Pre-Munar Landing Anonymous - A support group

[Obollzzor]

Finally, I made it after 10 failed attempts with quicksave! 8) My ship was a bit tall though, and they can\'t return. Does anyone know if they will make unmanned pods/satellites a part of the game? Even though I use a pod which is 'unmanned' in the description, the astronauts come along. I feel so terrible for leaving them

[Kreuzung]

Do you have the paid version? Download the MechJeb plugin, it allows you to have real unmanned pods (don\'t have Kerbal cameras and no KIA reports in the summary), you can even edit manned (kerbed?) pods to be empty ;D and it also has useful autopilot functions, like ascent, landing at a special point or simply exact pro/retrograde turns...

[Obollzzor]

Do you have the paid version? Download the MechJeb plugin, it allows you to have real unmanned pods (don\'t have Kerbal cameras and no KIA reports in the summary), you can even edit manned (kerbed?) pods to be empty ;D and it also has useful autopilot functions, like ascent, landing at a special point or simply exact pro/retrograde turns...

Okay thanks, will do. Yes, I bought the game yesterday, been practicing all night. Feel so terrible after leaving them. I have some fuel but no parachute, but I left them with a little 'home pod' for space stations. Sure they\'ll be fine

[cardgame]

I made it to the Mun on the second day of playing...

I landed safely on the Mun after a week.

I still haven\'t made it back safely (not quite enough fuel to escape).

[Kreuzung]

I just tried to get 2 unmanned missions into a 100km less than moon orbit, but both times i forgot that the autopilot takes km not m :-[ The second try I retro-burned and tried to land on Kerbin, bit my craft had no parachute and I gave too much throttle 150 m above the sea, then I had no more fuel left for a second run and splashed down with 30m/s.

[khyron42]

More details on the nature of the problems you face might help:

Are you reaching the ground with too much sideways drift still?

Are you flying without RCS thrusters, trying to kill sideways drift with the main engines?

[Cooly568]

I have yet to land on the Mun with only stock parts.

[Obollzzor]

What\'s the easiest way to kill sideways drift? I noticed that was a big problem with my landing, specially with a bit too tall lander. I had RCS-thrusters which I just controlled my ship with and main engines to brake the descent, but still I found it hard to stop going sideways.

[GOOMH]

What\'s the easiest way to kill sideways drift? I noticed that was a big problem with my landing, specially with a bit too tall lander. I had RCS-thrusters which I just controlled my ship with and main engines to brake the descent, but still I found it hard to stop going sideways.

Are you using the Translation keys for the RCS? They help a lot more than burning to cancel also keep SAS on when you translate just so you don\'t tip on accident.

[Sabactus]

What\'s the easiest way to kill sideways drift? I noticed that was a big problem with my landing, specially with a bit too tall lander. I had RCS-thrusters which I just controlled my ship with and main engines to brake the descent, but still I found it hard to stop going sideways.

The retrograde reticle is your best friend for killing the majority of your lateral momentum after that use RCS translation. MechJeb is a big help in this cause to can use it to control your throttle while you concentrate on maneuvering.

[Obollzzor]

Are you using the Translation keys for the RCS? They help a lot more than burning to cancel also keep SAS on when you translate just so you don\'t tip on accident.

The retrograde reticle is your best friend for killing the majority of your lateral momentum after that use RCS translation. MechJeb is a big help in this cause to can use it to control your throttle while you concentrate on maneuvering.

Okay, going for some new designs then. I believe my lander was incredibly bad designed. More practicing also. Thanks for the tips!

[OrionAurora]

I got a mun fail.

Long story short, I finally made a successful mun landing with plenty of fuel to return to munar orbit. I tried to fly away but somehow, idk how, the game just glitched out. Now I am stuck at ~15000m at 0m/s. I am neither rising nor falling.

[khyron42]

I\'m working on a practical, detailed, step-by-step to null your horizontals up around 10 km altitude, so that you can fall completely straight down and just do braking thrust and maybe a few IJKL-key adjustments with RCS. I\'ll update once it\'s done.

... of course, what I was gonna work on is the 'how to assemble your new bookshelf' style guide to what Thorfinn said right below. The only major difference is I was going to say to kill the horizontal velocity at 10 km, for even more room to not worry about running out of time while trying to get it right.

but, um, mine will have pictures!

[thorfinn]

But you could build a spacecraft with comparable thrust-to-weight ratio and practice flying that around KSC?

I tried that in 0.11, since I didn\'t have much more to do (except early Sun shots! ) but I don\'t know how much good it did me.

On Kerbin, everything happens MUCH faster because of the higher gravity, you are burning six times as fuel and so getting lighter much quicker, throttle control that would be completely acceptable on the Mun is completely inaccurate on Kerbin, etc. All in all, I never managed a powered landing on Kerbin, but made a Mun landing on the first try....

