What's the best method to achieve a successful landing unlike this one? [GIF]

[imonar]

Awful Landing

 

I like the air brakes system idea! But how would such a thing actually work out? And what do you guys usually use?

Edited December 29, 2015 by imonar

[Wolfos31]

It looks like either they had already burned the fuel in the landing tank (forgot to turn off crossfeed) or they were getting the cannot activate engine while stowed. Which has happened to me before. 

 

It looked like a decent lander, I also really liked the airbrake/sepatron/fairing system. Pretty nifty. However I didn't see many chutes on the pod and it was going pretty darn fast pretty low down. If I were them I may have come in shallower and tried to bleed off more speed. But looking again it was the engine cannot be deployed while stowed and so there was little they could have done, that bug happens when the game thinks an engine is still covered by a fairing/payload bay. This is why doing a pad test of all your landers is a must. 

[Mitchz95]

It looks like you had the engines activate in the same stage as the fairing separation, which doesn't work for some reason. Putting them in separate stages, with the fairing dropping away first, should resolve that issue. Additionally, I think you cut it too close to the ground as well. I would drop the fairing and the heat shield the moment the re-entry effects dissipate.

[steve_v]

8 minutes ago, Wolfos31 said:

they were getting the cannot activate engine while stowed. Which has happened to me before.

If you look at the fine print in the upper-left, that's exactly what happened.

8 minutes ago, Wolfos31 said:

This is why doing a pad test of all your landers is a must. 

This is why this idiotic mechanic should be removed. It's a real nice lander otherwise, and it looks like it would have plenty of thrust for that suicide burn... if the engines had fired as intended.

[Bubbadevlin]

I have somewhat similar problem, and what you want to do is to "break" or activate the fairing before or in the same stage you decouple.

If that is blowing up your stuff, i would actually suggest "rigging" the fairing to explode, by staging a small engine pointing at it, so that the fairing will explode (and fix the bug) when it is away from the craft (and hopefully not harm anything)

[Fearless Son]

I would have used a few radial chutes around the nose of the command pod, activated them immediately after separating the fairing.  This planet has an atmosphere, and chutes are fairly cost-effective delta-v when it comes to landing.  Even if not sufficient to bring it down on their own, they would slow it so the engines have to spend less fuel to touch down and give the operator more time to correct for problems (such as manually activating the engines if they, for whatever reason, fail to start like in this clip.)

[Wolfos31]

20 minutes ago, Fearless Son said:

I would have used a few radial chutes around the nose of the command pod, activated them immediately after separating the fairing.  This planet has an atmosphere, and chutes are fairly cost-effective delta-v when it comes to landing.  Even if not sufficient to bring it down on their own, they would slow it so the engines have to spend less fuel to touch down and give the operator more time to correct for problems (such as manually activating the engines if they, for whatever reason, fail to start like in this clip.)

If you look at the staging they did have some chutes, not sure where they were placed. They even activated them but they were still going too fast because the engines didn't fire and so the chutes were ripped off. The vehicle could have touched down successfully if not for the activate while stowed bug. 

[maccollo]

27 minutes ago, Wolfos31 said:

If you look at the staging they did have some chutes, not sure where they were placed. They even activated them but they were still going too fast because the engines didn't fire and so the chutes were ripped off. The vehicle could have touched down successfully if not for the activate while stowed bug. 

Actually, the parachutes didn't rip, because they didn't deploy, because they were stowed. The whole lander got bricked when the fairing separated.

[Fleb]

More research and development.

[luizopiloto]

Squadic bug... engines was outside the firing... but the game refused to activate them because the game thought is was still inside it... "Cannot activate engines while stowed..." 

Edited December 29, 2015 by luizopiloto

[steve_v]

Ya know, I was going to to cross-link this to the "Remove the terrible cannot activate while stowed" thread, as it's a perfect example of why this should die in fire... but it's become increasingly clear that nobody is actually listening to such things, so why continue to spit into the wind?

Engines "cannot activate while stowed", parachutes "cannot activate while stowed", craft crashes and burns. Nothing was actually stowed at the time mind you, that fairing is long gone. Will anyone on Squad or forum staff admit this "stowed" mechanic was a dumb idea in the first place, and causes more problems than it solves?... not a chance.

Edited December 30, 2015 by technicalfool
Mod edit. Nothing to see here, move along.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Very nice lander!  It looks like you ran into an annoying bug/feature.  Try doing the same thing, but with this staging order:

(Top is last, just like in-game)

4. engines, parachutes.

3. decouple fairing

2. deploy fairing

1. seperatrons

 

You could also try adding a couple drouges to the fairing to deploy earlier.

