Going to mun

[ThomasAngel]

Hello, i am ThomasAngel and i am new to the forums and i think game in general. I got 100+ hours in ksp. I still got a problem with mun. I have a rocket that can reach mun's orbit and probably land. I have tried landing with it many times, each time my landing is not soft enough. I always crash and lose everything else expect for the cockpit. Now i tried to land with Kerbal X and i could not even reach orbit around mun. I also don't have any fuel to travel back if i manage to land. I am playing career mode so i am a bit limited of parts. I will post the craft that i crash with soon.

-ThomasAngel

[sjwt]

Hey, the issue you are most likely having is not fully canceling out your orbital velocity, this is best done with lots of practice, linked here is a older video showing you how to do it, the principles are the same, just you may need to level kerbals etc if you are on career mode these days..

best of luck..

[Voyager_sput]

Hi there! Welcome to the forums. I'm one of those lurkers on the forum who usually just reads the posts. Perhaps I can help you?

Apart from seeing the rocket, how do you try to land? Are you crashing in to the moon because you have too much vertical or horizontal velocity and you don't know how to reduce/kill it? Run out of fuel on your way down?

A munar landing is a big hurdle to take after getting into orbit so it's not very unusual that you have problems with it. I racked up several hundred hours in KSP as well but with the coming of 1.0.2 I sort of had to learn how to build rockets again. I overestimated my fuel in my first munar landing as well. Jeb got down safely, but without enough fuel to get back into orbit, let alone back to Kerbin. Took me forever to redesign the launcher to get Valentina in a rescue craft to get Jeb

[CrazyJebGuy]

get an orbit with about 15-30 km average height. Do a manuever node with so much retrograde your orbit goes straight down. Now you will be falling. Burn retrograde (But don't put SAS on retrograde or you may flip if you burn too much on the last bit) and keep your speed low. Like 50-20 m/s. Try and get close to zero m/s before hitting the ground.

I know it isn't the most efficient, but it works. (My rockets usually have large error margins anyway.) Besides, If I try the more effiecent way I blow up.

Hope that helped!

[Mahnarch]

Adding:

Lights! (if you have them)

Use both square (flood) and circular (spot) lights.

The spot lights reach out further and tell you when you're close.

Flood lights are short distance and tell you when you're REALLY close.

You also want to be less than 5m/s when you land - vertically.

Edited May 15, 2015 by Mahnarch
Added photo

[Warzouz]

Do your lander has sufficient TWR ? A high TWR helps to land because you can react faster than a low TWR. For example, I recently finished my Mun exploration. I designed a 4T lander able to do do one or 2 additional hops (dropped from a polar orbit space station at 15km). I used one 48-7S (Spark) and ended with a TWR around 3. That was a bit low for my taste. I should have used a Terrier (LV909), I would have get nearly the same dV and a much high TWR for easy landing. I shouldn't have recycled my Minmus lander...

KER helps a lot to know when to slowdown, even at night.

[Prepper-Jack]

Mun is kind of a challenging landing as a first time body. If you want to practice, try for Minmus instead. The gravity is significantly lower, so you can take your time with it, and gain some practice before heading to Mun. Also, even with the extra fuel it takes to reach Minmus, it tends to consume far less to land, meaning it's easier to make it home.

Otherwise, what is your rocket design like? A good starter moon lander could be a basic pod, a mid sized fuel tank, and a terrier LV-909 engine. Throw some landing legs on the fuel tank, add some science stuff, some solar panels, and you're set. It's not a large payload, and should be able to get into Kerbin orbit fairly easily with a small asparagus lower stage of Reliants/Swivels and an even smaller upper stage of LV-909s to get you into orbit and at least partially on your way to the Mun.

