Uncontrollable rockets in sandbox mode

[BoilingOil]

Well.. here's another issue entirely...

Are you saying you are running out of fuel as you achieve orbit around Mun/ try to land on it?

Yup! I run out of fuel during the landing. Since that cut my "To the Mun, part 1" tutorial short every time, I went into Sandbox mode to figure out a way to improve my landings.

Well.. here's another issue entirely...

The smaller LV-909 has a higher Isp, and less mass, so you get more thrust per unit fuel, and you need less thrust because its less mass.

If you "haven't succeeded in reducing my velocity to 0" ... then a smaller engine may be exactly what you need.

True, but in the tutorial that smaller engine isn't what you have, and you cannot change it! So I have to learn to do it with the heavier ones as well!

For a probe or 1 kerbal lander, a LV-909 should give you plenty of TWR, and the problem has got to be your flight profile.

Precisely. I'm suree my flight profile sucks. So I went to experiment in Sandbox. But whereas in the tutorial I ran out of fuel, in sandbox I ran out of juice, because I had not set up a proper recharge. And not having any charge, I was no longer able to even START the landing.

Well.. here's another issue entirely...

Do you have a craft file? I'd like to take a look at this rather than asking about it.

In the "To the Mun, part 1" tutorial, they give us the "Kerbal-X (stock)" craft. So that is what I need to land with, which I fail at. I assume that you know where to find that craft file now?

[capi3101]

It's been a while since I did the Mun part 1 tutorial - is that the one where they give you the ship with three Terriers on a tri-adapter, and no lander legs? That's a pretty crummy ship to attempt a Mun landing with, I know - but I also know from first-hand experience that it is possible to do.

I'm assuming you have never landed a craft on Mun successfully and that you don't use flight assistance mods like KER or Mechjeb, something that would give you a flight readout of your altitude above ground or calculate at what altitude you must begin a suicide burn (or die). So, general tips for Munar landing, then. Keep your speed generally below 100 m/s as you descend; the more thrust your craft produces, the faster you can go in the early stages of the landing - the point is that you want to be able to decelerate quickly. What you'll then want to do is go into IVA mode (C-key by default) and look for your radar altimeter gauge - the one that looks like this:

The one in your cockpit will be in units of meters, not feet like the one in the picture; otherwise they'll look and function exactly the same. The moment you see the needle on that gauge start to twitch, you're 2500 meters over the deck. Switch back to normal view and check your altimeter, and subtract 2500 from it - the result is the elevation of the deck, at which point you're going to want to be stopped. Burn retrograde (set your speedometer to Surface mode if you need to by clicking on it) until your velocity is 20 m/s or so, and then reduce that down as you get within 100 meters of the deck to about 5 m/s or so. For the Mun landing tutorial, since the craft has no lander legs you're going to be setting down on the engine bells, so you need to touch down as gently as you can manage.

That's not the most efficient way of making a Mun landing - for that, you want to do a suicide burn (a burn that drops your speed to zero the moment your pads touch the deck, a tricky maneuver that only veterans and folks with flight assistance mods can pull off). But it's a good way to learn until you can get the hang of it.

One other piece of advice - and this is for practice purposes - is to quicksave before you begin your landing (F5-key). When you botch it, hit F9 for quickload and you can try again. Everybody botches it the first few times - which makes the first time you pull it off all the more awesome. Even when you become more seasoned, F5 before landing is an essential part of the procedure - I've been playing the game for something around three years now, and I still screw up Mun landings occasionally. And I use KER, so go figure that one out...

[BoilingOil]

It's been a while since I did the Mun part 1 tutorial - is that the one where they give you the ship with three Terriers on a tri-adapter, and no lander legs? That's a pretty crummy ship to attempt a Mun landing with, I know - but I also know from first-hand experience that it is possible to do.

Sure, I assume it is possible. The fact that I'm having trouble, is just because I'm rather new at this. I'm hoping to learn something.

I'm assuming you have never landed a craft on Mun successfully ...

Correct assumption.

and that you don't use flight assistance mods like KER or Mechjeb, something that ...

