Landing your ships on pleanets

[cutetiny]

Sorry for the bad spelling. When I was landing on the Mun my Space ship crashed. And I know what your saying when you read that and yes I was using parachute's and my rockets but I still was falling over 1000 feet pre second.

[blizzy78]

So what is the question?

Besides, a parachute does nothing on the Mun other than speed up your fall. There is no atmosphere there.

[lajoswinkler]

Mun? You must use more parachutes.

[Moon Goddess]

Sorry for the bad spelling. When I was landing on the Mun my Space ship crashed. And I know what your saying when you read that and yes I was using parachute's and my rockets but I still was falling over 1000 feet pre second.

Well, as above pointed out, parachutes do nothing on Mun, or any world without an atmosphere. I'm going to presume you mean over 1000 meters per second, which is a lot faster than 1000 feet per second and very very fast to be coming in for a landing. If you were firing retro rockets, then you probably didn't have enough rocket for the mass of your craft, and I do have to ask if you were landing from a Mun orbit or directly from a transfer.

And lastly I'm going to pick on you for a moment, "Sorry for the bad spelling" is not an excuse. Computer spell check is ubiquitous, I use Google Chrome as my browser, spell check is on at all times by default. I'm not saying you have to know how to spell, I'm saying get your computer to fix it for you. Language barrier is one thing, but acknowledging you're going to spell badly in advance and then not doing anything to fix it is not acceptable.

[Kerbal01]

Your spelling is impeccable, its your grammar that needs work. Welcome to the forums btw.

[Motokid600]

Where'd you get the idea parachutes would work in the Mun? Lol retrograde burns my friend. Retrograde burns. Bring your horizontal velocity down to zero. Float down like a butterfly while burning engines to keep your vertical speed manageable. Easy stuff.

[Tripzter]

You have to slow down to about 2ms when landing.

1000 feet per second is 681 mph so.. either way you were going way way too fast.

[TheDarkStar]

Are you sure you were burning retrograde and not prograde? 1000 m/s is 400 m/s faster than you are usually going when you enter the Mun's sphere of influence, unless you intercepted it by going opposite its direction of orbit.

[AlamoVampire]

Ya, the above are mostly right. It sounds as if you tried to land directly from a capture. Advice from me is to enter orbit first then go for landing. Also make sure you have enough power to slow down to 5 m/s or less for landing. And parachutes as the above folks said only help in atmospheres, with a caveat if you use too small a parachute it may tear off or if not enough you won't slow down enough

[Major "zubb" Tom]

You have to slow down to about 2ms when landing.

Not the way I did it.

Hi all, I'm not a lurker anymore.

[RSwordsman]

I suppose you could build an insane lithobraking shield, but regular landers do need to go pretty slow.

The way I do my munar landings is by getting about a 10km orbit. The slower speed for a relatively high orbit means I need far less delta-v to get a fairly steep descent curve and pick a precise landing spot. That means doing a retro burn for capture, one or two small ones for circularization/inclination, then lowering horizontal velocity in series as I get closer to the surface. By the time your horizontal speed is about zero, you can float down a couple hundred meters on a tiny amount of engine power, at which point I start praying I can cut the engine before I get a big bounce and my lander tips over.

Edited September 4, 2013 by RSwordsman

[Specialist290]

The way I do my munar landings is by getting about a 10km orbit. The slower speed for a relatively high orbit means I need far less delta-v to get a fairly steep descent curve and pick a precise landing spot. That means doing a retro burn for capture, one or two small ones for circularization/inclination, then lowering horizontal velocity in series as I get closer to the surface. By the time your horizontal speed is about zero, you can float down a couple hundred meters on a tiny amount of engine power, at which point I start praying I can cut the engine before I get a big bounce and my lander tips over.

This. Getting into a low orbit around the Mun instead of trying for a "straight shot" at the surface from Kerbin gives you much more control over the actual landing once you decide to start your descent. Since the Mun has no air, you can safely orbit quite low indeed, which helps you in the long run.

[KerbMav]

a parachute does nothing on the Mun other than speed up your fall.

No, because

There is no atmosphere there.

or even better!