Horizontal Landing And Take Off From The Mun

[illectro]

Did you know you can use the frozen lakes on Minmus as landing strips to take a vehicle down for a horizontal landing and subsequent take off?

Now, I\'ve managed to perform a horizontal take off from the mun, but only after dozens of attempts to find the right topography to support my ship.

So the rules are:

1) Use the wheeled landing gear

2) Stock parts only

3) Only main engines for propulsion/braking, no RCS. the engines must all be naturally aligned with the artificial horizon.

4) you may not lift the nose of the vehicle above 5 degrees. Don\'t design ships that naturally have an elevated nose.

5) land on the Mun , come to a complete stop using the wheel brakes

6) subsequently lift off again using the same vehlicle

Bonus points if you can do the whole thing with a spaceplane and land that back on kerbin

[Twinky827]

I\'ll do this, but can you please give me some hints on how to get to Minmus... I\'ve returned from the Mun about 1000000000000000000 times, but I still haven\'t gotten to Minmus..

[sss]

I\'ll do this, but can you please give me some hints on how to get to Minmus... I\'ve returned from the Mun about 1000000000000000000 times, but I still haven\'t gotten to Minmus..

go heading 005 and use mechjeb, but beware, there is a bug with mechjeb that overshoots minimus, but that can be corrected with a little bit of retrograde.

[Twinky827]

... In english? I just get to the mun by pressing A getting into orbit, growing the orbit, and landing.

[Monkthespy]

-facepalm-

That is English. Prograde is the direction in which if you burned it would extend your orbit. Retrograde is the direction that would decline the orbit if you burned.

[illectro]

That is English. Prograde is the direction in which if you burned it would extend your orbit. Retrograde is the direction that would decline the orbit if you burned.

Actually, technically Prograde is a needless modernism.

The word retrograde was in use since the 14th century, but wasn\'t applied to orbits until the early 20th century. Orbits were either \'Direct\' or \'Retrograde\', but since most orbits were direct, most people never used the term, then around 1967 someone mistook this intentional laziness for a hole in the terminology and invented the term Prograde - even though there was already a perfectly good word for this.

[PictoKong]

From 90°, you can align your plane to minmus\' and then burn when there is a 90° angle between you and minmus

Another way, if you got more fuel to spare, is to get to the right altitude at a 90° heading, then reversing your orbit (by burning retrograde long enough). WAtch out tho, you will get to minmus and will have a pretty fast speed...,

My favorite is to slingshot with the mun, but that\'s another story...

[RC1062]

Actually, technically Prograde is a needless modernism.

The word retrograde was in use since the 14th century, but wasn\'t applied to orbits until the early 20th century. Orbits were either \'Direct\' or \'Retrograde\', but since most orbits were direct, most people never used the term, then around 1967 someone mistook this intentional laziness for a hole in the terminology and invented the term Prograde - even though there was already a perfectly good word for this.

But you could shorten it to 'Pro' and 'Retro', which might be useful at some point.

*EDIT* 'Dire' wouldn\'t be that encouraging...

[Ronox]

Raising this challenge from the dead because it\'s one of the few exciting ones out there! I gave it a go, and almost made it, except for the part where my ship disintegrated at 500m/s, launching debris BACK into orbit... Will be at this for awhile

[pushingrobot]

I\'ve actually done this, though it took a fair amount of saving and reloading.

First, I put myself in a very shallow decaying orbit. I repeatedly saved and loaded until I had a trajectory that would put me down on a relatively flat stretch at a vertical speed of about 10 m/s.

Then I pointed my ship in a retrograde direction, with my nose slightly higher to account for gravity and give me a little breathing room--in other words, about 5 degrees above the green \'X\' on the navball.

I made a first few tries to get a general idea of how long it would take to stop the craft. Then, I made a save shortly before the burn point with my ship already pointing in the right direction.

Then it just became a process of trial and error. I\'d engage SAS every time I reloaded, so the only variable between attempts was the altitude at which I started my burn. After several attempts, I finally determined the exact altitude I needed to burn at to stop right before I reached the surface. My proper burn point ended up being only about 300 meters above the surface (!) though it will vary depending on your craft\'s thrust/weight ratio.

If I could land this:

...you should be able to land a more typical craft without much trouble.

Speaking of landing craft, the more thrust your ship has the easier it will be to land on the Mun. The faster you can decelerate, the shallower of an angle you can land at, so you might want to think about packing in some extra engines. Also, RCS thrusters below the nose of your craft really help, since you\'ll land at a slight incline and your nose will fall to the ground hard without RCS to stabilize it.

Also, this sort of landing uses far, far less fuel than a typical Mun landing. If the Mun has a gravitational acceleration of, say, 3 m/s per second, every second of descent takes means another 3 m/s of delta-v gone to waste. If your descent takes 5 minutes, that\'s 1000 m/s worth of fuel. If your descent takes 30 seconds, it\'s only 100 m/s of fuel. Once you\'ve tried a few high-speed landings, you probably won\'t want to go back to slow, floaty descents; the fuel savings lets you do so much much more on a mission. It\'s also way more fun and thoroughly Jeb-approved. Just remember to save before the attempt

[dylan1234]

you know that video is your name on youtube sysysyg because that\'s who made that vid.

[Markus Reese]

The no beyond 5 for the moon is near impossible. I have done a horizontal landing on the moon and it is very difficult because of mun\'s gravity, you have to have an upwards aim to keep the vertial velocity down. Just use 5 angle pitch, and is near impossible to maintain without doing little balerina spins to prevent de-orbit velocities. Since mun doesnt have the smooth ocean landing, a low velocity is required as well to prevent cartwheels. Will attempt, but probably going to have to break some rules.

Edit: Read post two above this one, some good hints. Though I like more control over trial and error, but it will help

[Synapse]

I realise this is resurrecting a very old thread but I've been trying to do this for a while now, keep smashing my landers at speeds in excess of 400m/s. How the hell do you perform a horizontal landing with no atmosphere?

[Sirine]

learn to land on Kerbin 1st.

[Synapse]

I can land on Kerbin quite easily