The Igaluk 2 is ready for launch. This mission is a possible Mün fly-by, depending on how much battery life that bank of batteries at the top of the transfer stage will give us. The mission guidelines state that the craft will achieve LKO, then the crew will check the battery life and a decision will be made from there.
Our rockets are getting big enough that we need stabilizing fins to keep it pointed in the right direction in the atmosphere. This one also comes with four fairly large solid boosters.
Bob has been selected for this first trip to the Mün. He sets the launch in motion. All systems are nominal.
At about 31 kilometers, the solid boosters flame out. Bob hits the staging button and decouples them without incident.
After exiting the atmosphere, Bob burns horizontally for orbit.
As planned, the second stage runs out of fuel just short of orbit, leaving almost all of the transfer stage's fuel for the Mün mission. The second stage, meanwhile, will fall back around to the other side of Kerbin, leaving no space junk floating around.
The Igaluk 2 settles into a stable orbit with a low of 141 km and a high of 153 km. Back on Kerbin, engineers work out a plan for a transfer burn. The staff comes up with a
free-return trajectory. The scientists consider two options for the free-return route. Plan 1 (circummünar) will send the craft screaming past the leading edge of the planet at low altitude (going around the far side of the planet), allowing the Mün's gravity to grab the craft and fling it back toward Kerbin. Plan 2 (cismünar) is to send the orbit higher than the Mün, then allow the craft to fall back in front of the planet. This plan would have the craft traverse the Kerbin-side of the planet, then fling it back into a higher orbit, where it would fall back to Kerbin.
Plan 2, since it deposits the craft into the planet's area going the same way the planet spins, will be best for achieving orbit. But it also takes a lot more time. Since this mission is only a fly-by with limited battery time, the scientists choose Plan 1.
Mission control compares the battery life to the travel time and weigh whether to proceed with the mission. Bob will have roughly three hours of battery life to spare (without power, he will be unable to turn the craft and the cabin will slowly fill up with carbon dioxide, eventually to fatal levels). Mission Control consults Bob over the radio, and he is gung-ho about it. The bosses give the go-ahead.
If Bob does the transfer burn correct, the trajectory will deposit him back into the Kerbin atmosphere without him having to adjust the flight at all once the initial burn is completed. The burn will take a minute and a half to complete. As Bob begins his burn, the Mün comes up over the Kerbin horizon.
With the burn complete, Mission Control re-calibrates its numbers. According to the calculations, Bob will come around the far side of the Mün just 23 kilometers above the surface, and come tearing back into the Kerbin atmosphere at 11km. He'll probably want to adjust that Kerbin periapsis up to about 20km on the way back, but it's damn near a perfect burn.
It will take Bob about three and a half hours to get out to the Mün. In the meantime, there's not much to do except watch it get closer.
This is what the trajectory will look like once Bob reaches the Mün's sphere of influence (gameplay note: since an actual N-body physics calculator would be extremely costly in terms of memory, the game instead assigns each body a "sphere of influence". Once you leave one body's SOI for another, the original body no longer has an effect on the craft. So the Igaluk 2 is now only affected by the Mün). The orange line shows the loop around the Mün, the yellow line is Mün's orbit and the purple line shows what the new orbit around Kerbin will be.
Kerbin looks pretty small from way out here.
The Mün, by contrast, looms over the craft.
Bob falls toward the Mün's dark side. As he drops lower and lower, the dark planet blots out more and more of the sky. As Bob swings around toward his periapsis, the sun rises over the jagged horizon.
Advancing farther into the light, still falling toward periapsis at about 30 km, Bob looks down to see a cratered, foreboding landscape.
To the south is a ragged landscape of craters and ridges.
To the north we can see the outline of the giant Farside Crater, a remnant of some ancient catastrophic event.
The inside of the crater seems flatter. Bob wonders if it would make a good landing site.
The edge of the Farside Crater passes behind the ship.
Bob ran one goo experiment high above the Mün and another at periapsis. As the craft rises away from periapsis, Bob exits to collect the data and to get a first-hand look at the landscape he's passing over.
The surface offers a variety of terrain types, with some flat areas and some areas riddled with craters.
Bob can't tell if the area to the west is less cratered or if the angle of the sun just creates fewer shadows.
Bob is rising now, up to about 50 km. He does what one should never do from a great height, and he looks straight down. A panic attack sets in.
After returning to the capsule, Bob is treated to a nice Kerbin-rise.
Bob bids farewell to the Mün, promising to one day return.
A few hours later, Bob is falling back toward Kerbin. He will swing around the dark side and probably re-enter somewhere around the dawn.
Yep. As the re-entry heat builds up, the sun rises. That dark patch in the middle there is the mountain range behind KSC, which makes Bob nervous. He's not sure if he'll wind up in the capsule rolling down a steep mountainside, which would be bad.
At 25 km above sea level, the chutes pre-deploy and begin imparting drag. Not enough to jerk the craft into a high-G situaton, but enough to start slowing it down.
The chutes do their job, and the Igaluk 2 loses its horizontal speed. Vertical speed is down to about 275 m/s.
As we fall through the cloud layer, the morning sun lights the mountains, which we missed by about 30 km.
The chutes gently set the capsule down in the grassland. Bob exits and poses for a photograph taken by a nearby villager.
The mission has been a resounding success. The science gathered has allowed Kerbin's scientists to start work on another round of advancements. Soon we will be able to add solar panels to our crafts so we won't have to load them up with batteries.
Our scientists hope to soon put a lander on the Mün.