Tips for landing on Mun?

[Joey]

I've made contact with the surface, but my parachutes failed and now I know why. How do I slow myself down enough so that I can land safely without parachutes on the Mun?

[Pursuedtank]

Parachutes won't work on the Mun, they are designed for atmospheres because that is how parachutes work You just have to have enough fuel and a powerful enough engine to do it. Burn at the yellow marker with a cross in it. I am sure there are good tutorials for this. I usually point people in

's direction in cases like this

[Joey]

But can someone just tell me what method I need to use in order to make a slow descent?

[PaleoGamer]

Use your rockets. Short version is to center your retrograde vector in the navball and slow down until you are pointed straight down. Keep your speed down and try to touch down at less than 10 m/s.

[Vanamonde]

Point your nose at the retrograde marker and fire the engine, and adjust throttle to get the descent speed you want. But don't brake too high or you'll end up wasting a lot of fuel. The most efficient method is to shed all speed at the last second with an intense burn, but that's hard to do precisely.

[Joey]

Use your rockets. Short version is to center your retrograde vector in the navball and slow down until you are pointed straight down. Keep your speed down and try to touch down at less than 10 m/s.

Thanks. This is what I was looking for.

[CalculusWarrior]

Thank you Joey, you just made my day. Parachutes on the Mun...

Anyways, landing is a notoriously tricky business, as you essentially have to transition from travelling at 500+ m/s to nothing in the space of about 30 km.

Here's a basic checklist that you might want to follow:

1. Quicksave. As soon as you achieve orbit around the Mun, locate your F5 key. Press it to quicksave. If at any time you feel like you've screwed up the descent, simply hold F9 and you will be transported back in time and space to the moment where you initially quicksaved.
   
2. Locate your landing spot of choice. An ideal landing site will be well-lit, not on the side of a mountain, and optionally on the side of the Mun facing Kerbin so you can see it in the sky.
   
3. Execute your deorbit burn.This bit requires a bit of trial-and-error. You can either burn on the opposite side of the Mun to your landing spot, expending the least amount of fuel possible, or you could burn directly over your site, killing all horizontal velocity. Ideally, you want a mixture of the two, as the former requires you to kill a lot of velocity on your final approach, and the latter eats up a lot of fuel. I find a good balance is to burn retrograde when your lander is approximately 45 degrees away from your landing site, but feel free to experiment. In the end, you want your orbit to be intersecting the ground a little further out from your landing zone.
   
4. Coast down towards your landing site. This part requires you to be on the ball. You don't want to start braking too high up, but neither do you want to try to burn when you're 500 metres above the ground. Remember, quicksave is your friend in this case.
   
5. Put down landing legs. Yes, I know that you could put the landing legs down at any time during the flight, but this is generally when I first decide to/remember.
   
6. Begin your final landing burn. Your aim here is to kill all of your velocity, both the velocity you have accumulated while falling towards the Mun, and also the velocity you started out with in orbit. Try to get a feel for your lander, and figure out how quickly it accelerates; landers with higher Thrust to Weight Ratios are a lot easier to handle at this point, as they can kill their speed a lot quicker. Ideally you want to reach zero exactly when you reach ground level, but this is not always the case. If you stop before your landing site, no worries, take a look at the next step. Again, feel free to hold F9 if you screw up.
   
7. Descend the final few metres. Unless you are a cyborg, you likely did not reach zero velocity exactly at ground level. As such, your lander will be stationary in the air above your landing site. To rectify this problem, simply cut the throttle and let yourself fall. However, it is not recommended to fall too far, and possibly throttle up a bit so that your velocity doesn't get out of hand. Keep your velocity below 10 m/s when you reach ground level, and you will land safely! Note that you also will be dealing with horizontal velocity, so keep your nose pointed at your yellow retrograde marker the whole way.
   
8. Settle onto your landing legs, extend your ladder, deploy your solar panels, activate lights and scientific instruments, and finally EVA your kerbal and plant a flag detailing your remarkable achievement.
   

Tips:

• The altitude numbers at the top of the screen display your current height above sea level, not the ground. Most cockpits have radar altimeters (the dial with the orange on it that goes up to 3000). Try switching to IVA view (the 'C' key) and taking a look at it every so often. This will let you know how far you are above the actual surface.
  
• Quicksave, quicksave, quicksave. I know I repeat myself, but this is an extraordinarily useful tool to have.
  
• If you're unsure which way to point your nose, don't worry. Keep your vessel pointed at the retrograde marker the whole way downwards (essentially the cross with the X on it).
  

If you're really having difficulties, try downloading and installing ...dare I say it on these forums?... Mechjeb, the sophisticated autopilot that can and will guide your ship down to land safely. There are currently two versions of it out there:

• Mechjeb 1.9.8 (the more user-friendly version), and
  
• Mechjeb 2.0.8 (more modern and updated for recent versions)
  

Find it here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/12384-PART-0-20-Anatid-Robotics-MuMech-MechJeb-Autopilot-v2-0-8

[Kosmo-not]

This video might help:

Okay, maybe it doesn't, but I hope it motivates you to master the art of landing.

[ChrisDaBox]

The best thing to do is to begin your descent from a 100km orbit. Then gradually slow yourself down so that you are moving straight down. This stage should be around 20km or 10km to give you a bit tof time for correction. Then just slow down your verticle speed until you gently touch the surface. Hope this helped

[stupid_chris]

To be totally honest, the way I learned the best trick is with MechJeb. Seeing it in action and how it lands you on the mun can show you a lot of tricks. Of course, you shouldn't try imitating it exactly cause you're gonna have a hard time killing your horizontal speed like he does, but it gives good markers for where to do what aproximately. I learned a lot from the ascent autopilot too. Now I do most of my stuff manually, but when I started I used it a lot and I think I learned from it. So I suggest that you should download it. It'S a useful tool, gives a lot of information, can help on really low fps landing and ascents, and it does tons of cool stuff. And if you just want to do your stuff manually and you feel comfortable, you just don't put it on your craft ^^

[Anglave]

Pebblegarden's "Take Me To The Mun" series includes very detailed Mun landing instructions. They helped me a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJk9U-A1ps4

Edited May 24, 2013 by Anglave

[Crush]

CalculusWarrior described it pretty well, but I would like to add one thing: Don't be a chicken. Wait until the last moment before you start retro-burning. The faster you approach the surface the less time you spend in the gravity field and the less acceleration you have to kill by expending fuel. Braking too early and then spending time hovering thousands of meters above the surface is just a waste of precious fuel. But when is the last moment? That depends on the acceleration power (thrust/mass ratio) of your lander. It might sound counter-intuitive, but a lander with more and bigger engines can actually be more fuel-efficient, because you can wait longer before you brake.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Crush

[IllicitMedic]

This video might help:

Okay, maybe it doesn't, but I hope it motivates you to master the art of landing.

Holy **** lol