Kerbal Space Program

[cardgame]

I usually have 25-40 units of monopropellant for any kind of trip, never use it for anything but deep space turns (to align a burn) unless I absolutely have to keep balanced in the atmo.

 

[warpus]

Are you leaving it on while traveling between Kerbin and the Mun?

Yeah, I must have accidently done that. Doh

Okay guys, I have been trying to land on the mun again, all morning, with no luck. I now have a rocket that can get a landing pod to the mun and back.. I think. I have had several problems.

1. Quicksave. When I load, my fuel is gone? Is this normal or just a glitch?

2. Quicksave. When I load, my latest save isn't loaded, but another one.

3. Quicksave. When I load, my spacecraft is facing in another direction than when I saved.

Are these things anyone else is experiencing or am I just an unlucky sob?

Also:

4. Whenever I'm landing, now, my rocket is always moving at least a bit laterally/sideways. I can burn retrograde all I want, this happens no matter what. I can position myself sideways to attempt to get rid of this movement, but how do I know which direction to point myself in when burning? How far from the mun do I have to be to perform this maneuver?

I seem to end up in a situation where I'm always getting closer, correcting, etc. and by the time I'm close enough to land I'm still moving sideways fast enough to make landing impossible.. and a lot of my fuel is gone trying to get everything just right.

Tips please?

 

[warpus]

I did it!! Landed on the mun without crashing and maybe even with enough fuel to get back home.

I think I answered my questions 2 and 3.

2 & 3 - You can't save when accelerating, I must have been pressing F5 but it wasn't saving for that reason
4 - Burning retrograde until I'm very near the surface does the trick. I don't know why it wasn't working for me these last couple times..

I'm still not quite sure how/why I lost all my fuel when loading. Let me explain exactly what happened: My lander has 1 main booster and 4 smaller side ones. When I re-loaded my game (after crashing) my main booster was suddenly without fuel. My side 4 rockets that hadn't been turned on yet were fine.

Now, it's possible that I just missed running out of that fuel, but I don't think so. I should have noticed that! I would have been paying attention to how much of it was left.

Anyway, I'm doing a moonwalk now and attempting to get back home. We'll see if those 4 side boosters @ 50% or so capacity will do it.

How do I get @ the rovers btw? I don't think I've seen any in any of the rocket construction panels. Mod?

edit: I have a problem getting one of my dudes home.. I think

Here's my lander and him trying to get back in:

I've tried jumping and grabbing that ladder, and everything else I can think of, but.. nothin. Dude's an idiot and won't grab that ladder. Is it just a matter of bad design? Should I have had more ladder steps in there? He just won't get in.

 

[Joecoolyo]

4. Whenever I'm landing, now, my rocket is always moving at least a bit laterally/sideways. I can burn retrograde all I want, this happens no matter what. I can position myself sideways to attempt to get rid of this movement, but how do I know which direction to point myself in when burning? How far from the mun do I have to be to perform this maneuver?

Blech, every time I've tried to land on the Mun today this is what got me.

So just burning retrograde is the answer?

How close did you get before you straightened your lander?

 

[Dreadnought]

Aim at the Green X on the navball and you'll lose all velocity.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Hmm, maybe I just wasn't burning early enough.

Cause I'd do that, and it still wouldn't be enough to stop it.

 

[Antilogic]

@Warpus: Looks like he needed a few more steps to climb over your ASAS module. You can jump to get back in--go to the surface of the Mun, press R to turn on his jetpack, and then use the rocket-assisted leap to get back into your craft. I think you might have hit a bug--you should have the same fuel state using quicksave and quickload, it shouldn't penalize you.

When landing on the Mun, I abuse the navball. When the green circle is directly on the 0° origin like it is on Kerbin, you have no sideways motion. It takes a little fiddling with the WASD keys while landing to completely kill your sideways momentum. I'm not perfect and I usually have ~1 m/s sidways motion, but it's close enough it doesn't ruin my lander. You can also use the RCS translation keys (I think they are IJKL) to make minor adjustments.

My Munar landing protocol is to get in roughly a 10-15 km orbit, then kill most of my velocity so I start falling straight down. Then burn to slow down as the surface approaches and make small adjustments on the drop. This may not be the most fuel efficient way to land, but it saves the headache of killing a lot of angular momentum very close to the ground (when I want to be vertical for the landing).

