Easiest way to land on the mun or other bodies?

[neoblackheart]

watched youtube videos left and right but I can't for the life of me land on the mun. every time I try its just crash and burn. whats the easiest ship to get to it? space plane or something?

 

 

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I can land pretty easily on the Mun, but only with a 1 star pilot holding retrograde in surface mode. All you need to worry about at that point is velocity. If I try to do it manually it gets pretty messy

Edited October 12, 2016 by Waxing_Kibbous

[Reactordrone]

A few basic points-

Burn retrograde until your orbital path intersects the surface just beyond where you want to land.

Place a manoeuvre node where that orbit line touches the surface. Pull the retrograde handle until the node flips. This will give you a rough idea of when to start burning (you can usually start the burn slightly late eg-40 seconds to complete the burn you can start at about t-30 seconds).

Use SAS on retrograde hold in surface mode where available.

Orient your ship so that the navball is blue up/brown down. If you have to adjust your angle of attack to avoid terrain it makes it much easier, just use the W and S keys.

Use the interior view to see the radar altimeter display to get an idea of the terrain height as you approach the surface.

 

There are a few other approaches but that should get you down in one piece without using too much fuel.

[Aegolius13]

Yep, hold retrograde surface is the way to go.  All you have to do is manage the throttle.

Spaceplanes are hard to land in vacuum.  Wings don't work so you have to land on your tail with main engines, or use auxiliary thrusters which are hard to balance.

The easiest lander should look something like real life - wide, low, symmetrical, etc. 

Can you elaborate on your approach, and/or provide a screenshot of your lander?

[Hupf]

Also, when building the lander, keep in mind the TWR. The lower it is, the longer it takes to slow down, making landing harder. Higher TWR engines are usually heavier and/or less efficient, so you'll want to compromise.

[Superfluous J]

Also keep in mind you're not achieving a goal when you land on Mun, you're developing a skill. It's gonna be rocky the first time. and the first dozen times. But you will get better!

[Kelderek]

I strongly recommend that you get a mod that will show you the radar altimeter numbers on your main screen.  Kerbal Engineer Redux is what I use.  The altitude number at the top of the screen in the stock game is the altitude above sea level on Kerbin - for other bodies like the Mun it is based off a number that is basically the average for that body (since there is no sea on most bodies they had to invent a sea level to base the altitude off of).  What you really need to land though is the true altitude above the surface as if you measured it with a radar.  In the stock game this is only displayed when using the interior view inside a cockpit or command pod, so it is really helpful to get a mod that allows you to see this with an exterior camera view.

As others have said you can just select retrograde in surface mode (NOT orbit mode).  Then just watch the surface altitude number and control your throttle all the way down.  You should probably aim to be at 40 m/s or less by the time you are 1 km above the surface, then no more than 20 m/s around 500m, then down to 10 m/s around 300m, and finally by 150m you should try to hold throttle at about 5 m/s slowing down to 2-3 m/s right as you touch down.  You can play it more conservative and be slower at those altitudes, but if you go too slow it will waste fuel fighting gravity.

[FullMetalMachinist]

1 hour ago, neoblackheart said:

watched youtube videos left and right but I can't for the life of me land on the mun. every time I try its just crash and burn. whats the easiest ship to get to it? space plane or something?

What specifically is the problem you're having? Unless we know where things go wrong for you, you're just going to get a lot of general advice, like those above. (Not saying that it's bad advice, just general tips) 

So, where are you having trouble? Is it that your ship doesn't have enough power (TWR)? Do you run out of fuel? You always have too much downward vertical speed? 

There is an in-game tutorial on landing and returning from the Mun. Have you tried that? 

[AeroGav]

37 minutes ago, Aegolius13 said:

 

Spaceplanes are hard to land in vacuum.  Wings don't work so you have to land on your tail with main engines, or use auxiliary thrusters which are hard to balance.

Instead of landing on your tail (no landing legs)  with the main engines,  or installing a bunch of twitch radial mount engines , is to put some Vernier engines in the belly.   Cluster some (one per 10 tons is plenty) under the centre of gravity and tap K when RCS is enabled to thrust upwards.  Helps that gravity is so low on Minmus - not only do the Vernier have less work to do, orbital velocity is not much less than final approach velocity

They also make quite a big difference on Duna.  Landing speeds are so high there because the atmosphere is wispy thin, but the gravity is also weak so thrusters like that can really help you flare and land at lower speed.

 

[bewing]

KerbNet now shows the altitude of the surface. So you don't need to do the IVA trick to get radar altitude -- just subtract the surface altitude from your current altitude.

I like to pick my landing spot from orbit -- looking for someplace between the craters that looks smooth. So I wait until I'm getting close to such a spot, and then burn retrograde until my orbital velocity goes to near zero, directly above the spot.

Then I switch to surface mode, retrograde, and fall straight down. But I don't bother trying for a "suicide burn" or anything. As I fall, I may try to adjust my target if I see a flatter spot. I slow down to below 100 m/s very early. Then 60, then 30, then 20, then 10 -- as I get closer to the surface. Adjust your thrust limiter so that it's easy to find a throttle setting where you don't accelerate. Saving a few units of fuel is not worth the cost of crashing.

