Tip Over Recovery

[Red Shirt]

I can't recall seeing this discussed before...

You have a perfect mission going until your chosen landing site turns out to be less level than you thought. You watch in horror as the ship slowly falls over on its side. Sometimes RCS or SAS applied in time can hold the craft upright. Usually this fails for me. Sure a lower and wider profile to start with would have been better, but it is too late. Now what? Any clever tricks you've learned? 

[Graveworks]

I've only learned 2 tricks that work for me; MechJeb Smart A.S.S or F9.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Graveworks

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I've actually rolled a fairly circular lander down an entire hill slowly and carefully until I got it to the bottom where I propped the lander up against the hill on one side and tipped it back on its feet lol. Might not be possible in your situation...

Do you play with quicksaves enabled? Could always save a few times on the way down in the future?

Individually raising/lowering the landing legs or locking the suspension may help you as well, best of luck!

[steuben]

Mods: hyperedit it up about 50 meters

Blackmagic: hack the persistence file

other ways:
- wedge your kebalnaut under the ship and jump/eva jet. or have him/her jump up and down on the other end.
- play with the legs, rcs, sas and main engines to get it up during a horizontal launch. watch your surface speed here.
- a... game crash... severely ... corrupts ... my save causing my to start over.

 

Edited December 11, 2015 by steuben

[katateochi]

I had a small mun lander tip over while on a career mission the other day. It didn't have RCS and it's SAS wasn't enough to right it.  But it was enough to roll it.  So I (very carefully) rolled it up a slight incline to the edge of a crater.  Got it right up to the edge and carefully turned it around to it was pointing over the edge and then launched.  Didn't break anything! 

Not the first time I've done things like this, although first time I used a crater's edge.  Usually I just roll it to the nearest slight incline and while pulling hard in whatever direction happens to be up, bring the engines up enough to get it moving along the ground, slowly enough not to break anything, fast enough to get a little "air" at the top of the incline.  The moment you leave the ground and have more pitch control, slam the throttle to full and hope like hell. 

[Red Shirt]

17 minutes ago, Graveworks said:

I've only learned 2 tricks that work for me; MechJeb Smart A.S.S or F9

I've not messed with MJ Smart A.S.S., what does it do and how do I use it?

15 minutes ago, steuben said:

Mods: hyperedit it up about 50 meters

Blackmagic: hack the persistence file

other ways:
- wedge your kebalnaut under the ship and jump/eva jet. or have him/her jump up and down on the other end.
- play with the legs, rcs, sas and main engines to get it up during a horizontal launch. watch your surface speed here.
- a... game crash... severely ... corrupts ... my save causing my to start over.

hyperedit is how I last handled it. It is just a game but I was looking for a more RL approach.

Wedging the kerbalnaut and jumping is the one I wondered about. The first time I used KAS I knocked an engine off my ship and almost turned the rocket over trying to attach a tube (obviously did not understand how it worked). Anyway this is worth a shot!

For the record, I don't currently have a tipped over vessel (or wessel as Chekov would say), just making plans for the eventual next time.

8 minutes ago, katateochi said:

The moment you leave the ground and have more pitch control, slam the throttle to full and hope like hell.

Ha. I've tried this more than a few times. You are a far better pilot than me. My attempts were... uhm... explodey. Cool, but explodey.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Red Shirt

[Graveworks]

1 hour ago, Red Shirt said:

I've not messed with MJ Smart A.S.S., what does it do and how do I use it?

I typically perform my landings manually, but have Smart ASS at the ready in Surface Level mode.  As soon as I touch down I can enable it if needed and it will attempt to hold the ship vertical, then I can lock suspension on the downhill side and set it down gently, or take off and find a better spot..  Mostly it buys you some time to analyze things and saves from accidentaly tipping in the wrong direction.  Still only limited to your ship's ability to hold itself upright though, so if the slope is too steep or your ship lacks adequate control not even MechJeb can save you.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Graveworks
clarity

[Fearless Son]

If you have powerful enough rotational torque, you can possibly flip the craft around.  It may not be geometrically favorable, resulting in a "roll" more than "flip", but there are things you can do with just that.  For example, variable geometry like landing legs can change the shape of the craft, letting you roll it in unusual ways.  This is particularly useful if you can lower and raise individual landing legs in the middle of a roll and possibly "bounce" from the force of it deploying.  This can in turn allow you more freedom to use your torque, or impart enough force for the RCS to right it, or just get pointing in approximately the right direction for the engines to lift the lander on minimal power so you can correct the orientation.  

Incidentally, I find SAS can be both a hindrance and a help while landing.  On the one hand, it helps keep the craft pointing in one direction.  On the other hand, the craft needs to "settle" on the ground to be stable and if the landing is not perfectly perpendicular to the surface (it almost never is) then the SAS might actually try to fight against the craft settling and overcompensate, making the craft more likely to tip than not.  It is good to get a feel for deactivating and re-activating the SAS as the craft lands.

