Can't figure out how to land on Mun.

[Fowele]

It's been about 3 days now, and I just can't figure out how to land on the Mun.

[desrtfox071]

What issues are you having?

[Eisbär]

How far did you get? Mun Orbit?

[Quizzical]

The solution depends on the problem. Can you not reach Mun at all? Do you crash into Mun too hard and explode? Do you kind of land, but then tip over rather than being stable?

[One Eye Jack]

Assuming you can get in orbit and are just having trouble landing. Set your ship retrograde and just adjust your throttle till you land. It’s really hard the first couple of times but after a bit of practice it’s really easy. I didn’t realize you could set your ship to point retrograde for a while. So I was having a LOT of trouble. Then I noticed that little retrograde button. And Shazam! So easy now.

[Jupiter3927]

Have you tried watching someone else do it and imitating them?
Or have you looked up a tutorial?
Either of those would help you a lot.

[MechBFP]

Play the in-game tutorials. They exist for EXACTLY this reason.

[lPaladinl]

What are you finding difficult about landing on Mun?

Are you just failing the actual landing stages? Or are you struggling to make orbit?

If it's just landing stages, it can be tricky, but you just need to follow your retrograde trajectory. It's easiest if you come to a near-complete stop and kill all of your velocity, then allow the craft to free-fall to the surface with you cranking the engines as needed to keep it from building up too much speed. The lower your speed when you finally hit the ground, the less you will bounce.

Also you should probably change your NavBall setting to SURFACE instead of ORBIT mode. You can land using the Orbit mode but it's much easier and accurate with Surface mode. (In some rare cases Orbit mode can totally throw you off and make it impossible to land following it's guidance). You do that just by clicking the little monitor where it says ORBIT/SURFACE, etc.

[SemperOptima]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEkUeJRCh083UT-Lq5ZIKI75

[SemperOptima]

^ best resource I'

[Quizzical]

Originally posted by SemperOptima:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEkUeJRCh083UT-Lq5ZIKI75

A playlist with several hours of videos that might not even have the answer in it, depending on what the original poster's problem is? Really?

[desrtfox071]

How about this?

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=KSP+land+on+Mun

[GeneralVeers]

@OP: Please specify which of the following steps you're getting stuck on:

Step 1: Get off the launch pad without exploding.

Step 2: Get into orbit.

Step 3: Make your ship's orbit cross Mun's orbit.

Step 4: Make your ship cross Mun's orbit when Mun just happens to be in that same spot. (NOTE: this is actually the toughest step!)

Step 5: Get into Mun orbit.

Step 6: Land on Mun.

Step 7: Do not explode when executing step 6.

[andylaugel]

An important step is to set your navball to "Surface" instead of "Orbit" or "Target." Just click on the word at the top of the navball to toggle. Then all you need to do is burn retrograde to land, while controlling the rate of your descent. No need to worry about lateral velocity that way.

It also helps to set your altitude display at the top of the screen to distance from ground instead of from sea level. Click on the symbol for that to the left of the numbers to toggle between them.

For the initial part of my descent, I'll burn retro from orbit until the end of my trajectory is near where I want to land. Then I'll drop a maneuver near the ground on my trajectory, and compare time to maneuver to time to burn to 0 m/s on the vehicle stat display on the map screen. Then I shift over to comparing speed to altitude for the landing proper.

I have a spreadsheet that helps with that last part. For example, I tell it my total thrust is 500 kN (2 poodles) and my mass is 67.1 tons. It'll compute gross acceleration at 7.45 m/s/s ( thrust / mass ). I then tell it which moon I'm landing on, and have it subtract its surface gravity in m/s from my acceleration to determine my net acceleration. When this vessel lands on the Mun, the net landing acceleration is 5.82 m/s/s. From there is computes a table for me, using the formula ( speed * speed ) / ( 2 * net acceleration ) for a series of target speeds. For instance, if I'm doing 250 m/s while landing on the Mun, I must start braking at 5,366 m; 200 m/s must brake around 3,434 m; 150 m/s brakes at 1,932 m; 100 m/s at 859 m; & 50 m/s at 215 m. Because mass is always dropping during a burn, I'll feather the engine to control the speed until I hit the target altitudes.

[n3uva]

m o r e f u e l.

[Fowele]

Originally posted by MechBFP:

Play the in-game tutorials. They exist for EXACTLY this reason.

That's thing I'm having trouble with.