Landing on dark side of planet?

[W. Kerman]

I tried to land a Dres rover on the mun as a test run. But I ran into a problem, I "landed", ( slammed), into the ground because it was to dark out, if anyone knows how to judge altitude in general, or on dark side of planets/moons, our input would be awesome!

PS, Seeing as I'm a KSP forum newbie, I'm not sure if this is the right forum to put this question in.

W. Kerman

[Mike Mars]

Use MechJeb, Surface Info option.

It tells you actual altitude versus altitude above sea level.

[klesh]

You would want to post this in the gameplay questions forum in the future, because its about how best to play the game. 

Dark side landing are indeed difficult, and its always a better idea to land during the day.  Even the Apollo landings landed with the sun low on the horizon most times to they'd have long shadows to see, helping them judge the terrain.  

You can mount lights to the bottom of your craft to illuminate the ground as you get close on a dark side landing.   Thats about as much help as you'll be able to give yourself.   Also, some cockpits offer a more accurate radar altimer reading on the inside.  Better than the altimiter you see at the top of the screen. 

[Superfluous J]

There are several ways to judge distance from the ground:

Lights. Have 2-4 lights around your craft, aiming down. The beams don't go super far so when you see the ground start lighting up you're pretty close, but it's better than nothing.

Go IVA. Do this in orbit, and make sure you know where the altimeter is in the pod you're using. Then as you're coming down jump in and check the altitude, then jump back out and note the difference between that and your sea-level altitude. That plus the lights suggestion should be enough in most cases.

Drop something. Build your ship so you empty (or nearly empty) a tank right before you land, and drop that tank on the way down. As it falls it'll tell you how far away it is, and when it blows up subtract that from your sea-level altitude. As above, this plus lights should be enough.

Use a mod. Several mods, including the popular Kerbal Engineer Redux and MechJeb do this, but my current favorite is Better Burn Time, which tells you the info you need to know right where the game normally tells you your maneuver node burn time.

 

Edited July 19, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[Xavven]

I use the spotlights trick as well -- 2 pointing down at the default angle, and 1 pointing forward but tilted up 45 degrees from the default downward angle. Don't use flood lights for range estimation as they don't show up far enough away to be helpful.

The two downward facing lights will help you estimate how far away you are by how much their spot circles overlap. However by the time you see the illumination, you had better be going less than 100 m/s (I prefer 40 m/s) or you might not be able to decelerate in time.

Hm, maybe this is the time to put in a feature request for a radar altimeter on the default exterior camera view? Kinda silly we have to go IVA to see it.

[CaelumEtAstra]

Lights. Or rather, as Bob Fitch (aka @Felbourn) says, MOAR LIGHTS! Put a couple facing downward, preferably the round, bright ones as they form a nice circle that gets smaller as you get closer to the ground.

Other than that, If you're not opposed to mods, I could recommend using MechJeb or Kerbal Engineer as they have surface altitude readouts.

[IWanttobeEVA]

Try not to land during the night! Lights and driving IVA are the best suggestions, also as you feel you're getting close drop your speed relative to the surface so the yellow indicator light turns off and proceed at around 10-12m/s decent, you'll burn though your fuel but when the lights do illuminate the surface at about 30m to go you'll have a second or two to make a final burn and land softly on the surface assuming you're not on the side of a crater. 

[kBob]

This is how I did it:

Lots of dv helps so you can change your mind at the last moment when you realize you're coming down on a steep hillside and try again in a different spot.  Of course that ship is overkill but I like to do a lot of things together like collect science and fulfill tourist contracts and land bigish ships.  And although I had MJ installed here I was only using it for the Dv readouts.

Edited July 19, 2016 by kBob

[RocketBlam]

The spotlight method works well. If you doubt how close you are, though, slow down (as has been previously said) because depending on your rocket, even at full thrust, if you're really descending fast you may not be able to slow down fast enough.

If you're in a manned capsule, you also have a landing radar inside the cockpit, which will tell you your altitude above terrain. It's pretty nerve-wracking to use though, because you have to use the inside view.

[Felbourn]

Needs more lights.

[Red Iron Crown]

I also use the dambusters style lights for uninstrumented dark landings. Though sometimes you can get a nasty surprise if you still have a lot of lateral speed and pass over a hill.

[AlmostNASA]

Moar lights!!!!!!!!!!!!! or Planetshine for eyeballing it. or just MJ

[Norcalplanner]

There's also a mod called landing height which changes the altimeter to show the distance above the current terrain when in surface mode.

[Provisional Name 12]

I usually use Kerbal engeneer and land on the light side. It's probably not worth putting lights on unless you need to land on the dark side. Really though maybe your landing funny. I don't know how others do it but when landing on low-grav/no-atmos bodies I like to draw my orbit as low as possible (a low apeostasis ensures low vertical velocity on final decent) and set it up so that my craft is really close to the landing area then kill my horizontal velocity when I have just enough time to land on the spot. When done right, I just drift down on a brief efficient controlled decent of a few hundred meters. Seems to save fuel vs other methods like suicide burns at high alt or killing both gradually from a higher point. I also think it is an easier way to land and easier to navigate to land in specific areas.

[razark]

Note the lights under the plane, shining on the surface of the water.

[KerbMav]

2 hours ago, Norcalplanner said:

There's also a mod called landing height which changes the altimeter to show the distance above the current terrain when in surface mode.

probably the best mod in this case, since you do not have to deal with anything else because it just adds that one thing you needed.

Slopes are still funny though. Better pick a good spot in orbital view/map mode.

[Provisional Name 12]

Actually that's the cool thing about kerbal engineer is that the surface tab will tell you all about the terrain below you as well including what slope it is. I honestly can't imagine why it isn't in stock.

[kiwi1960]

Lights should light your way.... and as a Kiwi, I'm proud one of our own was a "damn buster".....

 

[pandaman]

I find that lights are a good idea anyway.  Even in daylight they can give a good clue when you are getting close to the ground.  They are also handy when you are in a plane and losing altitude gently or the ground slopes up towards you. 

[KerikBalm]

lights, IVA radar (either look at it for a while until within illumination range, or glance at it and do the mental subtraction for "ASL" height), and Kerbal Engineer.

I really wish in map view the dark side was illuminated by ambient light after the world has been scanned, so one could at least plan the landing to be in a flat-ish area so you don't need to worry about smacking into a large ridge when you thought you had enough altitude based on the last time you checked the IVA radar.

I also wish the IVA radar had a non-IVA equivalent

[radonek]

Landing height is a great mod. KER have impact point slope angle readout that might be useful. If you can't do final approach pure IFR, have two bright downward lights and angle them slightly. Distance of two circles of light can give you some idea about height and rate of descent even in absolute darkness.There is also some mod that sound alert when you are too low&too fast, should things go "off-nominal" :-)
 

[AlmostNASA]

13 hours ago, razark said:

Note the lights under the plane, shining on the surface of the water.

it kind of looks like you used powder toy

[SpacedCowboy]

There's one more option here I don't think has been mentioned yet. If you're aiming for a particular spot, circularize your orbit and kick it into warp and wait for it. ( the light side )