New player help getting back and to the moon

[RemagCipe]

anybody whos great at ksp who can help new players this is where you can go if you're willing to give advice

[Astronaut]

Basic delta-v map. Count every node until you "reach" your destination. Then start from Mun's surface and go back to the kerbin node, now add up all numbers and that is how much you'll need for a mun mission. Try KER, it will tell you how much deltav your ship has.https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/17833-130-kerbal-engineer-redux-1130-2017-05-28/
Make sure twr is at least above 1.20, preferably. To display in-flight data you will need an engineer chip on your rocket, you might have to click KER icon to show data. Come in to a landing at about 0.5-5m/s. That way your engines don't blow up. If you do need to land on a slope, try to land somewhere else only if you have to. Make sure slopes aren't too steep. Don't forget your heatshield and parachutes. Also if you find yourself travelling to fast relative to the ground and can't slow down, you might have to abort, point ship straight up at the sky and burn. This will raise you higher, and enter orbit once you're "safe". For orbits, make sure you don't go straight up, then turn. Do a gradual turn to the east (90 degree path), start turning after you reach 100 m/s or if you have high twr you can start early. For the Munsplorer, you might want to be at 70 degrees by the time you hit the upper atmopshere. Fins help with stability. Same goes for Mun, only different. You can orbit lower, I'd recommend a 10 km orbit, make sure not to crash into any terrain. For efficient returns, you might want to use the Oberth Effect. Here's how it works in KSP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEra14FVD4o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSG33hAtc4c

And an example of a Mun mission, these are not mine. You could definetely improve upon these, you might want to add nose comes and stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVB4uETUipI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghym8ZdMiwc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38IYZUizX3E

[ghpstage]

Publicado originalmente por Jack:

yes but what kind of thing should i aim for
should i start with mk1 heavy lander then from there what kind of fuel tanks and boosters should i be using

A bog standard, simple lander that I use in early career, that can return home by itself, complete the final part of Munar orbit insertion while carrying science experiments can be made from,

Parachute
Mk1 Command Pod
TR-18A Stack Decoupler
1x FLT-400 Fuel Tank
LV-909 "Terrier" engine (due to its low weight a spark is actually even better)
(Built top to bottom like that!)
With 3 landing legs placed radially around the fuel tank for ease of landing.

[Chibbity]

Here's an example of a pretty minimal Mun lander with direct return to Kebin, just to give you an idea of how little you can get by with.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1193873660

[Yuki]

You already made it to the moon? great! Whats missing is a basic1o1 on getting back and re-entry. Both are of course related.

A. Getting back cheap:
To get back you need to slow down. Wait what?
Even while you are on Mün with both feed on the ground, you are at the same time orbiting around Kerbin as well. With high speed actually. So you need to slow that orbit down.

Of course you need to get away from the Mün and its gravity as well, but thats the catch: both can be done at the same time.

Imagine the following: Take a look at the map. Rotate it to a view from "above" so that Kerbin is at the top (12 o clock) and Mün the bottom (6 o clock). Mün will now travel counter clockwise. To get back to Kerbin you will need to accelerate clockwise. Lets say you are at 9o clock on the Mün, kinda on its backside. Yes, shooting straight up would indeed not only get you off Mün, but at the same time slow you down so you return to Kerbin!
(Of course greatly simplified as there is more to that like Mün's gravity would "accelerate" you in relation towards Kerbin again, still, imagining it like that helps and you will figure out the rest)

If you where on 3 o clock you could for example simply go straight to the horizon (after gaining some initial altitude). This would make you shoot towards Kerbin and away from Mün at the same time. Even better if you start at Mün's 12 o clock.

Whereever you are, look at the map while starting. If you keep burning after your trajectory does already bring you away from Müns Sphere of Influence you will notice how your final Perapsis towards Kerbin will also decrease. You dont need an orbit around Mün to get back, unless you parked a return vehicle there. But if you know how to do that chances are you skipped this section anyways :)


B: Re-entry.
So you are on your way back. You will probably notice that the first half of the path will take multiple times as long as the second. That is because you are actually falling back to Kerbin, fallin! The whole time!

As in accelerating. A lot. And again you need to slow down.
Now you could of course burn your fuel to do so, but chances are you dont have that much (it is however usually a good idea to burn surplus fuel before re-entry. Especially if you are taking most of your vehicle with you to salvage the parts)

The commonly used alternative is an athmo-break. This can be done to simply slow down into a lower orbit, for example to get to a space station, or of course for a full scale re-entry.
Or in doubt: A combination of both!

