Mun landing tutorial PDF for rookies!!!

[Guekko]

Hi all!!!

Lot of people ask for it....i did it!!!........in french ^^

I made a turotial for rookies 'How to land on the moon' unfortunately my english is awful and i can\'t translate it.... may is someone translate it for everybody?

It\'s a 10 pages file in full french with pictures i shot and made.

You can download it here: http://www.fichier-pdf.fr/2012/04/02/ksp-manuel-d-alunissage/

Here you can take a look at some screen shot:

I hope it will help you, and someone will translate it

Enjoy your flight!!!!

Guekko!!!

[Zephram Kerman]

Your english is better than my french. Until the day someone translates your tutorial, I will enjoy the beautiful pictures.

[Guekko]

Ah ah! Thanks! I\'ll try to translate it as i can for this week end. But it have to wait for this week end cause i m busy with managing of the space crew and futur missions of the company......it mean: really boring things to do in real life

[Cykyrios]

Hey, as I think non-English posts are not allowed outside the International forum, I\'ll just answer in English (though I\'m French too ).

Apart from a few typing mistakes, your guide is pretty good. I just want to tell you that apogee is a term that works for Earth only, and isn\'t correct when speaking about the Moon, the Sun, or Kerbin, Kerbol and the Mun, so maybe you should use apoapsis and periapsis instead.

The main other thing I have to say is about the descent on the Mun: the way you introduce it doesn\'t really allow to choose the landing site, which can require an orbit first.

But as I said, this is otherwise enough to let anyone try and land on the Mun, so good job on that

[ping111]

Bonjour mon ami! Qu\'est-ce tu busoin du faire c\'est copier tout ta text dans le Google Translate, et envoyer le translation Anglais a moi, et je translat en Anglais vraiment. Merci!

[Guekko]

Cykyrios thanks i\'ll correct the mistakes, and it\'s a guide for really rookies, not a complet guide, i juste wanted to help the beginner as i would like to be helped when i was a beginner, but i m not master kerbaunot.....yet ping111 i\'ll send you this by MP.

[Maraz]

Thanks for your tutorial.

Could you post here the craft file for the spacecraft you used?

Thanks

Maraz

[vexx32]

Well... I suppose I can take the time to (try to) translate it. No promises, though. I\'ll do it piece by piece using Google Translate. If I am reasonably successful, you\'ll hear from me again.

EDIT: Going pretty well, actually, although I can\'t extract the pictures easily from the PDF, so I\'ll settle for just getting some reasonably well-formatted text into a Word document. Will take a fair amount of time, though. machine translations can be a little difficult to understand and the grammar it spews out is awful, but that\'s nothing I can\'t fix.

[shaunlake]

Guekko!

I think I could translate this one but that will require a little help from ya. And I mean not systematically copying the text to Google Translate ( I can speak both french and english though I\'m neither from France nor England).

Sincerely yours,

Shaun.

[vexx32]

Haha, you could probably do it a bit faster than I, I\'d wager. That said, I\'ve already managed to do the first 3 sections, and they\'re all making sense so far (although there was one bit about the timing of the launch that Google made an absolute mess of and it took me ages to puzzle it out). Wanna race?

So yep, three sections done so far. I\'ll finish it off tomorrow. Time to sleep, I think.

[scouseyank]

so am i right in thinking this french tourtorial is being translated into english?

[ping111]

so am i right in thinking this french tourtorial is being translated into english?

Yeah. I did almost half of it, and someone else is doing the rest.

[vexx32]

Here\'s what I\'ve got at the moment. It\'s roughly the first half of it. School\'s started back now, and I don\'t currently have the time to finish it (and Google\'s translation for some of the necxt bits are completely illegible), so feel free to complete it later.

http://www.sporemodding.com/stuff/Basic%20Flight%20Manual%20For%20Landing%20on%20the%20Mun.docx

[Guekko]

I\'m sorry for the long time far from the forum but i have a lot of work IRL, i\'ll full translate it as soon as possible and correct few mistakes!! Really sorry but really busy!!

[shaunlake]

So how are you doing with the translation? If you are too busy, I have a couple of free days to help you.

[vexx32]

I vote everyone take between half a page to a page, and use Google translate to translate it. I\'ll warn you -- a page took me about an hour to do, and it can take a fair bit to work out what the intended meaning was (machine translations don\'t translate sentence structure, and so the translation can be quite lacking). If it doesn\'t make sense, use Google\'s 'alternate translations' and see if any of them make sense. If not, translate the next sentence or two and see if you can piece together what the first one was saying

It works, but I\'d recommend you have a reasonably sound knowledge of English and all its forms before you try something like that. Otherwise, we\'ll end up with a guide that\'s only half readable.

[shaunlake]

Why Google Translate?

