Landing on the moon (how?)

[Nomer]

I got my heart going when I finally got into my 1st encounter with the moon.

I rage quit I just hit the perapsis and flew out.

The second time, I decided to burn a little bit more while i was in kerban orbit,

I finally got into an encounter that will take me to the surface, instead of a perapsis.

I finally got to the land, noticed that I was going about 800 meters a second and was 20,000 off surface, noticed I was going way to fast, I did what I could but still crashed miserably, RIP 3 names that i forget.

Now, I\'ve learned to add another fuel tank for a retro-burn when I\'m near the surface,

The next time I headed for the mun, I was at 1.2k meters a second, kept burning down to 800, but noticed i just gained myself an apoasis.

So I stoped retroburning for a second, I waited to get under 20,000 meters, to make sure I was gonna hit the ground, no way to get out,

and I set it full throttle and by 4,000 meters I had a descent rate of 20 meters a second, I have no idea how I did it, so is there another guide for this?

Because I tried going again and failed to retro-burn, I ended up crashing on surface.

So, after I was descending, all good, I found out I was moving to fast along the surface, to much lateral movement,

I have no idea how to fix it, If I try burning in the other direction, my ship will go up,

RSC Tanks are useless in this matter,

Can someone help?

Or teach me how to get rid of lateral movement?

[NOTE: I\'m using the NovaPunch Mun-Lander rocket]

[lukasni]

First, from your description I\'m guessing that you burned toward 270 on Kerbin. Burning toward 90° is much easier, since it gives you a bigger window to get into Münar orbit.

Once you\'ve gotten that far, it\'s easiest to first get into a stable orbit around the Mün (I like to use one around 30-50km). To do that, start retroburning once you get close to the Periapsis of your münar orbit to get the AP down to approx. the same height.

After you\'ve achieved a stable orbit, you can retroburn once you\'re above a good landing spot to get a trajectory that is perpendicular to the Surface. Once you\'ve got that, you can go into powered descent, it might take a few tries to figure out when to start braking, but if you\'ve got some fuel to spare just make sure you don\'t get too fast and don\'t hit the Surface at more than ~7m/s.

To get rid of your lateral movement, make sure the X-ed green indicator on the navball is exactly on the zenith, this gets harder the slower you are but you can also use the RCS to keep it there.

Hope that helped,

-Lukas

PS: First post, yay =)

[Knyght]

Yeah, basically that. Remember that you can kill your momentum, land, and get back safely with only a half tank of fuel and the small engine. You can probably also make your Munar orbit burn with only this tank, but this is pushing it if you\'re a bit new to landing.

Just always point your craft at the green retrograde marker when descending, after a while it should point roughly upwards. Then you can let go until you need to burn to land. Some lateral movement is okay, but try to keep it as low as possible.

Also I prefer to keep my orbit low, around 10K max. The lower your orbit, the less speed you have to kill, which is nice because you can choose your landing spot a bit more accurately.

Also 7m/s is still pretty fast. Try to aim for less than 2, though < 1 is preferable (but difficult).

[Nomer]

I\'m practicing with the Thunderbird mods, unlimited fuel, easy to control, and sturdy structure, almost unbreakable.

Um, Thanks for your replies but I\'m a but confused on the terminology

zenith?

my bad, I\'m new to the game.

Yes I indeed to burn at 270, but it\'s better because I get an orbit around kerbin, incase I miss or overshoot, I have another chance to re-burn to shoot again.

When I heard to turn to 270, I had no clue what they ment,

So I even had to launch a tiny probe with 2 tanks and RSC fuel, to see what degreese are what.

[Nomer]

Ok right now,

I\'m doing one last dry-run with the thunderbird,

Then I\'ll head out and try for the actual landing with the novapunch.

[Nomer]

Ok, I really don\'t see a difference between the 270 and 90 degree one, but what ever,

Right Now I\'ve tried landing 3 times, way to much laderal movement, I\'m still hovering over the moon

trying to stabilize myself,

I got trolololo\'d by the altitude meter.

I saw my shadow at 2.5k altitude and went full throttle and now am waiting to go back down from the arch I gained myself.

This ship is hard to turn, Thunderbird is a great training module because it has unlimited fuel.

[Nomer]

I was on the opposit side of the vehicle, and I wasn\'t able to see the shadow, and my ship crashed and rolled everywhere.

I have no idea how to stop lateral movement,

Still failing at this.

RAGE

[Matticus88]

i\'ve done that soo many times! too much lateral movement but not soo much is destroys the command pod, leaving the kerbals stranded xD

[Nomer]

Atleast I didn\'t kill them, I\'m trying with the nova now, just bcuzes.

[E. F. Kranz]

Stay focused on the retro marker (yellow circle with an X through it). Burn while pointed against that marker. Watch your vertical speed indicator (at the top); if you get confused, it\'ll let you know whether you\'re going up or down.

There are countless videos on youtube showing many methods to accomplish this.

[Nomer]

I refuse to use mechjeb, tho it\'s a pain in the ass, though its fun and takes focus and skill.

[E. F. Kranz]

I\'ve never used MechJeb.