I did not at the time. I have in the meantime installed some mods, but have not a clue of how to use them yet. I'm not fond of the youtube instructionals that are hip nowadays: 'background' music not so much in the background, and people talking hours on end about stuff that has nothing to do with simply listing the keys needed to get into the necessary windows, which is the ONLY thing I wish to know! I wish I could just read a short-and-simple "how-to-use" text on the page where I downloaded the stuff.

But I'll try to wrestle myself through your explanation of what to do, see if I can make that work. Thank you!

One other piece of advice - and this is for practice purposes - is to quicksave before you begin your landing (F5-key). When you botch it, hit F9 for quickload and you can try again. Everybody botches it the first few times - which makes the first time you pull it off all the more awesome. Even when you become more seasoned, F5 before landing is an essential part of the procedure - I've been playing the game for something around three years now, and I still screw up Mun landings occasionally. And I use KER, so go figure that one out...

I'm sure that people botch things a few times.. even most people, I guess. But I've botched it a LOT already!

By the way: you say - and I quote - "Keep your speed generally below 100 m/s as you descend"... how do you keep you speed at a level that you cannot even achieve??? I haven't succeeded in getting my speed below 200 m/s yet, without running out of fuel!

[capi3101]

By the way: you say - and I quote - "Keep your speed generally below 100 m/s as you descend"... how do you keep you speed at a level that you cannot even achieve??? I haven't succeeded in getting my speed below 200 m/s yet, without running out of fuel!

That's a fair question - which mods have you installed? If you've got KER or Mechjeb installed, there should be a tab that tells you what your remaining delta-V is. I'm not that familiar with Mechjeb myself (my plan since 0.21 has been to reward myself with Mechjeb if I ever pull off a successful manned launch from the surface of Eve), but I use KER and I know that it's the VESSEL tab with that mod. Before you deorbit, compare your Surface speed to the ship's remaining delta-V; if your speed is greater than your remaining delta-V, don't land - don't even attempt it.

I suppose you could also manually calculate your remaining delta-V. For that, you'd need to go into your resource tab and note the remaining LiquidFuel and Oxidizer levels; tally them together. Then go to the map tab and look at the current mass of your ship - write that down. Each unit of oxidizer and LF has a mass of .005 tonnes; subtract that out of your current mass and you've got your dry mass. You then need to know the vacuum Isp of the engine - you can find that data on the wiki; for a Terrier engine, it's 345. Plug all of that into the Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation and you'll get your remaining delta-V. You'll need a scientific calculator (or just turn your iPhone sideways), something with the "ln" function.

I used to do that sometimes. Nowaways I use FAR.

So, assuming you've got the delta-V, you really just need to watch your speed, point retrograde and burn if your speed gets too high. You'll accelerate due to gravitational pull, so you might have to do that a couple of times. Maintaining a set speed really isn't necessary in the early stages of your landing; it gets more important as you approach the deck, and then it's a matter of finding the right throttle setting - if you're accelerating and don't want to be, turn the throttle up. If you're decelerating and don't want to be, turn the throttle down. You want to use the fine-tune throttle controls (Left-Shift and CTRL) as opposed to the full-blast toggles (Z and X).

[BoilingOil]

I have recently, while playing in Sandbox mode, installed a few mods - HyperEdit, KAC and MJ2. And I've already DL-ed KER, but not installed yet. And I haven't figured out how to use any of these mods, yet. I wouldn't know where to even FIND KER's 'VESSEL-tab' if my life depended on it. Not that this matters, because I prefer to use them as little as possible anyway.

I've ony tried to land several dozen times in the one tutorial mission, and that was without ANY mods at all. By the time my speed is 200 m/s straight down, I'm out of fuel and with enough altitude to make my prospect very bleak! Legs or no legs, I'm going to leave a nasty stain on Mun's surface! My future is going to be SPLAT!

