mikesensei
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Last night I completed my first flight from the Earth's surface to the surface of the moon... :lol: Just wanted to post a debrief - mostly to introduce myself, but also to perhaps get some ideas for better procedures.
I played around with orbiter a few years ago - got the basics of flight with the Delta Glider: getting to LEO orbit, changing planes, rendezvous in orbit, docking, etc. But then I had to give it up when I got a Mac. About a month ago I got interested again - now I have a Macbook Pro - so I installed Windows through Boot Camp and got back into Orbiter. I remembered most of the basics... but I wanted to try to get beyond LEO. I set my goal of landing the DGIV at the PreludeII Moon base. I wanted to first manage every step "manually" (using just the stock MFDs) before finding an autonav tool to do the job.
I first tried to get to Lunar orbit with just the stock MFDs. I generally started from Mir with my practice runs. Getting aligned using Align MFD was no problem, but it took me a while to get a good TLi - following the tutorials, I would always end up too far out in front of the moon's orbit. I think my problem was with my burn times - I was managing perfect dV, but I was starting the burn exactly when Te got to zero, thus burning too late in my orbit and sending me off course. At any rate, I eventually got to lunar orbit with just Orbit MFD and Align MFD. I then went looking for an automatic tool to handle this step. iMFD seemed like a good bet; but when I tried going through a few tutorials none seemed to work with the new version. At first I thought I was just doing something wrong, but after a while I figured out that somehow I had broken my iMFD install. :blink: After a reinstall, and by applying some of the stuff I learned from the tutorials and trial-and-error, I was able to consistently (though not efficiently, I expect) get to the moon.
Landing became the problem; after many, many accidental lithobrakes (not to mention all the dead DGIV passengers - may they rest in peace) I finally managed a manual VTOL landing. After getting this down, I found LandMFD and LolaMFD to do the job automatically.
Then I just put it all together. I'm sure there are much more efficient ways of making the trip, since I burned almost 90% of my fuel before I landed at PreludeII, but it worked, so I can worry about that later.
Working on a "JAXA to the Moon" theme, I launched from Tanegashima into LEO with the DGIV auto ascent program. I think these were my first mistakes as far as efficiency - it would have been better to launch from closer to the Equator; I'm thinking about setting up a Prelude base on one of the Southernmost Okinawan islands to use in the future. Also, I think the DGIV auto ascent is wasteful as well - from watching the tutorials, it seems that there's no need to get into a circular (or even stable?) LEO before shooting for the moon. I had burned almost half my fuel by this point.
The best lunar alignment I could get from Tanegashima was around 2.09 Rinc; but since I was using iMFD, I figured I could do an off-plane shot without much trouble. I set up my TLI with iMFD, trying to keep the dV as low as possible. My first hitch came with the autoburn - it stopped short for some reason, leaving me with an orbit that barely got out of the Earth's SOI. I figured the burn had me going in the right direction, though, so I just lined up with the velocity indicator and "eye-balled" more dV.
The next leg of my trip was probably the most wasteful. From tutorials, I know that one should do a base align while still fairly far away from the moon. I wasn't sure exactly when or how (other than just "eyeballing" using the Map MFD) to do this, though, and since this was my "live" shot I didn't want to take chances. I decided not to worry about efficiency, and just go step-by-step with iMFD to ensure that I made finished the trip in one piece. Once inside the Moon's SOI, I did a Planetary Approach burn. I don't know that I really needed to do this - I already had a parabolic orbit around the moon, and all the Planetary Approach burn seemed to do was re-align me. Again, though, I wasn't taking chances. Next I did an Orbit Insertion burn to get me into a stable (and fairly low) orbit. I then used BaseAlignMFD to get aligned with Prelude II. I know, very inefficient to do this after the Orbital Insertion. I seem to remember Martin doing all of this in one step in his Earth to the Moon recorded scenerio. Maybe getting this down will be my next project...
I then used LolaMFD to bring me in. My last hitch was perhaps just me hitting the panic button, but I wasn't taking chances. LolaMFD was designed for "backsitters" like the LM, and though it got me right over the pad, I was coming down engine first. It's possible that LolaMFD would have righted me at the last minute, but not wanting to ruin my trip when I was so close to the end, I made the decision to use my RCS thrusters to nose over manually at the last minute. I got down safe, but the result wasn't pretty - the main engines caused me to roll off the pad. I used my retros to roll myself back onto the pad, then EVA'd everyone into the base. Misson Accomplished! :beach:
M
I played around with orbiter a few years ago - got the basics of flight with the Delta Glider: getting to LEO orbit, changing planes, rendezvous in orbit, docking, etc. But then I had to give it up when I got a Mac. About a month ago I got interested again - now I have a Macbook Pro - so I installed Windows through Boot Camp and got back into Orbiter. I remembered most of the basics... but I wanted to try to get beyond LEO. I set my goal of landing the DGIV at the PreludeII Moon base. I wanted to first manage every step "manually" (using just the stock MFDs) before finding an autonav tool to do the job.
