Launch
“Once you get to Earth orbit, you're halfware to anywhere in the solar system.”
~ Robert Heinlein
So, with everything fully planned out, the next step was getting these things into orbit, and then docking them together. I'm starting to get the hang of rendez-vous and docking, so I was excited to try it out with these things.
The launches to get them into a low orbit (100 km for the CM, 90 for the LM — you need this for orbital rendez-vous) were routine by this time. The first to go up was the Lunar Module:
The Lunar Module was now in a stable ~99.7 km near-circular orbit:
The large final ascent stage remains attached for it still holds some leftover fuel, which will be be used to refill the tanks of the Command Module after docking, if needed.
I then launched the Command Module:
(Yes, this screenshot is from a previous design, hence the different final ascent stage, but the Command Module itself is identical.) This is what it looks like in orbit (again the screenshot is from a previous test; the actual orbit of the CM was about 90 km in the actual mission):
Continue to Rendezvous in low Kerbin orbit ...