From Kerbal to the Mun
This is the last post about Kerbal Space Program, honest.Today I spent my lunchbreak illustrating a mission to the “Mun” (the moon) from the home planet “Kerbal”, and took screenshots along the way to help other people playing the game (should they find this post). I was thinking about it earlier, and I have quite a few advantages over people coming to the game blindI was a huge space nerd when I was younger, I can fly radio controlled helicopters, and I wrote a planetary orbit simulation in computer science class when I was about 17. All of these disparate skillsets come to play in KSP when trying to get to the moon and back.
Rather than write the longest post in the known universe, I thought it might be better to do a gallery, and caption the photosthen you can step through them easily.
It's probably worth pointing out that the only really “difficult” part of the entire mission was launch. To avoid our ungainly lump of rockets becoming unstable during launch (and to save a lot of fuel), we only accelerate to 150ms from the launch pad, and then maintain that speed until we are into the stratospherethen gently increase speed, keeping an eye on the ability of the autopilot to keep the rocket from shaking itself apart. You could of course fly it manually, or add strengthening between the main engines and the upper parts of the rocket too.
Once the lander is freefalling towards the moon, the landing becomes pretty straightforwardkilling horizontal speed is done in exactly the same way as flying a helicopter.
If you're having trouble doing a “moon shot” in Kerbal Space Program, hopefully this will help a little.