Landing.md
Progress : 3/5
This pilot will help to touch the planet ground without much dommages.
For the moment it will only slowdown the vessel speed to avoid dangerous collision.
You have to define the Landing curve using Nodes and execute it with the Node ex pilot before having a good collision point.
The Pilot is mostly intended to run on planets without atmosphere. But I've tested it with succes on Kerbal. It costs a huge amout of fuel... but it can success if the vessel is well designed.
Please avoid very horizontal direction of collision (< 45°) it can lead to hazardous situations.
- Collision Infos : gives infos on timing when a collision would occur. Infos used by the Brake Pilot
- Main Brake Button : Start the Full Brake Pilot
- TouchDown Button : Start the Touch Down Phase. Urgency button that can be pressed if you're anxious about your landing (cost more fuel)
- Pilots Infos : Gives Information about the current Pilot phase
Wait for a collision to be detected. Look at the collision info and press brake when the collision point is good.
First a Start Braking Time is computed. The pilot tries to determine a safe starting time to start a burning. As it is not made for planet with atmosphere, it will compute a starting time really before what is really needed. it is then safier but too expensive in fuel.
The pilot will then auto warp until reaching the pahse for Rotating Warp.
The Rotating Warp is a warp where the direction of the vessel is well aligned with the retrograde direction
- Rotating Warp Duration : the duration is seconds of the rotating phase. adjust this if your vessel can be very long to rotate.
- Safe Warp Rotation : The max angles before time-warp is stoped to adjust rotation.
The Brake phase starts when we reach the safe altitude.
It will slow down the Vessel speed until it reach the "ad-hoc" Touch Down Speed
At the end of this phase the current altitude is checked
- if under, the Touch Down Altitude the Touch Down Phase is started
- if upper, another Brake phase is started. This can happen several time if you are on a planet with atmosphere or your collision direction is really horizontal.
- Burn Before : a timer in seconds to adjust the start burning phase. Use it to be a little bit safier.
You can start this phase sooner if you are in a dangerous situation.
During this phase the speed is limited depending ont he altitude. It will then adjust the speed and this will lead make the trajectory more vertical.
- Start Touch Down Altitude : When the touch down will be start after a Brake phase
- Max Angle : accepted angle with retrograde direction. Thrust is stopped if angle reach a dangerous angle. (Adding this parameter in this 1.0 version made the landing a lot safier. I Should have added it sooner)
- Altitude/Speed ratio : This is ratio used to compute speed depending on altitude. Lower value is safier as the vessel will have a lower speed anytime. Higher speed can be dangerous but cost lower fuel.
- Touch-Down Speed : the wanted speed when touching the ground.
- Draw a propagation line in the Fligh View. This will show the collision line and halp the player to adjust than landing position.
- Choose the landing site on the main map and create a Node deorbit node.