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Ok, I know you have some questions Warpus and I'm not ignoring them. I just got my computer unpacked and I'll try and cover the bigger questions tomorrow, I do want to take a minute to answer a quick question and post some of my own picks. (no guarantees I will get to it tomorrow, I'm visiting with family but I'll try)

1) On how to get back in the lander:
You should have attached ladder rungs over the ASAS unit if you didn't (can't tell from pick). However, you should be able to grab them by pressing R to deploy your jetpack. Pressing Shift makes you fly up, press control to fly down. W is forward, S is backward, A/D are left right and Q/E rotates you. That should help you get close enough to see the <Press F to grab> or <Press F to enter capsule> messages.
_______________

I have begun work on the first Munar base for the UKSR. It is an astronomical observatory that will look for black holes for the glory of the revolution, naturally called Glory Hole Base. I also have 2 rovers parked near it. They are the Red Wing Standard Transportation Device and the I Can Haz Cornhole VI, which is currenlty exploring the depths of a crater.

 

[cardgame]

Open in new tab for glory

Spoiler :

 

[Dreadnought]

My first non-Lunar landing expedition success on another celestial body!! Anyone want to guess which body this is?

Hint: I brought parachutes because I didn't intend to land here, but it got in the way...

 

[warpus]

Just got back from dinner

Right before I left I was pretty sure that one of my kerbinauts was dead - the guy who I thought I had to leave behind because he couldn't reach the ladder fell off and just lied there. My ride was here and I had to run - thus the rushed screencap sans the details - left my guy lying there 3 and a half hours ago and just got back.

He was lying about 150m from the ship.. huh? How'd he move there? Either way, thanks a lot guys with the jetpack, I have seen that thing in action before, but totally forgot about it.

So I'm about to run back to my spaceship and try to get home. We'll see how that goes

Blech, every time I've tried to land on the Mun today this is what got me.

So just burning retrograde is the answer?

How close did you get before you straightened your lander?

That is the answer, but.. my burns varied quite a bit. For a while I didn't burn at all, then I did it on and off to try to stabilize my acceleration and make sure that I didn't speed up too much, then it was a bit of a constant very-low burn for the same reason.. then near the end you have to somehow balance it so that the distance to surface-1500m (or so) and your acceleration both reach 0 at the same time. If you keep adjusting where you burn (retrograde will move, you have to move with it), and your initial entry angle isn't too crazy, eventually you'll lose all lateral movement.. or at least most of it.

That's how I was able to land at least. I have 2 successful landings under my belt, and in the first one the whole lower part of my lander blew up. The rest landed upright and I got to go on a moonwalk, so it was a success. Then I guess there is the third time where I managed to do a flip and land sideways.

My way of getting to the moon is to just continue burning horizontally when you are trying to get into orbit initially until my orbit intersects the moon's gravitational influence. I realize that I am skipping a stage here where I'm supposed to "select" the entry point by adjusting my orbit (or whatever), but I've been winging it. It means that I might have to orbit the planet a couple times before the mun intersects my orbit at the right time, but that seems to be the only downside.

Ok, I know you have some questions Warpus and I'm not ignoring them. I just got my computer unpacked and I'll try and cover the bigger questions tomorrow, I do want to take a minute to answer a quick question and post some of my own picks. (no guarantees I will get to it tomorrow, I'm visiting with family but I'll try)

No prob. Thanks to mostly you I am now at a stage where I can put things in orbit and make attempts to land on other planetary bodies. So if I get stuck with something in particular, there are many more things for me to try out.

By the way, did you say that you got that mun base there in one piece, on just one rocket? Or was that just a part of it?

Oh and.. I have temporarily switched to a rocket design that does not use the asparagus method. It seems to work better for mun-bound probes,.. but I'm really just basing that on my success vs failure ratio, and that is influenced by many other things. Either way, the simpler design is what I have been using to get things into orbit and to the mun.

My Munar landing protocol is to get in roughly a 10-15 km orbit, then kill most of my velocity so I start falling straight down. Then burn to slow down as the surface approaches and make small adjustments on the drop. This may not be the most fuel efficient way to land, but it saves the headache of killing a lot of angular momentum very close to the ground (when I want to be vertical for the landing).

