Search the Community
Showing results for tags '8-ball'.
Found 1 result
-
So I've built myself my first "space ship". It's a MK3 core fuselage with 2.25m parts attached along the sides to create a wider base, the parts running "along" the main body. I've got the sides of those lined with Thud engines pointed "down" when it is sitting flat/ belly down to the planet surface, and an obscene number of landing struts to support it when it does touch down. The top of the vessel is also lined with parachutes for descent into any kind of atmosphere, though I think that engine braking can be pretty solid on most planets. My current mission is a trip to and from Duna with landings on Minmus and Ike to refuel before making the jump into Solar orbit to set up the transfers. What I'm bumping into is any tricks to manage the landings. My first thought was to simply tell the pilot to align the ship to the the "Radial" vector in the gimbal and hold that position on the way down. The problem is that I set the gimbal to measure relative to the surface, I lose the the Radial option. Usually when I do a "butt first" landing, I just tell my pilot to align the ship Retrograde and go from there, burning as needed to slow to a nice touch down. Last night I managed a landing "by hand" holding the artificial horizon steady and eyeballing the "translation" vectors to be sure I was coming "straight down". Eventually I'd love to master the landing of coming in at an angle, burning the belly engines just before landing to slow significantly, turning it flat, and then dropping down. For now I'm only as good as burning Retrograde until I come to a near stop, dropping straight at the surface, and flipping over to a Belly Flop before impact and burning the belly engines there.
