Kerbal Space Program - From the Kearth to the Mun

[Logan Darklighter]

Build number 12 is out - and it's a doozy - we have a go on launch to the Moon! 

First off - a few interesting additions to the program OTHER than the moon. 

First - Kearth now rotates and has a day-night cycle. 

A new feature you can add to craft is RCS Thrusters. It adds another option to piloting your craft other than just relying on the gyros and SAS inherent in the capsule. 

You can zoom out to an "Orbital View" that shows your spacecraft as just an icon and has the orbital vector drawn in as ray trace lines. Updated in real time as you boost. Which is an AMAZING addition - no more guesswork or using third-party calculators to figure out your orbital path. You can actually SEE it. 

And that's incredibly important too. Can you imagine trying for a lunar orbital insertation using nothing but a calculator and having to eyeball it? Well, maybe you can if you were trained as one of the orbital mechanics guys in "The Trench" at Apollo Mission Control. But for those of us a little weak on the math, this is a godsend.

Another godsend is the "Time Warp" feature. You can speed up time up to a factor of x10,000. This makes what would otherwise be an ultra long wait overnight into something that can be done in a few minutes to an hour. An entire mission to the Mun and back can be accomplished in 30 minutes to 2 hrs (depending on how much time compression you use and what for.)

So - the Moon (Mun). How easy is it to land on it? Oooogh... Not very. I've had live Kerbals make it down to the surface in one piece. But something on the craft always seems to fail and they get stuck there on the Mun. A lot of it has to do with the fact that given the weight requirements, it's almost impossible to bring along an extra SAS unit to help stabilize you. You have to use RCS thrusters and fly it yourself for the most part. You'll still have a weak SAS in the capsule itself. But that's not much. Still - better than nothing. 

So - some pics. And cue the Space 1999 theme music! 

So first, before trying to actually LAND on the Mun, I decided to take a page and some advice from the pros - the Apollo Program to be precise. Send something up to orbit the Mun first to see if you can do -that-. 

I used the now-venerable Falcon Mk VIII to test this the first time. Surprisingly I made it to Munar Orbit without a hitch. 











It's at the above point where in retrospect I made a serious error. Look at that green line back around the backside of the Mun. That's a damn near perfect "free return" trajectory! I didn't have to do ANYTHING and I could've simply looped the moon and come back, easy as you please. 

But no... I decided to "do it right" by establishing a parking orbit and THEN trying to boost home. Trouble is - the Falcon 8 wasn't really designed with this sort of thing in mind, as you will see. 





So I've got an orbit established, but I spent some more fuel to make it more circular, as I suspected the gravity of Kearth might yank me back on the high side of that. 



Ahhh! Is that the nuclear dump blowing up?! Is the Mun being blasted out of Kearth's orbit? ... No, it's just the sunrise. 



So after another boost to get out of parking orbit...


Trajectory looks good. 





I'm trying to bend that vector to intersect Kearth, but I don't have much fuel... I was hoping to establish an elliptical orbit and then tweak it on the Apogee end...



... but this is when I ran out of fuel... CRAP.

Oh it gets worse...



That extremely elliptical orbit took me far enough out of the Kearth/Mun system...



That it became a SOLAR orbit. Mark well, this is not what you want to see! 

On to the next set...