Landing a spaceplane?

[Khrissetti]

I\'ve finally managed to build a spaceplane which actually flies. I\'ve crossed the home continent on the way to KSC2 (hopefully, though the actual destination is just landing it somewhere in a fashion I can walk away from!) and am currently over the ocean. Only problem is, I\'ve never actually landed a craft with wings before. Any tips to stop me becoming yet another smear on the landscape?

This is the currently unnamed beast (why bothering naming something you expect will be dead within 30 seconds?)

[E. F. Kranz]

Sure! Watch you vertical descent rate, keep it <5 at touchdown. Keep your speed as low as possible. Keep your wings level (good luck - hope you have a joystick and a steady hand).

[Khrissetti]

Well, it wasn\'t quite KSC2, but the \'Wright\' as I\'ve christened her, is down. So gently that I didn\'t even realise we\'d touched down until the velocity dropped off.

[A Fat Pokemon]

You people land your planes forwards? I land mine backwards! (Seriously, I do)

[Bluejayek]

Good job! I have yet to successfully land a plane. The closest I came was a glider landing where I touched down safely, and then was slowing to a stop, but I crashed into the runway (I had missed and was touched down directly beside. Incidentally, the engine on the plane had broken off earlier when I did a roll which was why I had to abort and land.

[rasheed]

I have land a few of my orbital planes including my skylon space-plane which makes orbit.

Water-Landings, not so much. After a successful mission of deploying a satellite and rendezvous a Geo satellite of mine. I overshot the KSC by 40-50 Km landing in the ocean. At impact the wings got torn off and flipped upside down.

Attachment shows condition of the space-plane.

Other Attachment shows full skylon space-plane

[the_bT]

So after some messing around, I wondered if it might be possible to do a plane style touchdown on one of the methane lakes on minmus with near orbital speed...

There is only one way to find out, said Jeb.

If you have that kind of speed, it might even be possible to do the maneuver without rcs... but that would require insane timing.

Turns out, you can\'t really brake with that speed and minmus\' gravity. Once you\'re out of lake, you\'re in trouble.

If you touch down with around 90 m/s it becomes possible to stop the craft, but it is always difficult.

It\'s in space, it lands like a plane. Spaceplane ;P

[Vanamonde]

Are you talking about bringing your orbit into collision with the surface, so to speak, and then braking to a halt? I tried the opposite: driving to orbit, but it didn\'t work. Try switching your landing gear to the cart mod. I drove it across the lake surface at up to 430.9m/s under its own up power, and it was still handling pretty well and sticking to the surface. In fact, I couldn\'t get it to lift off despite clearly exceeding orbital speed. Somebody was telling me that it\'s got a bit of built-in down force, which defeated me, but might help you stay in contact with the surface while slowing. But use the reverse K key rather than the brake N key, because the brake tends to pitch it over on its nose.

By the way, it was still picking up speed when I ran out of lake bed and plowed into a hill, which did NOT serve as a launch ramp, as I had hoped. Kerbal science marches on.

[fowlplaychiken]

I have found that landing on Kerbal is easy enough, but landing on Minmus or the Moon 'airplane-style' is extremely difficult. I optimized my plane for VTOL takeoff/landing (but gave it the option of normal takeoff and landing, which is does fine) because I found that landings without atmosphere were best done the same way as rockets- Backwards with counterthrust.

I imagine you can land the normal airplane way with heavy RCS thruster use, but it is just not worth the effort. I usually land backward and then tilt the nose forward last minute to land on my wheels; or just land it like a rocket ship on the landing legs I put on back.