Lithobraking strategies

[thereaverofdarkness]

I know a lot of people do aerobraking maneuvers to slow down, but lithobraking seems a lot less popular. I haven't been able to find a single guide on it. I was just hoping to strike up a discussion about your guys' preferred methods of lithobraking to decrease speed for landing?

I usually use a combination of tactics -- connecting with the surface at proper angles so as to detatch spent fuel tanks (for combined mass reduction and deceleration), and angling the ship on initial high-speed landing so as to divert the command module (which usually comes free) into a more upward trajectory which will be cancelled out over time by gravity. I have not yet successfully used this method to perform an unpowered landing on any worlds without atmosphere, though I did come very close to an unpowered landing on Duna.

Thoughts or suggestions?

[lajoswinkler]

I've did it on Gilly and Minmus with some damage. Never on purpose. If there are enough stages, you can turn retrograde and falldown a huge mountain (essentially still orbiting), slowly touching the ground. Kinetic energy of the craft is tranferred to the last stage which explodes and you can end up with your lander rolling down the hill. Lots of laughs.

It would be cool if airbag systems were included in the game.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/cp-airbag-system

[AmpsterMan]

I saw a video of someone surrounding their Probe with a whole bunch of girders and then struting them together in an interesting pattern. They tried to Lithobreak on Mun. The result was somewhat underwhelming because they had little to no control of where it would stop and it just continued bouncing almost at infinum. That being said, I think on a world with an atmosphere to slow you down somewhat it would make more sense. Still, the reason you see a dispraportionate amount of guides on Lithobreaking vs. Not-Lithobreaking is because, in KSP, it is often more difficult to build something that will not blow up when it crashes than it is to just make sure it doesn't crash in the first place.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I stand corrected, there actually are some lithobraking guides out there. Apparently the cubic octagonal struts are very usful here.

[Whackjob]

I'll just put this here.

[lajoswinkler]

oh god... the "laughter"... I don't know whether I want to smile or smash my screen with a brick.

[spikeyhat09]

the dark structural bits have retardedly high impact resistance. just stick a bunch of them all over the craft pointing outward

[Merinsan]

I saw some guy doing something with rover wheels one time. The thing had like 20 wheels all around. Apparently the wheel part of wheels have a pretty good impact tolerance.

He managed to land something on the Mun using this method, although it took forever to come to a complete stop.

[Ittiz]

I did come up with a ship design I called the hanging fruit basket design that required no parachute no nothing to land as long as you were going 120kps or less. Too bad the thing was so unstable the design was used often to save the Kerbals upon a launch disaster. Usually the only part that came out intact was the pod holding the kerbals.

[Captain Sierra]

Be weary of planet breaking, as discovered by Danny2642.

[lajoswinkler]

So if I strap myself to a large block of steel and jump from a building, I won't get hurt because the block has a high impact resistance? Neat. Gonna try that some time.

[Superfluous J]

So if I strap myself to a large block of steel and jump from a building, I won't get hurt because the block has a high impact resistance? Neat. Gonna try that some time.

I would not suggest you do ANYTHING in real life that you can accomplish in Kerbal Space Program.

ANYTHING.

[loknar]

Lithobraking means braking using fat?

edit: oh that would be Lipobraking

Litho means stone or rock which makes total sense as a naming convention

Edited September 3, 2013 by loknar

[magnemoe]

I saw some guy doing something with rover wheels one time. The thing had like 20 wheels all around. Apparently the wheel part of wheels have a pretty good impact tolerance.

He managed to land something on the Mun using this method, although it took forever to come to a complete stop.

Make some sense, note that if you lithobreak on an body with no atmosphere you should come in at an low angle, you will bounce, the wheels are bouncy and have shock absorbers so they will take up an lot of the impact.

During my first landings I used the Prometheus solar powered rover from Lionheart a lot as it had an airbag system, main benefit of this was that it managed horizontal speed well and its the killer of normal landers, I only had to get the vertical speed below 10 m/s and it was an successful landing.

And yes I like the shock crumble zone in the video. Actually reminds me of the structure often used on the exit ramps on highways to catch cars who are about to hit pillars, they can take some serious impacts safely as they collapse over 3-4 meters.

Lately I had an Eve lander who broke all the landing legs and landed safely on the engines after landing at 8 m/s with parachutes. I thought it was an fun feature but it was scraped.

Edited September 3, 2013 by magnemoe

[Mudkip909]

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Lipobraking

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Vanamonde]

This thread seems to have run its course.