Arg! Spend an hour getting my Munar landing setup, and BOOM!

[Scurge]

I just spend an hour getting my trajectory to the Mun just right. Got my Munar orbit just how I wanted it. Saved enough fuel in my final stage to get back to Kearth and deployed my landing gear and began my descent. I had myself slowed down to about 17m/s watching the altitude and making sure to keep my nose pointed in the opposite direction of my velocity vector, and when my altitude is 883m BOOM! I crashed. The Kerbilnauts survived and the capsule is intact, but there is no hope of a return to Kearth. I constructed the ship out of stock parts and have attached a picture of it. I didn\'t know about the quick save button until I was reading another topic just before posting this. :\'(

Any help suggestions, or maybe a point to a thread on how to complete the actual landing on the Mun would be appreciated.

I have also attached the ship for anyone who wants to give it a go, or tweak it. It is very stable while lifting off and getting into orbit. It\'s a bit overstable before you eject the 3 main engines before the final stage, but the last stage is nicely maneuverable.

Any constructive criticism on this design would be welcome.

NOTE: If you decide to DL and fly the Death Machine, know that after ejecting the 1st stage you can hit space bar once to move the remaining 3 burning engines to the next stage, or you can simply wait, but you\'ll have to hit space twice in that case to eject to the final stage.

[Vanamonde]

You\'re doing fine and just having the same problems everybody had to learn to get through. Firstly, the altimeter reads from 'sea level,' whatever that means on the Mun, and doesn\'t tell you how high you are off the ground. You have to look past your ship on the main screen and watch the terrain rise up to meet you, because that\'s the only way to tell when you\'re about to touchdown. Secondly, 17m/s is a bit fast. Anything over 10m/s and you risk damage to your ship. I actually try to keep it below 7m/s or so, to be on the safe side. Thirdly, some of us like to use RCS for last-minute extra-braking, but there\'s difference of opinion about that. Other than that, it just takes practice. And seriously, crashing a few times beforehand just makes you feel that much more triumphant the first time you pull it off. Take lots of celebratory screenshots. Good luck!

Also, you might want to consider changing the name from 'Death Machine 2,' just for morale purposes.

[Evil Acrylic]

As Vana said you are doing fine it sounds like you are nearly there and he is correct in saying that the altimeter is based on sea level which proves kerbels have found water on the mun! hehe... I have just looked at one of my screen shots of my mun rover and it is reading 2326 on the Altimeter and it is driving around the moon.

The best way to judge it i have found is the detail of mun look down the more detail you can see the closer you are and when you can see the small rocks its time to slow up.

I use RCS to land not for speed corrections but for when you are just about to land its very very useful to get rid of the side to side drift so you don\'t fall over when you land. i land at about 1-2ms max

[Zephram Kerman]

Yep! I agree you\'re doing fine. Every space program has a lunar impact mission before the round trip. (Although only the Kerbals would do this with a live crew!) So consider it a successful mission, and good progress.

As Vanamode said, you\'ll need to watch the surface coming to meet you. So it helps to pick a spot on the day side near the terminator, so that you can see a long shadow to help gauge the last few meters. Also, the 'seas' tend to be more level.

Finally, the winglets up there on your lander stage probably don\'t help much. You could get rid of those, and use the available mass for another lander leg or three. I like to have at least four legs, so that the touchdown shock is more distributed, and so that it stays upright if one leg breaks. If you have that fourth leg, touchdown at 5-7 m/s is quite reasonable. With six, you can hit even harder.

Oh yeah: for even more sturdification, you can add two struts to each leg.

[Khrissetti]

Yup, your best bet is to utterly ignore the atimeter, I\'ve found it worse than useless below 5km (above that I use the map) just watch for shadows and the point when your exhaust sinks below the surface.

version 0.16 needs to have a proper laser altimeter.

[Anachronda]

You have to look past your ship on the main screen and watch the terrain rise up to meet you, because that\'s the only way to tell when you\'re about to touchdown.

On my computer, there\'s a spot where the terrain behind the ship changes from fuzzy grey to a crisp field of boulders. That\'s when the adrenaline starts.

One thing it took me a while to catch on to is that the dial next to the altimeter indicates your rate of ascent or descent. Very useful, but I wish it were down by the navball; my eyes are going all over the place during the landing to watch that meter, the terrain behind me, and keep myself on top of the retrograde marker on the navball.

