How can i land this thing without exploding?

[Reinhart Mk.1]

everything about the landing seems like it should work, i've gotten it to as slow as 30 mps and it STILL breaks apart...

(edit, idk why i can't upload the image but here's the link)

https://imgur.com/ppEqOUK

 

Edited September 21, 2020 by Reinhart Mk.1

[bewing]

The most likely culprit is the actual attachment point of your rear landing gear. It is always smarter to attach your landing gear to your fuselage directly. Then use the "move" tool to visually place the landing gear where it looks nice, cosmetically.

When you land, that whole spike of force is transmitted through the landing gear to its attachment point. If the attachment point is on a wing or engine or something flimsy, then that shock will often be enough to break stuff off your plane. If the attachment point is on a heavy nacelle, or your fuselage -- your plane is much more likely to land intact.

[Reinhart Mk.1]

7 minutes ago, bewing said:

The most likely culprit is the actual attachment point of your rear landing gear. It is always smarter to attach your landing gear to your fuselage directly. Then use the "move" tool to visually place the landing gear where it looks nice, cosmetically.

When you land, that whole spike of force is transmitted through the landing gear to its attachment point. If the attachment point is on a wing or engine or something flimsy, then that shock will often be enough to break stuff off your plane. If the attachment point is on a heavy nacelle, or your fuselage -- your plane is much more likely to land intact.

this might actually be the best answer because that seems like what the root of the problem was, im too tired to test it now but i VERY much appreciate it

[Reinhart Mk.1]

i think i need a set of landing gear for takeoff and another for landing... may be too heavy to land with only one set of gear

[FleshJeb]

3 hours ago, Reinhart Mk.1 said:

i think i need a set of landing gear for takeoff and another for landing... may be too heavy to land with only one set of gear

That gear should be more than enough. Also, Bewing is correct.

Set the Spring to 0.5, and the Damper to 2.0 on all gear. It will land more gently and bounce less.

The rear gear should be closer to the COM. If you do that, set the Spring on the front gear to 1.0.

The plane should be sitting lower to the ground for stability. Unless you need to get into a downward facing cargo bay or something.

Autostrut Grandparent everything. It should help against the landing impact. All the wheels are automatically forced to Heaviest, so don’t worry about them.

Those Matt Lowne style planes are very hard to get right, BTW.

 

edit: regarding the image link. Paste the address that says Direct Link, that includes the file extension.

Edited September 21, 2020 by FleshJeb

[Reinhart Mk.1]

6 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

Those Matt Lowne style planes are very hard to get right, BTW.

trying very hard to make the concept as original as possible but at this point i dont even care if it looks like a copy, i just wanna be able to fly this thing properly lmaooo

[FleshJeb]

34 minutes ago, Reinhart Mk.1 said:

trying very hard to make the concept as original as possible but at this point i dont even care if it looks like a copy, i just wanna be able to fly this thing properly lmaooo

Do you mind if I build you a sample plane when I get home from work? If you tell me what you'd like it to be able to do, I can design to those parameters. I can explain why I make the design choices I do, and how to pilot it.

Where is it supposed to go, what does it do (science, refuel, passengers) when it gets there?

In the meantime, read this. Gav doesn't cover Mk3 planes, but it's got very good general spaceplaning information: 

 

[Vanamonde]

I see you're descending at 10m/s vertical speed. That seems to be a sort of magic number in KSP. No matter how large or small it is, any KSP ship is likely to take some damage when touching down at 10m/s or more. I have no idea why. It's just something I've observed while playing this game for years. 

[king of nowhere]

as a test, you can try pressing f3 after it explodes, it will generally tel you what exploded first, which is useful to figure out the problem

[Reinhart Mk.1]

i still dont understand it because ive seen people land craft that were WAY bigger than this and even on rough landings they dont explode, basically with this i have to land just right or i WILL explode. maybe im just more used to smaller craft but i'm still puzzled that even after i put two more sets of landing gear i still had to make a near perfect landing to keep everything intact

[linuxgurugamer]

Are you flying with the keyboard or joystick?  Joystick gives you much better control.  Also, is it fully fueled or empty tanks?

[Entropian]

Autostrut everything.

14 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Are you flying with the keyboard or joystick?  Joystick gives you much better control.  Also, is it fully fueled or empty tanks?

I've used a keyboard for years and never had problems with its landing control, but that may just be me.  Even fully fueled I would think that the plane would be able to land safely.

[Reinhart Mk.1]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Are you flying with the keyboard or joystick?  Joystick gives you much better control.  Also, is it fully fueled or empty tanks?

keyboard mouse, tried it both ways. still explodes when near empty unless i land it perfectly

 

46 minutes ago, Entropian said:

Autostrut everything.

I do this with every craft

 

47 minutes ago, Entropian said:

Even fully fueled I would think that the plane would be able to land safely.

you would think, again, i thought that was what the mk.3 gear was for

[Entropian]

Craft file possibly?

