Landing Spaceplanes At KSC

[GreatWyrmGold]

I've seen loads of people build spaceplanes but built few myself. I quickly threw one together with Spaceplane+ parts (also landing gear, RAPIERs, and a MechJeb unit) and took it to orbit with ease. When I had it land, I wanted to end up on the runway like you just about always see happen in videos.

I set MechJeb to autoland at the KSC runway (or at least, that's what I thought the thing was supposed to do) and started timewarping. After some minutes, it crashed down in the desert with no apparent attempt to save any of the pieces. It was about a third of the planet away from KSC.

Next, I tried flying it level towards KSC for a while, aware that I was slowly losing fuel. I made it there, finally, then decided to see if MechJeb's autoland was any better if you started deep in the atmosphere instead of 50-odd kilometers up. Well, it was closer to the Kerbal Space Center.

Luckily, I quicksaved! I tried to land it manually, and...well...most of the parts survived, even if they weren't attached to each other.

I have a couple of interrelated questions. How, with or ideally without MechJeb, does one...

1. Land at KSC rather than anywhere on Kerbin? (A version that works with pods would be helpful.)

2. Land without destroying the plane?

And while I'm here, what's the Autoland function supposed to do, anyways?

Edited August 31, 2014 by GreatWyrmGold
Answered

[Tex_NL]

Turn on MechJebs descent guidance and activate the landing prediction.

Depending on orbital height create a manoeuvre node a quarter to half and orbit before KSC.

Select KSC as target and pull the retrograde node until the blue prediction is roughly over the mountains west of KSC.

Execute the node.

Keep your nose on the horizon as you enter the atmosphere and keep an eye on the predicted landing distance.

If the distance drops fast bring your nose down. You're generating too much lift. If the distance increases bring the nose up slightly to generate more lift.

If necessary turn on your atmospheric engines and land.

[GreatWyrmGold]

That should help with the hitting-KSC part; thank you! Now I just need to work on the not-smashing part.

[Scarecrow88]

I find it best to set the predicted path to the surface to the east of KSC rather than over the mountains to the west. You lose a lot of speed coming through the atmosphere which, allowing for some planet rotation while you are coming down, usually means you land some way short if you don't have the orbit prediction a little way off to the east.

That's without mechjeb though, so I have no idea if you need to do it completely differently using an autopilot.

As for the not smashing part, try building an ordinary plane and fly to the island runway and back a few times. That should give you enough practice to nail your landings every time.

[Snowwy]

I can tell you from painful experience- do not try to use MechJeb for flying your plane! Use SAS for stabilisation and fly it yourself. I'm a MechJeb devotee so I hate to say it, but for airfoils of any sort you just can't trust it.

[ratchet freak]

to practice the landing itself tweak out most of the fuel in th hangar. Then launch and take off then turn around, get to the mountains and practice the line up and approach the runway

[AlexanderB]

I use a different technique, because of not-using mechjeb.

1: I planted a flag near the runway, so I can see from space where it is, even in the dark.

2: From low Kerbin orbit (anything from 70 to 120 will work) plan a manouver node about halfway arond the planet, and put the PE at 38-40 km. this should drop you right down on the KSC, so you can easily fly back to the runway by manual piloting alone.

When returning from the Mun or further, this sadly doesn't work, best bet is to aim deeper into the atmosphere and take a steeper path, so you don't skip back out, or aerobrake into a low orbit first.

[Laie]

That should help with the hitting-KSC part; thank you! Now I just need to work on the not-smashing part.

That's something you better do yourself, I'm afraid. Mechjebs Smartass (will the profanity checker let that pass?) is a great aid, though on the last few meters you'll have to switch to "full" manual control (still using SAS/Kill Rot, perhaps).

Lining up with the runway may seem daunting at first, but once you're there, it's actually pretty wide. Getting the direction "about right" is usually good enough, and the landing gear can take impacts that would utterly destroy other craft.

Have the brakes active when you touch down. Disable brakes/unlock steering on the front wheel(s), plus SAS enabled, and you won't need to worry about skidding, flipping, or other shenanigans.

[technion]

The whole point of being in a jet is that the whole "land too early" shouldn't be possible. If you're 50km away and coming down... point the nose up a bit and just keep flying.

[Wanderfound]

As above: land manually.

Get yourself low and slow (i.e.: subsonic speed, < 5,000m altitude) before you reach the mountains west of KSC. Pop over those mountains and then drop back down to ~1,000m. Get lined up as soon as you can: the KSC runway is on a perfectly east-west orientation, so a target set to the flags or rovers you've left as nav beacons just off each end of the runway should show a bearing to target of 90°.

If you've forgotten the nav beacons, KSC is midway up the east coast of the one that looks a bit like Africa.

Throttle way down as soon as you get over the mountains. By the time you get within 10km of the runway, you want to be below 150m/s and only a few hundred metres off the deck. Try to touch down as slow as possible, but avoid overly vigorous manoeuvres once you're above the runway. Be prepared to do a bit of very gentle steering just after touchdown. Make sure you've unlocked the steering and disabled the brakes on your front landing gear. If you're flying with FAR, explore the use of flaps and spoilers.

[Wanderfound]

PS: don't be afraid to use F5/F9 heavily while you're getting the hang of it. Quicksave once you've set up a decent final approach, then repeat the landing a dozen times.

Remember to take screenshots while crashing. Think of it as simulator training.