where it can go are based on how efficient its engines are and how much fuel it carries around, which is all wrapped up in a neat little mathematical formula called the Rocket Equation:

delta-V = ln(M/Md)*9.8*Isp, where ln is the natural logarithm function (look for it on your calculator), M is the total mass of your rocket stage, Md is the dry mass of the rocket stage (i.e. how much it weighs when it's out of gas), and Isp is specific impulse (a measure of how efficient your engines are - look for this data on the wiki and in the VAB).

4,550 is the amount of delta-V you have to have available to have a reasonable shot of making it as far as Kerbin's orbit. A Mun mission takes around 7200-7800 depending on how good of a pilot you are; Minmus takes somewhere around 6800.

3) Kethane does that I think; you might check it out.

4) You don't need to do the circumlunar (i.e. figure-8) style transfer, no, but you can do it if you want to. Cislunar orbits (where you just go) are way easier to pull off in my experience; circumlunar gets you there quicker, which is why NASA did it that way - they had these asinine things to think about like "the human need for food, water and oxygen", unlike Kerbals...

[Las-pen]

You can get Scansat here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80369

You can equip a satellite with it and map whole planets.

Or just search the internet and save the trouble.

[Horan]

4) Kethane doesn't make altitude maps, only a grid for kethane, for the map you want you'll need scansat

[Sirrobert]

This is the mod you're looking for. SCANsat

Regarding your Apolly style: you can do a single mission or an apollo style, however a single mission is easier. So I'd recomend you start with that. It's suprisingly easy to get to the Mun.

Regarding your figure 8: That's actually what happends after you extend your orbit.

You extend the orbit, your craft is then captured by Mun's orbit, and the resulting trajectory will look like a figure 8

[Starman4308]

1) Untrue. You can have multiple pods, there are pods with more than one seat, there are external command seats, and there are docking modules which let you assemble multiple vehicles, etc. You can manage it with one of the tabs up near the top of the VAB. That said, for your first Mun mission, KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. A typical first lander is going to be a Mk. 1 command pod on top of a fuel tank, an LV-909 engine, some lander legs, solar panels, batteries, lights, and other science/utility equipment (don't forget the antenna!).

2) Delta-V refers to how much your rocket can change its velocity, and is tied to amount of fuel, fuel efficiency, and vessel dry mass. Ignoring gravity and atmosphere, a rocket with 4,550 m/s of delta-V can change its velocity by 4,550 m/s. That figure is the approximate amount of velocity change you need to get out of atmosphere and get to orbital velocity: you need to go up ~70-80 km (edge of atmosphere is 69,078 meters) and get to ~2200 m/s, all the while fighting atmosphere and gravity. Missions outside Kerbin orbit have other considerations: efficiency depends on how much you can use the Oberth effect, gravitational slingshots, aerobrakes, bi-elliptic transfers, and how much you need to correct your orbital inclination before the transfer burn, and there are probably other tricks I haven't heard of. Learn about these at your own pace.

For the ascent phase, you absolutely need a thrust-to-weight (TWR) ratio of 1.0 or greater, and you typically want a TWR slightly > 2 (usually a bit less at launch, because as you consume fuel, your TWR goes up). The reason for this is that if you are going faster than terminal velocity*, you are wasting fuel fighting air resistance, and if you are going slower, you are wasting fuel fighting gravity. You also want to do a gravity turn: at around 10 km altitude, you want to start tipping eastwards, finishing your ascent pointing straight east. The last part of your ascent will be with engines off; you will generally circularize your orbit (get to orbital velocity) once you've left the atmosphere. However, at this point, you should generally be only a few hundred m/s short of orbital velocity anyways.

The reason for this is that prograde burns (in the direction of your orbit) are the most efficient way to raise your orbit. In theory, then, one should point one's rocket straight east (in the direction of Kerbin's rotation, which gives you about 150 m/s for free) and start burning, but then you run into these pesky "atmosphere" and "lithosphere" things. Thus, you need to start by going straight up to get out of that thick, thick atmosphere, and gradually start tipping eastwards.

*Terminal velocity is how fast you fall: it is the speed at which air resistance exactly matches gravity. Obviously, for rocket ascent, you would be going in the opposite direction. If you are not going in the opposite direction, your space car is not going to space today.

#3) You can always just do an orbit or two at 8 km and visually scan for good landing sites. Remember to have a lander with a low center of mass, with the legs as high up as you dare (you do need some clearance so that you don't crunchify your engine).