[neoblackheart]

Anyone know if the mod Scott Manley uses to tell what his velocitys are and everything is updated to 1.2? also what about the interstellar mod he has? Really I just would love to play what he does in interstellar quest. Its got so many different parts and so much stuff it looks like it makes the game 10x better.

[Sharpy]

EASY way?

0. Make your lander squat and wide, especially the landing legs. I found designs where you use the thinnest 2.5m tank with 3-4 1.5m tanks and engines attached to the sides - AND landing legs attached to these - to be very stable. Generally, if it's taller than wider, it's a bad design.

1. Have a lot of delta-V to spare. All methods that are delta-V efficient are more or less hard. If you want it done EASY, you'll be wasting some fuel. Also, decent control authority.

2. Have a decent Mun TWR. Not excessive, because it gets hard, but landing a BIG ship on one Terrier, or using the ion engine to land is hard. Generally though, 1 to 3 Terriers is a plenty for Mun.

3. First inefficient thing: nix your horizontal speed. When in Mun orbit and above a place you wish to land at, click the Speed display to switch it to Surface mode, then burn towards the horizon in retrograde direction until it stops dropping.

4. Nix your horizontal speed totally. Again, inefficient because braking this early IS inefficient, but it takes the burden off your head later on. With most of horizontal speed removed, you start falling. Switch "Retrograde" on SAS on, and throttle gently up - enough so that your speed still keeps growing (gravity stronger than engines). Your retrograde marker will be crawling towards the center of navball.

5. Keep a safe speed. When your altitude is <5,000 throttle up so that your speed slows down below 100m/s. Try to keep the speed (in m/s) roughly at 2% of altitude (in m), using the throttle. Err on the safer (slower) side if you see the ground close. Generally at all times use the throttle to keep the speed from growing or dropping too fast.

6. Orient the camera to the sunlit side of the craft and observe the ground for shadow. When you can see the shadow, you should slow down to some 10-15m/s and keep it there.

7. As the ground approaches (shadow gets closer to the ship; plumes of dust rise) reduce the speed to 1-2m/s, then throttle down enough so that it's RISING very slowly.

8. Touchdown at ~2-4m/s and shut the engine off immediately.

 - Do NOT try to touch down at 0 speed. Your SAS is in retrograde mode, and as soon as your vertical speed is zero, your retrograde marker goes into whatever microscopic remains of horizontal speed are there, somewhere around the horizon. And SAS follows. And disaster follows. 1-3m/s is fine. 0.6m/s is as risky as 6m/s and 0.4m/s is more dangerous than 10m/s.

9. Switch SAS to Stability Assist if it didn't on its own, then concentrate on WSAD keys to nullify any tilt resulting from the craft bouncing - keep the navball pointing at the center of blue half.

 

 

If at any point you see you're about to land on a very steep slope, or moving too fast horizontally, or get in trouble in any other way, don't try to "correct in hover". That's difficult and easy to botch. Instead, abort landing. Press Z, and immediately switch SAS to 'stability assist' (otherwise the rocket will hist love to flip upside down, where the new "retrograde" is!), rise at least 200-300m, better some 1500, fly to a safer spot horizontally, then go through the motions of nulling your horizontal speed and then performing a gentle touchdown again.

 

Some important points:

- horizontal speed is much more of an enemy than vertical. Vertical crashes are far less frequent than tumbling. It's the primary reason of crashes.

- vertical speed is easy to keep in check with fine throttle use. Keep your fingers off these X, Z. Only Shift and Ctrl, and only gently!

- Overreacting is the second cause of most crashes - a situation that is perfectly survivable if not optimal (say, ship descending at 6m/s the last part of the drop) can be turned into a disaster by overcorrecting. You press Z, your ship shots up, SAS turns you retrograde = towards the ground, BOOM. The ships on the landing legs side are sturdy, they can take some punishment. They won't survive running full throttle into the ground upside down though.

- Once you touch down, switch the engine off - even if you do bounce. Use reaction wheels, RCS, whatever, but keep the engine OFF and make sure you're not fighting SAS. Correcting after a bounce using the engine is very difficult and very easy to botch. If your lander isn't a spindly tower, gravity will do all your stabilizing on its own if you only let it - by switching the engine OFF.

- there IS such a thing as too much thrust. It may be difficult to keep the precise control of throttle if you have too high TWR. In this case, before attempting the landing, use the thrust limiter - rightclick each engine and slide the 'thrust limiter' slider to the same value - sufficiently low that 'hover' thrust vertical speed unchanging) is between 1/4 and half the throttle.

- if you're doing it right, at no point below some 5000m should your throttle be at 0 or full, except after touchdown or during abort.

[Clipperride]

There isn't much to add to the tips and advice that has already been given.  The only thing I would suggest is trying out a landing or two on Minmus.  It's a lot easier as the gravity is much lower, which means you need less fuel and the altitude of the different "flats" is 0m, so you know how far you have left to go.

Like docking, landing on another body is one of those things that seem almost impossibly difficult to start with, but becomes easier each time you do it.