xenu

It's not so hard to land the Buran, it did take me several attempts and many smashed orbiters on the runway but here is what i do... Don't attempt to land at night, sometimes it can't be helped using the landing guidance but if you find yourself re-entering orbit on the dark side i'd go around for another try (if you can). If you do land at night, you won't see the runway until the last second and by which time you will miss it completely. Once in a circular orbit, or docked with a station, I fire up the landing guidance and target KSC. I then wait until it's just entered the atmosphere, and hit the gear button (twice for some reason on the Buran model) You should see the gears drop, and the airbrakes start to open. I then turn off landing guidance, point the spacecraft in the right direction using only the RCS and then hit the SAS when the nose of the orbiter is aimed at the sea. KSC is usually hidden just behind a mountain range at this point, so aim for the sea beyond it. For the next few minutes, gliding into KSC you can adjust your heading and orientation it bit by bit using RCS and then turn the SAS back on When you reach a few hundred meters off the ground its time to start pulling up gently, until you are just a few feet off the runway and this is the part where its almost pure luck.. you want to drop down gently by pulling up and then letting go and pulling up hard. If you got it right, you should be on the runway at which point you need to let go of the flight controls and deploy the 'chutes.. if you bounced on the runway and flew up again, don't worry.. just drop gently... Hope it helps you land it, I have also cheated a few times and had infinite fuel on but I found the above method actually lets me land Buran as close to automated as possible. I don't think Buran ever flew with a crew on board, so would be cool to figure out an automated landing system for it.