I do the 'stop and drop' routine. At around 20km altitude (depending on the craft), I start my retro burn. I keep the craft oriented against the retro marker. At 150m/s or so, you\'ll notice that the retro marker starts to move towards straight up. Follow it. (the marker is moving because your craft is now falling down as fast or faster as it is moving 'sideways.') As your speed approaches 0m/s, cut the engine. Check the map view, your 'orbit' should now be straight down.

From there on, it\'s relatively simple. I usually let my craft work up a speed of about 100m/s, then I burn it down to 30m/s or so. Wash, rinse, repeat. So long as you stay on the retro marker, you will not gain any lateral motion.

[Anachronda]

I have no idea how to stop lateral movement,

Ideally, when you\'re close to the ground you\'ll be pointed straight up and sitting on the retrograde marker. Lateral movement shows up as the retrograde marker being off of the straight up dot on the navball.

Lateral thrusts with RCS pull the retrograde marker around, because they change your lateral speed. You can use them to get back on top of the retrograde marker.

[Yourself]

Ok, I really don\'t see a difference between the 270 and 90 degree one, but what ever,

Right Now I\'ve tried landing 3 times, way to much laderal movement, I\'m still hovering over the moon

trying to stabilize myself,

I got trolololo\'d by the altitude meter.

I saw my shadow at 2.5k altitude and went full throttle and now am waiting to go back down from the arch I gained myself.

This ship is hard to turn, Thunderbird is a great training module because it has unlimited fuel.

There\'s a huge difference in the two directions you can go. First of all, the rotation of Kerbin can save you some fuel for getting into orbit, but that\'s not the biggest issue. The biggest issue with flying at 270 is that you\'re flying the opposite direction that the Mun is orbiting, so when you get out to the Mun you\'ll have a much larger relative speed which means it\'s much harder to slow down (the difference is having a relative velocity of about 368 m/s as opposed to 722 m/s).

[Nomer]

Ok. Whoever said burn at the retrograde,

thanks.

It worked like a charm,

but once again,

I got trolololo-d by the altitude meter,

I once again thought to myself at 2.7k altitude

'Nah I\'ll be fine, don\'t waste fuel!'

I was going 50 meters a second and crashed into munar surface,

but,

I went down completely straight.

Thanks for the help guys,

I\'m gonna do 1 last successful munar mission,

wish meh luck.

[tt]what the hell does this do[/tt]

[maltesh]

Assuming you\'re on the paid version, one thing you might do is start your descent with the last pre-lander stage still attached, and chuck it at the Mun ahead of your spacecraft. Its distance when it hits the surface will give you a good idea of how high the surface is at that point.

In the paid version, most of the Munar surface at standard latitudes is below about 1.6 km. Steer towards one of the large craters for a lower altitude than that.

[vexx32]

Yeah, the altitude meter is calibrated to the lowest level of Munar surface; everything will be at least a bit above the altitude meter. To be safe, start a controlled descent about 5,000m up.

[Nomer]

Lol,

I got a tradjectory dark side landing,

I made an epic touchdown,

but

throttle was full

so

i technically landed,

but then i had to turn sas off to actually hit the ground

so i just took right back off and started spinning

then crashed.

I\'m gonna go again tomorrow once it\'s light or something,

is that how the game works?

[E. F. Kranz]

\'X\' kills the throttle.

[Nomer]

Does the game go by local time?

Because I hate landing on the dark-side,

I have no idea how far I am away from the ground,

untill I\'m 2 meters above the ground

going 400 meters per second.

[maltesh]

The game goes by elapsed game time. It passes when you are flying an active spacecraft, or are on the Tracking station screen. No time passes when you\'re in any other part of the game, or when the game isn\'t running.

If you don\'t want to land on the dark side, put yourself in orbit around the Mun before landing and pick a landing spot on the light side.

[Nomer]

Oh, because I still have my space station orbiting kerban with a vehicle docked ( not really, i just got it to catch on the claw ) witch counts as 2 active space crafts

[Nomer]

Ok,

Did 1 last attempt,

Was amazingly close

everything went smoothly,

touchdown to hard,

Can someone tell me a good touchdown speed?

I perfer to land at 20 meters a second due to low gravity,

but it always end up breaking legs.

[lukasni]

20m/s is WAAaaay too fast. Just think, that\'s 72km/h or 44mph, imagine what would happen to a car that hits a wall at those speeds.

The highest you should go to avoid breaking anything is around 5m/s, for bigger or more fragile rockets i\'d even try to keep it below 2-3m/s

It also helps to have a few more legs than are absolutely needed, that way every leg has to bear a smaller fraction of the whole weight. Also, it doesn\'t matter as much if you lose a leg or two if you have a few spares

-Lukas

[Markus Reese]

Something very important, watch your horizon more than directly the ground. Looking straight down, is tough to tell when you get close, however watching angled makes it alot easier to judge when you are getting close. If the ground seems like it is coming up faster, approach a bit slower. The visual clues such as shadows etc will do alot more than the altimeter. Something important to think about is that your approach of 50m/s is 180km/h or over 100 mph. Once I hit below 5000m/s I would slow it down closer to 20m/s which will get you more reaction time and less space needed to decel.