[QUESTION] How to land at the KSC runway from orbit?

[VincentMcConnell]

So I don\'t know if anyone has EVER done this, but I would like to know how to land at the KSC runway. I am currently about to land my first space shuttle from orbit, but it\'s in a giant field about half the world away. I CAN land on the Kerbal continent, but the pin point runway is a completely different story. If anyone can give me some exact procedures, that would be great. Also, is there anyway to practice landing spaceplanes without having to get them into orbit first? It takes a long time and I want to practice landing several times.

[ping111]

Of course we\'ve done it - we\'ve done it blindly from the Mun!

Sorry, can\'t help you there, though.

[VincentMcConnell]

Of course we\'ve done it - we\'ve done it blindly from the Mun!

Sorry, can\'t help you there, though.

So you say you\'ve landed at the KSC runway all the way from the mun (blindly), but you can\'t help? I highly doubt you\'re telling the truth...

Can I get someone with an honest answer?

[ping111]

So you say you\'ve landed at the KSC runway all the way from the mun (blindly), but you can\'t help? I highly doubt you\'re telling the truth...

Can I get someone with an honest answer?

I haven\'t, silly! We as in the community!

[Cykyrios]

I guess you would do it roughly the same way you deorbit a rocket, except you want to be lower so you can glide down (I usually have my rockets in a trajectory that overshoots KSC so the chute gets them within 10 km, which is not too bad). I\'d suggest trying to time your deorbit burn from 70 km so that your trajectory is displayed as slightly overshooting KSC and a few kilometers in the ocean. During reentry the trajectory will change, and then you want to glide to the runway.

I haven\'t flown a shuttle yet, but that\'s the way I\'d do it. Make sure you save before your deorbit burn so you can play with your timing until you feel comfortable enough to do this consistently, and everything should go well.

[White Owl]

Practice landing by building a small, simple airplane, and just... don\'t go to orbit. Launch, pitch forward, steer where you want to go. If your plane is stable and carries enough fuel, you should be able to launch, land, take off, land again, several times in one mission.

To get back to the runway, aim your deorbit to slightly overshoot KSC. As you get down into the lower, thicker, atmosphere you can then maneuver around and choose your landing spot.

[VincentMcConnell]

Practice landing by building a small, simple airplane, and just... don\'t go to orbit. Launch, pitch forward, steer where you want to go. If your plane is stable and carries enough fuel, you should be able to launch, land, take off, land again, several times in one mission.

To get back to the runway, aim your deorbit to slightly overshoot KSC. As you get down into the lower, thicker, atmosphere you can then maneuver around and choose your landing spot.

How do you take off horizontally? I\'ve only been able to take off while still on the launch pad>

[White Owl]

Throttle up, get the plane moving, and pitch back to raise the nose off the ground. As speed increases, so does lift, so the airplane should easily lift off the ground.

If your plane can\'t take off horizontally, then it needs more thrust, or more lift, or less mass, or less drag, or some combination of all of the above.

[Zephram Kerman]

I think he meant how to get the craft to the runway in the first place. This hasn\'t been implemented yet (in 0.14.4).

While I don\'t have a step-by-step procedure, I can think of a few tips that might help:

1) F5 quicksave just before your deorbit burn, so that you can do some trial-and-error,

2) set your trajectory to overshoot KSC and a few Km eastward to compensate for Kerbin\'s rotation,

3) MechJeb has a landing calculator (not intended for planes, but it should deorbit on time to get you close),

4) this sounds like an extreme challenge, so do some test flights to make sure your plane is stable throughout the various phases.

By the way, the techniques used by the real-life shuttle are just fascinating. The shuttle had (relatively) much more control of the reentry corridor than capsule-type craft like Mercury and Apollo. Basically they would trim the ship so that the angle-of-attack caused a constant 2-4 G, then kept doing rolls to steer the thing like a directional conduit borer.

[hubbazoot]

I managed to land at the KSP base...once. As of right now, it\'s really too much of a PITA until the trajectory calculator accounts for atmo deceleration.

The way I\'ve gotten close/done it is I start in a round orbit at ~75km. When I\'m on the opposite site of the planet from KSP, I start a deceleration burn until my PE is over KSP at ~50km. From there, I start my deceleration burn on the west coast of africa and 'shoot from the hip' from there until I land. General rule is: overshoot.

