Mun landing issues.

[Grindcore]

I cant seem to get my lander below 30m/s, im not sure what i am doing wrong, i have attached a picture so any help would be awesome.

Edited July 14, 2013 by Grindcore

[Scarecrow88]

Can't see anything from that picture, it's too small. General principle of landing on the Mun, or pretty much anywhere else really, is to keep your craft marker on the retrograde marker and burn to kill your speed. If that's what you are doing, not sure why you would struggle to get below 30m/s unless you are running out of fuel.

[SRV Ron]

From what little is visible, looks like he killed orbital speed to drop straight down. Better to do a reverse gravity turn closer to the surface.

He may be getting horizontal surface speed on the readings as he nears the surface. I had the same issue and couldn't figure out why I started climbing on my first attempt when my speed got near that value.. I used thrusters to kill the horizon speed and got a landing on the second try with a probe.

Edited July 14, 2013 by SRV Ron

[Vanamonde]

This is a duplicate thread. Moderators: how about merging it with the gentleman's other thread?

[rpayne88]

If you kill all horizontal velocity and drop to the surface, you will still gain horizontal velocity due to the rotation of the body you are trying to land on. You are better off, as SRV Ron said, using a reverse gravity turn. Starting from LMO, burn until you are on a sub-orbital trajectory. The wider the arc, the less fuel you have to burn to slow yourself down. You mostly just have to kill your horizontal velocity, meaning you are not losing dv to fighting gravity. After this, simply follow the retrograde marker on the navball until it is straight up. Do not let it deviate from this attitude. By this point, you are on your final approch. Just keep the retrograde marker where it is and burn until touchdown. Depending on the size of your lander, you should aim for between 5-8m/s on touchdown. Don't forget to drop the gear and make sure you still have enough fuel to get back into orbit unless you plan to launch a rescue mission. As a piece of advice, for your first Mun landing, I would suggest having a lander with a TWR> 2. The higher the better. While you only need a TWR> 1 to land, the more thrust you have, the more abrupt your maneuvers can be. Honestly, this is not needed to land, but landing on just enough thrust will not give you a lot of time to correct a mistake.

[Kimberly]

Personally, I'd recommend you set 5 m/s as a maximum vertical speed. Your lander might be able to handle more structurally, but even at 5 m/s landing gear has a tendency to sag with the impact, and then make the lander bounce, tipping you over or just plain smashing you into the surface.