The trick to landing is being efficient about it. Coming in low helps quite a bit, as you spend less fuel fighting gravity, so set up a low orbit by going to navigation mode, and burning retrograde at your lowest points. Just have to be careful, as the Mun is a rocky place. Sometimes you can cut an orbit down to about 5-6k or lower, but I usually prefer 9k-10k to be on the safe side. Once you've plotted where you want to land, head to navigation, and carefully burn retrograde (use shift/ctrl instead of full burn) on the far side of it until your shallowest point is around 2k over your intended target. Time warp to a spot nearby, set the auto to retrograde, and head again to navigation map. Hit full burn (Z), and watch your angle head to your target. Once you start getting below 100 m/s, the line should become more straight, and you should ease up on the throttle until you hit close to 0 m/s. Switch to regular view, and you'll notice you're flying pretty much vertically, and heading slowly straight down. Keep autopilot on retrograde, and let it build a little speed on the way down, though sticking below 150 m/s might be a wise idea. When you start noticing the shadow of your craft, it's time to hit the gas, and if you haven't already - the landing struts. Once below 20 m/s, cut throttle and use shift/ctrl keys to bring you slowly down to 1-4 m/s. Going over 0 m/s will cause your retrograde autopilot to disengage into stability assist, so reset that if you do so. After that, landing at <1m/s is quite easy.

[Fishslap]

Your pilot will have an ability you can activate to keep your craft retrograde while you approach. That way you will be slowing down but also cancelling out any orbital, or sideways, movement. Most of my early crashes came because I was still moving horizontally when I got close, and then it`s more or less totally impossible to land. You want to be going completely straight down for the last KM or two, so all you have to worry about is lowering the speed. If you rely on the retrograde ability of the pilot then you should remember to bring some batteries and solar cells because it uses a lot of electrical energy. But it is the simplest way.

[Cardano]

As others have said - Munar landing is a big step up from getting to orbit - and like a rendezvous its a very different skill set to develop than blasting into orbit and making/executing maneuver nodes.

One suggestion that has not been made yet - is to try for a Minmus landing first. the gravity on Minmus is so much weaker that it's actually less total dV to get there and back than Mun, and it's about 10 times more forgiving to attempt the landing. also - it's got HUGE swath of flat that you can land on. if you've gotten a good handle on manuever nodes, then inclination changes to intercept minmus shouldnt be too hard to figure out - and there are good guides on when and how to best alter inclination to be researched as well.

other tips :

Do not try to land in the dark. not for a while. burn to land in the bright light of Kerbol.

Look for a big flat spot - muns gravity combined with a crater's slope can be painful.

unlock RCS for some small aiming adjustments - or add in more torque for more agility while not burning

make sure you have a wide stable base to your ship ( doesnt sound like tipping is your problem *yet* but it will probably become an issue once you touch down

Finally - think about adding in Kerbal Engineer Redux or some similar add on that gives you a little more information than stock ( even in career - you just have to add the part to the ship ) and it should help with knowing how high you are above ground ( not above 'zero' altitude )

Cancel ALL horizontal velocity at a high altitude ( KER can help with that as it shows the absolute value of the horizontal component in it's window ) and fall straight down.

Then you can point straight up and manage just your vertical velocity component. feel free to take it slow and keep your velocity low - it might take *FOREVER* to touch down, but you will never be in danger of crashing - only in danger of running out of fuel - which is fine - just reload and let the velocity creep up a little the higher above ground you are.

getting to know each lander's 'flight' characteristics for each body it lands on is part of the fun of the game. I've made some very graceful landers in my day and loved touching them down exactly where I wanted to the first time - and I've made some empty 'bases' for contracts on mun to support 11 kerbals that barely avoided exploding on impact but paid me my 359k funds thank you very much. [ for the record - one does not simply land on minmus with (3) hitchhikers, and orange and a mainsail ]

Good luck - and stick with it. Crashes are half the fun - as long as every crash is a learning experience.

Cardano

[Dust]

Learning how to land on the Mun is all about learning how not to crash. It probably took me about a dozen crashes into the surface of the Mun before successfully planting a lander upright and undamaged on the surface. Then about half a dozen more landings to get one that could also return. At first you have no feeling for how fast you're going or how high up you are, and how fast you should be going and how high you should be.

