am i doing it right?

[Cannon]

i think im doing something wrong every time i fly but i don't know what, i downloaded ships that other people landed on planets and returned them, but i can barely land them because of fuel.

here is my video, my first mission to mun and back to kerbin so please take a look maybe im doing something wrong, if you notice anything please tell me, any advice would be good:

[Kasuha]

Sorry but I can't afford to watch a 50-minute video just now. But if you're into videos, you might try to watch videos of people doing things right, such as Scott Manley or HOCgaming. Especially their early, training, or tutorial videos. I spent a lot of time watching them when I was a KSP newbie and I must say it helped a lot.

[blizzy78]

You might want to cut the video to just a short section where you have a question with (or tell at what time code to look.)

[Streetwind]

Haven't watched the video (currently have no opportunity to do so), but yes: piloting makes a large difference in fuel consumption, far larger than switching to a more efficient engine.

Example: I have a Mun rocket built such that the launch stage runs out of fuel pretty much exactly when I finish circularizing in a 72km equatorial orbit. The transfer stage then travels to the Mun, where it inserts into a 10km orbit. When the time to land comes, the transfer stage burns whatever fuel it has left to decelerate, then decouples the lander, which then continues decelerating and descends to land. After landing, it takes off again into a 10km, 90 degree heading orbit, from which it performs a retrograde ejection burn at the appropriate location that consumes pretty much all its remaining fuel. This burn directly drops its Kerbin periapsis into the atmosphere, where it aerobrakes into a landing.

Now, imagine I gave you this craft, and told you it can do a Mun return mission, which is true. You then try to fly it, but run out of fuel in every possible way. Why?

- If you perform the gravity turn in an inefficient fashion because you are less experienced with the rocket than I am, you won't reach orbit.

- If you launch into a higher orbit than 72km, you need to spend more fuel.

- If you launch into an orbit that is not equatorial, you might potentially need a plane change maneuver to hit the Mun, which costs extra fuel.

- If you perform the transfer from an orbit higher than 72km, you gain less help from the Oberth effect and thus spend more fuel.

- If you insert into a munar orbit higher than 10km and attempt to land from there, you spend extra fuel on fighting gravity.

- If after landing you take off again into a munar orbit higher than 10km, you're spending more fuel.

- If your takeoff heading is not 90 degrees, you cannot perform a fully retrograde ejection, so you need extra fuel to drop your orbit towards Kerbin.

- If you perform your ejection burn from an orbit higher than 10km, you gain less help from the Oberth effect and thus spend more fuel.

- If you drop your periapsis into Kerbin atmosphere while in deep space instead of during the ejection burn, you don't gain help from the Oberth effect and thus spend more fuel.

- If you try to circularize in Kerbin orbit before deorbiting for a landing, instead of aerobraking directly out of the transfer, you're spending a gigantic amount of extra fuel.

That's an impressive list of things that gobble fuel, isn't it? I can't guarantee I haven't forgotten something, either...

[Othuyeg]

I started watching the video, but I have no time to watch it completely. First thing I notice is you do your entire transfer burn to Mun while still in the atmosphere without establishing an orbit around Kerbin. I do not believe this is the optimal way of doing it. Also you overshoot your apoapsis well past the Mun orbit. Going past the Mun orbit only wastes fuel.

Also when you deorbit yourself to Mun, you do your deorbit burn immediately after entering the Mun SOI. This is definetly not efficient. You will fall straight into mun and killing your vertical speed will cost you immense amounts of fuel.

[FREEFALL1984]

I've had a quick glance through and couple of major piloting errors have cost you your surplus DV, firstly while your launch profile from kerbin is reasonably good your approach to the mun is terrible. firstly you didnt wait for the optimal window and you overshot it by a long long way by not using maneuver nodes and ended up having to kill ridiculous amounts of speed on landing, a good approach would of brought your kerbin apoapsis just above the moons orbit and intercepted with it at your highest point, this is pretty easy to pull off with correct node placement this mistake likely cost you 800m/s Dv which is a whole bunch. the second error is your terrible return trajectory, you need to remember that in order to return from a moon you need to reduce speed, while in orbit around the mun your travelling the same speed as it relative to kerbin, in order to drop your periapsis the most effective method is to leave the muns SOI on its prograde and heading a little vertical in relation to kerbin helps make your kerbin orbit nice and elliptical meaning you will end up on a closer approach, if you would of left the muns surface and headed west about 45 degrees from vertical your change in relative velocity would of dropped your kerbins periapsis, to a much lower altitude. meaning you would of saved yourself about another 300m/s, in total I think you wasted about 1100m/s if not more, I haven't watched the full video so there may be other issues, but these are the more easily visible ones.

