Enture

Oh. That's embarassing for me... ok then, I'm off for 3 days or so of intense landing training.

That's it, I don't wanna play anymore. Ok, calm down Jeb, I was kidding! Seriously, holy wow, what a landing! How can you even do that? I've yet to do my first landing without tipping over... I guess you play with a joystick?

I usually use a 260km orbit as my typical parking orbit in preparation of TMI/TmI burns; but there's no special reason for it, it's just a habit. I read several people saying they only went to 100km orbits for their burns, however I would try to be at least 155km high, so the game stops updating Kerbin's surface, which causes a slight lag. I guess there's no such thing as an ideal orbit (fellows rocketeers, correct me if I'm wrong!): you may save energy by staying on a lower orbit, but only to need more later during the TMI burn. Certainly the "burn at munrise" method doesn't work anymore at a certain altitude, but that's the sole impact I can think of.

So those thrust indications were kN indeed, it explains part of my problem. But of course, if I use 0.166 instead of 1.628 for Munar gravity acceleration, I won't get very far (was mistaken by the 1.628m/s^2=0,166g thing)... Well, thanks for the clarification! Back to designing my minimal Minmus lander now... EDIT: @Cykyrios, yeah, this lander's ascent stage is *slightly* overpowered... It did save at least 9 Kerbals' lives though, when operating emergency landing aborts at extremely low altitudes.

I've got yet another question, AncientAstronaut: this time concerning thrust: thrust is the force created when firing our rocket engines. Good. At liftoff (let's say on a body without atmosphere), it has to be greater than the weight of my rocket to actually leave the ground: Thrust>m(rocket)*g(body). BUT then I should never manage to lift off a 30t lander from the Mun using only 3 stock radial engines: the engines give me 80x3=240N thrust, while my munar weight remains 30000x0.166=4980N! And yet I can do it. (Same thing with all the rockets I applied the calculation to). So am I missing something obvious, or are the KSP thrust values given in another unit, like kN or something, or...? Would be handy to be able to do the calculation, as we could then design really minimalistic landers without running the risk of stranding Kerbals everywhere...

So true! I decided to put some real math and orbital physics in my rockets' conception yesterday (+actually being a physics student, it really can do no harm, can it?), and moments ago the first result of it, my Amandil-2X test flight, splashed down east of KSC: after having been brought to LKO by a rocket designed just to do this, and not more, this spacecraft consisting of a 3-crew pod and a single 1600L fuel tank + 2m 909-engine went all the way to a 5km-high circularized Munar orbit and back, with 100L of fuel to spare! Wouldn't I have done the math before that I wouldn't have believed it. EDIT: in fact, for my ∆v-budget, I used the 900m/s for TMI mentionned in the first post, but then it was all approximations to figure out how much ∆v I might need to achieve the 5km Munar orbit. Turned out to be a good approximation, but I was wondering yesterday after reading Kosmo-not's interplanetary travel planning guide: is there a way to calculate "precisely" the ∆v required to go from a given Kerbin orbit to a given Mun orbit, or are there too many factors to consider? Yep, thanks, and keep up the good work!

I'm sitting at my desk, lost in awe and amazement at how a game can bring people to do real math and physics for the sake of just doing it. This piece of programming there, it's AWESOME! Congrats on you three, and thanks! +1 for the sticky-proposal

...well, here we go. Thanks what-the! Didn't remember the atmosphere's density would be so high, though. I mean, it's already scary what kind of speeds Kerbin's atmosphere can eat up, so imagine it 5x denser! I can already here Jeb: "Chutes? Chutes for what? Screw the chutes! If anything, then moar boosters!"

If I remember correctly, Nova said a couple of weeks ago that Eve would have 2g gravity (either he said it in this thread, or on the comments of his development album). But I also read somewhere (can't remember where, to be honest... it's a shame) that Eve's surface gravity would be 1.35g. Seems it will be higher than Kerbin's gravity, in any case!