[Sheppard]

Or you can cheat a little. Alt+F12 for the cheat menu, Hack gravity, turn your ship, unhack gravity and that is it.

[RocketPropelledGiraffe]

On low gravity worlds you can often use an EVA Kerbal to push the craft back up if you jump against the correct spot of the lander... it is dangerous, though, because most of the time I end up tipping the craft in the opposite direction.

 

 

[Gojira1000]

Verniers (KSPese "Vernors") ftw. You can often get back on your landing legs, or at least vertical enough to hop somewhere flatter.

[Red Shirt]

Kind of a rabbit trail: Us older folks may recall there being some concern when the Eagle landed of just how much dust was on the moon's surface and that the lander might just sink. I wonder if they had a contingency plan if they tipped? 

On topic:

14 minutes ago, Gojira1000 said:

Verniers (KSPese "Vernors") ftw. You can often get back on your landing legs, or at least vertical enough to hop somewhere flatter.

I've not used Vernors (drank plenty of it though!), but have considered low power engines radial attached up high for this purpose. Probably if I just located RCS thrusters a little more thoughtfully they would be sufficient on most moons. Also considered landing gear or airbreaks located near the top just to raise the ship from a tip  (similar idea to the edge of crater takeoff) but this adds weight. 

[MaxwellsDemon]

I had this happen on the Mun... and then the rescue vessel also crashed (for a different reason-- design defect), and both ships' crews had to be rescued by a third ship!

I considered trying to use Kerbal Attachment System as a pulley to haul the overturned lander upright, but ultimately just left it in place as a monument to poor planning.       I've made certain my landers have a much lower profile since then...

[Aethon]

 

[Plusck]

One time, I pushed gently up a slope then launched myself off a crater wall.

Ok, the flight profile immediately after that was less than optimal. And the cockpit recorder probably read "aargh up up comeon where's up argh turn turn thrust thust argh we're spinning press T OMG OMG OMG we're all gonna die" but I recovered. Eventually.

[Guest]

Maybe just send a probe first?

[Superfluous J]

@Aethon your post to me looks like a huge block of nothing. I block some images to save on bandwidth but that is a surprisingly large post even considering that.

[technion]

The trick I go with these days is.. build a lander that's unlikely to tip.

Below is my standard lander for most bodies.

 

[oglommi]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

@Aethon your post to me looks like a huge block of nothing. I block some images to save on bandwidth but that is a surprisingly large post even considering that.

Just to bloat, I recently got a 500/50 connection.

[colonel0sanders]

Last time this happened to me, Jeb had landed on Duna.  I was playing with no quickloads/no reverting/no crew respawns, and had just about unlocked the entire science tree (everything else was on normal difficulty) without losing a single crew member throughout the play-through.  Since I wasn't about to take any risks, Jeb got out and went a few hundred meters away to wait for rescue.  Luckily, the lander had a probe core on it, so I attempted to try to light the engine and pitch up.

 

Surprisingly, it worked!  I landed the ship, Jeb got back in, and they took off for home.  It seemed to be just that kind of mission, though, as my extra takeoff and landing burnt up too much fuel, and Jeb had to bail out part-way up from the Duna surface.  He managed to barely get into orbit with the EVA jetpack, and was successfully rescued, but all of the science and the surface sample was lost.

Edited December 11, 2015 by colonel0sanders

[The Optimist]

More reaction wheels m8

[Aethon]

Apparently the forum doesn't react well to gifs.  Sorry, I don't know haw to fix it.

[Zephram Kerman]

5 hours ago, Aethon said:

Apparently the forum doesn't react well to gifs.  Sorry, I don't know haw to fix it.

I can see one gif. Hey, pretty cool move! It should break the legs, of course, but it's KSP.

[Zyffyr]

The last time it happened to me, I was able to slide along the ground with my engine on absolute minimum throttle until I was pointing up the incline. At that point, I boosted the thrust and made sure to vector it down to get me airborne. It was very ugly but thank Jeb for engine gimbals. I did lose a solar panel and 2 of 4 landing gear to the damage from sliding.

[Skorpychan]

Reaction wheels are wonderful for this.

I was on the Mun last time this happened. I ended up retracting the landing gear and using the reaction wheels to wiggle the lander around to point the engine downhill, then tipped it up onto the engine nozzle before extending the gear.

That just made it roll over again, and down the hill until I hit the bottom. Then I had to sort of prop it against the side of the hill, rotate it to point the nose upwards, and use the engine to push me along and up the hill at low thrust until I could use thrust vectoring to tip upright and stay there long enough to settle on the legs.

I'm really considering belly-lander designs for future use. Especially because they'll be compatible with wheeled landing gear in case I mess up the horizontal velocity.