#4) I'd make a maneuver node about a quarter-rotation behind the Mun, set it prograde to get to about Mun orbit, and then play with moving the manuever node and increasing/decreasing thrust to get a good Mun intercept. If it will take your ship 30 seconds to pull off the transfer burn, start 15 seconds before the node: that is the most efficient and least inaccurate way to do it. To set up for this, I would select the Mun as your target, and make a maneuver node at either the ascending or descending node, and set it normal/anti-normal as necessary to match planes with the Mun (should not be difficult, as the Mun orbits exactly around the Equator with no inclination).

Also, one note: when returning from the Mun, what you want to do is perform your return burn slightly before your orbit points directly opposite the Mun's orbit, and set it so that your Kerbin periapsis will be at a good aerobraking altitude (37.5 km, in my experience, is reasonably safe for Munar returns). Think of your vessel as being in Kerbin orbit alongside with the Mun: to return to Kerbin, you need to kill a lot of the Mun's orbital velocity. This means exiting Munar orbit going in the opposite direction, and the faster you exit Munar orbit, the less time it's got to try to pull you back to itself. The reason for not burning at exactly that point is that the Mun will curve your orbit, such that when you exit, your trajectory will be going further out in Kerbin orbit.

Aerobraking is literally just using the atmosphere to slow your orbital velocity. You want to go deep enough in to reduce orbital velocity without engaging in unplanned lithobraking (complete re-entry, presumably followed by landing... or crashing, if you forgot the parachute and don't have any fuel left). Remember: parachutes don't work on the Mun!

[cantab]

The "figure 8" pattern is what's known as a free return trajectory. That means that after the ship departs low Earth/Kerbin orbit, if it makes no further course changes it will fly round the moon/Mun and land back on Earth/Kerbin. In the real world that's safer - should the engine break the astronauts will still get back. Indeed Apollo 13 employed it, though when the explosion happened they'd left their free-return course and had to use the landing engine to get back on track.

In KSP it takes a little bit of precision to do this, so I suggest not worrying for your first mission. Simply try and get on a course that passes low over the Mun, then burn retrograde there to enter orbit.

As for landing site selection, http://www.kerbalmaps.com/ may help. You can send unmanned probes first. And you might do what I call a "stop and drop" landing, where you reduce your orbital speed to near zero when you pass over a suitable site then descend vertically. That's not very efficient but it's simple.

[Vanamonde]

Here's a written/illustrated walkthrough, primarily in response to your 4th question, but might help with other aspects of the flight as well.

[Pecan]

And in Chapter 5 of the tutorial in my signature are two single-Kerbal designs for return Minmus (easier) and Mun (harder) landings and returns. Chapter 6 has a three-Kerbal Apollo-style vehicle if you want to do it the hard way.

[MCA]

1) There is a 3 kerbal capsule, forgot the name. There is also the lander can Mk2 that can be used to make an eagle styled lander.

2) You should be able to view your delta-v in the VAB. If I understand, it's just your fuel with your thrust

3) I have tried a lot of time landing, and always get a flat spot. You should be ok unless you land on the side of a hill.

4) If you extend your orbit to where you wanna go, you're gonna be lucky if you get in the mun's attraction. Just use maneuver nodes, they aren't that difficult to use anyways. Just get in orbit, pull prograde till you get to the desired altitude, then play with the node's location.

[EndOfTheEarth]

Before I answer these questions, I would like to point out that you can easily get to the Mun or Minmus without Apollo-style docking.

1) The closest pod to the apollo LEM is the MK2 Lander Can

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Mk2_Lander-can

2) You seem to be early-on, so you don't need to worry about this sort of thing. I've been to most of the planets without giving it a second thought. If in doubt, try it out on Kerbin, then compare the gravity/highest altitude of your flight on Kerbin to the place you're headed. Since this is Kerbin SOI stuff you don't need to worry much about making an amazing transfer stage.

3) No mods needed either. Any of the large dark craters is reasonably flat on the bottom. If you want to make life easier on yourself, there are two tricks you can do to improve your landing knowledge:

a) Land or crash a probe at your destination first. As long as one part survives, you have a good estimate for landing altitude.

put colored Illuminator Mk1 lights on your lander, pointing DOWN. If they're on, they'll give you a 100m warning about your distance from the ground.

There are also a number of maps published online.

4) If you've been practicing rendezvous, you know about maneuver nodes. Use maneuver nodes to get you into a close approach to the Mun, then, once your periapsis changes to one around the moon, plot another maneuver at periapsis that burns retrograde--away from your direction of travel, so that it captures you in orbit around the moon.