Edited November 4, 2015 by BoilingOil

[capi3101]

Once you've got KER installed and up and running, you'll see the VESSEL tab pretty readily (there are four tabs - ORBITAL, SURFACE, VESSEL AND RENDEZVOUS). To use it in flight, you'll have to include the Flight Computer part on your rocket; that's a Science part, and you can attach it pretty much radially anywhere. I've never had one blow on me for any reason other than running it into the ground at unholy speeds. There used to be another mod out there that would let KER operate without adding the parts; sadly I've forgotten the name of it. Incidentally, if you've got a maneuver node set up, the ORBITAL tab will contain information on when to initiate the burn based on your current TWR as well as when to cut it off after you've started burning.

KAC is another fun one. You can use it to set up alarms before important events (such as when you're making burns). I usually go with a twenty second margin on the burn, though if you've got a craft that doesn't like to turn well, a one-minute margin helps more.

The others I've never used. MJ2 and KER might be redundant downloads; again I don't know enough about Mechjeb one way or the other since I've never actually used it myself.

[BoilingOil]

Ok, thank you so much, capi3101. I'll see what I can do with this info. Hopefully, it'll help me understand how to do it without those tools as soon as Kerbally possible.

[Harry Rhodan]

There used to be another mod out there that would let KER operate without adding the parts; sadly I've forgotten the name of it.

KER itself has a partless mode. And then there's VOID which uses KER readouts and has at least to my mind the better HUD.

[Highguard]

WARNING: off thread topic, but about to bite you BoilingOil -

The tutorials have not been updated (from 1.0 to 1.0.4) and when returning to Kerbin your parachute will fail to land you safely.

There are a couple of threads on this (which I can't find at the moment). The solution is to i) check what the correct deployment settings are in the VAB/SPH by putting a parachute on something and right-clicking it, ii) when you do the tutorial similarly right-click the parachute in flight and correct the settings.

[capi3101]

KER itself has a partless mode.

Oh? That's news to me...how do I activate it?

[BoilingOil]

WARNING: off thread topic, but about to bite you BoilingOil -

The tutorials have not been updated (from 1.0 to 1.0.4) and when returning to Kerbin your parachute will fail to land you safely.

There are a couple of threads on this (which I can't find at the moment). The solution is to i) check what the correct deployment settings are in the VAB/SPH by putting a parachute on something and right-clicking it, ii) when you do the tutorial similarly right-click the parachute in flight and correct the settings.

What parachute, my friend? You mean the one in "To the Mun, part 2", perhaps? I'm not going there until I've managed to land on the Mun first. Landing is not officially part of the previous episode, but I think that in order to return from the Mun, one must first have been on the Mun, with each and every toe on the surface! But once I get to that point, I will heed your advance warning, for which I'm grateful!

- - - Updated - - -

Oh? That's news to me...how do I activate it?

From the KER download page:

Please note that by default KER runs using a career unlock system. This means that when in career mode it will require either an Engineer skilled Kerbal, an Engineer Chip/ER7500 part placed on the vessel or a level 3 tracking station to work in flight. Unless one of these three conditions is present, the KER icon will be disabled and greyed out in flight. This mode is completely optional though, and by clicking on "Settings" on the Kerbal Engineer Redux window in the editor, you may change its mode from "Career" to "Partless".

Edited November 4, 2015 by BoilingOil

[Highguard]

What parachute, my friend? You mean the one in "To the Mun, part 2", perhaps?...

Yes, this was just a 'Watch out, danger ahead' warning. You do want to come back eventually, don't you? :-) Enjoy yourself with part1 for now though.

[BoilingOil]

I will, Highguard. Thanks!

[BoilingOil]

I think that after two or three more attempts, I will give up trying to land that pod (I've figure out that it's actually "Orbiter 1A", not "Kerbal X", which one gets in that tutorial). It seems that after the transfer, there just isn't sufficient dV left to safely land the thing. Maybe a suicide descent (or whatever it was called) would do, but that's extremely tricky if you haven't even made a normal landing yet. And the tip about quickj-saving the game, while probably very valuable in other cases, doesn't help in these tutorial missions: every time I try F5, I get "You cannot quicksave in this mission."

Anyway, landing is only optional; the mission is about getting into an orbit around the Mun, and I have. Many times. I should be happy with that and move on

Anyway, thanks guys, for trying to help.

Edited November 8, 2015 by BoilingOil