If you're using quicksaves in your game, get into a low circular orbit (10-30km) around the Mun then quicksave. Then when you crash you can load that quicksave and try again. And again. And again. You will improve until it happens.

The other thing you can do, and what many recommend - and many others scoff at - is to try Minmus first. It only takes a little more fuel to get to, but the much lower gravity of it means landing is a lot slower and easier.

[Empiro]

My biggest piece of advice: Use the NavBall!

Switch it to surface mode and always burn against the green retrograde marker. Don't try to "wing it" by sight! The only thing you need to use sight for is judging approximate altitude above the surface. If you always burn against the retrograde marker, you'll kill off your lateral and vertical velocity. When you get close to the surface, keep the speed around 1-2 m/s (remember, burn against retrograde), and you'll be able to touch down gently.

[SRV Ron]

Here is an example of using the Navball for landing and the ideal descent. Practice on Minmus. Then on Kerbal with its much higher gravity. You should then find landing om Mun much easier.

Note, the radical decouplers on the legs are for added stability.

Edited May 16, 2015 by SRV Ron

[LN400]

Landings can be challenging for sure and there are lots of ways you can go about it, as shown in the forums and on youtube etc.

My way, one among all those, is to first make sure I have RCS thrusters for horizontal corrections.

On the launch pad, go IVA and look at the radar altimeter. Remember what it says. You will need that radar altitude later.

Fast forward to Mun orbit and the deorbit burn.

For the decent, go IVA and glue the retrograde marker AND the nose mark to the center of the navball.

Switch the speed readout to surface and keep an eye on the navball, the VSI needle and radar altimeter.

Use thrusters to control decent speed. Use RCS to keep the retrograde marker at center of the navball. Be on it.

When the radar altimeter shows less than say, 500 meters (or your personal favourite low altitude), adjust throttle and RCS for a slower decent. Below 100m on the radar altimeter, keep the VSI needle at 0-5m/s decent and be on the retrograde marker with the RCS. Remember the radar altitude from the launch pad? expect touchdown once you reach that altitude.

On touchdown, the retrograde marker will suddenly dance and the VSI needle will show 0. Kill the engines. Stabilize then turn off the RCS and SAS.

Ok, so you can do it more fuel efficient or more spectacular but I found this would give me a pretty good success rate.

Edited May 16, 2015 by LN400

[rcp27]

My landing routine looks something like this:

1) get in a circular ~50 km orbit. Hit F5. Deploy your landing legs. You don't need them yet, but better to get that out of the way now. if you have landing lights, switch them on.

2) pick your landing spot

3) when you are a bit before 90 degrees away from the landing site, point retrograde and burn so that your blue trajectory hits the ground a little beyond your landing site

4) set up a manoeuvre node on your trajectory just past your landing site, and pull the retrograde all the way, to kill velocity to zero. This is useful because if you hit full thrust in the retrograde direction a little before the "burn time" matches the "time to manoeuvre", you will kill your orbital velocity over your landing site.

5) switch the nav ball to "surface mode" and put SAS in "retrograde". Once you settle on the retrograde marker, put SAS into normal "heading mode", wait a short time, then burn your engine at about 50% thrust. By not being on retrograde mode, this will kill your descent but also push the retrograde marker towards "straight up". Once your retrograde marker is straight up, kill the engine, put SAS in "retrograde" mode.

6) control your velocity on the descent. There are various ways to get a feel for how high up you are. Can you see ground scatter yet? Is there a shadow from your ship on the surface? If you have downward pointing lights, can you see them on the surface? If you have a lander can, the IVA view has a height-above-ground indicator.

7) aim to hit the ground at less than 5 m/s. I usually manage about 2.

Note: the SAS on retrograde has been fixed, so if your velocity drops below about 2 m/s, it automatically switches to heading hold, so that if you overdo it and start going up, you won't find your ship flipping over.

As others have suggested, Minmus is a good learning ground. First, the gravity is a lot less, so everything happens more slowly. More usefully, it has the big flat areas. In the big flat areas, the ground height is zero on the altitude readout at the top of the screen, so you have a much better idea of how high up you are.