Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game

Nice! I also got hooked on the lander thing, really quick to pick up and good replay value! Your autopilot handles a gentle landing well. If I get the lander going sideways at any appreciable speed, then flip autopilot on, a crash is inevitable :) As a human my solution to that is simply slowing down with lots of thrust, though I still wind up turning the lander into scrap most of the time hah!

Cool, neat code too :) Now do https://race-condition.reaktor.com/! I wanted to pour a few hours into race condition but I got it to complete a lap and never went back.

It's interesting to think about how the optimal strategy to land the lander would look like.

If the distance to the moon was large, I would expect 4 phases:

1: Turn the lander towards the moon

2: Constant thrust towards the moon

3: Turn the lander away from the moon

4: Constant thrust away from the moon

But if the initial distance is small enough, turning it around might not be worth it or even possible.

So the optimal strategy is probably a somewhat complex function of the initial angle and distance to the moon.

I wanted to go for a record of as many flips as possible. So I boosted up to 25,000 feet; started spinning until it was doing about one flip per second; waited a few minutes; then turned on the autopilot to come into a landing.

The autopilot did a perfect job of stopping the rotation and lateral motion, so the lander came down straight as an arrow. Unfortunately, the autopilot didn't even try to decelerate! I crashed into the moon at 0.9 degrees and 770 MPH.

One suggestion: if the lander is within about 10 feet of the ground and is still either swaying back and forth or going really fast laterally, it should thrust upwards to buy more time to correct those things.