I suck at landing. literally. No matter the weight, TWR, whatever

[carmine summit]

I never manage to land. If I try landing on planets with no atmosphere and, even worse, if they have low gravity I perform my boost too early and I reach 0m/s above the ground and start to fly up again so its just an up and down the whole time, sometimes it even adds sideways velocity so I have to perform retorgrade burns and stuff and it makes everything even wrose. On planets like kerbin, with an atmosphere but uneven terrain its just as bad. I land and fall. Can anyone give me tips on how to improve with landing? Ive seen people land superheavy recreations literally perfect, but thats not even my goal, I just want to finally be able to land without always falling down and having to load quicksaves 1000 times just to land on the mun or whatever

[proper bobcat]

It can help to only throttle up slightly so that you can keep the same vertical velocity while going down, at least that’s what works for me

I like to get within 10 m/s when close to the surface and then slow down to about 2-5 m/s when about to touch the surface, and then I cut the engines as soon as I touch down.

[keen drift]

If you're using landing legs, reduce their friction to about 0.2 so you don't tip over from horizontal velocity. It also lets you slide down slopes to a flat valley.

Burn retrograde only until you have slowed down below 30m/s or so and are less than about 500m from surface, then switch sas to "up". Below 10m/s or so retrograde starts swinging wildly if you try to follow it because the small horizontal velocity is a big enough component.

[jaunty verge]

are you managing your throttle or just full to zero back to full?

[simple tree]

i'll calculate jerk(delta acc) is 0 because i'll think your vessel has enough fuel.

so (initial vel)/2 is the mean velocity and (height)=(initial v)*(time)

1/2*(acc)*(time)^2=(height)

[simple tree]

then (time)=2(height)/(ini vel)

4*1/2(acc)(height)^2/(ini vel)^2=(height)

so 2(acc)(height)=(ini vel)^2 and (acc)=(vel)^2/2(height)

a=v^2/2h

you need to add gee of planet to acc because it is net acc

remember this is just an approximation, it may not be accurate on small vessels.

[pure basin]

What he said

[simple tree]

that means the vessel's net acceleration should be (initial velocity)^2/2*(initial height)

remember it is an approximation(no fuel change)

you can use small engines to avoid big TWR change

or just adjust throttle to make net acc fit to my equation

@pure basin or does my equation has calculation errors?

[simple tree]

if you land with that constant acceleration then your vel would be 0 when ground contact

[pure basin]

Idk, but my brain automatically calculates what to do during a landing

[carmine summit]

Yea I manage my throttle, I do suicide burns and then once I reach a comfortable velocity I go to lower throttle and I try to reach pretty much 0 vel once I touch down

[hasty rock]

If I were you, I would try to find a sequence that’s comfortable for me before attempting a suicide burn. And for a planet with an atmosphere, just let the atmosphere slow you down and fire up the engine at any point you find comfortable. If you reach 0 m/s above the surface you can fine tune the descent from there, assuming you have the fuel for it, if not then just reload the save and try again

I would also recommend getting experienced with landing a normal lander before trying to land a booster

Boosters tend to have a high CoM which makes them easy to tip over

They also have a high moment of inertia along the pitch and yaw axis so canceling horizontal velocity becomes difficult because they rotate slowly

[carmine summit]

Im not trying to land a booster

Thats way out of scope

😂

I dream of that at most

I tip over with normal landers too

I never manage to get the landing done corect

I either cancel out my velocity too early, then fly up and from there on everything goes wrong. Or I cancel it out too late and I bounce and tip so I have to burn to not fall on the ground sideways, then I have to cancel out my horizontal velocity again and then everything fails again

[hasty rock]

If you cancel velocity too early turn the engine off

And to cancel horizontal velocity, make SAS hold the vertical orientation and manually tilt the craft in the direction of movement slightly

Once you’re slower than about 10 m/s, horizontal velocity isn’t worth canceling unless it makes up more than half of your total velocity

Although, some landing gear in the game appears to suffer from some kind of spring strength bug, making it unreliable

If you have RCS use the translation keys to cancel horizontal velocity, it’s significantly easier that way

[cinder niche]

Hope this is not already said: the heavier the craft to more difficult it is to land, start learning landing on very light craft first.

[shell rune]

always point retrograde, enable SAS and point straight up once you're like 10 meters off the ground, and focus mostly on your speed, do not let it go above 0m/s

[carmine summit]

thats what im doing but it I either have too much horizontal velocity left or I land on a steep hill or smth and have to redo the landing

[shell rune]

when you have too much horizontal velocity left, you should probably increase throttle to slow down
i know, trivial but still, and when you see that you're landing on a steep hill you should probably move away which will be a bit hard

[keen drift]

If these are your main issues then decreasing landing leg friction value will definitely help.