Happy Landings - To the Mun with kOS

In the final episode of our miniseries, we figure out surface normal vectors, add some judicious time warping, and set out to land on the Mun!

This tutorial is running on KSP version 1.4.1, and kOS version 1.1.5.2.

READ THE FRIENDLY MANUAL

GRAB THE FINAL SCRIPT

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GET THE KOS MOD

DOWNLOAD KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM

[CheersKevin]

Had to reupload due to a botched export. Enjoy!!

[jeremyfarley]

Thank you for teaching me kOS. I learned C++ in college and I saw kOS as an opportunity to both add more realism to KSP since modern rockets are not manually flown except as backup, as well as practice my programming skills. It is very amazing that someone set out to write their own complete programming language!! Yea, I know! all languages are invented by someone, but commercial languages that we use are made for a capitalist goal. Whoever invented this language did so as a game mod in their free time and gave it away for free, simply for their own pleasure. Just amazing!!

[flyingfiddlerq]

I hope you do another full Kerbal programming series soon.

[alvarosanchezmartinez]

I loved this series, it has taught me a couple extra things and I improved some scripts I had.
A comment for an improved script you could make, just for Mun and Minmus, not interplanetary transfers would be to rise the target apoapsis to the Mun's orbital altitude, minus its radius, and try to tweak for when you have the closest periapsis with that.

[gwivongalois]

Well done. I was on the edge of my seat during the landing. And i must say, i sometimes landed worse. I loved to see the development of the script, from something barely able to launch before exploding, then getting better and better. You even tamed the famous beast called Mathematics.

[krishanson]

Next two things that would be fun would be a return trip and a way to more precisely control where on the Mun the ship will land. I ran this 5 times in a row. Four landed within a 10km radius, and another was 80 or so km away - kind of an outlier it seems. But most seem to land in the Northwest Crater for me. Of the 5, one landed on the very steepest part of the crater with a RUD. Great job on this - thanks for walking us through the dev of it, Kevin.

[rtleitao]

This was excellent. It should be the first contact anyone gets with kOS.
I still have to try coding it, and implement improvements, but learned a lot just watching it.

Brilliant

[anonymeusofficial]

2022 and still relevent! Just went through the whole series! Thank you!

[RobDeVos]

Yeah got it working.
I have added a round function in eccentricityScore function in order to stop improving beyond the burn accuracy. I also changed the radar height from 4.7 to 7.7 m. After that it was just luck to get on a flat surface, about 3 time I ended up on a steep slope.
The algorithm from episode 10 gave me often a fly-by with the Mun but not a collision, the latest code did gave me an proper encounter en never a fly-by.
Your code is really nice! Hope to see more!

[sionkim]

I appreciate for excellent series. thanks.

[matthewp]

Great series! I wish you would do another. Maybe visit multiple bodies? Auto rendezvous docking? Loads of possibilities

[horman]

Again a very well explained series, learned alot!
I hope, you will continue on with KOS Videos!

[ScottGauche]

I think the reason the circularization maneuver node takes a long time to settle is because you are trying to start that calculation while you are still in the atmosphere, where there is a little drag. Enough drag to be slowly decreasing your apoapsis. I'd modify the script to wait to calculate the circularization until after you are out of the atmosphere.

[patrik]

Thanks for the amazing tutorials! You are a great teacher :)

[danielboro]

Thank you for this and the older sires
They are both of immense help
(I apologies for my behavior In the old sires)
Plagiarism hehe :)
Id like to show my score version for munTransferScore
local result is
If set result to
I also replaced my clunky hill claiming function whit your better version :)

[mds]

Very interesting. I would love more videos

[kleinerprinz]

Great series! Now all I need to do is adapt it Principia Mod System! (N-Body Simulation) Wish me luck! :D I think a quick and dirty patch would be to calculate the maneuver node in a way that they are executed right after the node not 50/50, but 0/100 the way the flight planner and maneuver planner in principia work. :)

[ctbram]

Just a little confused because if you use the right hand rule the cross product of up and north results in a vector pointing west not east

[robbertolozzi]

Hi Kevin.
Thanks for this video series. It’s been great! If I wanted to create a script for each body, I would just need to do a save as on the script and change “Mun” out for say “Minmius” and so on? Also could the script be refactored so instead of calling out the “Body” your going for in the script, but just have it go off whatever your ‘Target’ is?

[dong]

any plans to redo this series on RSS with RO? Would be really cool as the techniques to get to orbit and the way most engines cant be reignited or throttled all way down would make it a lot tougher