How to make a radial decoupler with almost no force?

[gta-man]

Hello, i want to drop an object on the mun, but i dont want a the decoupler to send it flying horizontally.

In the part.cfg, ejectionForce does nothing at all.

Help please.

[Stogas]

You\'d probably have to do a retroburn to decrease your horizontal velocity enough to lower your periapsis into the surface before decoupling, and then to save the actual ship you\'d need to do a proburn to put you back into orbit again.

The way I would do it - align your trajectory during TMI for a crash course, so that it will require the least amount of delta-v to get back to a safe orbit.

The object would probably be destroyed by the impact, though.

[gta-man]

I just want the object i attach to the decoupler to drop down instead of horizontally.

[Stogas]

  gta-man said:

I just want the object i attach to the decoupler to drop down instead of horizontally.

So yeah, basically what I said.

In layman\'s terms: you have to be on a landing course yourself before decoupling the object.

[semininja]

I think he meant after he\'s landed...

Ejection force may have to be exceptionally low, depending on the mass of the object. Have you tried setting it to 0?

[Clouds]

At least on Kerbin, a radial decoupler modded with ejectionForce = 0 let the part drop straight down. Since the decoupler remains attached to what falls off, you might also want to set it to 0 mass.

[semininja]

0 mass breaks things, but you can set it to 0.00001 or something and it\'ll be effectively the same thing.