Tips on how to land on the Mun at the same spot repeatedly.

[Eyekonn]

Hello fellow astronauts!

I have been playing KSP for a little over a week now and I have made my first landing on the Mun and return to Kerbin in my own crafted vessel. I have to say it was a great feeling of accomplishment of making on own design of rocket, landing on the Mun, then bringing my Kerbal safely back to his planet. Now I cannot get enough of this game. I have now set my sights on practicing landing on the Mun in the same spot in preparation to set up a Mun base. My question is if any experienced players have some tips/hints for a young astronaut and other new players who are attempting the same thing? Thank you for any help!

Knowledge is power!

Gods speed!

P.S. Here is my rocket I used for my first landing/return any tips/hints on how to build a more efficient lander would be greatly appreciated as well!

[Vanamonde]

Moved to gameplay questions.

For precision landings, I like to set the camera looking past my ship at the target at about a 45 degree angle from the ground. From this vantage, it's easy to see if the ship is drifting. If low, throttle up. If high, turn retrograde and brake. Left/right are obvious. Though to make that easier, I rotate my ship so that left on the screen is left for steering as well.

[lammatt]

if i am to land at about the same spot on Mun,

- i'd do my initial descend in a way that the crashing spot is a little bit behind my target landing spot

- when the lander (almost) flies pass the zenith of my landing spot, i kill my surface horizontal speed ASAP, so that the lander is moving almost vertically exclusively.

- than i proceed to try to find flat spot and land.

[MKI]

Welcome to KSP! Glad to hear your liking it

Landing accurately isn't an exact science. Its one of the few areas i believe Humans just wont be able to do extremely efficiently. But there are some tips on getting close, or really close to your target.

You must remember a few things though.

1. atmospheric targets(kerbin) are MUCH harder than things in a vaccum(the mun). This is with or without parachutes, as you must take drag into account in slowing down.

2. Design your Lander with human error in mind, such as not to little thrust where landing burns take to long. A wide base so you can land on a decent slope etc.

3. Bring enough fuel for human error. I over design a lot of my landers with extra fuel to account for my own flying errors. You can't stress this enough, as without fuel you have limited options in landing and could possible have it crash if you run out!

Now onto learning a method on landing.

This is how i land on the mun and its very procedural and not extremely efficient, but if you do it right you should be able to land very close to your target most of the time.

Ill assume your already over the Mun, and have a target on the ground you want to land near.(such as a flag or a mun base)

Ill also assume you are not in a high orbit, for instance near the edge of the Mun's SOI. I stay near 50km for my Mun orbits. Just keep a set distance with all your landings, so you don't have to account for changes when you want to land again. Ill also assume your target is close to the Equator and you don't need to change your orbit to compensate (that's another story!)

1.(quicksave) De-orbit around 90 degrees from your target, this should make your orbit an arc. Keep the Blue line PAST the target, so you would overshoot it if you did nothing else. If you haven't done so set your landing spot as a target if you can, you will use this reference later. You should have time to adjust this later.

2. Make a node OVER your targeted landing zone. Its not an exact science, just get it close.

3. Pull retrograde and make your orbit a near line, i try not to make it a complete line as the Retro and Pro get mixed up and it can be a pain to deal with.

4. Take note of your burn time, time to Node and ending altitude of the node above the target. Here on out is more on the situation presented after you have completed the previous steps. If you are extremely high above the target, like 20km for example, you may want to retrograde now and lower your orbit. If its very very low, you may want to do the opposite. Its better to be safe than cutting it close, its ok if you are high up rather than lower than your target...(your dead)

5. Now you should be nearing the time to Node next to the NavBall. Here is where things get a little hairy. You should have enough time to node to do the burn. You have a few options, unlike a transfer or an orbital insertion burn where you try to get half the DV before and after the node, you can do it all BEFORE or BETWEEN the node. It is more upon your personal judgement. Just remember your height of the node, it should give you an idea of when the ground is coming up when your doing the burn.

6. focus your retro burn near the HORIZON. You can aim directly for the retro, or the Node. But your using the Node more as a guide, not a direct path to land. Your goal here is to bring your Retrograde to the TOP of the navball (white point at the top of the blue side of the navball). Aiming for the Horizon will kill your Horizontal velocity before your vertical. So the Retrograde should move tward the top of the Navball, and you start falling straight down.