Oh. I'm a regular user from another forum, where it is bad practice not to search through older threads and using those if their topic is similar, to keep the number of threads as low as possible; that's why I acted that way. But OK, I'll change my habits on the KSP forums then... :-) Thanks for your answers; I know my retrograde indicator should be on the vertical point, but should I use my Orbit-retrograde indicator, or my Surface-retrograde indicator?

Ok, bringing this thread back to life with a few questions... I get what the method to kill horizontal velocity is, however no matter how hard and carefully I try (with main engine or RCS), I always still end up with 4 to 6 m/s horizontal velocity upon landing, causing my lander to tip over. So how do you manage to kill that velocity entirely? Am I missing something? Should I have my velocity display and pro-/retrograde markers on the "Orbit" position or "Surface"position to use them efficiently during this phase? Thanks for your help!

My first Mün landing, after 6 failed attempts (you know, like: "oh, I did I just jettison my lander stage at 1.5km from the surface?...")! Here are Jeb, Bill and Bob and their *slightly* fallen over 2-stage lander: Hearing about the situation, KSC flight controllers & scientists didn't lose their self-control, and announced the successful landing of the Tsiolkovsky Permanent Munar Research Base at the press conference. Kerbal style. Meanwhile, Jeb wondered: "what if I get under it and use my EVA-pack?...": Finally, an oddly familiar picture: Jeb on the Mün, with Kerbin high up in the sky: So yeah. Now to design a rescue mission (and learn how to kill my horizontal speed more efficiently).

Well... I don't really have the time for that, sadly. What I *do* have, on the other hand, is news about my 5th münar landing attempt. Aborted 1,5km above the münar surface, when the landing stage got jettisoned, victim of a very bad staging sequence (needless to say, the engineers responsible for this got fired). For a little while, Jeb seemed willing to attempt landing with the ascent stage, before Bill and Bob managed to take over the commands, tie Jeb to its chair, and bring the ship safely back home.

Good evening, fellows Rocket Scientists! I'm Enture, Berliner physics student of french nationality and big, BIG space enthusiast ever since I was a kid! I stumbled over KSP about a month ago, completely by accident, while watching a N1-related Youtube video; 1 hour later I achieved my first Low Kerbin Orbit, and those last few days I discovered the wonders of the KSP forums, so here we go! :-) So far I couldn't play as much as I would've wanted to, but I've had a lot of fun already, and the potential in that lies in future updates and mods is just mind-blowing for the space enthusiast and student I am. LKO, Mün and Minmus orbits and transfers all are routine now, next steps are powered landings, precision landings and Kerbol orbits (preparing for 0.17!). Currently I'm trying hard to land on the Mün (with a crew of 3), but my 4 serious attempts so far all experienced various problems: -1st try, the "Kerbaac Newton": Went to LKO just fine, experienced spontaneous and catastrophic engine/decoupler failure 6 seconds into the TMI burn. The crew barely made it out alive, and operated a successful emergency deorbit and reentry, only to see the chutes being ripped off the top of the capsule 500m above the sea. RIP. -2nd try, "Kerbaac Newton 2", revised design: A flawless flight, where each and every step went better than expected. However, at a mere 2km from the münar surface, the crew realizes that the KSC engineers screwed up badly: the lander only has 1 leg! The ascend stage is fired right away, and the Bill, Bob and Jeb make it back safely, although somewhat disappointed. -3rd try, "Kerbolas Kopernic": Forgetting to raise your munar orbit back to 50km after a 5km-high reconnaissance orbit, and instead deorbiting right away is a bad idea. RIP Kerbals. -4th try, "Kerbert Einstein": The 2nd stage smashed in the TMI engine upon stage separation, while not even in LKO. Mission aborted. So yeah, wasn't that lucky so far, but I'm optimistic, and it's so much fun anyway! I look forward to reading you all on the forums. Enture.