Landing Spaceplanes/Buran via MechJeb 2.0.x

[MDBenson]

I've never go the hang of this. I've searched the forums and scoured YouTube but I can't find any guidance on combining the Landing Guidance and Spaceplane Guidance in MechJeb 2.0.x to do an automatic landing of a spaceplane. I tried with BobCat's Buran and Kliper and failed there, and I tried my own but that failed probably due to shonky craft design (I'm fundamentally awful at designing spaceplanes!).

SO any tips?

[Superfish57]

Fly the plane yourself?

[Flixxbeatz]

Fly the plane yourself?

Best advice ever

[lyndonguitar]

I've been trying to do exactly the same, only difference is i'm using my own designs.

mechjeb 1.9 seems to do it easily with the autom8, but in my experience with 2.0.8, its a bit harder. What I do is just target KSC, burn until you are 5-10km off target to the west. then after re-entry, fire up the spaceplane guidance, it's not fully automated though, You have to guide the guidance in order to have a successful landing lmao. at least for me.

Landing planes with Jet Engines are much more easier though, what's making it hard is that you basically have to glide your all the way back to the runway

Fly the plane yourself?

.....

Edited June 15, 2013 by lyndonguitar

[MDBenson]

Fly the plane yourself?

Best advice ever

I suppose I asked for that but trolling is trolling, guys, c'mon. I can quite happily manually land the Space Shuttle in SSM2007, but it's set-up specifically to do that, the flight controls and model in KSP are pretty cranky. I've tried flying stuff by hand but it's hard as hell and frankly I'm a terrible pilot. If you have any suggestions of craft to practice flying with then I'll try but... it probably won't help

The reason I asked is Buran had automated landing guidance and autopilot. I wondered if it's possible in the game yet but I guess it's... patchy.

I've been trying to do exactly the same, only difference is I'm using my own designs.

mechjeb 1.9 seems to do it easily with the autom8, but in my experience with 2.0.8, its a bit harder. What I do is just target KSC, burn until you are 5-10km off target to the west. then after re-entry, fire up the spaceplane guidance, it's not fully automated though, You have to guide the guidance in order to have a successful landing lmao. at least for me.

Landing planes with Jet Engines are much more easier though, what's making it hard is that you basically have to glide your all the way back to the runway

I gotcha. Thanks, I guess I need to either try and land it by hand or work out a better strategy.

Edited June 15, 2013 by MDBenson

[Quorthon]

I've been trying to do exactly the same, only difference is I'm using my own designs.

What I do is just target KSC, burn until you are 5-10km off target to the west. then after re-entry, fire up the spaceplane guidance, it's not fully automated though, You have to guide the guidance in order to have a successful landing lmao. at least for me.

I gotcha. Thanks, I guess I need to either try and land it by hand or work out a better strategy.

This is the same strategy that I also worked out for my own space glider and for the Klipper. Haven't flown the Buran yet.

Both designs require a lot of positive trim for gliding back to the runway. Otherwise you're gonna have a bad time landing them.

[MDBenson]

Okay I gave your strategy a shot and also watched BobCat's manual landing video and I got it on the ground. It wasn't at KSC but it did work

[xenu]

It's not so hard to land the Buran, it did take me several attempts and many smashed orbiters on the runway but here is what i do...

Don't attempt to land at night, sometimes it can't be helped using the landing guidance but if you find yourself re-entering orbit on the dark side i'd go around for another try (if you can). If you do land at night, you won't see the runway until the last second and by which time you will miss it completely.

Once in a circular orbit, or docked with a station, I fire up the landing guidance and target KSC.

I then wait until it's just entered the atmosphere, and hit the gear button (twice for some reason on the Buran model)

You should see the gears drop, and the airbrakes start to open.

I then turn off landing guidance, point the spacecraft in the right direction using only the RCS and then hit the SAS when the nose of the orbiter is aimed at the sea. KSC is usually hidden just behind a mountain range at this point, so aim for the sea beyond it.

For the next few minutes, gliding into KSC you can adjust your heading and orientation it bit by bit using RCS and then turn the SAS back on

When you reach a few hundred meters off the ground its time to start pulling up gently, until you are just a few feet off the runway and this is the part where its almost pure luck.. you want to drop down gently by pulling up and then letting go and pulling up hard. If you got it right, you should be on the runway at which point you need to let go of the flight controls and deploy the 'chutes.. if you bounced on the runway and flew up again, don't worry.. just drop gently...

Hope it helps you land it, I have also cheated a few times and had infinite fuel on but I found the above method actually lets me land Buran as close to automated as possible.

I don't think Buran ever flew with a crew on board, so would be cool to figure out an automated landing system for it.

[HeadHunter67]

Fly the plane yourself?

Yeah! That's how the Russians landed Buran, right? RIGHT?

[sgt_flyer]

Erm russians are masters in gudance systems - buran made a fully automatic ascent and landing (most russian manned spacecrafts are automated, to remove human error from equations )

[HeadHunter67]

That was kind of my point. It's silly to criticize someone for wanting to use autopilot to land a craft that was only ever landed... by autopilot.