How to land better on Planets? Or is it just the planet im landing ON?

[ThatKerbal]

I don't know if its just the planet i'm trying to land ON, Or if i just totally suck at landing.

But im trying to land on the mun (I've tried to missions actually, Both having to settle for a craft-on-it's-side landing) Every time i actually end up landing is when the craft miraculously survives and lands on it's side. But i feel like I haven't really completed my mission. Because in my head to complete my mission, I need to land correctly, As landing is a big part of it. So i'd like to know how to land what i'm not doing. I end up crashing or falling on the side. (It takes alot of F9's) So how do i land or what im doing wrong, I'm aiming retrograde marker thrusting slowly so i don't start going upwards by accident. (Which happens to me A LOT)

So you know my question.

Thanks in advance!

[Specialist290]

At this stage, it's mostly a matter of practice, but a few specific areas you might want to work on:

About how fast is your final velocity at the moment of contact? Ideally, the slower you're going right before touchdown, the "softer" a landing you'll have.

How good are you at gauging the terrain at your landing site? Are you able to make small steering corrections during your descent to avoid slopes and other possible hazards?

What do your landers tend to look like? Are they tall and slender, or do you make them fairly wide to give yourself a wider landing leg base (and thus better stability on the ground)?

Hope this helps

[Seret]

Practice.

Practice.

Practice.

Practice.

Practice.

Practice.

Then practice some more. It sounds like you're doing it basically right. You can do yourself a favour by building your landers wide with a low centre of gravity. Use your navball, try and get that horizontal velocity as close to zero as you can. Make sure your SAS is locked vertical as you touch down and it'll automatically resist any force trying to tip you.

Landing on your side isn't a biggy anyway. You can quite often right yourself using pod torque, RCS, and/or retracting and extending the legs. Even if you can't you can often take off ok from lying down. In my book any landing that doesn't include fatal splode is ok.

[ThatKerbal]

Thanks for the replies. Specialist You've actually struck a thinking node on my brain lol I usually use the kerbal X But, You...it's all clear, The wider the lander the easier you'll land because your landing legs are more extended so if you start falling to the side you have a better chance of not falling on the side, but tipping a little but then miraculously being tipped backwards and you land vertically. Thanks, Also is practicing to land on kerbin a good idea (Since you don't gotta travel to a planet all the time lol)

[Mr.Rocket]

Landing is hard to learn, but i'll do my best to teach. Lots of practice in the demo helped in the real game. Make sure you are landing on the light side of the moon, so you can see and mountains and whatnot.

Recommended method:

Have SAS on the whole time

Start with a low orbit, for moon about 12 kilometers. Then, burn retrogade, until your periapsis just dips below the surface and disapears. This way, you are at first coming in for a shallow landing so you are not flying strait towards the ground at high speeds, but rather slowly towards the ground, but really fast side ways. Then, warp until you are 10 ish kilometers from the ground. Burn retrogade until your speed is near 100 m/s. Warp a little more, yes you will start speeding up again. Warp until maybe 5 kilometers. Then, burn retrogade again, (this should still be near the horizon ish). Your retrogade marker should slowly start climbing upwards, and thats okay, just follow it. Once you are going vertically down, keep your speed under 30m/s. Check IVA view every once in a while to see your actual altitude, the one at the top of the screen is to sea level, and mun clearly doesn't have seas. Once you are under 1 kilometer or 1000 meters, try to keep your speed under 12 m/s going completely vertically down. Once you see your shadow getting bigger on the ground, or you know you are really close, stay near 5 m/s. Don't throttle too much or you'll go back up again. Land.

P.S. Minmus is a little harder to get to, but much easier to land on, i highly recomend it first. Have lights on the bottom of your ship so if you accidnetally land on the dark side, you can see how close the ground is.

[Seret]

is practicing to land on kerbin a good idea (Since you don't gotta travel to a planet all the time lol)

Not really, Kerbin's gravity is really high. It's much more difficult to land on than the Mun for example. Just get something parked in orbit around the Mun, hit F5 to quicksave, and then do multiple landings by hitting F9 to load.