[Spricigo]

3 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

No matter how large or small it is, any KSP ship is likely to take some damage when touching down at 10m/s or more. I have no idea why.

If I needed to guess, I'd say that is because of how much it "sinks" into the ground before the physics engine kick it up for being bellow the ground. (but I'd laying if I said I actually know *Shrugs* ) It may even explain why it consistently dismantle @Reinhart Mk.1 craft while causing no harm for people using slightly different machines/configurations.

Anyways, I'm not entirely sure if the "magic number" is 10m/s but meet the ground quickly enough and something will break. Rigid attachment can make things worse because the craft become more brittle while attaching the landing gears to the heaviest part (to which, gears are autostrutted) can alleviate the issue a tiny bit.

 

5 hours ago, Reinhart Mk.1 said:

trying very hard to make the concept as original as possible but at this point i dont even care if it looks like a copy

Don't worry about copying a design that works, not even in the sense of downloading the craft someone shared and use it as it is. More experienced player are those that just found more ways things fail, you have plenty of time to find those by your own, meanwhile there is not wrong to use the exception (things that actually work)

Also, taking a craft someone else designed and reverse engineering it is a good way to learn. Allows you to get something that already works, make some change to suit more our needs (or tastes) and, if the changes break the craft, revert to the previous functional version. (E.g. One of my earlier shared craft was a development of a craft @bewing shared, it is not a better craft than bewing's original except in the sense that it was more along what I wanted and that I learned somthing mesing with it and with his later comments about the differences and why he did as he did. Oh!..Maybe (/probably) is broken after several game versions)

[Reinhart Mk.1]

2 hours ago, Spricigo said:

If I needed to guess, I'd say that is because of how much it "sinks" into the ground before the physics engine kick it up for being bellow the ground. (but I'd laying if I said I actually know *Shrugs* ) It may even explain why it consistently dismantle @Reinhart Mk.1 craft while causing no harm for people using slightly different machines/configurations.

i use rigid attachment and given the weight of this thing even when on empty... i can actually totally see how that complicates things so this makes a lot of sense

 

2 hours ago, Spricigo said:

Don't worry about copying a design that works, not even in the sense of downloading the craft someone shared and use it as it is. More experienced player are those that just found more ways things fail, you have plenty of time to find those by your own, meanwhile there is not wrong to use the exception (things that actually work)

tbh you can only be so creative with the stock parts so i dont worry about it too much, also i don't mind what people use because crafts like these take so much patience to fly let alone do the complex missions it has to do

I want to thank everyone who submitted an answer, there was some helpful stuff in here and it'll help me in the future! Ultimately I think it's  deceptively heavy even though it seems fairly short so I can't afford to just flop her down on the runway. It actually made me like the game more knowing that I had to relearn how to land something, it's nice to change things up. Anyways thanks guys!

[jimmymcgoochie]

Vertical speed matters a lot more than horizontal speed for landing planes. The best way to land a plane is to perform a ‘flare’ like real planes (especially larger ones) do- pull the nose up just before touching down to cancel out your vertical speed, floating down the runway while shedding horizontal velocity before touching down at a much lower speed both vertically and horizontally. Adding deployable flaps and/or slats on your wings can help to increase lift at low speeds which will help with landings.

You should also attach your landing gear to something very sturdy like the fuselage or possibly a really big wing e.g. Big-S delta or FAT-455 wings, before using the move tool to offset them to where you want them for aesthetics/stability purposes.

Landing a plane isn’t easy; there’s a reason pilots have to do so much training for it!

[Linkageless]

20 hours ago, Spricigo said:

Rigid attachment can make things worse because the craft become more brittle

Seconded - I find that often rigid attachment removes that bit of flexibility that almost works like a shock absorber for certain structures.  It's not something I would usually use on landing gear, but elsewhere on things that need to keep their shape like wings.

[FleshJeb]

20 hours ago, Reinhart Mk.1 said:

you can only be so creative with the stock parts

Allow me to disagree ;-)

Spoiler

 

[Reinhart Mk.1]

31 minutes ago, FleshJeb said:

Allow me to disagree ;-)

looks nice! im also kind of a minimalist, i just like the configuration of the craft i posted it's straight forward enough. what's the range on that thing btw?

[Spricigo]

1 hour ago, FleshJeb said:

Allow me to disagree ;-)

You know there is a price for that disagreement, don't you? 

I'd say your craft is well worth it, BTW.

[Klapaucius]

On 9/21/2020 at 7:22 PM, Reinhart Mk.1 said:

i think i need a set of landing gear for takeoff and another for landing... may be too heavy to land with only one set of gear

Are you using rigid attachment?  That can make planes very brittle.

[FleshJeb]

@Reinhart Mk.1 @Spricigo Thank you.

Knowing me, the range was probably at least Minmus, but it has the cargo capacity for self-refueling. I tend to design spaceplanes, make sure they can get to orbit, and then never look at them again.

Tax?: I'd have to rebuild it. I lost something like 2000 craft files when work upgraded my workstation. I'll be happy to do that this weekend if you like.