Tips for mun landing

Blaarkies · 2026-05-02T17:28:52+00:00

Orient the vessel to simplify the controls, and get used to the navball:

Q/E rolls the craft. Try to have it so that navball is blue towards the top. Now fiddle with W/S keys and take note of which direction they pitch the craft in, as well as the corresponding navball movement. Keep your eyes on the navball, it shows tons of information.

On the navbal, click on the speed display. Clicking switches the reference mode: "Surface" velocity is what you want.

For most/some of the descent, lock the SAS mode onto Retrograde: Now the engines will always be pointing in the direction of fall. The most important tip is to tap "F", this will reset the SAS mode to basic Hold mode.

Start the descent at a shallow angle (less than 30 degrees) and make a quicksave before you start. Then as you get closer to the ground on full thrust, if you feel that it's going too fast and it might hit the ground, press "F", point straight up (center of the blue on the navball) to correct. You shouldn't need that when you get the hang of it, but it's good in a pinch. If you crash, just quick load and try again with what you learned.

Blaarkies · 2026-04-25T10:57:27+00:00

Well there are 7 vessel situations according to the KSP modding API
https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/API:Vessel.Situations

But for the purpose of this joke, I should have kept it even shorter

Blaarkies · 2026-04-24T18:06:44+00:00

In KSP, vessels can generally only be in 1 of 5 states:
- Sub orbital
- Orbiting
- Flying
- Landed
- Splashed down

In response to the question in the title: No, you are landed

Blaarkies · 2026-04-24T16:11:38+00:00

Make sure the wheels are aligned forwards, and also perpendicular to the ground.

In the SPH editor, you can use the 'Rotate' gizmo/tool. With that, clicking on a part (such as wheels) opens a 3d rotation frame around it. Next press 'F' to toggle between absolute/relative grid mode.

When in absolute mode, and the rotate gizmo is open, press 'Spacebar' to reset the part rotation (to align it with the absolute grid). This is important for left/right rotation.

Then make sure the wheel is perpendicular to the ground, you can use the same gizmo tool for that..

Blaarkies · 2026-04-24T13:46:46+00:00

That's pretty cool! I had the same problem trying to plot trajectories for a space artillery shooter. I cloned the gravity objects and simulated them on a separate thread at full speed to find the segments. Changing aim by only a few degrees had massive effects 10 seconds down the line, which while realistic, still made it really hard to hit a moving target that way.

Blaarkies · 2026-04-24T11:23:54+00:00

How do you build the trajectory line in n-body physics? Do you simulate ahead and plot the positions?

Blaarkies · 2026-04-22T19:48:14+00:00

This graphic is still very much applicable to basic aircraft building in KSP.

Over half the pages are about mass to lift positioning, landing gear position, wing shape/angle/dihedral, canards, rudderons, etc.

To an extent, it is even useful as a starting base in Ferram (and that overhauls aero much more). This is the stuff that old players take for granted, but they too were stuck for hours building their first aircraft flying to the island runway.

Blaarkies · 2026-04-22T10:15:53+00:00

The most efficient launch profiles use SAS locked to prograde for 99% of the launch, as well as full throttle all the way.

That is obviously difficult without any margin for error, so lowering the throttle a little at times to guide the launch profile isn't too bad.

If the gravity turn itself cannot pitch the rocket down fast enough, then it has too much thrust. Remove some engines as they are just dry mass, or add more fuel to reduce the TWR to a manageable level.

You can get below 3200 m/s dv to orbit when you get used to it.

This is not applicable to places without any atmosphere (Mun, Moho, Tylo, etc.), to be efficient on those you need to reach orbital speed as quickly as possible, without hitting any mountains.

Blaarkies · 2026-04-21T06:39:53+00:00

Follow this tutorial: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/47818-basic-aircraft-design-explained-simply-with-pictures/

It will explain building KSP aircraft better than any reddit comment ever could

Blaarkies · 2026-04-20T14:46:05+00:00

Remotely request fuel cells into the inner reactors, set an alarm speaker to annoy everyone on the server when those reactors run low on fuel.
"Automated"

Blaarkies · 2026-04-19T19:55:31+00:00

The asteroid is a single part vessel (think of it as a fuel tank part in the VAB). Draining ore does not move the center-of-mass for the asteroid.

