Any tips for Mun landing?

[Herger Joyous]

I seem to never be able to slow down enough to land, i've crashed into the mun over a dozen times. Any suggestions?

[sal_vager]

Yeah, don't do suicide burns, instead get into an orbit around the Mun with a low periapsis, for a light craft this can be as low as 5km, but 10km is a good PE for practicing.

When you reach periapsis, retroburn to scrub off your speed, and make the final decent vertically, try to keep your vertical speed low enough that you can slow down easily before reaching the surface, less than 50m/s is good.

Lower your speed to below 10m/s for the landing, watching your navball the whole time and keeping your yellow marker centered right at the top, you can use RCS or tilt your craft to do this.

Watch for slopes, it helps to have one leg angled down the slope to prevent toppling over, and turn on terrain scatters so judging the distance to the ground is easier.

Don't forget lights for those night side landings :)

[Herger Joyous]

:-D awesome responce I really appreciate it. I wont be able to get some play time for a little bit but, i'll let you know how I do!

[lagrangewei]

practise. you can practise landing the lander on the launchpad itself, stick a small SRB under it and try to land from 1000m up. i did 3 to 4 run on kerbin before my first mun mission. sometime there is no time to think, so some experience will help u make the correct reaction in that split second if you are too high or too low...

what you want to take note when you reach mun is your throttle, how much throttle is needed to balance the gravity. it not easy to get under 10m/s if you don't know what your throttle should be to just be abit higher than the gravity's pull. if it too high, you will overshot and fly away and that is usually when the problem begins... so try to figure that out before you are close to the ground...

an example is the chinese moon mission. the lander actually try to "hover" for a split second, before landing so it can calibrate and confirm the final descent speed to achieve the soft landing.

[Noteak]

Remember f5 = quicksave f9 = quickload, saves me a ton of time ;)

[Herger Joyous]

I did not know that haha! I really should know by now to review the keybindings that will be a life saver I bet.

[Xcorps]

Lights. Both types.

The round point type has a very long range, set some up pointing downward at about 45 degree angle and set the color to yellow. When you see the ground get bathed in yellow light, you know your getting close.
The square lights have a much shorter range. Set some up pointing straight down and set the color to red.
Test them on your lander in the VAB by turning them on, then grab the root and move the rocket up and down.

For whatever reason, Squad designers decided that you don't need to know your actual altitude, you just need altitude above "sea level". That will get you killed until you get a mod that gives you AOG.
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Keep your weight to an absolute minimum. You don't need RCS to land, science parts, goo containers etc. Get the science on a later mission when you have a better grasp on the mechanics and your skill has improved. A pod, batteries, a rocket engine and fuel is all you need to land. Additional SAS is helpful for manuevering.
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Keep your ship pointed at the retrograde marker with the navball oriented up and down. As you burn retrograde, your horizontal speed will drop. As it does, your vertical speed will increase (to negative).
At some point during your descent, the retrograde marker will be end up being at the top of the navball (in the blue). That means your horizontal velocity is gone, so you can concentrate on getting your vertical velocity below 10m/s at the appropriate altitude.

You may find yourself fighting both horizontal speed AND vertical speed if you don't do this. If your vertical speed is only -2 m/s but your horizontal is 14 m/s, you are not likely to have a good landing because your total speed is 16 m/s.
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Quit trying to land on the Mun. Go to Minmus. The lower gravity from Minmus gives you much greater opportunity to practice with a lot of room for error, because the TWR is so much higher if you screw up it's a lot easier to get away from the ground. You use a lot less fuel on a successful landing as well.

You can get from Minmus back to Kerbin with about 100 DV from Minmus orbit by slingshotting around Mun and adjusting your trajectory, so it more than makes up for the additional cost to get there because it takes about 800 DV to get into Munar orbit, then another 600 or so to get back to Kerbin, plus all the fuel you have to burn to land on the Mun, which is substantial for a perfect landing.

Minmus is easy mode landing with a Mun designed rocket.
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Good luck!

[Mr Thumpy]

I'd actually suggest using a light pattern, fit 3-4 round lights around the base of your lander, they'll be pointing slightly out of vertical. When they illuminate the ground at maximum range you will see 4 individual light spots, then as you near the ground they will expand, cross and overlap. It's basically using parallax measurement to guage your distance above the surface

[Herger Joyous]

House + Gordon Freeman is love that! "avatar" !. Whatever the kids are calling them these days.

[Ottomic]

Pay *close* attention to the navball. Learn how much acceleration (twr) your ship has, and what effect on your trajectory a burn in a given direction has. Keep your touchdown speed under 5 m/s, don't be afraid to overburn when close to terrain until you get things right.

[Bomoo]

I'd grab this mod for showing accurate terrain height (without landing IVA) vs. the standard height from sea level.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/76320-23-5-%28Apr12-14%29-Landing-Height-Show-distance-from-bottom-of-your-vessel-to-ground

[Moon Truther]

make your verdicl speed 0 turn your lander engins tords the ground slow down to about 15 m and keep it here and when you can see rocks make as slow as posible

[jay]

Pack way too much fuel and then use a bigger engine, youll learn with expierience

[Sokarrat]

For small spaceships this rule works for me.
Near periapsis or a low orbit, to land.

A) always aim retrograde
B) velocity under 'v' at an altitude 'h'
b.1) h = 30 km -> v < 300m/s
b.2) h = 20 km -> v < 200m/s
b.3) h = 10 km -> v <100m/s
b.4) h = 5 km -> v < 50m/s
b.5) h = 1 km -> v < 10 m/s

Steps are easy to remeber.

I don't know if that works for big spaceships. You can run out of fuel easily.

[Rowbot]

Make sure you slow your horizontal speed.

[Sokarrat]

If u follow the method I described before, you don't have to worry about horizontal speed. As u always aim retrograde, horizontal and vertical speed are reduced with the same 'boosts'.
The only 'problem' I found is that it can take long and you have to do lots of corrections+boosts.