7. You should be going only down to the surface with time to prepare yourself for landing. Depending on how well you did the previous steps depends on how roughly close you are. If you are above the target, goodjob! If your not (your probably not on top of it lol) your going to have to do some "flying" to get closer.

7B. If your "close"(close depends on how much fuel you have left to use to get closer, if your cutting it close you may not want to do this.)but want to get closer, use your reference to the target (you selected it on step one) and point your ship toward it while firing some retrograde. You will slow down some, but want to increase your Horizontal toward the target. Think of a helicopter flying to something. Try keep your ship from descending to fast. Reference your map if you want to make a further journey and use the Blue line as a reference to where your going. This "flying" part is based mainly off experience and your lander design. Just keep a safe altitude as you glide toward your target, take your time in getting closer. This is where the "human error" fuel comes in, along with flying it conservatively (burst your engines enough to keep you moving, without flingin yourself around in some direction to fast.)

Once your close enough to it, slow your horizontal(think of a helicopter stopping to hover) and prepare for vertical decent.

If your REALLY far off, is suggest reloading from orbit and trying again.

8. So you should be above where you want to land and you can take if from here.

Goodluck!

Edited March 30, 2014 by MKI

[lammatt]

and yes, some spare fuel is always a good idea.

(and another important tip is remember to SWITCH YOUR SPEED DISPLAY TO SURFACE MODE)

[daniu]

P.S. Here is my rocket I used for my first landing/return any tips/hints on how to build a more efficient lander would be greatly appreciated as well!

http://i.imgur.com/VJxoJ9Y.png

I would suggest putting the radial tanks lower and attach the landing gear there. This way, the craft is less likely to tilt over.

I have a similar lander, but what I did is add 3 909s on the outer tanks rather than one in the center, to be able to add thrust quickly (because one late large burn is more efficient than a long one all the way down). Not sure if that makes the additional weight worth it though; probably not. Thinking of replacing them with a set of one of the tiny engine types.

[magnemoe]

Train on Minmus first, as the gravity is far lower things go slower. Mun work the same way however you have to do longer burns and things go faster.

You might want to train with Alt-F12 and infinite fuel,

[magnemoe]

I would suggest putting the radial tanks lower and attach the landing gear there. This way, the craft is less likely to tilt over.

I have a similar lander, but what I did is add 3 909s on the outer tanks rather than one in the center, to be able to add thrust quickly (because one late large burn is more efficient than a long one all the way down). Not sure if that makes the additional weight worth it though; probably not. Thinking of replacing them with a set of one of the tiny engine types.

My standard design is four of the 45 liter tanks and the landing legs on the drop tanks, this let me drop the legs. I sometimes add extra tanks if I use the lander engine to go to Mun.

The 909 has more than enough power for the mission, they weight 0.5 ton so you don't want to many.

[Skorpychan]

Lander: Wide base, a decent amount of legs, a good amount of fuel. Maybe add single-point RCS thrusters to the top of the craft in case you land wonky.

Preparation: If you leave a spot and want to go back there, leave a flag as a bookmark.

The descent: Make your orbit so it's over the target area. As you pass it, burn retrograde until your orbital path nears the area you want to land in. Then burn horizontal only as you get over it.

As you descend, use the engines to slow your craft, and adjust your trajectory. You're basically falling out the sky at this point, so bear that in mind.

As you near the ground, start the suicide burn. Straight-up vertical burn, full throttle, lowering it as you slow down. Ideally, you should be running out of velocity at a few hundred meters above the surface, then dropping down gently from there. Let it down gently. This uses more fuel, but it's precise.

What to do if you miss:

By a lot: Suborbital hop, using the same procedure.

By a little: Shorter suborbital hops, making sure the craft's pointed the right way.

By a few meters: Say 'to hell with it' and just work with it.

[Grover]

I personally prefer to fly by instruments, so you need a flag or a ship to target (in KSP, not mechjeb or anything like that), then you need to put your orbit over the target in the map view, and lower your orbit to pass a few km over the target. As i descend, i do a little mental maths, calculating the acceleration of my craft, as well as my predicted speed at my burn point, and csn therefore work out my total braking burn time and the distance i will cover (how long i need to burn at the horizon to reduce my speed to zero), then add a little bit on for safety and start burning at full whack. As you get close to the target, your navball should change to target mode (click the window above the ball if it isnt), showing which direction the target is and your relative velocity. More importantly, it shows the negatives of these (which way to point to look directly away from the target and which way to burn to kill your velocity) which i then use to adjust my course. If i adjust my heading, i can push the negative velocity vector on top of the negative targerlt heading, because if im burning backwards, the negative velocity vector will move away from the crosshair on the navball.

