Horus Lupercal
Primarch - Warmaster
Professor
Swingin' on a Star
Deja Vu
Biker Mice from Mars
ET phone home
Floater
Copycat
Registered
Mission 2: 'Apollo' Moon Landing.
Next up on Basics FM, a return moon landing.
In this one, I'm going to concentrate on the specifics of this mission from orbit onwards
Knocking off the fairings (by pressing on them) and burning onwards to a decent orbital height.
In this case, to a rough 150km orbit towards the higher end of LEO.
Next, to select an appropriate destination. In this case the moon. So select the map view, and zoom out until the moon is visible and press on it
Then press 'Set As Target'. Focus makes the selected body the centre of the screen and zooms in appropriately. We don't wanna be doing that yet though.
What will appear now is a thicker shaded area on your rockets orbit. This is the mythical Transfer Window and is the most efficient area to start your TLI burn.
Once you are inside this shaded area, rotate your rocket and burn prograde. Your orbit will start elongating away from you, raising your apoapsis towards Lunar orbit, where the Moon is projected to be by the time you arrive.
At some point along this burn, stage 2 may cut out. Kick it off and continue on with the landers engines until you hit an encounter.
Now, if you scroll over to the moon in map view, you should see inside its SOI its own projected orbital path, and a new line.
This line is your projected path inside its SOI, including a new periapsis. When this happens, throttle right down and bring that periapsis down a bit closer to the Moon. The earlier you do this, the less Dv it'll cost you to do so because you're still inside Earths transfer window and taking advantage of that previously mentioned Oberth Effect.
I drop mine to about 90km and then cut engine.
Next, sit back and relax whilst your rocket coasts the distance from Earth to the Moon. Time warp up and you'll see the moon and your rocket closing in on each other.
Once you enter the Moons SOI, then cut the time warp and its time for some more work.
Next, we have to make sure we stay inside the SOI, otherwise we will just get slung straight out. So, we wait til we get to the closest point to the Moon (to take advantage of its own Oberth effect) and burn retrograde until our projected path is inside the moons SOI
And keep adjusting your orbit using prograde/retrograde burns until you achieve a circular orbit. I've done for apo90/peri76...
You are now in Low Lunar Orbit (LLO).
Next, landing this sucker.
Next up on Basics FM, a return moon landing.
In this one, I'm going to concentrate on the specifics of this mission from orbit onwards
- Selecting a target body
- Transfer windows
- Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) burns
- Encounters
- Achieving Lunar Orbit
- Powered Landings
- Take Off from the Moon to LLO (Low Lunar Orbit)
- Trans-Earth Injection (TEI)
- Aerobraking
- Atmosphere Entry and parachute landings
- Mission Recovery
Knocking off the fairings (by pressing on them) and burning onwards to a decent orbital height.
In this case, to a rough 150km orbit towards the higher end of LEO.
Next, to select an appropriate destination. In this case the moon. So select the map view, and zoom out until the moon is visible and press on it
Then press 'Set As Target'. Focus makes the selected body the centre of the screen and zooms in appropriately. We don't wanna be doing that yet though.
What will appear now is a thicker shaded area on your rockets orbit. This is the mythical Transfer Window and is the most efficient area to start your TLI burn.
Once you are inside this shaded area, rotate your rocket and burn prograde. Your orbit will start elongating away from you, raising your apoapsis towards Lunar orbit, where the Moon is projected to be by the time you arrive.
At some point along this burn, stage 2 may cut out. Kick it off and continue on with the landers engines until you hit an encounter.
Now, if you scroll over to the moon in map view, you should see inside its SOI its own projected orbital path, and a new line.
This line is your projected path inside its SOI, including a new periapsis. When this happens, throttle right down and bring that periapsis down a bit closer to the Moon. The earlier you do this, the less Dv it'll cost you to do so because you're still inside Earths transfer window and taking advantage of that previously mentioned Oberth Effect.
I drop mine to about 90km and then cut engine.
Next, sit back and relax whilst your rocket coasts the distance from Earth to the Moon. Time warp up and you'll see the moon and your rocket closing in on each other.
Once you enter the Moons SOI, then cut the time warp and its time for some more work.
Next, we have to make sure we stay inside the SOI, otherwise we will just get slung straight out. So, we wait til we get to the closest point to the Moon (to take advantage of its own Oberth effect) and burn retrograde until our projected path is inside the moons SOI
And keep adjusting your orbit using prograde/retrograde burns until you achieve a circular orbit. I've done for apo90/peri76...
You are now in Low Lunar Orbit (LLO).
Next, landing this sucker.