Help with lander

[Ty Tan Tu]

First, how do you turn off Windows 10 sticky keys popup? When trying to land I end up pressing the shift and ctlr keys repeatedly, and the annoying sticky key popup gets in my way.

Disclaimer: I am a total newbie and am using the F12 fuel and battery cheats for this project.

My first attempt at a landing on Mun did not go well.

 

I fell sort of obligated to save poor Valentina now.

My first idea for a ship is to use the:

Mk1-2 Command Pod
FL-T100 Fuel Tank (Fuel is turned off)
TVR-2160C Mk2 Stack Quad-Coupler
Four 48-7S "Spark" Liquid Fuel Engine
Four LT-1 Landing Struts

But my first test attempt at landing that on Kerbil did not go as well as planed.

So, another idea I had was to add a parachute and decoupler above the fuel tank. The idea being I could use the engines to slowly lower the ship down through Kerbil's atmosphere. Once I am down below say 6,000, eject the fuel tank, engines and landing structs and open the parachute. (A heat shield adds too much weight)

A third idea I am toying with is to use the Mk1 Command Pod with a RC-001S Remote Guidance Unit on top. That drops the weight by about 3 tons, which, hopefully, makes the ship easier to handle. The idea is to use the RC-001S Remote Guidance Unit to land on Mun, and put Valentina in the MK1 pod.

Can you attach stuff on top on a parachute? Ultimately if you can, I could add a parachute to the top of the MK1 pod with a decoupler and the RC-001S Remote Guidance Unit on top of the parachute. With a heat shield on the bottom of the MK1 pod, returning to Kerbil is rival. 

Or maybe I can add the heat shield to the bottom of the MK1 pod and the parachute to the top of the RC-001S Remote Guidance Unit?

Any help would be appreciated. 

 

[LordFerret]

I don't have Win10, but if you go Control Panel, check out the Ease Of Access Center... Make the keyboard easier to use. In there you'll find an option to disable the Sticky Keys popup.

Check on YouTube for some tutorials. They'll give you ideas about Munar landings and types of crafts to build and use.

[polytechnique]

I'd recommend using radial parachutes in your situation. You can have the guidance module on top of the capsule, radial parachutes around the outside (thus allowing you to not have to worry about the weight of the heat shield and probe core, just add more parachutes) and an additional parachute on top of the probe core.

[Ty Tan Tu]

Well, I am in Mun orbit now. I only have the one parachute, but it worked in my test flight. (I picked a dumbest Kerbal for the test. Is that evil?)

From top to bottom:

Mk16-XL Parachute
RC-001S Remote Guidance Unit
Mk1 Command Pod
 _>Telus-LV Bay Mobility Enhancer
Heat Shield (1.25m)
TR-18A Stack Decoupler
FL-T100 Fuel Tank
 _>Four LT-1 Landing Struts
TVR-2160C Mk2 Stack Quad-Coupler
Four 48-7S "Spark" Liquid Fuel Engine
Illuminator Mk2

Valentina was in an almost polar orbit. Finding her is going to be the hard part...

 

[Tweeker]

Some thoughts on your current situation:

         1) Glad your here have fun!

         2) What are you trying to get out of this? Learn more about landers? or rescue Val? If all you after is to rescue Val, then just fly her off the Mun using the  infinite fuel cheat.

       3) as far as the lander goes, wider, and shorter & lighter is better. In general.

        4)  Looking at you design I would suggest making it shorter, and wider. Try using a lander can, instead of the command capsule. This will make the lander lighter, and you can mount fuel tanks on the sides of the lander. making it wider.

This will give you a more stable lander. I would also suggest using fewer engines, or setting the thrust limter to a lower setting. That will make it a lot easier to fine tune the throttle on your final descent  

[Ty Tan Tu]

I still landed on my side...:-(

[Tweeker]

Well it's a robo-lander, so try, try again

It will be easier if you lower you twr, because this will give you finer control of your throttle while descending.

1) set the guidance to hold retrograde. burn until your overall velocity is relatively low, like maybe 50 m/s at 5000 meters.

2) lower your throttle so the velocity islowly counting downwards as you descend. maybe -1 m/s every 5 seconds

3) as it get below about 10 m/s try to balance it so it holds steady around 5 m/s   --------if you slow down too much "retrograde hold" will disengage. so try to balance it near 3-5 m/s

4)  This is where it is important to have a low twr Either build the lander that way, or click on your engine and lower the thrust limiter  

[magnemoe]

This is my standard Mun lander design, ignore the small nosecones, they was an atempt to make it more streamlined as this was build before I had fairings. 
Design is the MK1 pod, service bay for probe and science stuff, heat shield, decopler fuel and engine, the four tanks will be decopled during accent, this design require you to have some fuel in the drop tanks to get home. 

Now another feature I tend to use is to put droptanks below the 4 radial tanks, this is used for going to Mun. 

First lander landed a bit hard and destroyed the engine so I send an probe and mechjeb based one to rescue Val. 

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

[bewing]

I tend to wait until I have nuke engines to go to the Mun, because of the largish deltaV requirements. My landers tend to look like this:

[Kermanzooming]

18 hours ago, Ty Tan Tu said:

My first attempt at a landing on Mun did not go well.

 

Sincerely, I can't see anything wrong with that landing. Returning to Kerbin could be a little tricky, though...