Interestingly, this is still the figure-8 maneuver from Apollo, just chopped up into pieces. The reason for the 8 was something called a "free return trajectory", which was designed to allow Apollo astronauts an easier time getting home if they messed up somewhere.

[MegaFlop10]

I don't think anyone has mentioned how to add Kerbals.

There should be a blue icon, to the left of the name of the ship, with a kerbal on it. Click it, and it will let you choose who goes on the flight. You can then click the parts button next to it to continue editing.

If you edit the ship, the list of Kerbals going on the flight will reset, so make sure you do that one last.

Edit:

[3] You can go to the tracking station, double-click the Mun, and look around for a landing spot.

Edited September 24, 2014 by MegaFlop10
Added #3 reply.

[cantab]

Alternatively if you launch from the Space Centre screen by clicking the launchpad/runway, you get prompted to pick crew. Makes it easier to remember.

[tsotha]

Before I answer these questions, I would like to point out that you can easily get to the Mun or Minmus without Apollo-style docking.

Easier, in fact. Much easier, particularly if you don't have a lot of experience docking. It takes fuel to match orbits with another ship and dock. Plus, giving your lander the ability to dock places design constraints - you need to add the docking adapter. You need to make sure fuel use doesn't change your CoM very much, since otherwise your RCS thrusters will be in the wrong place.

It's easier just to keep decoupling the stuff you're done with until you finally arrive back at Kerbin with a pod and a parachute.

[Kryxal]

My lander design for the Mun and Minimus actually does the whole return in one piece ... it works well except on bad slopes.

[michaelhester07]

If you need a first time good landing spot on the mun look for areas between small craters within main craters. Now to actually land on that spot this is how I do it.

1. Adjust your orbit inclination so that you'll pass over the spot you want to land on.

2. When you're on the exact opposite side of the Mun from your landing spot drop your PE to 15km.

3. Wait until you're almost passing over your target landing site, then burn retrograde to stop your orbit. Drop your speed to 200m/s.

4. When you're almost directly above your intended landing site burn on the side of your retrograde marker away from the "zenith" on the navball so that your retrograde marker lines up to the zenith.

5. At 5km above target drop to 100m/s

6. At 2km drop to 50m/s, 1km to 40m/s, 500meters to 20m/s, 100 meters keep it below 10m/s, 25 meters above drop to 3m/s.

7. Soft landing.

For steps 5 and 6 beware that your altitude indicator is sea level and most crater floors are at least 1km above sea level on the mun. You can use IVA to find the actual radar altitude. Landing on the day side of the mun is easier as you can use your ship's shadow to judge your height. If you have a mod that shows your radar altitude you can read the altitude directly for those steps. I've found that mun takes 2500 d/v in the lander stage to land and return to kerbin safely. This works out to a FL-400 with the LV909 with the Mk1 capsule, plus landing gear and a small science experiment (one Science kit). My most recent mun lander in my current full career mode ends up using the transfer stage for most of the landing as it has extra dV.

[Enterprise0709]

1) sounds like you are using a single seat cockpit/comand pod. I sugest you use the mk1-2 commandpod or mk3 cockpit. you can also add multiple pods that can be decoupled and used as lander

2) http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/18230-0-24-2-Kerbal-Engineer-Redux-v0-6-2-10-and-v1-0-9

use this in combination with that nifty flowchart you got there. It's what i do and it always gets me where i want to go!

3) what everyone else said: Scansat. Or you can just guesstimate like most people do.

4) Figure 8? Like a free return trajectory? http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:Free_Return_Trajector

You can do that but you don't have to. Just remember to burn your engines retrograde when you reach Ap in munar orbit.

[Heagar]

MegaFlop10 is right for adding Kerbals to your ship. You can accsess the (nearly ) same menu from the KSC overview screen clicking either on the lauchpad or the runway.

But a few things i like to point out:

• You have to hire the Kerbals before in the astronaut complex before you can add them.
  
• KSP is always searching for the first command-pod in your *.craft file - witch will be automaticly manned - the other availible seats (including the hitchhiker and sience module) you have to fill on your own. The only exception for this rule is the external command seat. You have to put manually (via EVA) a Kerbal in it.
  
• Regarding to the sience module: You need two kerbals to operate it. And the kerbals inside it will not be displayed in the lower right corner of your screen. You have to click on the crew hatch to get access to them.
  
• Every pod you add to your craft adds an SAS force and uses electricity, even if it is not manned! The same is valid for every SAS/ASAS unit you add.
  
• 
  

[Kryxal]

Also note that you can turn those SAS modules and pod torque off if you don't want to use any given one.

Every time I see this thread, I think you're sending questions to the Mun...