[Vanamonde]

my eyes are going all over the place during the landing to watch that meter, the terrain behind me, and keep myself on top of the retrograde marker on the navball

Oh yeah, I\'ve landed without damage on Mun about 20 times now (many more not-so-nice landings and catastrophic crashes), and I\'m still panicked and terrified every time. I don\'t know why, since it\'s obviously just a game and I can always load my quicksave if it goes badly. But it\'s part of the fun!

I haven\'t made up my mind about the optimal number of landing legs. More does distribute the shock better, but I also found that more legs means more chances of springing back into the (lack of) air and more chances to snag on the surface and spin the ship around. My big problem when I was first landing is that I would touchdown gently, then go sproing-flip-boom. I found that my lander would 'stick the dismount' better when I reduced the number of legs to 3 or 4. That\'s especially true if you aren\'t landing on flat ground.

Anachronda, I forgot to mention that. If you\'re still crashing, check to see if you\'re coming down on a lump or a slope. It\'s very hard to tell when you\'re looking down from above, though, and I don\'t have any advice about avoiding that. I mean, I know you can pan out and rotate the camera to look for parallax on ground features, but I\'ll be danged if I can ever manage to do that on top of everything else I\'m trying to do at the same time while landing.

[Khrissetti]

yeah, I don\'t like the \'bouncy\' legs for precisely that reason, and I just equip my ships with 6 of the old solid legs.

[Anachronda]

Anachronda, I forgot to mention that. If you\'re still crashing, check to see if you\'re coming down on a lump or a slope. It\'s very hard to tell when you\'re looking down from above, though, and I don\'t have any advice about avoiding that. I mean, I know you can pan out and rotate the camera to look for parallax on ground features, but I\'ll be danged if I can ever manage to do that on top of everything else I\'m trying to do at the same time while landing.

Oh, I\'ve had several good landings. Not routine, yet, by any means.

[Zephram Kerman]

...check to see if you\'re coming down on a lump or a slope. It\'s very hard to tell when you\'re looking down from above, though...

That\'s why I try to pick a landing spot on the limb of the daylit side. Mostly for the exaggerated lander shadow, but also because the terrain shadows help a lot.

I had never noticed the bouncy legs problem, nor legs sticking to the surface. But I have noticed similar phenomena on the launch pad and the runway. Even on Minmus, using the tiny rover and four propane tank nozzles to return home, the craft can only 'unstick' from the surface if the wheels are retracted, never while rolling. Watching other folk\'s spaceplane designs, it seems to be about the ratio of mass to wheels. A heavy craft can lift off normally if it has lots of wheels, but it gets 'stuck in the mud' with only three.

[Vanamonde]

That\'s why I try to pick a landing spot on the limb of the daylit side.

That\'s a good idea, if you\'re patient enough. Most of the time I\'m buzzing low over the surface and say, 'That looks like a scenic spot. I\'ll land there! BURN!!!' (That last part\'s the engine noise. I don\'t actually say it.) ;D

[Markus Reese]

The bouncey leg problem is something I experienced in the early days of my flights. This is due to the horizontal velocity on landing. The leg hooks and flips the rocket over. Can watch my vid here of my minimus landing to get how I like to set up and get control in landing. Even though Minimus has alot less gravitational effect than Mun, the principles are the same. See part 3 of the playlist for landing.

[Scurge]

Nice Markus! Well, I finally did it after crashing several times and adding an RCS I landed on the mun. Unfortunately, I bounced twice and was able to recover and land, but I used up all the fuel I needed for the return to Kearth in the process. Now that I accomplished that using only stock parts, I suppose I can allow myself to play with the addons.

[Anachronda]

Unfortunately, I bounced twice and was able to recover and land, but I used up all the fuel I needed for the return to Kearth in the process.

That\'s when you have the crew open their *sealed* orders, which involve establishment of a Mun base.

[Markus Reese]

That\'s when you have the crew open their *sealed* orders, which involve establishment of a Mun base.

Makes me think of the kerbal web comic to that point. I love the art and comedy they do up.

http://www.kerbalcomics.com/2012/06/22/episode-ten-stranded-squared/

The most recent one makes me laugh each time

[Zyorg004]

I don\'t know if anyone has mentioned it to ya, but those nose cones on top of your rockets don\'t make any difference as I have tested this earlier. all it does is add more weight which = more fuel burnt!

[Scurge]

Yeah, I kinda figured that one out. Hope in future releases it would help with aerodynamics and thus make them more than cosmetic, which is why I kept them on there after realizing that they were nothing but anchors to Kearth.