I can't land on the mun in career

[kerballaut117]

everytime I reach the Mun or minmus I always run out of fuel while landing and crashdown there killing my crew :

could you guys post me some of your designs or give me tips formun/minmus rockets in 1.0.5

thanks 

Edited March 3, 2016 by kerballaut117

[Snark]

It can certainly be tricky when you're new to it. 

There are a lot of helpful tutorials over in the Tutorials forum.

This thread in particular has a lot of good stuff in it, I suggest reading through it:

If you have a specific problem (i.e. not "how do I land on the Mun" in general, but "why can't I land this ship on the Mun", then it's helpful if you can provide the following information so that people can give you specific advice:

• A screenshot of your ship
• A description of your technique (i.e. describe your mission, how you fly it, what you're doing when you try to land).

I can also offer the general advice that if all of this is hard for you, it's probably good to practice on Minmus for a while before the Mun, because it's much more forgiving for a variety of reasons (smaller radius, much lower gravity, lots of nice flat smooth spots to land).

[Streetwind]

One mistake that I made when I first started playing KSP was underestimating gravity. I'd build a lander with huge amounts of fuel, haphazardly throw it at the Mun, null my orbital velocity and sink down straight towards the surface from really high up while running the engines regularly to make sure my speed remained nice and low, for safety. It seemed to be a much more simple and safe solution than trying to descend out of an orbit and worry about all that sideways velocity.

Needless to say, all my attempts ran out of fuel.

Turns out gravity is a big old meanie. Every second you run your engines pointing down, to fight the speed at which you fall, gravity eats away some of your fuel. The slower and more careful you try to sink down, the more time you spend fighting gravity, and the more fuel is eaten away.

So you don't want your engines pointing down for an extended period of time. And you don't want to come in slow. And, most of all, you don't want to come in from high up.

I would recommend the following: before landing, first establish a circular orbit, and make it nice and low down. Really low down. As low as you can go without risking to plaster your spacecraft against a passing mountainside. For the Mun, this would be between 8 and 10 km altitude. It may seem scary low - and certainly look that way when you do it ingame - but it is safe. It's also a good idea to quicksave (F5) here.

In a second step, make a retrograde burn so that you are now on a suborbital trajectory. The trajectory should disappear into the Mun's surface a bit after the spot you want to land in. In other words, intentionally overshoot for now. Usually you want to land inside a general biome area anyway, so precision is not required.

In a third step, once you're confident you're going where you want to be going, start burning full force retrograde towards the horizon. You only have a small distance to go down, but a whole lot of horizontal velocity to kill. That's a good thing, because it means you're not trying to burn towards the ground, so gravity cannot steal your fuel.

Finally, at some point you will see your retrograde marker on the navball detach itself from the horizon, and drift into the blue area. This is a good indicator you are slowing down measurably and are making good headway towards landing. Usually, you want to follow your retrograde marker wherever it goes, because that automatically makes you zero out all velocity (horizontal and vertical) eventually. If you feel you are overshooting your target, keep burning more towards the horizon (but keep an eye on the rate you are approaching the ground at); if you feel you are coming down too early or are falling too fast, burn more towards the Mun (but beware losing too much fuel to gravity).

For starters, try and aim for coming to a full stop in "midair" (midspace?) a few hundred meters above the surface. You can sink down safely from there without spending too much fuel. If you screwed up, hold F9 to quickload and try again.

 

If you run out of fuel using this approach, however, then piloting is not your issue, but rocket construction is. You will need to learn how to build more efficient rocket stages so you arrive in orbit around the Mun with more fuel to use. (note: this doesn't automatically mean bigger. Just more efficient.)

Edited March 3, 2016 by Streetwind

[CSE]

If you have researched solar panels in your career, then you could try landing one or two probes first. The payload should be much lighter than a crewed mission - a probe core that has torque, some batteries, three or four panels. Start off with a no-return mission, pick a spot on the daylight side, and enjoy the extra fuel endurance.

[Gojira1000]

 

 

[kerballaut117]

19 hours ago, Streetwind said:

One mistake that I made when I first started playing KSP was underestimating gravity. I'd build a lander with huge amounts of fuel, haphazardly throw it at the Mun, null my orbital velocity and sink down straight towards the surface from really high up while running the engines regularly to make sure my speed remained nice and low, for safety. It seemed to be a much more simple and safe solution than trying to descend out of an orbit and worry about all that sideways velocity.

Needless to say, all my attempts ran out of fuel.

Turns out gravity is a big old meanie. Every second you run your engines pointing down, to fight the speed at which you fall, gravity eats away some of your fuel. The slower and more careful you try to sink down, the more time you spend fighting gravity, and the more fuel is eaten away.

So you don't want your engines pointing down for an extended period of time. And you don't want to come in slow. And, most of all, you don't want to come in from high up.

I would recommend the following: before landing, first establish a circular orbit, and make it nice and low down. Really low down. As low as you can go without risking to plaster your spacecraft against a passing mountainside. For the Mun, this would be between 8 and 10 km altitude. It may seem scary low - and certainly look that way when you do it ingame - but it is safe. It's also a good idea to quicksave (F5) here.

In a second step, make a retrograde burn so that you are now on a suborbital trajectory. The trajectory should disappear into the Mun's surface a bit after the spot you want to land in. In other words, intentionally overshoot for now. Usually you want to land inside a general biome area anyway, so precision is not required.

In a third step, once you're confident you're going where you want to be going, start burning full force retrograde towards the horizon. You only have a small distance to go down, but a whole lot of horizontal velocity to kill. That's a good thing, because it means you're not trying to burn towards the ground, so gravity cannot steal your fuel.

Finally, at some point you will see your retrograde marker on the navball detach itself from the horizon, and drift into the blue area. This is a good indicator you are slowing down measurably and are making good headway towards landing. Usually, you want to follow your retrograde marker wherever it goes, because that automatically makes you zero out all velocity (horizontal and vertical) eventually. If you feel you are overshooting your target, keep burning more towards the horizon (but keep an eye on the rate you are approaching the ground at); if you feel you are coming down too early or are falling too fast, burn more towards the Mun (but beware losing too much fuel to gravity).

For starters, try and aim for coming to a full stop in "midair" (midspace?) a few hundred meters above the surface. You can sink down safely from there without spending too much fuel. If you screwed up, hold F9 to quickload and try again.

 

If you run out of fuel using this approach, however, then piloting is not your issue, but rocket construction is. You will need to learn how to build more efficient rocket stages so you arrive in orbit around the Mun with more fuel to use. (note: this doesn't automatically mean bigger. Just more efficient.)

thanks for the advice Streetwind  :I usually just did a maneuvre at the lowest pointof my orbit and made it go strait down from 50 000 to 100 000 m but know I think my attempts my work  Another step in kerball safety!

[kerballaut117]

I'm in orbit around mun at an orbit that has 16 580 m in apoapsis & 7 403 m in periapsis 

[kerballaut117]

YES I HAVE LANDED ON THE MUN !!! thanks to all of you for your advice : 

a small step for a kerbal a big step for all the big headed green men 

and again thanks!

[Streetwind]

Congratulations!   I remember feeling like the king of the world the first time I did it.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Streetwind