I first tried to get to Lunar orbit with just the stock MFDs. I generally started from Mir with my practice runs. Getting aligned using Align MFD was no problem, but it took me a while to get a good TLi - following the tutorials, I would always end up too far out in front of the moon's orbit. I think my problem was with my burn times - I was managing perfect dV, but I was starting the burn exactly when Te got to zero, thus burning too late in my orbit and sending me off course. At any rate, I eventually got to lunar orbit with just Orbit MFD and Align MFD. I then went looking for an automatic tool to handle this step. iMFD seemed like a good bet; but when I tried going through a few tutorials none seemed to work with the new version. At first I thought I was just doing something wrong, but after a while I figured out that somehow I had broken my iMFD install. :blink: After a reinstall, and by applying some of the stuff I learned from the tutorials and trial-and-error, I was able to consistently (though not efficiently, I expect) get to the moon.
Landing became the problem; after many, many accidental lithobrakes (not to mention all the dead DGIV passengers - may they rest in peace) I finally managed a manual VTOL landing. After getting this down, I found LandMFD and LolaMFD to do the job automatically.
Then I just put it all together. I'm sure there are much more efficient ways of making the trip, since I burned almost 90% of my fuel before I landed at PreludeII, but it worked, so I can worry about that later.
Working on a "JAXA to the Moon" theme, I launched from Tanegashima into LEO with the DGIV auto ascent program. I think these were my first mistakes as far as efficiency - it would have been better to launch from closer to the Equator; I'm thinking about setting up a Prelude base on one of the Southernmost Okinawan islands to use in the future. Also, I think the DGIV auto ascent is wasteful as well - from watching the tutorials, it seems that there's no need to get into a circular (or even stable?) LEO before shooting for the moon. I had burned almost half my fuel by this point.
The best lunar alignment I could get from Tanegashima was around 2.09 Rinc; but since I was using iMFD, I figured I could do an off-plane shot without much trouble. I set up my TLI with iMFD, trying to keep the dV as low as possible. My first hitch came with the autoburn - it stopped short for some reason, leaving me with an orbit that barely got out of the Earth's SOI. I figured the burn had me going in the right direction, though, so I just lined up with the velocity indicator and "eye-balled" more dV.
The next leg of my trip was probably the most wasteful. From tutorials, I know that one should do a base align while still fairly far away from the moon. I wasn't sure exactly when or how (other than just "eyeballing" using the Map MFD) to do this, though, and since this was my "live" shot I didn't want to take chances. I decided not to worry about efficiency, and just go step-by-step with iMFD to ensure that I made finished the trip in one piece. Once inside the Moon's SOI, I did a Planetary Approach burn. I don't know that I really needed to do this - I already had a parabolic orbit around the moon, and all the Planetary Approach burn seemed to do was re-align me. Again, though, I wasn't taking chances. Next I did an Orbit Insertion burn to get me into a stable (and fairly low) orbit. I then used BaseAlignMFD to get aligned with Prelude II. I know, very inefficient to do this after the Orbital Insertion. I seem to remember Martin doing all of this in one step in his Earth to the Moon recorded scenerio. Maybe getting this down will be my next project...
I then used LolaMFD to bring me in. My last hitch was perhaps just me hitting the panic button, but I wasn't taking chances. LolaMFD was designed for "backsitters" like the LM, and though it got me right over the pad, I was coming down engine first. It's possible that LolaMFD would have righted me at the last minute, but not wanting to ruin my trip when I was so close to the end, I made the decision to use my RCS thrusters to nose over manually at the last minute. I got down safe, but the result wasn't pretty - the main engines caused me to roll off the pad. I used my retros to roll myself back onto the pad, then EVA'd everyone into the base. Misson Accomplished! :beach:
M
. I know how it feels when you have finally got yourself to the moon by yourself. Its really something. Have you read "Go Play in Space" ? Its a very good guide. In fact thats what I used when I learned Orbiter and did my first trips.
