Landing on HD 148937 3

WyoWrestler44

WyoWrestler44
Made planetfall on HD 148937 3 yesterday evening, a 9.77G world about 1400LY from the Bubble. I'm not the first to land there by any means but it was touch and go all the way. It literally took an hour to safely get within 20m of the surface. Suffered very minor damage on impact (landing). After a sigh of relief I decided to deploy my rover. The SRV dropped out of the bay like a ton of bricks and suffered damage on deployment! I didn’t have to worry about losing surface contact, the SRV wheels stayed glued to the rocky surface as I drove around. I was very leery about my co-pilot even attempting anything so much as a take-off and landing so I stayed close by. Little did I know that ascent would be even worse. After retrieving the rover I fired up the engines and failed to budge on the first attempt. I contemplated my next move and the thought of being stranded weighed heavily on my mind. On the second attempt, my ship, the DSEV Kasei Valles slowly began to rise above the surface. I put some distance between the ship and surface of about 10km using only vertical thrusters. I thought I could safely switch over to main drives, boy was I wrong! I applied about 50 degrees of pitch and throttled up to 100% but my ship started falling back towards the planet! I increased my pitch to 90 degrees, still nothing. Boosting did zip and attempts to level back out failed. With mass lock looming and after a free-fall of 6km I engaged my FSD as a last ditch attempt. All I got was “Throttle up to Engage” even though I was at 100% and boosting for all it was worth. Finally, with about 2km to the surface my ship slowly stopped its free-fall and stood dead on its tail for what seemed like a full minute and then began climbing, literally inch by inch. My speed slowly increased until the FSD finally engaged. Talk about a wild ride.


https://i.imgur.com/TjkdV3A.png
https://i.imgur.com/Jeaizrp.png
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https://i.imgur.com/8vHZZ64.png
 

WyoWrestler44

WyoWrestler44
Thank you! I have a strict explorer build on my ship. I tried for the lightest build I could get and the best thrusters and FSD (FSD is engineered and the thrusters are not) My hull is unmodified and shields are practically non-existent (222mJ) I just went VERY, VERY slow on descent. Literally, I leveled off at about 9km coming in after the Glide finished, I actually think I aborted it early. I throttled all the way down on everything, I did not touch my vertical thrusters once. I'd pitch my nose down about 15 degrees and the ship would start to descend on its own, then I'd pull back up to level and allow everything to stabilize. Never once did I increase throttle or push down on vertical thrusters until I was 10-20m from the surface and kicking up dust. Even then I was wary and only did extremely slight adjustments to find a level landing spot. I only used my pitch to descend and even then, very little at a time. Take-off is a different story. I could ascend on vertical thrusters only after I "broke loose" from the surface. In hind-sight I would have done that far longer than just getting up 10km, I would have waited until in orbit before I ever thought about switching to main drives or pitching up or any of that nonsense, LOL.
 
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Jastebro

Jastebro
You haven't really visited HD 148937 3 until you've flown upside down across its surface. ;)
Just make sure to sell data at Colonia before.
 

Shir

Shir
I think the safest way to take off on high g planets is to just take off like an airplane would, straight ahead slowly climbing in altitude.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Inspiring post Wyo, definitely adding that to my TODO list!

I've previously landed a race built Imperial Courier on the 8.7g Chi Hydrae A7 when I was there for the Speed Bowl tournament but that ship had massive thrust to weight ratio so it wasn't quite as exciting as your landing and takeoff, still challenging tho!

[video=youtube_share;l0l9BV_GV8M]https://youtu.be/l0l9BV_GV8M[/video]
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
WyoWrestler44 said:
Great write up, wish I'd come across it sooner. I'm glad that I used roughly the same method for my landing. The whole, "NEVER USE VERTICAL THRUSTERS" is very important indeed.
Click to expand...

Indeed, for my landing the only thing I did do was momentarily toggle FA off and back on again as fast as I could which caused me to drop the last 20ft or so like a stone.
 

WyoWrestler44

WyoWrestler44
Junosulyn said:
It is a trecherous place to approach and land upon. I was there months ago and arrived and left safely, only to be destroyed by a npc taking advantage of what was left of my hull not far from my home station.
I used this guide which was really helpful as I'd never set down on a really high gravity world prior to this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/86jbnm/strong_g_keeps_reaping_souls/
Click to expand...

Great write up, wish I'd come across it sooner. I'm glad that I used roughly the same method for my landing. The whole, "NEVER USE VERTICAL THRUSTERS" is very important indeed.
 
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