[ping111]

Why Google Translate?

Because this is what you get...

! Part one chouillat delicate but pretty easy if you know how to do it. We must keep in mind that the lunar surface is not a 0 meter altitude but about 360m. Once your going to orbit the moon crosses it just have to ask. I Steering in yellow circle with a cross, and accelerate the time of the car exceeds 600m / s send a shot of gas to fall to 550m / s. When you\'re dry Eject the 2nd floor, adjust your speed with the small reactor moon, you\'ll find that the fuel dessant very slowly so do not hesitate to abuse it, and return to earth you did that you need a tank 500. Here we seek has not made you happy then go back to the retro pushed. Once below the 60km speed up thoroughly in retropoussé to reach 150m / s, when that happens it will do more than about 10km to do, you have to adjust the push for dessandre has a speed of 10m / s finally do the last kilometer was about 3 to 8 m / s for itself as a flower. We must also remain aligned with the round yellow cross throughout the maneuver, to compensate for lateral movement and are asking straight. If possible we must ask with the slowest speed possible, and be careful to watch the surface velocity and not the orbital velocity.

[shaunlake]

I mean, why aren\'t we just translating it from French?

[Kosmo-not]

I mean, why aren\'t we just translating it from French?

If you can translate it, then please go ahead.

[vexx32]

Aye. Also, the nature of machine translations requires you to work it out no more than one or two sentences at a time. This allows you to correct it as you go. I\'d finish it, but I simply don\'t have the time right now. If you look at what I\'ve done already, it basically proves it\'s perfectly possible to translate it using Google Translate, but as I said... it\'s time-consuming.

If you can translate it directly, then please go ahead and do so.

[ping111]

Aye. Also, the nature of machine translations requires you to work it out no more than one or two sentences at a time. This allows you to correct it as you go. I\'d finish it, but I simply don\'t have the time right now. If you look at what I\'ve done already, it basically proves it\'s perfectly possible to translate it using Google Translate, but as I said... it\'s time-consuming.

If you can translate it directly, then please go ahead and do so.

Would you like to share notes? Spoilered is mine:

Kerbal Space Program Space Inc.

Basic Landing Flight Manual

Introduction

Hi all! I\'m Guekko and I\'m a fan of space and KSP. I\'ve been playing for 15 days now. After many requests, I made this little handbook to help beginners get started in KSP. I\'ll show you the different steps of a mission: takeoff; orbit; and landing. By following these simple steps, you will be playing like a pro in no time at all.

Before I begin, here are a few basic things to know.

! -RCS is activated by pressing R, but you have to have an RCS tank and radial RCS thrusters to use it. This helps stabilize your rocket, and can be enabled and disabled as you please. Personally, I use very little; preferring SAS.

! -SAS is a stabilization system that does not need fuel and can be used indefinitely. It is activated by pressing the T key or by holding down F.

! HUD is the interface located at the bottom of the screen. There, you will find many essential elements for flight. The yellow icon, resembling a circle, represents the heading of your rocket and is projected onto the navball. The blue hemisphere on the navball represents the sky, and the brown part represents the land. If the yellow circle is pointing at the brown, it means you are heading down towards the ground. If it\'s blue, up, and if the circle is pointing at the white separation between the two hemispheres, it means you are heading sideways.

! -There are three other icons on the navball: a yellow circle with an X in the centre, and two purple icons that look similar to the yellow ones. Contrary to the empty yellow circle representing the heading of your rocket, the yellow X icon symbolizes that you are heading retrograde, or backwards, from where you\'re heading. This is very useful because it gives you the necessary information to adjust your orbit by speeding up, or slowing down, or targeting a celestial body like the Mun, Kerbin, or Kerbol. Finally, there are the two purple icons: the more circular one points towards Kerbal Space Centre (KSC), which tells you where the space centre is if you want to return to it; the other purple icon points away from KSC. I really haven\'t found it useful, but please let me know if you have.

! -Some astronomy notes now! Orbiting means you are circling around a celestial body in space, and will never fall back into the atmosphere. In reality, the satellite/module that is in orbit will eventually fall because it slows down, and subsequently, re-enters the atmosphere. In KSP, this does not affect crafts above 65 kilometres, as that is the edge of the atmosphere. As soon as you have orbited once, it is certain that you will forever, because orbits do not decay. Orbits have two apses, or climaxes of altitude: the Apogee, and the Perigee. The Apogee is the point in your orbit where you are furthest away from the body you are orbiting. The Perigee is the opposite: it\'s the lowest point in your orbit. To change these apses, you have to point prograde to make them get higher, or retrograde to make them lower. This will be explained in more detail later in Explanations.

Making the Rocket

! Here I am using the rocket I call Europa V. It is called \'V\' because it had four previous versions (I, II, III, IV). I actually discovered and copied this rocket from a video I found; unfortunately, I don\'t remember the link.