[metl]

I have one quick suggestion to consider. Get into a stable orbit first, then retrograde completely horizontal until your orbital velocity is zero. Once you start falling down, you will drop almost straight down then it only takes slight adjustments to correct and leaves your craft upright the whole way down. Landings were extremely difficult for me to figure out until I found this trick. To find a flat spot (or mostly flat), set a marker on your orbit above a spot that looks good and free of craters, using the retro adjustment to get a vertical line. Once it is vertical, you can drag it around your orbit until it is in just the right spot to give the best chance at a smooth, vertical descent onto flat land.

[SmarterThanMe]

What everyone else said regarding practice.

I'm assuming that you're not using MJ (or you're early in the game where you don't have any useful MJ components), but this is how I do it.

Make sure that your ship is equipped with a decent engine, reaction wheels and RCS. It's best to build a bottom heavy ship. Towers and top heavy things tend to topple.

Make a maneuver node above the approximate area where you want to land that completely zeroes your orbit and brings you down in almost a straight line. Execute that node. Point the tip of your straight up, gear down, SAS on, RCS on (and lights off, as well). You're no longer going to move the ship from this axis unless you desperately need to. Use RCS boosters in small increments to zero the difference between your orbit speed and your surface speed (click orbit speed to change). You can tell which direction you need to adjust by where the prograde/retrograde markers are and keep in mind that you might need to adjust further on your way down. Once its zeroed, hold on, and ride it in. You need to reduce speed using your main engines when you're close to touching down (say, the last 10 km). When you're in the last couple of hundred metres, reduce your speed down to around 7m/s and try to keep it around there all the way in. You can tell when you're close because your shadow will converge on you, so use that as your guide. Cut off your engine the second you make contact, or immediately before.

That's how I do it, but, again, it needs practice.

[technion]

What legs does it have? I've had a lander drop perfectly vertically on duna at 2m/s and flip on its side because of those silly micro-legs.

[brooklyn666]

Three big things that can cause rockets to land sideways are the slop of the landing area (flat is better), center of gravity of your lander (you want the CoG to be low, as top-heavy rockets tend to flip), and landing touchdown velocity, both vertical AND horizontal. You don't want to be moving horizontally over the surface at all if you can help it.

[JiWint]

Kill horizontal speed,so that your retrograde vector (the circle with +) will be pointing directly upwards.So when you're closing to the ground,you will not be moving to any side,so everything you will have to do is to make your falling speed less than 5m/s when you touch the ground

[Richy teh space man]

Even if you do land on the Mun sideways, you can still try this trick to take off:

[Nao]

Thanks for the replies. Specialist You've actually struck a thinking node on my brain lol I usually use the kerbal X But, You...it's all clear, The wider the lander the easier you'll land because your landing legs are more extended so if you start falling to the side you have a better chance of not falling on the side, but tipping a little but then miraculously being tipped backwards and you land vertically. Thanks, Also is practicing to land on kerbin a good idea (Since you don't gotta travel to a planet all the time lol)

Remember you can also train at Minmus! There are a lot of flat areas that are easy to hit and the KerbalX can do a land and return mission stock, unlike the Mun mission. To help throttle control , when you are low and slow over the body you are trying to land on, try limiting the thrust of the engine via the engine's right click menu (especially good on minus, as KerbalX needs only ~3% thrust for hover there, so 10-20% is enough. For Mun i would recommend 30-50%).

Also regarding technique, there are two main reasons the rockets fall on the side: 1) too high horizontal velocity when touching down and 2) ground slope is too big.

First can be reduced by training. (When landing keep an eye on the retrograde marker, if it isn't in the middle of the nav ball, turn the rocket in it's direction, while slowly descending. Also make sure the speed indicator is in "surface" mode, minmus has mountains high enough for it to automatically switch to orbit and mess everything up.)

Second can be fixed by picking a better landing spot or making the rocket have low center of gravity and long landing base. Also when landing on slopes, remember to cut all power as soon as first leg touches the ground! SAS also can help in stopping the rocket bounding left and right after touchdown.