Tip Over Recovery

[r4pt0r]

I close all landing legs except one, then try rolling until the game gives me a good bounce  situation to burst out of there.

[Skorpychan]

15 hours ago, Red Shirt said:

Kind of a rabbit trail: Us older folks may recall there being some concern when the Eagle landed of just how much dust was on the moon's surface and that the lander might just sink. I wonder if they had a contingency plan if they tipped? 

 

IIRC, they did. Aside from 'get out and push it upright again', or 'improvise a crane from the legs', there were plans for dismantling the ascent and descent stages to make a bare-bones framework with engines and fuel tanks that they could simply ride up into lunar orbit. Both one-man and two-man versions.

Which definitely sounds like something from KSP. But I think I'll just include self-righting mechanisms for my rockets in future.

[Red Shirt]

5 hours ago, Skorpychan said:

IIRC, they did. Aside from 'get out and push it upright again', or 'improvise a crane from the legs', there were plans for dismantling the ascent and descent stages to make a bare-bones framework with engines and fuel tanks that they could simply ride up into lunar orbit. Both one-man and two-man versions.

Which definitely sounds like something from KSP. But I think I'll just include self-righting mechanisms for my rockets in future.

This made me think of adding an escape pod made from a command seat for those times when crater tilting just doesn't work. It would add some excitement and avoid the hyper edit 'fix'. Some moons are small enough you can jet pack to orbit. I've never tried from the surface of Mun. I did once bail Jeb on ascent when the ship ran out of fuel. Jet packed to a circular orbit. Stayed there until a rescue arrived.

An aside - I started reading up on the LM and it didn't even have seats to conserve space and weight. The guys were tethered in place to keep from bouncing around but basically they stood. They WERE Kerbals before Kerbals were cool.

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, Skorpychan said:

Which definitely sounds like something from KSP.

Sadly that sounds nothing like KSP. I WISH your Kerbals could do anything even remotely like that.

[Red Shirt]

Here is the lander I am currently using on moons. Capable for use as a Kerbin reentry vehicle (sort of*). It was designed for Moho and handled quite well. For Moho I attach additional tanks for descent via decouplers. I drop them before landing. Very stable. For giggles I hyperedited it to the steep sloping edge of the launchpad. It slide but never hinted at tipping. So - success.

* The chute isn't quite enough for the job. Works well for water landing. Hits at about 8.9 m/s on land. The landing struts don't survive.  

So now I am trying to come up with a stable atmosphere lander/return craft that won't tip. 

[sal_vager]

Sometimes, when even after several attempts I can't find a flat area and can't avoid falling over, I'll make use of the "hack gravity" button in the debug window.

It saves a lot of frustration.

[Snark]

What the solution looks like can depend on just how bad the tipping is (i.e. is it totally out of control, or is it pretty close and a nudge will do).

Short squat lander is the best solution, of course, but you've already ruled that out here. 

First, make sure you're coming straight down so that there's no sideways jolt to contend with when you touch down.  If you have a level-1 or better pilot, or HECS-or-better probe core, you can just put the navball into "surface" mode and choose "hold retrograde" and the ship will naturally ease into a vertical descent.

One strategy to shore things up:  extend only the legs on the downhill side of the lander before you touch down.  Depending on how much ground clearance your engine has when the legs are down, this can save you a few degrees of tip.  If doing that is almost-but-not-quite-enough, you can take it one step further and lock the suspension on those legs (it's a right-click option)-- that forces them to their full extension and doesn't let them compress under load, so they'll hold you up higher.

If all that fails and you end up tipping over anyway and need to figure out how to get right-side-up, the previous posters already have some pretty good suggestions.

Edited December 12, 2015 by Snark

[GluttonyReaper]

I've used the service bays before as righting devices, somewhat unintentionally - they open with a surprising amount of force.  

[cubinator]

If there is no hope, I fire the engines again and fly up to the nearest flat surface. If that is not an option and I hit the ground, I try to roll over and get upright again and frantically fire landing legs and even antennae, usually to no avail. I've tried the "slide up a hill" method, but never quite mastered it.

[Warzouz]

I don't have much clue to flip a lander back, even the "gravity hack" seems to be the best...

But I've a technique to reduce flipping chance : lock suspension on the lower leg and touch down very slowly. I've noticed that suspension make the craft bounce and the CoM pass over the lowest leg contact. Without suspension on the lowest leg, the bouncing is much less important and the CoM is less likely to pass over the leg.

It's not miraculous but it helps. Of course touching down very slowly (<1m/s) and having SAS On is very important.

Here is my 40 to 60 tons heavy lander on a 27° slop on Bop.