Tutorial: How to land in the Mun with the Apollo method

Hi! In this tutorial, you will learn how to land on the Mun using the real-life Apollo method

Info and Requires

Difficult: Medium (if you know orbit mechanics)

Length: 1 hour

Requires: How to orbit Kerbin, how to encounter celestial bodies, how to land in other bodies, how to rendezvous and dock, at least 200,000,000 funds in career mode and an advanced tech tree.

The Apollo method was used from Apollo 11 until the end of the program. The stage had two ships, the command module and the landing module. While the Landing Module was on the surface, the Command module was orbiting it. When the Landing Module finished all your tasks, it lofts back to orbit and after it docks with the Command module.

Step 0- Building the rocket

In order to land on the Mun, you need first build your rocket.

You probably will have a very heavy rocket. There's the stage distribution:

First Stage: To lift off. In my opinion, this is the hardest thing to deal with on the rocket. It needs to have a high thrust engine to carry all the weight off the atmosphere and have stability.

Second Stage: Complete the orbit, make the transmunar injection and adjust the munar orbit. It is highly recommended put a high thrust engine and a few fuel tanks because you will just use a few of them.

Third Stage- Command Module: It will carry your crew back to Kerbin and it has a heat shield. It needs to have a docking port and RCS equipment. Third Stage- Landing Module: It will take some Kernels (probably 2 of 3) to go to the munar surface. Need aIt need a docking port and RCS equipment. IMPORTANT! Need a TR-XL Stack Separator for separate the decoupler off the module, otherwise, the docking port will be locked.

Step 1- Lift off

Launch your rocket into an equatorial orbit. It's easy man, so I will not explain.

Step 2- Transmunar injection

When your ship is on a stable orbit, open the Map and create a maneuver, prograde the maneuver and see if the apoapsis is about 45 degrees from the Mun. If yes, OK. If not, correct it.

Then, prograde again until your apoapsis make an encounter with the munar gravitational influence (Mun encounter: T-00:00:00).

Timewarp to your maneuver and burn WHEN the time left to burn is equal to the burn time. After, check the Map if you're going to encounter the Mun. Timewarp to the encounter.

Step 3: Munar orbit

You're on the Mun's sphere of influence. Warp to the periapsis and burn retrograde until you get a stable orbit. Discard the second Stage.

We want a 50 km orbit, so you need to correct your orbit. Warp to the apoapsis, burn retrograde until your periapsis is under 50 km. Do the same in the periapsis.