From here, just keep the velocity vector away from the blue on the navball (point up a little so you dont crash) and when you come to a stop, pitch up to enter a hover, and if you did your maths well earlier on, you should be within a couple of km away from your target, which you can then hover over to and land as close as you need (using the extra fuel you brought as suggested by most people here)

[John FX]

Myself I quicksave, do a test landing which tells me the distance from staring the landing burn to the landing spot then I start burning that far from where I want to stop. A little extra fuel for landing adjustments and you can land where you want. I have a Mun lander that you have to start burning about 63Km from your landing spot but you have a 2-3km area to choose a landing in at least.

Like this.

[Claw]

Hello fellow astronauts!

I have been playing KSP for a little over a week now and I have made my first landing on the Mun and return to Kerbin in my own crafted vessel. I have to say it was a great feeling of accomplishment of making on own design of rocket, landing on the Mun, then bringing my Kerbal safely back to his planet. Now I cannot get enough of this game. I have now set my sights on practicing landing on the Mun in the same spot in preparation to set up a Mun base. My question is if any experienced players have some tips/hints for a young astronaut and other new players who are attempting the same thing? Thank you for any help!

Knowledge is power!

Gods speed!

P.S. Here is my rocket I used for my first landing/return any tips/hints on how to build a more efficient lander would be greatly appreciated as well!

http://i.imgur.com/VJxoJ9Y.png

I must say... If you've only been playing a week and you designed/flew/landed this thing on the Mun, then you're already doing really well!

There will always be all kinds of tweaks and modifications people do to their landers, but if you aren't having problems flying/landing this then stick with your gut feelings. If you haven't landed this one on a slope yet you might find it's a bit top heavy, but it still looks great.

If you're looking to land at the same spot on the Mun, I usually start by getting into a fairly low, circular orbit. Then I drop my PE so that it's a few km above my target area (around 3 to 5km or lower depending on skills/practice and terrain clearance).

As you approach the landing spot (near PE), burn retrograde to kill horizontal (orbital) speed.

The altitude available due to setting your PE height will allow you time to reorient as the camera flips and you can lower yourself to the desired spot.

As you get better, some people descend fairly ballistic and aim the trajectory at the landing spot, then burn hard right before impacting the ground. I find this a little harder to start off with because the planet/moon rotates so it's a bit harder to "aim" the ballistic landing spot in the right location. Also, timing the engine burn is rather unforgiving. Too early or late and it turns into a mess...

If you're thinking about making a Munar base, a lot of people also use wheeled rover movers to get all the parts together. Here's a thread discussing a modular Munar base with rover assembly. There are lots of ways to do what you want. Try them out and see what works best for you.

Good Luck!

EDIT: Oh yes. And the thing I wish I knew about when I was first exploring the Mun and trying to figure out how to land.... Quicksave (F5) & Quickload (F9) (if you didn't know already...) Quicksave will save your game right where you are. Quickload will go back to where ever you last quicksaved. So if you want lots of practice landing, get your lander into a good orbit right before you're ready to practice. Then quicksave. Now you can practice multiple landings at different approach styles without having send multiple new missions.

Edited March 30, 2014 by Claw

[Tank Buddy]

My method is not the best, but you could always do it Scott Manley Style:

~4:50

I drop my Periapsis to 5 Km over my target on the Mun's surface by burning on the other side of the Mun. (A Maneuver node helps) You can change inclination when you are halfway to periapsis so the orbit passes over your target. Depending on your velocity and TWR, you will need to start burning earlier or later, so It's pretty much guess-and-test (at least with the first attempt on each ship). But you should be able to land withing 1000m, and within 200 if you get better. Or you could do it Mr. Manley's way.

[Taki117]

If you watch

by Scott Manley it will tell you everything you need to know for pinpoint landings.

[iStickyDuck]

If you want to build a Mun base try using small rovers to position the base parts Personally, I would choose minmus due to it's low gravity and large flat areas