So i wanted to know why rockets don’t follow a straight path to other planets or our moon,they orbit earth first and then moon before landing?
Is it to reduce the amount of fuel?
In: 5
The answer is complex.
If we look at a program like apollo, the saturn V first went into orbit and then spent an orbit checking to make sure it was okay before sending the apollo spacecraft towards the moon. That sort of pause is not common with current designs, which generally send payloads directly to their destinations.
The original Apollo approach involved sending a spacecraft directly to the surface of moon and then back to earth. But that would have required a much larger rocket than the Saturn V, so NASA chose an approach called lunar orbit rendezvous. They send the command and service module to lunar orbit along with the lunar module. They leave the command and service module in lunar orbit (to save fuel), leave half the lunar module on the surface (save fuel), and leave the rest of the lunar module in lunar orbit (save fuel).
Even with all of that, Apollo was just barely able to send two astronauts to the moon and bring them home.
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