Choosing a landing site on the Mun?

[CanuckOverlord]

How the hell do you do it without Mechjeb? I don\'t want to use Mechjeb, but I want a Munbase.

[Melfice]

Aim for the ground.

I\'m not being an ass. That\'s all there\'s to it. Pick an area, preferably in one of the large craters, and set \'er down.

[rkman]

Practice, use quicksave/quickload.

Pay close attention to what mechjeb does.

[Endeavour]

I would say use Mechjeb. It will be very difficult to get the pieces of your base close together without it. Otherwise, bring lots of fuel.

[TheDarkOne]

I\'d pick a landing place with a first craft in crater or somewhere flat. To land other craft, get a circular orbit that passes over you target area with them. Decelerate so that you will land in the general area, then adjust as you get lower. Bring a large fuel tank and a weak engine.

[Shadownailshot]

The Dark one is correct, I\'m able to pick landing sites quite easily this way. I don\'t even have mechjeb. It\'s all a matter of eyeing it out on the orbital map, and when you get in close (within 2-4km), simply watch the target location on pure visuals. I\'ve been able to make a veritable city of mun landers this way.

[wildkittyv1]

Firstly, don\'t come in for a landing at a harsh angle. Make sure your orbit passes over the spot that you want to land (roughly), and just before you reach that point in your orbit you fire a retrograde burn. If you don\'t know how to change your orbital path, you need to learn how to do that before you can begin to choose a landing spot. Shrink your orbit until your 'descent' line is touching on the area you want to descend. Your orbital line should be a very narrow looking oval shape - much longer than wide - with the ends nearly touching. Use small thrusts to change the landing zone. Come down as straight as possible. Make small adjustments as you get lower as others have said.

[Guard13007]

Well, this is how I do it, and it works damn good for me every time.

1. Get into orbit (preferably a low circular orbit or with near where you intend to land being low).

2. If where you want to land is not somewhere in your orbit, you need to change the plane of your orbit, it\'s a bit hard to explain, but you point on the horizon directly between where you are going and where you are coming from on the navball and one way will drive your orbit one way, the other will drive it the other way. I can\'t explain it any better and you get a nice feel for it after you\'ve done it once or twice. (Additional note, because the Mun rotates, your orbit may not be over where you want it when you actually get there, just do more adjustments as you get closer, and/or as you get a feel for it you can figure out what adjustments to make earlier on.)

3. Now that your orbit goes over that spot, go to the opposite side of you orbit and retroburn until your periapsis is about 5 km (I assume you have strong engines on your craft, else you may want to come in slower/from a different angle).

4. When you get near where you want to land, retroburn until you\'re moving about 100 m/s, then slowly continue to retroburn as you get lower and you\'ll notice you have to tilt yourself upright.

5. When your path is almost straight down, go ahead and switch to burning straight down and lock yourself in place with ASAS. You can tilt a little bit here and there to kill off any remaining lateral movement.

6. As you get closer to the ground, start slowing yourself down, depending on how responsive your craft is, this will be to different degrees. For instance, mine is very quick so I can keep it between 20 and 40 m/s until I start to get uncomfortable (when I can see rocks coming up at me).

7. For final touchdown, bring it down to as slow as possible, under 5 m/s is best. Use steady low thrust instead of bursts. As soon as you touchdown, cut engines, if you bounced, just make sure you are coming down straight again so you don\'t tip over.

For future flights, if you are trying to set up a base, this becomes even easier because you have the craft as a point of reference. Just land everything within a kilometer, and then you can take off again and carefully move closer to the other structures.

Hope this helps and isn\'t too complex. Like I said, after the first time (or second), it becomes second-nature to change your orbit and land. Unless you decide to do a direct decent landing, in which case the biggest thing to remember is to slow the heck down while you are still high up because you won\'t have enough time to closer to the ground (3 of my Kerbals learned this the hard way).

[maxsil]

Strap a few RCS thrusters and some tanks on your ship then Just do a deorbit and to get the landing area withing a few KM of eachother, then use I J K L N and H to steer the ship/base into position using that

[Animal Mother]

Aim for the Green Circle with the cross through it, then perform a long burn at 5-10% engine power, at any altitude; unless your under 1000m, in which case you burn that engine as hard as you can. You should be looking at between 0-10 on your velocity speed indicator before you hit the ground otherwise your landing struts will snap off like twigs. Throughout the landing process, you should still be aiming at the Green Circle+Cross, and an ideal landing is one where the Navball shows the cross and circle as being 90\' of horizon, because that means all your landing struts hit the ground at the same time.

[ApoIIo]

It\'s simple. Pick a recognizeable flat and suttle area.

then when you get into your munar orbit, from kerban, it\'ll be 90 degrees (if you\'ve done it the normal way)

then burn northingly to inclinate left, and burn southingly to inclinate right, usually I put a set of wheels on my lander so I can make it pimping. Er, well get closer to where I actually wanted to land.

I once rode 20 km. because i wanted to reach the mun arch and misjudged landing sight from orbital map ty to eighth res.

[CanuckOverlord]

it\'ll be 90 degrees (if you\'ve done it the normal way)

What normal way? I do the Mun-rise burn transfer from an equatorial Kerbin orbit, and usually I\'m about 45 degrees in any given direction.

[wildkittyv1]

What normal way? I do the Mun-rise burn transfer from an equatorial Kerbin orbit, and usually I\'m about 45 degrees in any given direction.

He meant as in an 'eastward' or prograde orbit, where you\'re traveling towards a 90 degree heading all the time in your orbit. Retrograde or 'westward' orbits have you traveling towards 270 degrees.

Which type of 45 degrees do you mean? Do you mean intervals on the horizon or 45 degrees towards space/ground. After you establish an orbit for your gravity turn, you never really need to point towards anything other than N/S/E/W (0, 180, 90, 270 respectively on the gyroscope), unless you\'re trying to move or shape an orbit that\'s gone wonky for one reason or another (usually due to bad or awkward rocket design that throws you off, or a bad trans-Munar burn). You never really need to use the in-between headings unless something goes wrong or you\'re adjusting your ascent/descent to a body.

[CanuckOverlord]

I mean, 45 degrees from munar-equatorial. I think it\'s just little mistakes compounding by the time I reach the Mun.

[vexx32]

Really? Wow. I\'ve never been able to be off by more than a few degrees. Anyway, if your craft are commonly on this inclination, you can take advantage of it to get them all to the same place. Retrograde is the green circle with the X through it at all times. Point towards that and fire your engines to bring your orbit down. If you wanna do the stop and drop method (as is what appears to be suggested from a skim-read of this topic), just keep firing retrograde until the speed is very close to zero. Then switch it to Surface to account for the Mun\'s rotation, and point retrograde again and fire your engines until it\'s as close to zero as you can get it. Then, just fall towards the Mun and prepare for landing.

[Shadownailshot]

What normal way? I do the Mun-rise burn transfer from an equatorial Kerbin orbit, and usually I\'m about 45 degrees in any given direction.

Jeez, I\'m usually only in such an erratic orbit on a minmus capture.

[A Fat Pokemon]

Enough practise and you will do it all the time picking landing points is one of my strongpoints,

I can easily land my rovers on top of the mun archs, not that it does me much good though.