... Land on the Mun?

[Freakywwe]

Okay so now that I've finally understood how to get to the Mun, my problem is landing. I can bring my ship down to the ground without issues but slowing down is confusing me. The lowest I can get is about 20m/s before I start rising again and have to cut my engines to lower down, usually resulting in either crashing or my capsule bouncing across the surface. What is the technique to removing the "bounce" from my landing and coming down smooth onto the surface?

[Pyre]

Sounds like you still have horizontal velocity to kill. Try to keep your ship facing retrograde(the green/yellow marker with an X through it on your nav-ball). As you slow down it will move upwards. Once it is vertical, come down slow, and try to land at less than 5m/s.

[Freakywwe]

That's what I'm doing, something tells me I'm either starting far too early or far too late. I just become afraid that by the time I want to lose speed I have too much and no time to kill it

[NeoArod]

I can totally relate to this issue, yesterday I started practicing landing on Kerbin before embarking on a journey to the Mun, and I have to say landing has to be by far the most difficult thing in the entire process

Im going to try this, thanks for the tip.

Sounds like you still have horizontal velocity to kill. Try to keep your ship facing retrograde(the green/yellow marker with an X through it on your nav-ball). As you slow down it will move upwards. Once it is vertical, come down slow, and try to land at less than 5m/s.

[Vanamonde]

If you're having that much trouble fine-tuning the speed, maybe your engines are just too powerful for the weight of your lander? What does you ship look like (in screenshots)? Maybe you could get close to the speed you want with the main engine, and then use RCS bursts to fine-tune. You might also build your lander shorter and wider, in which case you can bounce a little and still land upright. But mostly I suspect that if you're going sideways 20m/s as you're about to touch down, you're waiting too long to cancel your horizontal velocity.

[EndlessWaves]

Yeah, the nav ball shows velocity so if you're showing 20m/s on that while your vertical speed indicator is reading 0 then it's horizontal speed - you can either tilt your rocket slightly and use the main engine to kill it or use RCS via the IJKL keys.

Edited August 29, 2012 by EndlessWaves

[Legal2k]

Try starting descent from high orbit (~50 Km or so).After main retroburn to lower periapsis. Slowly retroburn until the

is in the center of the blue side of navball, that's mean you have no horisontal velocity. if it's not in the center, horisontal velosity is not killed.

Edited August 29, 2012 by Legal2k
Added spoiler tags

[Vanamonde]

Nothing like getting something backwards in print to make you feel stupid. You're right, Pyre. I guess it's just too early in the morning for me.

Edited August 29, 2012 by Vanamonde

[Pyre]

You want the prograde marker in the blue and the retrograde in the brown, or your landing will not go smoothly.

I think you have that reversed, if prograde is in the blue, you are going up, and landing will be difficult unless you are aiming for the underside of an Arch.

[Kosmo-not]

Shortly before touchdown, you want to maneuver to put your retrograde marker on the 90° pitch dot on the blue part of the navball.

[NeoArod]

Here is another thing, I just realized for the 1st time that you can switch between Orbital and Surface speed on the navball, so when killing your horizontal speed to land do you pay attention to Orbital or Surface Setting?

[maltesh]

Surface. When landing, the surface is what you're trying to match velocities with.

[Rich]

The single biggest tip which allowed me go from a serial Mun crasher to landing 90% of the time, was the fact that you can make small adjustments to your orientation with SAS still turned on. Really helps eliminate that last bit of surface velocity in a controlled way.

[NeoArod]

Thanks.

Also is landing on Kerbin much harder than landing on the Mun? Because by what I've seen on youtube sure seems like it.

[Zephram Kerman]

A very different strategy: instead of lander legs, use one of the rovers. Those things can safely touch down with horizontal speed, and can bounce harder too. (Just be sure to land straight, not sideways, of course.) Once you're safely down, you can explore long distances. But it doesn't look nearly as cool as the classic "Eagle" style landing.

[Serratus]

I find that landing on Kerbin is far easier. The atmosphere (provided You don't go into it 'straight down') will kill most of Your speed. On Kerbin You don't even need to engage Your engines until ~2Km at which point Your speed is down to ~200m/s just by aero-breaking. That makes it WAY easier. Then again, if You enter the atmosphere the wrong way, nothing's gonna save You due to higher gravity...