So the lesson is to use maneuver nodes, they'll save our kerbals lives

[SRV Ron]

The demo lander from KSP demo with solar panels added for KSP 0.23.5.

In orbit;

Orbiting Mun;

Note how much fuel remains for landing and return.

The same designed updated with stock 0.23 parts which resulted in some weight reduction in the lander.

In orbit;

Orbiting Mun;

Note, being lighter, the flight was more efficient.

Practice getting efficiently into orbit of about 100K.

Practice getting an efficient Mun capture

Practice getting an efficient Mun orbit

When you are able to do so, go to Minmus which takes about the same amount of fuel to get into orbit and attempt your first landing onto the seas there. Then, attempt your first Mun landing.

[Cannon]

You might want to cut the video to just a short section where you have a question with (or tell at what time code to look.)

i think orbit is the main problem it's almost at the beginning of the video

[FREEFALL1984]

i think orbit is the main problem it's almost at the beginning of the video

As I mentioned I think the main issue the the munar approach shown at about 5:30. you gain way too altitude and end up hitting the moon at far higher speeds than necessary.

[Red Iron Crown]

I skimmed the video, here are my thoughts:

~5:00 Your Munar injection burn uses more fuel than necessary. Try for a transfer where your apoapsis just touches Mun's SOI, maneuver nodes are your friends for setting this up.

~9:30 You use an impact trajectory for your approach, I find it better to do a capture burn into Munar orbit at closest approach, then a deorbit burn to set your landing site.

~23:00 Your actual landing is reasonably efficient, good job.

~31:00 Your ascent puts you in a polar orbit, which makes your return transfer more expensive. Launching into a less inclined orbit (either Easterly or Westerly) will make the transfer cost less fuel.

~36:00 You escape Mun's SOI before completing your transfer burn, and you use an impact trajectory for your return. You can save some fuel by doing the entire transfer burn from low Munar orbit, and some more by just lowering your periapsis until it's deep enough in the atmosphere to let aerobraking kill your orbital speed.

[Streetwind]

i think orbit is the main problem it's almost at the beginning of the video

Okay, I got time to watch it now.

Well, Othuyeg above already said it: you're never actually orbiting. You're launching straight into a transfer. Which by itself is not bad, if the opportunity presents itself, but in your case, there is no such opportunity. The Mun is completely elsewhere, which is the reason why you need to overshoot so much in order to get an encounter. You're basically trying to force an intercept by increasing your travel time to such a degree that the Mun has time to get where you will pass its orbit - you're traveling 24 hours for a trip that normally takes about 8.

Then there's the fact that you're going orbital velocity and faster while you're still deep in the atmosphere. You're below 40km when you get fast enough to comfortably orbit at 80km. And that means you are constantly losing a large amount of forward momentum to atmospheric drag. You should focus on first exiting the atmosphere, and then think about going other places. I'm fairly sure you could almost halve the size of your rocket if you simply ascended out of the atmosphere and circularized before transferring. That's how much fuel you lose there.

In addition, because of how far you overshoot the Mun's orbit, you're going quite fast when you do encounter it, and you need more fuel to slow down again.

And, well. Your maneuver after entering the Mun's sphere of influence? I think you should get some kind of award, because you literally managed to find the single most inefficient Mun landing maneuver in the game, executed at the worst possible time

Try the following instead:

- Launch so that you end up in a circular low Kerbin orbit, meaning both periapsis and apoapsis between 70 km and 80 km. To get there, turn sideways

, and don't let your apoapsis get too far ahead of you - about a minute at most is good. If necessary, kill your engines and coast for half a minute or so to catch up with it.

- After you are in a stable orbit, set a maneuver node and draw your orbit out so that it *just* touches the Mun's orbit. Now click on the maneuver node itself and drag it around. You will find that somewhere roughly 45° ahead of the Mun's current position, you will get an encounter.

- Transfer using this maneuver node.

- After entering the Mun's sphere of influence, do not set a maneuver node. Instead, just coast to your Mun periapsis.

