Help with Shuttle mission planning.

[ArmchairPhysicist]

My latest endeavor has been to build very large shuttles capable of putting anything short of other giant shuttles in orbit. I've gotten the craft design down, but the whole point of a shuttle is the high cost savings of reusablity. I can get to orbit, do stuff, and prepare for the return deorbit. My trouble comes in with figuring out when and where I should deorbit to land back at KSC. I almost always overshoot or come up short and land in the mountains. Any tips?

[Tex_NL]

18 minutes ago, ArmchairPhysicist said:

I almost always overshoot or come up short and land in the mountains. Any tips?

Yes, practice.

Pay close attention to where you make your burn, how big your burn is and how low you drop your Pe, your AoA (angle of attack) during re-entry and finally where you end up.
On the next attempt try to do everything the same except for one factor and see how that affects your landing location.

The burn location and Pe altitude are the main factors that determine your landing location. If you overshoot make your burn sooner or drop your Pe lower. AoA during re-entry can be used to fine tune your path during flight.

Edited July 29, 2017 by Tex_NL

[Gargamel]

What tex said. 

Quick save about 1/2 orbit before the KSP, and try different reentry speeds and angles. 

I'm horrible at making spaceplanes, I can only get them to function in LKO, but one of my design goals is to have a quantity of liquid fuel left over for the mouth air breathers to have some oomph left for landing. 

I usually do my burn over the last desert peninsula, and then fly in from there.  It usually brings me to controllable flight just on the other side of the mountains, about 15k-20k up. 

Edited July 29, 2017 by Gargamel

[fourfa]

Try placing a waypoint at your preferred deorbit burn point, to use as a reference each time.  I find that's it's not hard to be consistent with your deorbit burn dV, your angle of attack thru reentry, etc.  But just going by eye, the location of the maneuver node is pretty variable.

That said - my shuttle style craft at the moment has a pair of jet engines and enough liquid fuel for some crossrange capability, and even the ability to wave off a botched approach and circle around for a second pass.  More fun (for me) than innumerable F5/F9 trying to get the deorbit perfect.

Edited July 29, 2017 by fourfa

[Vanamonde]

This question about how to play the game has been moved to Gameplay Questions.