KER Suicide Burn Readouts

[RocketMoron]

I consider KER a very essential add-on to the game. However, I do encounter the occasional frustration while using it.

Specifically, the suicide burn functionality. In the readouts, I have suicide altitude, distance and dV all showing in my surface tab. I use the suicide burn distance to judge when I begin my suicide burn, am I right in doing that? In atmospheric landing, the velocity cancels out much quicker than my reaching the ground (usually cancels at around 500m). And for non-atmospheric landings, the suicide burn distance goes into the negative although I've started my retro-burn, causing me to crash (very frustrating)

I resort to you kerbonauts for help, since I would love to get a handle on the suicide burns. Right now, I just have the vessel acceleration readout, and I get the maneuver burn time readout. Creating a maneuver node at the approximate landing spot to cancel velocity, I know how much dV I'll approximately need. The 'Time to Surface' readout gives me a baseline for when to begin my retro burn, giving between 5 and 7 seconds delay between the 'maneuver burn time' and the 'time to surface' depending on the engines I have aboard to get close to doing one perfectly.

 

[Xd the great]

12 minutes ago, RocketMoron said:

I consider KER a very essential add-on to the game. However, I do encounter the occasional frustration while using it.

Specifically, the suicide burn functionality. In the readouts, I have suicide altitude, distance and dV all showing in my surface tab. I use the suicide burn distance to judge when I begin my suicide burn, am I right in doing that? In atmospheric landing, the velocity cancels out much quicker than my reaching the ground (usually cancels at around 500m). And for non-atmospheric landings, the suicide burn distance goes into the negative although I've started my retro-burn, causing me to crash (very frustrating)

I resort to you kerbonauts for help, since I would love to get a handle on the suicide burns. Right now, I just have the vessel acceleration readout, and I get the maneuver burn time readout. Creating a maneuver node at the approximate landing spot to cancel velocity, I know how much dV I'll approximately need. The 'Time to Surface' readout gives me a baseline for when to begin my retro burn, giving between 5 and 7 seconds delay between the 'maneuver burn time' and the 'time to surface' depending on the engines I have aboard to get close to doing one perfectly.

 

You have a reaction speed, so unless you are using computer programs to auto-fire engines, I dont think you can suicide burn that accurate.

SpaceX does suicide burn, but still they dont fire full throttle at the last second for more precision control.

Mechjeb does kind of a suicide burn...

[4x4cheesecake]

The suicide burn readout of KER is just pretty bad. It works good on bodies without an atmosphere and you have to cancle your horizontal velocity first, so basically, you stop mid air and fall down to the ground...that's the only situation where the readout is correct right now.

BUT, jrbudda is working on a solution and actually released a beta version to test the improved sucide burn read outs:

https://github.com/jrbudda/KerbalEngineer/issues/22

[HebaruSan]

If you're interested, there are some details about how and why these numbers are faulty here:

 

[RocketMoron]

On 7/27/2018 at 9:53 PM, HebaruSan said:

If you're interested, there are some details about how and why these numbers are faulty here:

 

Thanks a lot for directing me to this post. It answers many questions I had of the readouts, and how to interpret them. I'll be on the lookout for future updates and in the meantime, use my haphazard way of doing the suicide burns. 

Been trying a few Falcon booster landings without kOS, and it's real tough. 

[Xd the great]

4 hours ago, RocketMoron said:

Thanks a lot for directing me to this post. It answers many questions I had of the readouts, and how to interpret them. I'll be on the lookout for future updates and in the meantime, use my haphazard way of doing the suicide burns. 

Been trying a few Falcon booster landings without kOS, and it's real tough. 

Mechjeb?

Im lazy.