- If that periapsis is really high over the surface because you got a bad encounter, you can set a node and try moving it closer to the surface by toying with the light blue radial in / radial out markers. Don't spend too much dV here though, it's an inefficient place to do a burn.

- Once you are at periapsis, burn retrograde. Hard. You want to capture into orbit, and then keep burning, until the periapsis flips to the other side, then keep burning more still until your new periapsis is no higher than 20km over the surface.

- Coast to that new periapsis. Once there, circularize the orbit again. Both apoapsis and periapsis should be under 20km.

- Now, pick your landing site (ideally on the daylight side). Coast until you are only a few kilometers ahead of it. Now, burn retrograde again and kill most of your velocity, so that your flight path points at your desired landing spot.

- Perform your landing swiftly. You don't want to hover down slowly, you want to fall and then kill your vertical velocity in a short, hard burn close to the surface. However this takes practice, so allow yourself a suitable margin of error. When you're this far and landing from such a low orbit, you already saved a lot of fuel, so don't sweat it. Be safe.

[The Yellow Dart]

So I have to disagree with Red Iron Crown on one point. Via Scott Manley, any time spent falling vertically towards a planet means wasted energy, and he falls vertically for a long, long time. The most efficient landing is one where you get your orbit as close to the planet as possible before burning retrograde to land. This is because of the Oberth effect, which causes burns at higher speeds to be more energy efficient than burns at low speeds. So the highest speed you will reach on a munar mission will be your periapsis above Kerbin, making that the best time for an insertion burn, although if you start with a circular orbit then it makes little to no difference. Likewise, your munar periapsis is the best time to perform your insertion burn to be captured by the moon and to set up your landing. So ideally, you want to make a low circular orbit around Kerbin, make your burn for the Mun using a maneuver node so that you end up with a Munar periapsis of about 6500m to 7500. Then make a burn using a maneuver node to circularize your orbit around the Mun, again at around 7000m, and then another small burn that brings your periapsis inside the mun on the daytime side of the mun for easier landing. Next, for the most efficient landing, is a suicide burn. To do this, put a maneuver node very close but not quite to where your orbit goes inside the planet and pull retrograde until it flicks back and forth, meaning lateral speed goes to ~0 m/s. Start your burn when the burn time and the time to node are equal (if you are brave you can wait a few seconds after if you want but how long you can wait is dependent on terrain). This is kind of scary and dangerous as you are putting your life in the hands of the somewhat inaccurate Orbit Map terrain models. You'll flying very fast very very low but it ensures that your burns are made at the highest speeds possible for the greatest efficiency. Also, someday (soon?) I'm sure the vanilla game will have deadly reentry stock so shallow reentry trajectories are a good practice. Set up your return periapsis on Kerbin to around 20k to 30k meters for "safe" reentry.

[Taki117]

Yeesh, where do I begin?

1. You're gravity turn is far too shallow. Once you pitch over to 45 degrees you should hold that attitude until your time to Apoapsis is about 1 minutes, then slowly pitch over to maintain time to Apoapsis. (video time 0:00 to 5:00)

2. You perform your Munar Insertion before establishing a stable orbit around Kerbin, resulting in an inefficient Munar Transfer due to incorrect phase angles. This also results in your orbit going far beyond the Mun which is inefficient. What you should do is establish a circular orbit at an altitude of about 75km, then wait until the Mun just rises over Kerbins Horizon. (Assuming you don't want to use maneuver nodes) (Video time 5:00 to 6:00)

3. You Completely nullify your orbital velocity in preparation for landing, this is horribly inefficient. You should instead establish an orbit at about 20km then perform a small de-orbit burn to pass just over your target landing site. This takes into account the rotation of the planetary body, whereas nullifying all of your obital velocity does not. (video time 8:00 to 9:00)

4. You descend from an altitude of well over 100km at 10m/s, this is horribly inefficient because you are using fuel to slow yourself down, and from such a height it will require large amounts of fuel. Using the above method (In number 3) once you get above your desired landing site then you begin your final descent by killing your horizontal velocity. (Video Time 9:00 to 24:00)

5. You establish a polar orbit in order to return to KErbin, an Equatorial orbit would be much more efficient, then you could simply establish an orbit and perform your burn whenever you wanted. This also results in a very large orbit around Kerbin, resulting in the use of more fuel to return to Kerbin, whereas with an equatorial orbit you can depart straight into an aerobrake to landing. (video time 30:00 to 35:00)