For now I have combined by deacceleration burn with my mun landing burn. So for me it's just one burn.. I keep burning until my orbit intersects the muns.. Then I burn every once in a while so I don't speed up too much.. and so on.

What I do is probably inefficient for other reasons.. but it does save me a couple steps.. which means more trial & error runs.

 

[cardgame]

It's Ike, isn't it?

 

[Antilogic]

Open in new tab for glory

Spoiler :

Looks like you missed the water this time. How's driving around on Laythe?

My first non-Lunar landing expedition success on another celestial body!! Anyone want to guess which body this is?

Hint: I brought parachutes because I didn't intend to land here, but it got in the way...

I was going to say the Duna ice cap before I read the bottom of your post and realized there was no atmosphere. Maybe Ike? Never landed there, don't know what the terrain looks like.

 

[warpus]

Hahaha

So as I was typing the above post, Nedster Kerman was running away from my mun lander.. and when I eventually returned to the game was 1km away from it

... It's going to take a while to get back. I'm thinking of just leaving him there

 

[Antilogic]

Hahaha

So as I was typing the above post, Nedster Kerman was running away from my mun lander.. and when I eventually returned to the game was 1km away from it

Spoiler :

... It's going to take a while to get back. I'm thinking of just leaving him there

He must have been sliding, or you had the finger on the button or something.

You can jetpack back pretty easily and without much fuel. Jump with the pack, then hold W to move forward. You can pick up some speed and the kerbal will go ragdoll and skid along for 100 m or so when he hits the ground, it's tons of fun. Just don't kill him by going too quick.

 

[cardgame]

Laythe is very similar to Kerbin. 0.7Gs with 0.6 atmos of pressure. The ground is nice, if you can find it.

 

[Joecoolyo]

That is the answer, but.. my burns varied quite a bit. For a while I didn't burn at all, then I did it on and off to try to stabilize my acceleration and make sure that I didn't speed up too much, then it was a bit of a constant very-low burn for the same reason.. then near the end you have to somehow balance it so that the distance to surface-1500m (or so) and your acceleration both reach 0 at the same time. If you keep adjusting where you burn (retrograde will move, you have to move with it), and your initial entry angle isn't too crazy, eventually you'll lose all lateral movement.. or at least most of it.

That's how I was able to land at least. I have 2 successful landings under my belt, and in the first one the whole lower part of my lander blew up. The rest landed upright and I got to go on a moonwalk, so it was a success. Then I guess there is the third time where I managed to do a flip and land sideways.

My way of getting to the moon is to just continue burning horizontally when you are trying to get into orbit initially until my orbit intersects the moon's gravitational influence. I realize that I am skipping a stage here where I'm supposed to "select" the entry point by adjusting my orbit (or whatever), but I've been winging it. It means that I might have to orbit the planet a couple times before the mun intersects my orbit at the right time, but that seems to be the only downside.

Yeah that's how I've been burning. I think I've been crashing just because I kept trying to land on the dark side of the mun, which is hard when you can't see anything.

Anyways, my winging it strategy (I think you do the same thing warpus) managed to get me to land on the bright side of the mun this time, and, finally, I have been successfull-ish!

Spoiler :

 

[Dreadnought]

It's Ike, isn't it?

I was going to say the Duna ice cap before I read the bottom of your post and realized there was no atmosphere. Maybe Ike? Never landed there, don't know what the terrain looks like.

Yep! I never realized that you need a nice vertical intercept course to hit Duna because Ike has a large sphere of influence...

 

[cardgame]

My next mission is headed to Duna

 

[warpus]

He must have been sliding, or you had the finger on the button or something.

I think I alt-tabbed out while holding down W

I did the same thing to get back at first - went on reddit for 2 minutes, went back to the game, and he was still walking back towards the lander. In theory it should be possible to walk around the mun like that. maybe

You can jetpack back pretty easily and without much fuel. Jump with the pack, then hold W to move forward. You can pick up some speed and the kerbal will go ragdoll and skid along for 100 m or so when he hits the ground, it's tons of fun. Just don't kill him by going too quick.

Aww yeahh..

I wish there were some cliffs on the mun you could jump off and screw around with