[Foxster]

Couple of thoughts...

Why have the lower fairing at all whilst entering the atmosphere? It really doesn't do anything if everything is in the heat occlusion shadow of the heat shield.

Keep the air brakes until you are on the ground. At design, rotate them so that they too are in the heat occlusion shadow of the heat shield when deployed. That might mean they clip into the capsule but never mind, eh?

 

 

[David104]

Think Foxster is right...you really dont need the big fairing. I think you can also get rid of the heatshield as the atmosphere on duna is reaaaalllyyy thin and normally not harmful.
You could also look for a lower place to land and make your entry less steep..

[I_Killed_Jeb]

1 hour ago, Foxster said:

Couple of thoughts...

Why have the lower fairing at all whilst entering the atmosphere? It really doesn't do anything if everything is in the heat occlusion shadow of the heat shield.

Keep the air brakes until you are on the ground. At design, rotate them so that they too are in the heat occlusion shadow of the heat shield when deployed. That might mean they clip into the capsule but never mind, eh?

 

 

it looks cool. sometimes that's all the justification one needs

[nosirrbro]

ALL THE PARACHUTES. ALL OF THEM.

An insanely large amount of parachutes is usually cheaper than adding extra fuel to your lander, which means the midstage has to add a lot more, and then the first stage even more, but parachutes have little weight and the extra price you pay to buy them is all you have to pay, no increasing in lower stages (For the most part)

And a very shallow re-entry.

[Temstar]

2 hours ago, Foxster said:

Why have the lower fairing at all whilst entering the atmosphere?

The question you should be asking is "why shouldn't the player be allowed to use fairing this way?".

[maccollo]

2 hours ago, Foxster said:

Couple of thoughts...

Why have the lower fairing at all whilst entering the atmosphere? It really doesn't do anything if everything is in the heat occlusion shadow of the heat shield.

Keep the air brakes until you are on the ground. At design, rotate them so that they too are in the heat occlusion shadow of the heat shield when deployed. That might mean they clip into the capsule but never mind, eh?

 

 

The lander was not really designed around maximum efficiency given the rules of the game. I gave it a back shell because real landers have back shells.  In the final version I even got rid of the parachutes despite knowing that it would actually reduce performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA-uMHj5aZM

[Fearless Son]

2 hours ago, Foxster said:

Why have the lower fairing at all whilst entering the atmosphere? It really doesn't do anything if everything is in the heat occlusion shadow of the heat shield.

Sometimes, you just have to go for style.  

[Foxster]

22 minutes ago, Fearless Son said:

Sometimes, you just have to go for style.  

 

33 minutes ago, Temstar said:

The question you should be asking is "why shouldn't the player be allowed to use fairing this way?".

Hey, I'm all for cool looking ships! But fairings are busted at the moment if you want to use the stuff inside them before or even as they are deployed, which means the choice isn't a matter of cool or style...it's a matter of the craft being buggered otherwise. 

[luizopiloto]

ppl at Squad usually fix this kind of bug when we, the players, start to abuse it to do fun stuff... we can use this to make parts sink on water... stowed parts don't have buoyancy at all...

[Xavven]

If you're planning on landing with chutes on Duna, set your periapsis to 10km in an area away from mountains. If you come in from orbit on a trajectory that intersects the ground, then be prepared to do a fully propulsive landing.

[Mikki]

1. drop eventually mounted heatshield and /or engines for FIRST powered brake maneuver in mid atmosphere, as soon your fairing with the content receives enough drag, which will make sure your dropped compounds leave your descender savely in prograde vector towards ground.

2. engage then drogue chutes.

3. or all this at once.

4. open the fairings in a save speedzone, sub mach1, make sure your craft is aligned precicely in flight vector.

5. engage SECOND powered brake maneuver while your craft hangs in the chutes.

6. land.

7. relax.

Or make another system, depends allways on your freight, size, shape, weight, snacks 



Inside was this, ISRU Base and Fueltruck together. No bugs in stockgame.



KSP 1.0.5.(1028) stock, (+KJR)

Edited December 30, 2015 by Mikki
tell:)

[jdub3350]

Is it crazy that I've never used heat shields/fairings for Duna?  I usually do a 2 stage lander/CM combo, slow the lander with airbrakes, then use enough parachutes to get the touchdown speed down to about 15 m/s, which I soften with the 1st stage engines.  I've done this in both stock and modded 1.0.5 games.  

I usually start at a 75km apopsis, and lower the periapsis to around 0.  Drogue chutes deploy around 7500m, main at 1000m.