6. Once you are on the edge of the Mun SoI, you perform a burn to get into orbit around Kerbin, this is not required nor desired and simply results in wasted fuel. (Video time 35:00 to 36:00)

7. You perform a de-orbit maneuver which if you had followed a "proper" Munar exit would not be needed. (Video time 38:00)

[Red Iron Crown]

So I have to disagree with Red Iron Crown on one point. Via Scott Manley, any time spent falling vertically towards a planet means wasted energy, and he falls vertically for a long, long time. The most efficient landing is one where you get your orbit as close to the planet as possible before burning retrograde to land. This is because of the Oberth effect, which causes burns at higher speeds to be more energy efficient than burns at low speeds. So the highest speed you will reach on a munar mission will be your periapsis above Kerbin, making that the best time for an insertion burn, although if you start with a circular orbit then it makes little to no difference. Likewise, your munar periapsis is the best time to perform your insertion burn to be captured by the moon and to set up your landing. So ideally, you want to make a low circular orbit around Kerbin, make your burn for the Mun using a maneuver node so that you end up with a Munar periapsis of about 6500m to 7500. Then make a burn using a maneuver node to circularize your orbit around the Mun, again at around 7000m, and then another small burn that brings your periapsis inside the mun on the daytime side of the mun for easier landing. Next, for the most efficient landing, is a suicide burn. To do this, put a maneuver node very close but not quite to where your orbit goes inside the planet and pull retrograde until it flicks back and forth, meaning lateral speed goes to ~0 m/s. Start your burn when the burn time and the time to node are equal (if you are brave you can wait a few seconds after if you want but how long you can wait is dependent on terrain). This is kind of scary and dangerous as you are putting your life in the hands of the somewhat inaccurate Orbit Map terrain models. You'll flying very fast very very low but it ensures that your burns are made at the highest speeds possible for the greatest efficiency. Also, someday (soon?) I'm sure the vanilla game will have deadly reentry stock so shallow reentry trajectories are a good practice. Set up your return periapsis on Kerbin to around 20k to 30k meters for "safe" reentry.

Ah, I didn't catch the deorbit burn when skimming through the video, just the final approach, which seemed OK. You're right and your post is full of good advice.

[Cannon]

thanks guys, is it smiliar when landing on eve for example?

[Red Iron Crown]

Eve has a thick atmosphere, so you can use parachutes to do your landing using little or no fuel. The transfer to another planet is considerably trickier than to the Mun, ideally you want to wait for the right alignment of the two planets ("transfer window"). If you are planning to return, the ascent from Eve's surface requires a very well-designed ship and close to error-free piloting due to the thick atmosphere and heavy gravity; it is considered one of the biggest challenges in the game.

If you want to try another planet, I would suggest Duna first as it is a bit more forgiving than Eve. Not to discourage you, but even experienced players struggle with an Eve landing and return.

[Tank Buddy]

From what I see, you need to do the following:

1. Get into a stable orbit around Kerbin (above 70 Km) on a 90 degree heading.

2. Wait until you see the Mun rising above the horizon while in orbit.

3. When an encounter is formed, keep burning until Pe is ~ 10 Km.

4. At Munar Pe, burn retrograde to circularize orbit.

5. Lower Pe (Preferable burning retrograde on the dark side so you land in the light) to ~3 Km.

6. At new Pe, drop speed so in map view you have a ballistic trajectory, and continue slowing until you land.

[Streetwind]

thanks guys, is it smiliar when landing on eve for example?

You generally differentiate between airless bodies, and bodies with an atmosphere.

Eve, Duna and Laythe have atmospheres. Landing on them should be treated like landing on Kerbin - that is, find out where the atmosphere ends and, using that information, perform an aerobrake/atmospheric reentry. Duna's atmosphere is so thin that you will probably need to do an engine assisted landing even if you have parachutes in most cases.

Jool has an atmosphere, but you cannot land on it. (Technically you can try, but it's super glitchy and not actually intended to be done.)

All the other bodies are airless bodies, and are treated just like the Mun: circularize an orbit as low as you possibly can without plastering yourself in a thin smear across an inconveniently placed mountain, and then kill horizontal velocity with a retrograde burn, followed by a powered touchdown.