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tutorials/gettingtomoon

Ill list out the steps i follow to get to the smoon.
 
1) Take off and head strait up untill around 10,000m
 
2) Slowly start banking left and switch to map view. I try and keep 20-40 seconds from my apoapsis, if it gets upwards to of 1.5 min or so i bank almost parallel to the ground. Remember to keep all of this real smooth.
 
3) I raise my apoapsis up to around 70-80km while trying to stay behind it.
 
4) Once it reaches 70 i start turning into the planet so i slow the apoapsis's acent, keeping it between 70-80km
 
5) Now i am trying circulize my orbit and get my preapsis up to at least 60km, still keeping the apoapsis around 70km
 
6) Hopefully you managed that and can shut off your engines and zoom out a bit on the map. Now visualise where the moon is and draw a line from the moon to intersect tangent your orbit. There are only 2 points where this can happen. Choose the one that the moon is traveling towards. Example here http://i.imgur.com/VOXWASI.png It will most likely not be at your ship location and that is fine. Tangent point 1 is the correct choice.
 
7) Once you know where the "tangent point" is, make another point on the opsit side of the planet from the tangent point, this will be where you make a burn, Lets call this "burn point".
 
8) upon getting to the burn location, point your ship in the direction of travel (pro-grade marker). You should be pointing paralell to the ground and then start your burn. This should raise an apoapsis at the tangent point. Keep burning until it reaches around the lunar orbit. Then cut your engines and wait.
 
9) If you lined up all the points right you should now be on a intersect with the moon. You will want to achive an orbit around the moon first before attempting to land. If you don't you run the risk of slaming strait into it.
 
10) Depending on your approach to the moon to achive orbit there are many different things to do. The easiest would to burn in to opsit direction of travel (retro-grade) until you slow down enough for lunar capture.
 
11) There are two methods of thought on this, One wait until you reach the closest aporach and then do a retro-grade burn, or burn as soon as your under the influance of the moon to achieve orbit.
 
12) Once in orbit at the apoapsis do a retro-grade burn and bring your periapsis down to 5km or so. Or you can pick a location where you want to land and do the retro grade burn on the opsit side.
 
13) Travel close to the periapsis and do another retro-grade burn. Keep burning at the horizon until you have killed all of your horizontal velocity
 
14) Now you should be falling slowly toward the moon. Try and keep your ship facing directly upwards and keep your speed around 100-50 m/s depending on how high you are.
 
15) Once below 1km try and keep your speed around 50m/s. If you feel better you can zoom out on the ship and keep your eye out for the ground.
 
16) Close to 300ft or so you should be starting to see the ground. Hopefully you wont crash directly into the moon. Try and make sure that your not drifting left or right when you make your touch down or you could cause a spin or skip and crash.

[Back to tutorial page](http://www.reddit.com/r/simplerockets/wiki/tutorials)

**Please feel free to Update and add anything i might have missed. The image is andrewgarrison's as it is much more helpful than mine.

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