Phases of athmospheric breaking:
1. At the topmost edge of the athmosphere you will notice next to no drag, thus no breaking speed. you will actually see some acceleration still. This is however deceiving as even the outmost edge will slow you down- by decreasing your Apoapsis on the next turn around.
You can maximise this by turning your vehicle in such a way that the most drag intense side is facing prograde/forward. Usually a heat shield, but with some designs it can be the side- or take a shuttle! There it would be its belly.

2. The "hot" Phase: Begins somewhere below 1. Its when things get hot, like really really hot.
Hot doesnt equal hot however. Every part (besides solar panels maybe) can withstand some. The trick is now: How fast do you go at which altitude? In general you would actually want this phase to be as late and long as possible. Which usually equals low heat -though over extended time which again can be tricky, its all about balöancing it right.Test it, test it again, and once again until you got the hang of it, its highly craft and speed dependent.

3. The "oomph" phase. Short after the hot phase when things cool down again is usually the phase with the actually highest G. Keep that in mind if you have the blackout option enabled or parts that may be ripped off.

Now, how to re-entry: In most cases you would actually NOT want to have your trajectory lead directly towards the ground. But Through the upper athmosphere. Depending on your craft usually somewhere between 25-40km. As a rule of thump:
If you got a decent heat shield but not much drag- go deeper. Not such a good shield and or lots of drag- higher.

In doubt you can skim through the upper athmosphere a few times. Every time your skim through at lets say 55km you will slow down, making the final re-entry this much less hot.

Tips and tricks:
Air brakes help a lot in phase 1 and beginning phase two. They will also improve stability even without SAS. Additionally if you use athmobreaking without re-entry they let you fine tune your final apoapsis with high accuracy.
Air brakes facing the wrong direction are even more effective in phase 1 but will burn immediately during 2.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=434503279

Alternating your pitch during re-entry can help a lot too. But do keep in mind that there will be incredible violent forces at work. You would want to turn your ship for phase 2 in time- or might no longer be able to do so.
Especially shuttle-style designs may even alter their pitch during phase 2 however, if limited though.

From Yuki, whos Mün and Minmus shuttles use athmobrakes to get directly into an intercept to the Low Kerbin Orbital Station :D

PS.: As someone who learned the hard way (No Mods at all way before there was even a career mode-and did the first landing on Laythe not Mün :D) and ever since helped dozens of newcomers i can vouch that MechJeb was helping 100% of them. And they are not dependent on it anymore. Hell, one of em is giving me a run for my money in launcherr designs!
Whoever moanes about they should learn without is just bullshitting and proving they got no clue. Maybe they are afraid of it because they dont understand what all those functions are for? :P

[Chibbity]

Publicado originalmente por Yuki:

PS.: As someone who learned the hard way (No Mods at all way before there was even a career mode-and did the first landing on Laythe not Mün :D) and ever since helped dozens of newcomers i can vouch that MechJeb was helping 100% of them. And they are not dependent on it anymore. Hell, one of em is giving me a run for my money in launcherr designs!
Whoever moanes about they should learn without is just bullshitting and proving they got no clue. Maybe they are afraid of it because they dont understand what all those functions are for? :P

"Monkey see-monkey do" isn't a valid form of education. It'll only help you when nothing goes wrong.

I don't have an issue with experienced players who choose to use MechJeb to automate their launches. (Although I do think they are a tad lazy.)

Bottom line; it's considered borderline cheating by a large group of KSP players, use it and you face the possible ridicule of your peers and the dismissal of your accomplishments. If you don't care about that, go ahead and let a machine do your job for you; it's a single player game, and you aren't hurting anyone but yourself...although I don't see why you don't just watch KSP vids on Youtube if that's what you are gonna do with your time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BVSDaI0wnk&t=3s

[Yuki]

Pretty much the contrary. The majority of people is using it, for good reasons. And such wannabe-elitists that moan about...well, more often than not prove themselves being wanna-be's early on.
It simply adds whats missing to the game. But dropping that "PS" is a fool proof way of catching trolls :D

[Harry_Robinson1]

Going to the Mün is easy. You just need a big enough rocket. I personally like developing a mostly liquid fuel rocket with a few SRBs on the sides of the fairly large first stage, if you need them, a medium size second stage that can achieve orbit and begin the Mün transfer, and a medium transfer stage with a LV-T 45 for steering ability and high thrust with decent efficiency, which can finsih the Mün transfer and begin the lunar circularization burn, and maybe begin the decent and slowing the lander down, and then a small-medium sized lander which can finish the decent, and then take off and make it back to earth. If you do it right, you can get there for £30,000 roughly using this method.