This rocket allows you to send satellites into orbits of any size, and even send small modules onto the Mun, and bring them back. Look at the picture below for reference:

For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be using this rocket, but the steps will be the same for every rocket, only yours will look and work differently with the staging and fuel.

The Takeoff

! This is probably the most delicate, random, and precise stage of the flight. Before taking off, make sure the staging of your engines is in order; it would be a pity to arrive at the Mun and not even be able to activate your descent engine! Once you\'ve done that, we must start the flight at the right time. Open map mode by pressing M to see a globe of Kerbin, and speed up time with \'.\' (period) until the Mun is about 90° away from KSC (just over/under the horizon). Please see the photo below if you don\'t understand.

There you go, you\'re all set!

Activate the SAS and start the countdown. These are important steps to follow.

! -With my rocket, you don\'t really need to do anything until orbit. On the contrary, your own model might need to be monitored, so that your rocket will be properly aligned with the vertical axis, and does not mess up its trajectory, which could jeopardize the entire mission. With the first stage of the Europa V, you can reach the edge of the atmosphere. Once the tanks empty, your altitude must be between 70 and 90 km. Eject the first stage with the space bar, but do not immediately activate the engines; your rocket will continue to climb thanks to inertia. At this point, we can move into the orbit.

Orbit

! Once the first stage is dropped, you have 20 seconds to deactivate the SAS and tilt the rocket horizontally. If you wait any longer, you may lose too much speed, and start to fall. In map mode (M), you can see that your orbit indicator (blue/green line) only covers half of Kerbin; this is normal. In this phase, you must be very accurate because if you tilt a few degrees to one side or the other, you may notice that your orbit is becoming very elliptical. Continue to tilt until you reach the white divider on the navball. It is imperative that the number on the navball that is closest to you is 90°, or what it says on the monitor below the navball is at 90°. This must be done very precisely.

By now, you should be somewhere between 100 and 120 kilometres in altitude. Press Space to start the next stage\'s liquid engines, and hold Shift until you\'re at full power, and reactivate the SAS. In map mode you can see that the apses expand very quickly. If all goes well, you will have two fairly equal apses, but if not, you are not in serious trouble, but you will need to use much more fuel to rectify them. Another note: accelerating or decelerating on one apsis affects the other, not itself. What this means is that if you accelerate at the Apoapsis your Periapsis will grow, and vice versa. If the two apses are above 65km (you can see this by mousing over the \'Ap\' and \'Pe\' icons in map mode), you can cut the engines. Congratulations, you\'re in orbit! You can now use the extra fuel to adjust your orbit to be perfect, or burn the rest of it retrograde in order to return home.

Now that you know how to maneuver in space to anywhere you wish, it is time to head for the Mun. The difficult part is timing the TMI, or Trans-Munar Injection, which is basically an extremely elliptical orbit that brings you to the Mun. If you are orbiting at 90°, you should burn prograde when the Mun rises, and if the other way (270°), when it sets. Go into map mode and stop the burn when the Apogee reaches 11,000,000 km (the distance from Kerbin to the Mun). Now cut the SAS and accelerate the time, or watch the rocket for a very, very, very long time, until you finally reach the Mun. In either direction you choose, you will notice a sudden change - if you\'re in map mode, your orbit path will change and become a check-mark shape around the Mun, and if you\'re on the HUD, your altitude will suddenly start going down instead of up. All of these are signs that you have entered the Mun\'s SOI, or Sphere of Influence.

Again this is a simplification of reality. In KSP, the rocket is only attracted by one celestial body at a time, when actually, you are almost always affected by two or more - it\'s even possible to sit at the exact line where two SOI\'s meet, called a Lagrange Point!

You must now secure your orbit around the Mun. If you didn\'t hit it perfectly so that you\'re in one automatically, you will have to burn retrograde until you are. Do not orbit below 3km - you will smash into a mountain!

[vexx32]

First page -- I uploaded a Word Document of the first half xD

Here it is again

http://www.sporemodding.com/stuff/Basic%20Flight%20Manual%20For%20Landing%20on%20the%20Mun.docx

I just did it that way because the formatting was rather similar to the PDF and I could keep track of where I was up to a bit better.

Looks like you\'ve done a slightly better job in some parts, and I\'ve done slightly better in others, by the looks of it. Merge!

Oh, and retrograde is defined as 'heading backwards from where you are heading' which is thoroughly confused

I\'d say it\'s more that you are oriented towards or pointing in the opposite direction of the direction your ship is moving.

Oh, and be careful with your use of semi-colons... it\'s not quite correct and breaks the flow of the sentences in some places. Just so you know

I think the main things that would make your translation confusing is the phrasing and word choice, really.