DGIV mission - Turbopack on the Moon

[Jarvitä]

I've just managed to fire the MMU astronaut into a low lunar orbit with the turbopack (solely by eyeballing it, too - no external MFDs, although I did "cheat" by checking the MMU's orbit from the DGIV before his final correction burn), then recover him with the DGIV before he ran out of air and land back at Brighton in a single orbit. This is why I love flying around the moon - a little Δv goes a long way.

 

[tomek]

Did you achieve orbit with just one turbopack? When I tried it, two were just about enough.

 

[Jarvitä]

Did you achieve orbit with just one turbopack? When I tried it, two were just about enough.

One turbopack and around 40% of the RCS fuel for a 50x120km orbit. The key is to level out and produce increased horizontal velocity very early - after my turbopack burn, my altitude was extremely low, but my apoapsis was at 50km on the other side of the moon, so all that was left was a simple circularisation burn with RCS. I didn't wait, of course, I launched the DGIV on a randevouz course , and capture took place only minutes after the MMU's orbit was circularised, still allowing me to do a low-angle descent with the help of the DGIV's hover autopilot, although I did almost hit the rim of the Brighton crater because I came in too low, so the last part of my flight and the landing were entirely manual.