[RoofCat]

4 stages to reach Mun is too much. All those connections have mass and price too.
Also you shouldn't use Swivel engine for anything. It is too heavy and thus kills any reasonable usability. Even less so for transfer stage. Use Terrier. 2 min burn on orbit is just fine. Drop empty fuel tanks if needed. Cheapest Mun lander I know starts with 5700$ with just 2 stages. Keep it simple.

[Harry_Robinson1]

Publicado originalmente por RoofCat:

4 stages to reach Mun is too much. All those connections have mass and price too.
Also you shouldn't use Swivel engine for anything. It is too heavy and thus kills any reasonable usability. Even less so for transfer stage. Use Terrier. 2 min burn on orbit is just fine. Drop empty fuel tanks if needed. Cheapest Mun lander I know starts with 5700$ with just 2 stages. Keep it simple.

Well, you clearly have more skill than me. Congratulations.

[Astronaut]

Publicado originalmente por Chibbity:

Here's an example of a pretty minimal Mun lander with direct return to Kebin, just to give you an idea of how little you can get by with.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1193873660

If you wanted extra efficiency, you could remove the science jr. Surface samples are worth as much, if not more, than the science jr.

[Harry_Robinson1]

Publicado originalmente por Astronaut:

Publicado originalmente por Chibbity:

Here's an example of a pretty minimal Mun lander with direct return to Kebin, just to give you an idea of how little you can get by with.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1193873660

If you wanted extra efficiency, you could remove the science jr. Surface samples are worth as much, if not more, than the science jr.

But how does it get to the Mun? How much does that cost?

[Astronaut]

Publicado originalmente por Harry_Robinson1:

Publicado originalmente por Astronaut:

If you wanted extra efficiency, you could remove the science jr. Surface samples are worth as much, if not more, than the science jr.

But how does it get to the Mun? How much does that cost?

ways it gets to the Mun:

1. Launch it properly
2. Cheat it there
3. Jeb flies it
4. Propelled by fireworks
5. Staged Mun Landing
6. Visit little kerbals and help them pretend they're landing on the Mun
7. Kraken puts it there
8. AI flies it there
9. You play KSP
10. VAB Crew pretends to land on Mun during lunch break
11. Crew trains for actual mission
12. Kerbals say it went to Mun
13. Kerbals photoshop it
14. Propelled to Mun by imagination (get it?)
15. Teleports to Mun
16. Kraken borrows it and uses it as an amusement ride for his Munar Fair.
There you go.

[Chibbity]

Publicado originalmente por Harry_Robinson1:

Publicado originalmente por Astronaut:

If you wanted extra efficiency, you could remove the science jr. Surface samples are worth as much, if not more, than the science jr.

But how does it get to the Mun? How much does that cost?

Huh? You build a launcher underneath it obviously. It would be very cheap considering the lander itself is very lightweight. Do I really need to include a picture of that? I figured anyone interested would be more than capable of slapping a reliant, fuel tanks, and some SRB's under it.

I could remove the Science Jr. in favor of surface samples, but why not get both?

Publicado originalmente por Yuki:

Pretty much the contrary. The majority of people is using it, for good reasons. And such wannabe-elitists that moan about...well, more often than not prove themselves being wanna-be's early on.
It simply adds whats missing to the game. But dropping that "PS" is a fool proof way of catching trolls :D

-Ridicules you and dismisses your accomplishments because you're a filthy cheating MechPleb.-

See? I warned you this would happen.

D:

[RoofCat]

I think it is perfectly fine for some people to pursue higher skills and for some less.
If you want elite achievements, you can get those. Higher stakes, higher satisfaction. Or not.

The only thing I recommend is to not call yourself great (=elite) if you haven't played KSP in the hard* way.


----
- actually stock is quite easy once you learn how. Like steering a car. You don't have to know exact degrees your wheels turn while steering. Nor exact physics in tires (they are worse than space flights, trust me or youtube). Yet you can steer it fine after just a few hours practice.

[Astronaut]

Publicado originalmente por RoofCat:

I think it is perfectly fine for some people to pursue higher skills and for some less.
If you want elite achievements, you can get those. Higher stakes, higher satisfaction. Or not.

The only thing I recommend is to not call yourself great (=elite) if you haven't played KSP in the hard* way.


----
- actually stock is quite easy once you learn how. Like steering a car. You don't have to know exact degrees your wheels turn while steering. Nor exact physics in tires (they are worse than space flights, trust me or youtube). Yet you can steer it fine after just a few hours practice.

*hard= scott manley way


right?