My first successful Mun Landing

[andrew8098]

I have finally been able to land on the Mun! but i had to use MechJeb to do it. Im just too ham handed to manually make all the controls neccesary, especially finessing the throttle in the last few seconds before touchdown, its either a crash or i rocket back up into space.

anyhow heres my lander. all stock except for the mechjeb module.

i landed using the rocket/tanks on the external then using the last little bit of fuel in the tanks i took off from the moon, I of course managed to get stranded in orbit but im sure that was my own lack of skills, i should imagine that one tank of fuel is more than enough to leave Munar orbit, de-orbit to Kerbin atmosphere, and deploy my parachutes.

[madmat]

Welcome to the forum Andrew,, Congrats on your first Mun landing,,Mechjeb certainly makes it easier but you WILL get the hang of landing manually, sideways drift is the major killer.Good solid lander design there, can\'t go wrong,although a few RCS thrusters will account for the sideways drift,,Give it a go.

[Capt'n Skunky]

Welcome to the KSP Forums!

Happy Launching!

Arrr!

Capt\'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

[Bill_Murray]

In the final stages of landing keep aiming at the retrograde icon on the navball, the circle with a cross in it. Keep following it until it moves towards the top of the nav ball, be as accurate as you can as it will move about a bit, but don\'t go mad following it when it\'s at the top. That will get rid of most sideways movement. Aim to land at as low a speed as possible, I think around 3 or 4 m/s max. I use the RCS as well for little blasts of the H key to smooth out throttle movements. Also, if you can see you\'re going to be landing on a slope, manually fly to a flatter area, then aim at the retrograde symbol again and stop the drift again. Advanced SAS is your friend.

Your new mission is to not use Mechjeb and go do it manually, it feels a great achievement.

[SmiteZero]

You havn\'t landed on the Mun until you\'ve done it manually. Completely. In fact, you havn\'t landed on the Mun until you\'ve done the whole flight without any of the new plugins to help you.

Keep practicing. It will make you better at the game even if you do use autopilots. You\'ll feel better for doing the whole thing yourself. Then doing it successfully enough times that it becomes routine. THEN you can use autopilots and they\'ll just make you lazy instead of stupid and/or incompetent. Then you can save a flight if something goes wrong with your fancy computers.

[Bluejayek]

You havn\'t landed on the Mun until you\'ve done it manually. Completely. In fact, you havn\'t landed on the Mun until you\'ve done the whole flight without any of the new plugins to help you.

Keep practicing. It will make you better at the game even if you do use autopilots. You\'ll feel better for doing the whole thing yourself. Then doing it successfully enough times that it becomes routine. THEN you can use autopilots and they\'ll just make you lazy instead of stupid and/or incompetent. Then you can save a flight if something goes wrong with your fancy computers.

Does being assisted by stock ASAS count as manual?

[madmat]

And Jeb\'s grandad says 'I remember when i did my 1st munshot all we had was an old 44 gallon drum, a bottle of Kero and my dad\'s old ski mask. None of them new fandangled computers, times were tough back then i tells ya, but dammit we got it done'. walks off still mumbling

[SmiteZero]

Stock ASAS/SAS is acceptable

Just do it without a flight computer like we had to in the old days. The trip to the Mun was uphill. Both ways. And it was snowing.

Start about 20,000m, burn retro to go sub-orbital and keep controlling your speed as you come down, pointing retrograde. You\'ll slow down and your craft will automatically slowly tip over to vertical, ready to touch down. I recommend hitting Caps Lock to make your inputs smaller and help minimize the panic over-control.

You might not do it the first try. It took about 5 for me before I got a landing where everyone survived and lots more before I could do it consistently without breaking stuff off, but my first successful one was a rush.

Here it is: