How to navigate to planets & formulas

[robertpladet]

Hey guys!
As you might know i am new to this forum and i am very excited to start orbiting and learning all these new things!
One question i had is how can i navigate towards the moon and orbit it?

And are there any (reasonably easy) formulas that i can use to calculate things that can be applied in Orbiter, such as re entry angle, time, etc?

Thanks already guys, i appreciate all your help

 

[Urwumpe]

Did you already read JPLs Basics of Space Flight Tutorial? It is not for Orbiter, but spaceflight operations in general, and should clear some misconceptions quickly.

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/index.php

And then you use TransferMFD, TransX or IMFD.

 

[Hmuda]

Answer in the previous topic, pretty much all you'll ever need.

 

[insanity]

You can do lots of the math by hand and have results confirmed by Orbiter. Look in the Orbiter.pdf for some useful equations. A
I've been writing a simple program in BASIC the last few days that can do a host of space related problems (orbital speed, azimuths, relative speed, deorbit burn location given altitude and angles, and a few other things) all of this is more or less a port of code I wrote for my Ti83 to do quick math in Orbiter.

As for getting to the moon and beyond, it wouldn't hurt to learn both TransX and IMFD and watch the recorded playback in orbiter to learn TransferMFD. Go Play in Space is more or less the standard beginner's manual and can be found in the tutorials section of this website.

 

[John_L]

In a nutshell, take off on a heading of 90 degrees, get into orbit, at that point, use the alignment MFD to ensure you're on the same orbital plane as the moon (a 90 degree heading will put you close), after the orbital planes are aligned, use the Transfer MFD to calculate the burn, then, perform the burn (prograde)(it will be when your craft is on the other side of the planet compared to the moon's position), and you'll be on a free return. Once you're on the far side of the moon, you'll perform a retrograde burn (facing away from direction of travel), which will move the other side of the orbit closer too the moon. Now you're in lunar orbit. Read Orbiter.pdf and learn the Align and Transfer MFD's, that's all you really need to get to lunar orbit.

The main things to understand is that you're always affecting the orbit 180 degrees from your present location, and, your most efficient burns are at apogee (apoapsis) or perigee (periapsis).

 

[the.punk]

Here are also some manuals:
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/tutorials.php

I think calculating those trips with a calculator would be very difficult. There are many navigation programms that make this easier. In the above posts they are mentioned.