And by straight, i mean, just… Point the nose of the rocket towards the moon and keep steering till you get there….
In: Physics
It’s not always about just getting to a certain point in space in the fastest manner. Mostly because all things are in constant motion relative to each other, and always moving. So going to the moon, if you take a sling shot and shoot it will miss because by the time it got there, because the moon is no longer there.
The next step is that you don’t even want to get there in a straight shot, but you also want to get there and hang out right? If you build up too much speed taking a direct line approach, that velocity could very well take you very much past the moon. So the trick is to put yourself into such precise motion that you leave on a path that will intersect where the moon will be at a specific time, while moving at a proper speed such that you can interact or land at the moon and not go hurtling by.
The third and final piece of the puzzle is the concept of the orbit. You don’t just fly straight up and out into space. You fly up, and then you fly sideways, and gain and incredible amount of lateral velocity. By the time you hit orbit, you are not flying up, you are flying around. This ‘flying around’ is the exact same thing the moon is doing around us every day (albeit, much further away). Once you are up, and flying around, there are procedures; transfers as I believe they are called, that govern the rules behind how your movement in orbit affect your orbit and movement around the planet.
For further study, please see Kerbal Space Program. Get yourself into orbit, dammit!
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