Go to the Moon

How do I get to the Moon?

The Moon is a real world you can land on, with its own terrain, saved like the Earth's. You go there by rocket; the autopilot flies the whole trip. The Moon's radius is 273 km, a quarter of the Earth's 1000 km.

• 1.62 m/s²Moon gravity (0.165 g)
• 273 kmMoon radius
• 4.2 km/sEarth to low orbit
• 3.4 km/sMoon surface back home

1. 1

   Build a rocket with enough delta-v

   Two tanks reach a Moon landing; four tanks go there and back. Methane tanks give about 7.0 and 8.3 km/s. Carry spare dewars in a cargo module if you want to refuel up there.

2. 2

   Set the destination

   Press N in the cockpit and choose the Moon, or pick a landing point on the map: it shows the route and whether your rocket can do it.

3. 3

   Light the engine

   Space, then P for the autopilot. It climbs, reaches orbit, burns toward the Moon, corrects its course, enters lunar orbit and lands. Time warp speeds up the cruise by itself.

4. 4

   Land

   The rocket drifts toward the chosen point and hovers 20 m above it before landing. If it arrives too far (more than 6 km on the Moon), it lands as near as it can and says so.

5. 5

   Go home

   Board, choose Back to Earth, light the engine. The rocket passes 100 km above the Earth and brakes into low orbit first, because a direct entry at 4.4 km/s would burn the fairing.

What does the Moon look like?

• Black sky and no weather: no air, no rain, the stars in daylight. The Earth hangs still in the sky (the Moon always shows it the same face) and goes through its phases. Sounds reach you muffled, through the suit.
• Low gravity: 1.62 m/s², six times weaker than on Earth. You jump much higher and fall slower.
• Dust deserts and highlands: dark maria rippled with regolith, bright anorthosite highlands, and labyrinths of canyons 4 to 9 m wide and up to 32 m deep.
• Craters of every size, from a few metres to crater worlds 28 to 60 km wide with terraced walls and a ring of peaks.
• Inner worlds on the floors of the big craters: a silver forest, a garden of lantern trees with crystal fruit, crystal groves and ice fields, with lunar moss and star ferns.
• Underground: vaulted halls under the inner worlds, shafts from crater floors, fissures and lava tubes.

Is there life on the Moon?

• Pearlwing: the giant bird that soars over the craters. Tame it with star ferns (about eight), put a sky saddle on it, and it flies you anywhere: Space twice to take off. Bring it back to the Earth by rocket, on a leash, for the Homecoming patch.
• Dustback: a shelled grazer in herds. Shears give its dust felt (rocket padding) and it sheds helium-3 every 6 to 9 minutes; breed it with lunar moss.
• Geode snail: eats crystal and leaves quartz every 5 to 8 minutes, silicon without mountains. A grid under the pen collects what they drop.
• Dust maw: hostile, it swims in the regolith and bursts out under dustbacks and players. Its plates halve the shell parts of a cockpit or a fairing.

What is there to find and make on the Moon?

• Ores: titanium only 2 to 60 m down (on the Earth 90 to 200 m), ilmenite under the maria, meteoric iron under crater walls, bauxite and anorthosite in the highlands, copper in labyrinth walls, quartz and gems in crystal groves, helium-3, and ice in mass near the poles. Each kind also has giant lodes.
• In the Furnace: ilmenite gives 2 titanium for half the coal, meteoric iron gives 2 steel with no coal, anorthosite (on a powered cable) 2 aluminium, regolith 32 glass. Helium-3 burns four times longer than coal.
• Build: lunar wood gives planks, doors and furniture; the concrete mixer makes concrete from regolith and water.
• A Moon base that makes its own propellants, aluminium and heat shields is a goal of the progress path.

Updated 2026-10-22