My advice is, on the first tries, overengineer your landing a bit and try to get to a dead stop at about 6000 meters indicated alt. Picking a spot isn\'t so important, and if you aim for the center of a mare you should avoid steep ridges. Then, go vertical, manage your vertical speed and keep the cross-circle on top of the navball with RCS translation.

After you\'ve done it this way a few times, you can start omitting RCS, and trying to 'fly' a landing, though our current instrumentation is very bad for that right now (I\'ll try fixing that if I have the time )

All this with ASAS, obviously.

[Guest]

My advise is safety burn at 50,000 to 100 m/s and then slow to 100 m/s at 10,000 again. Then start your powered decent at 2,000 meters.

[khyron42]

Members of PMLA, do you want that detailed guide, have you already had enough helpful tips for now, or do you need something else? I just went through the process and came up with, fittingly, a 12-step process.

[mrdest21]

My munar lander is made of a SAS, a single fuel tank, the new small engine and 3 lander legs. You really don\'t need that much fuel to get back to Kerbin. As soon as you fire your engines from the munar surface, start turning your craft until it\'s facing sideways. You only need about 2000m in altitude to avoid all müntains and then accelerate to 800m/s. This\'ll get you out of the Munar SOI, then use your remaining fuel to deorbit back to Kerbin. The important step is to make sure that you\'re leaving the Mun in the correct direction so that you\'re aiming away from its orbit direction. If, for exemple, Kerbin is right over your lander, you want to leave at 90 degrees. A single tank is enough for all that.

[Majiir]

I actually recommend against putting RCS on a lander. The only good time to put RCS on a ship is if you need to maneuver it for docking. Anything else doesn\'t need them and shouldn\'t use them. (Heavy launchers should use vectored thrusters, but even just one is enough to keep even very large rockets stable.)

A capsule + ASAS + small tank + lander engine + legs can make it to the Mun\'s surface and back into orbit, but it takes a lot of skill to do it without running out of fuel. I recommend a full tank to start with. The trick is to keep your ASAS on while you tilt to the side to kill horizontal velocity. I fly almost exclusively on my navball; you only need to look at the ship itself when you\'re getting really close to the ground.

[Zephram Kerman]

My advise is safety burn at 50,000 to 100 m/s and then slow to 100 m/s at 10,000 again. Then start your powered decent at 2,000 meters.

I do something similar, but more efficient. If you are quick with simple arithmetic, keep your speed in proportion to your altitude down to about 1000m. For a very cautious approach, my speed will be 0.02 * altitude. (For example, at 4000m, my speed should be 80 m/s. At 2000m, my speed should be 40 m/s.) For more efficiency/adrenalin, I\'ll use 0.03 or more. (Basically, just look at the altimeter, ignore the last two zeros, and multiply by 2 or 3. That\'s your target speed.) Below 1000 feet it gets too slow, so at that point just do your own thing.

Also, I start my Munar descent from 5 or 6 km orbit. These two tricks make landings more efficient and safe-ish.

[rkman]

My munar lander is made of a SAS, a single fuel tank, the new small engine and 3 lander legs.

As long as the lander is small and has a command pod it does not need SAS because the pod has SAS build in. It\'s weak but enough to control a small lander.

What any except the most daring craft need, is ASAS.

I recommend using 4 lander legs because with 3 legs, a small horizontal movement at touchdown the craft is likely to fall over even if it\'s not particularly tall.

[Baalphire]

Eureka! I finally made moon fall! After several aborted missions and one disastrous landing resulting in the tragic deaths of three of Kerbal\'s finest, my crew landed with minimal damage and managed to get into polar munar orbit. While touching down we had a little too much sideways drift destroying 2 of my 4 legs. This while only using stock parts!

[Zephram Kerman]

Ehhhhxcellent! Congratulations Baalphire!

Just a little more practice and you\'ll be landing like a pro, with a like-new condition lander monument on the moon and three screaming (but alive) Kerbanauts bobbing in the ocean.

[Zharkov]

I managed to get to the moon and back with stock parts on my first afternoon playing (ver 0.14.4, I bought it after about 15 minutes of fooling with the free version), but I may have been assisted by the fact that I\'ve been playing Orbiter (http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/) for ~six years.

[Dynamo]

It\'s about time i was here. My rocket is beautiful, though it\'s Novapacked, it gets there with a ton of fuel. My problem is landing the thing, i\'ve yet to stop my craft from slamming into the moon, i don\'t know when to decelarate. Practice takes a while to set up too, so it\'s a pain.

[Guest]

@Dynamo Well, i cant tell you the most efficent way or how to do it, but i posted how i like to do it somewhere above. If you dont want to do that, just make sure your around 100m/s at 10,000M Or else your gonna slam into the mun in about 3, 2, ............