[Phoxtane]

I can theoretically put a plane just about anywhere on Kerbin. I fly the plane straight up, and adjust the trajectory to cross over the landing area. Your goal is to have a nice sloped path down. Done right, I can land entirely by gliding in or with a few tiny burns from the engines.

[hubbazoot]

I can theoretically put a plane just about anywhere on Kerbin. I fly the plane straight up, and adjust the trajectory to cross over the landing area. Your goal is to have a nice sloped path down. Done right, I can land entirely by gliding in or with a few tiny burns from the engines.

With a plane it was pretty straightforward, I\'ve been using stock parts.

[sal_vager]

How do you land a stock plane? I have a design that\'s a dream to fly but it only has room for one parachute, and that simply isn\'t enough to land without everything but the capsule exploding.

I had to stick the cart on my plane so it could land, and it now has landing lights too

[hubbazoot]

I managed to land at the KSP base...once. As of right now, it\'s really too much of a PITA until the trajectory calculator accounts for atmo deceleration.

The way I\'ve gotten close/done it is I start in a round orbit at ~75km. When I\'m on the opposite site of the planet from KSP, I start a deceleration burn until my PE is over KSP at ~50km. From there, I start my deceleration burn on the west coast of africa and 'shoot from the hip' from there until I land. General rule is: overshoot.

Use the rigid landing gear, powered descent.

[sal_vager]

Bugger, no can do, my planes rely on being empty for balance, I can get to the runway just fine but have no thrust, I\'m a glider.

[Zephram Kerman]

Bugger, no can do, my planes rely on being empty for balance, I can get to the runway just fine but have no thrust, I\'m a glider.

As it should be! A spaceplane should glide home. And safety margins are for humans.

[sal_vager]

Probably not the place for it but what the hell, here\'s my recent excursion to the secret spaceport in the mountains, It took ages to fine tune this little plane and now it flies without ASAS, it\'s just there as ballast.

[VincentMcConnell]

Probably not the place for it...

Whatever you want to share, you go ahead. I\'m not going to bitch at you like some people here for straying off topic. In fact, I like to do that sometimes.

[Elven_sword]

I\'ve landed my Component Space Shuttle right near the launchpad.

With no rudder, one wing, two engines, and no control surfaces. I lost my nosecone from crashing into the pad.

[Zephram Kerman]

Probably not the place for it but what the hell, here\'s my recent excursion to the secret spaceport in the mountains, It took ages to fine tune this little plane and now it flies without ASAS, it\'s just there as ballast.

Very nice excursion report. You definitely did the right thing to visit KSC2 in a spaceplane. I used a ballistic launcher to send a cart instead, and it took me waaaay too long to get anywhere close.

Just one thing... why is your nav ball made of mosaic tiles? Doesn\'t it take a lot of glue to update every time you turn? And where can I get one?

[sal_vager]

I\'d have loved to have landed my winged cart at KSC2 but the challenge on /r/kerbalspaceprogram was to do it fully stock, and also I wasn\'t supposed to have the navball up at all as it could have been used to help others find the base.

So I rooted through the Gimps filters to find some way to hide the ball, mosaic looked nice so I went with that.

Landing at KSC\'s or KSC2\'s runway isn\'t too hard if you make sure your trajectory overshoots the runway, as you can always scrub off altitude by turning or sliding sideways the same way the Shuttle did, though the KSC2 runway is angled north/south.

The biggest trick for landing any kind of spaceplane or shuttle though, is to make sure your craft is balanced, otherwise it becomes very difficult and you\'ll struggle to maneuver with ASAS trying desperately to hold you steady.

Balance is hard to achieve though, and you will have to keep moving parts, then testing, then moving parts again, then testing again, it helps if you have something, like landing legs, that you can use as ballast without affecting your lift, as you can move them around easily.

One really big problem here is your balance will shift as you use fuel, so I have been making my aircraft into gliders to avoid having to deal with the change in center of gravity / center of lift, I\'m actually taking advantage of the stack decouplers fuel crossfeed ability to help make sure I drain the tank

Soon as I can wrestle Blenders texture engine to the floor I\'ll be able to make some metal plates specifically for balancing our craft, the mesh is done and I\'ll use the winglet module, but trying to make them look pretty is hard work.

What we really need is some way to easily find the CG of our craft, as right now we\'re blind, and it\'s a pretty critical thing for aviation and aerospace.