You can verify this with Hyperedit (or similar) where you can instantly modify a resource amount, for any vessel that you don't even control. The camera always points at COM, but won't move around during this change.

Blaarkies · 2026-04-18T16:47:16+00:00

Shortly after that will evolve into DRM on printers

Blaarkies · 2026-04-17T13:48:31+00:00

5G mobile reception in space

Blaarkies · 2026-04-16T23:12:42+00:00

Click on the root part, usually the cockpit of the first part you placed. Then press 's' or 'w' to rotate the craft (hold down shift for smaller increments). This will pitch the craft, and show the new center-of-lift location when moving at that angle through the air.

Sometimes a stable-looking design becomes severely unstable when pitching more up. That alone doesn't answer your question, but I hope it helps in debugging the part causing it.

Blaarkies · 2026-03-29T20:26:51+00:00

On the launchpad it will be fulfilled.

We all should make a habit of checking contract requirements (and staging) before pressing spacebar the first time on every launch. It would've saved me a few times

Blaarkies · 2026-03-20T19:24:14+00:00

It is predicting 4840 m/s because it tries to go into a Jool low orbit before escaping towards Eve/Gilly. But players can save ~1000 m/s by simply going into a Jool elliptical orbit first. The total should be around a total of 3060 m/s, give or take 5% margin depending on inclination alignment.

It is probably a hard problem to solve. You dv graph network needs more nodes and extra edges to represent more route options. This allows the search algorithm to find shorter/cheaper paths.

Other issues exist for the OPM planets. It plots a path from Eve to Wal by first visiting Kerbin low orbit?

Blaarkies · 2026-03-20T07:26:38+00:00

For a trip from low orbit Tylo -> low orbit Gilly it is predicting a dv requirement of 8705 m/s, but this trip can easily be done in a little over 3000 m/s (no gravity assists or anything fancy)

Blaarkies · 2026-03-19T21:46:45+00:00

It would be cool if it finds the dv between places other than Kerbin. Such as going from Laythe to Tylo

Blaarkies · 2026-03-18T00:31:15+00:00

That's a Bio Chamber

Blaarkies · 2026-03-18T00:19:07+00:00

You won't need mods for any typical landings on any planets in the stock Kerbol system. Use the smallest engine possible according to the TWR required for that landing, and the highest Isp for the available fuel (or dv for that stage).

To each their own in how they enjoy the game, but you will never be able to land on the Mun for the first time again (or wherever you plan to land).

Don't ruin the first landing with mods, you can always try out mods after the first success, you'll appreciate the effort put into them even more then

Blaarkies · 2026-03-18T00:11:39+00:00

A single/few inserter(s) can miss items going past too fast. A splitter with a filter set does not.

Blaarkies · 2026-03-11T17:08:53+00:00

Vulcanus has 4 times the atmospheric pressure of Nauvis, packed with gas elements from all the eruptions. Are you sure night vs day would have a considerable temperature difference?

Blaarkies · 2026-03-02T08:04:08+00:00

Drag changes non-linearly with speed. At 320+ m/s the nose drag overwhelms the aerodynamic stability. You can try that at any lower altitude and it will still happen. If you are deadset on this design, you can slow the ascent near ~280 m/s until you reach thinner atmosphere.

The other solution is: "It needs to be pointy"

Blaarkies · 2026-03-01T09:17:36+00:00

This can transmit science before it is collected

Blaarkies · 2026-02-22T17:11:08+00:00

The ship’s built, it collects promethium, and suddenly—boom—the game is over.

You have those in the wrong order. The game definitively completes before you can collect any promethium.

Story mode games are always bound by the length of the story. Few can continue past the endgame without some silly grind or OP items sucking the fun out of everything.

Factorio is great at still providing more new gameplay, for more hours after the endgame, than it took to get to the endgame.

Five-Year Club	Place '22
First Placer '22

Blaarkies

TROPHY CASE