Mechjeb assisted landing

[Nostur]

I have a really simple question, I need MechJeb to kill vertical speed for me, so I can land easily without breaking anything, however in Translatron, I don't understand which button should I use, or even if to use translatron, so far I've been using only Smart A.S.S. to keep my nose pointed up. Does anyone have some tips for me? Thanks

[Nostur]

Alright, once more I smashed in the surface, I always approach the ground around 10 m/s, but since I seem to always get high horizontal speed, I just crash in the terrain, what should I do, even without MechJeb, to land straight down, not sideways?

[EndlessWaves]

Burn towards the retrograde marker, that'll cancel horizontal velocity.

[Nostur]

But due to the moons rotation, am I gonna land perfectly vertically? Or will the horizontal velocity gain again ?

[Sputnik-1]

To land, follow retrograde down. you should be burning at ~2km from the surface, safe touchdown speeds are under 5 m/s

The Mun rotating isn't the cause for your horizontal rotation, it's you just getting out of an orbit where you were heading sideways.

Also, I'd really recommend not using mechjeb, it's worth it to learn how to actually play the game.

[cloudflint]

To land with mechjeb I generally I use the Smart A.S.S to point me retrograde (RETR GRAD button) for slowing myself down then when I get closer and need a bit more control I use the Translatron to control the vertical speed more accurately by using the "KEEP VERT" button and putting in a negative value of about -100 in the speed and have the "Kill H/S" button selected, that will restrict the vertical speed to 100m/s and kill any horizontal movement. I then drop the vertical speed to -10 and finally -1 for the last few meters.

Mechjeb WILL get you killed however if you rely on it without knowing how the underlying manoeuvres should actually be performed, if your going to use mechjeb its a good idea to get your navball set to surface mode so you can keep an eye on it (Your retrograde marker should be straight up at 90 degrees, if it starts to wander that means you are building up horizontal speed) and also keep an eye on your vertical speed (The ones in IVA view can be seen much more accurately than the one on the HUD) and radar altitude gauges (NEVER trust the altimeter!). I would say roughly half the time ive noticed something going slightly wrong and had to manually correct when landing with mechjeb.

[jgkamat]

This is how I land (without mechjeb (with mechjeb you can just use the landing autopilot))

Point retrograde.

enable normal ASAS

Turn on thrust to full

Go to map

Wait until the two points of the orbit arc are close as possible (or until they start to drift apart)

Point retrograde again.

Fire thrust to slow yourself down, make sure to keep yourself retrograde.

Land at 12m/s or less

Landing without mechjeb is so much more fun/rewarding than with mechjeb, I suggest you try it

If you want to change your navball to a surface refrerence frame, you can just click on the "orbit" name above it

[Nostur]

I do most of my maneuvres by hand, however mechjeb is handy because of Smart A.S.S. and to make last-sec corrections. And I use mechjeb to see, how to perform some maneuvre, like landing etc., so I can do it next time by hand. Anyways thanks for the tips guys

[ManFlu]

mechjeb on the Mun is painful at the best of times for me, as a new guy to this game I actually do find it easier without mechjeb. when i use MJ it flips me upside down last second which is stressful. also i find ASAS and RCS are key to those last minute corrections, just watch asas doesnt burn all the rcs fuel off

[Cryocasm]

I use MechJeb primarily for Smart A.S.S, it really helps in being 100% precise (which I kind of OCD over). I occasionally use the ascent autopilot if I'm feeling too lazy to actually care about sending whatever into space.

Other than that, I do most of my flying by hand.

[Curs0r]

I like to keep mechjeb on my vehicles mostly because of its ability to auto-handle some of the time warping. The auto-landing I have used a few times, and I almost always have to correct it before landing. That's ok, it is accurate for the most part. Just bear in mind that the auto landing will always do a much better job if you put yourself into a circular orbit around the planet or moon first.

[SDIR]

I have a question. Does anybody have tips on how to land accurately? So far most of my landings have been within 3km of my target which is fine, but any tips on how to get closer after touching down without using too much RCS? Like, within 200 m or so?

[MR4Y]

Both my Munar and Minar landings were made without Mechjeb. I might not come down completeley vertical, but that's not that lethal on Minmus at least.

[PringleMan]

I have a question. Does anybody have tips on how to land accurately? So far most of my landings have been within 3km of my target which is fine, but any tips on how to get closer after touching down without using too much RCS? Like, within 200 m or so?

Honestly the only way to do this is to just make so many landings that you know where it will land. You DO have some degree of control over how you go about your landing. You can burn at low throttle for longer earlier on, so that if need be you have the juice to slam on the brakes later so to speak. Mostly just do lots of little burns to tweak your landing while you are coming in. An ASAS is vital in this respect, to keep a heading steady.

When it comes to landing in atmosphere though, the only way to learn how much your trajectory is going to change is to make so many landings you just know where to aim. There are not nice tools to do it by hand really. By the point you are using calculators to help plan the landing, you might as well just give mechjeb control.

[dcon930]

Mechjeb helps you learn how to play the game. I must have watched Mechjeb do an orbital rendezvous fifty times before I got my own correct, but I never would have gotten my own rendezvous correct without MJ.

[technicalfool]

Posting in very old threads, otherwise known as "necro" posting, is frowned upon unless there is some kind of important and relevant information that needs to be added to the thread. It's much preferred that you create a new thread in the appropriate forum section.

And with that, I'll close this thread to prevent it from being raised from the dead a second time.