How do you land a spaceplane on duna?

[royying]

Duna has thin atmosphere, wings only can generate a little lift.

And when the plane landed on ground, uneven surface and low gravity make the plane easily bounce off the surface and crash.

It seems that land a plane on duna is not easy:(

[CalculusWarrior]

It's tricky, but not impossible, as many a YouTuber has shown. The key is to make the aircraft as light as possible, with very large wings. Since jet engines are inoperable in Duna's atmosphere, you need a rocket plane, an ion-powered craft, or a straight-up glider.

If you do decide to go rocket plane, bear in mind that fuel and engines are quite heavy, meaning that you will want to be cautious you don't add too much fuel.

As for landing, Duna is deceptively bumpy. To overcome this, you'll need to have enough control of the plane (lots of lift) so that you can easily abort a landing if the terrain is too rough. Sending a rover ahead of time to scout the terrain for a 'landing strip' may be another possible option.

[Spatzimaus]

It's not that bad. Here was mine, using a spaceplane designed for Kerbin and Laythe (no extra wings, etc.):

There's enough atmosphere that a good Kerbin design can still land, as long as you take the descent slowly (angle your nose up more than you would on Kerbin). Finding a good landing spot is hard, although the fact that I use the gear from the B9 mod (which have better shock absorbers than the stock gear) helped quite a bit. Even so, I bounced a few times and was lucky to brake without flipping; it also helped that my plane used a 4-point landing gear setup (front, back, and two wingtip gears) instead of the usual triangle, so that it could handle an awkward bounce a bit better.

[Lindy]

Just spitballing here, but why not a VTOL setup? It would make finding a flat level spot easier...

[Superfluous J]

[Wanderfound]

Like this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/101944-Kerboduna-Part-1

Basically: wide-track landing gear, tailstrike guards, a hint of VTOL to control the sink rate and retro-thrusters for grounded braking assistance. None of those things are necessary, but they all make it easier.

Piloting-wise, it's just like landing at KSC: come in as low, slow and shallow as possible.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Wanderfound

[Bill Phil]

Simple, YOU don't. I can't, and others can, but YOU can't either.

[Levelord]

Self-proclaimed expert at Duna spaceplane landings here.... D:

Try attaching parachutes above the center of mass and use it to slow down the descent to the surface. When the chute deploy, it will bring down your speed to about 10 m/s. Here you will lose lift and use VTOL engines for the final descent. Because you are moving slowly, you don't have to deal with uneven terrain. I've spent the past years landing spaceplanes on Duna and this happens to be my latest plane out of the SPH.

[Jason Patterson]

Duna has thin atmosphere, wings only can generate a little lift.

And when the plane landed on ground, uneven surface and low gravity make the plane easily bounce off the surface and crash.

It seems that land a plane on duna is not easy:(

Like most of the more involved things in this game, it takes a lot of practice. You can use drogue chutes (that you cut) to get yourself slowed significantly as well. Otherwise it boils down to making a good approach so that you're aerobraking as best you can and at the end of that aerobrake, you wind up in a good spot to land.

[TokiTech]

I used 3 parachutes for a near vertical landing for my MK2. Touch down speed around 23m/s enough for structure to sustain impact, but i added more wheels to balance and incase. Always transfer the remaining fuel to tanks that has wheels on it.

[Xacktar]

Here's how I ended up doing it.

LINK

I'm not sure if I should recommend it.

[Parallax]

you have to get the Infernal Robotics mod and build an ornithopter, like so:

Edited January 2, 2015 by Parallax

[bsalis]

A Tailsitter with chutes works well.

[Cirocco]

I did a runway-duna surface-runway in an SSTO spaceplane without refuel a while ago. Here's what I learned about landing on Duna:

- No oxygen so rocket engines are required. I went with nuclear engines because my spaceplane was big and heavy and I used those for interplanetary transit as well, but if you go light then other engines are of course viable as well. I'm not sure about ion engines because they have a REALLY low thrust and gravity losses may be too high, but I've never tried so it might work.

- easiest way is to do a tailsitter with chutes and a suicide burn at the last second to slow you down so you don't break your engine bells on impact. You can tip it over if you want to do a horizontal take-off. Low gravity and high impact tolerance on landing gear means you probably won't break anything tipping over. This obviously isn't that different from a "conventional" powered landing.

if you want to go for a horizontal landing:

- get a TON of lift on you spaceplane. Seriously, whatever you think is enough, double it. More lift means less horizontal speed required to reduce vertical speed. For reference: a plane that does 80 m/s horizontal speed on a safe landing on the runway on Kerbin likely will need to do at least 200-300 m/s on Duna to get the same vertical speed, which obviously is NOT a safe landing speed. I usually take 100-120 m/s horizontal and 5-10 m/s vertical speed as a reference for "safe" landings. (actually 10 m/s vertical is already a bit much and be aware that if you land on an upwards going slope, the impact will be much harder than what the vertical speed would lead you to believe)

- landing site matters! pick a low landing site. Anything under 3000 meters means a lot thicker atmosphere, which means more lift which will make your life TONS easier. When I did a horizontal landing I went with the flats that are located on the equator next to the large canyon. Landing on the equator also means you can save a couple of hundred delta-V in getting to orbit if you take off facing 90° on the navball.

- wingtip gears! Gears on the wingtips means you will be much less likely to clip the ground with your undoubtedly large wings and horribly crash and die.

- protect against tailstrikes. Because of the uneven terrain, tailstrikes are very much a real threat. Usually a few gears near the back will be enough, but be aware that this will make take-off from Kerbin harder. On Duna the low gravity and the large amount of hills means they probably won't be a real problem on take-off.

that's about all that jumps to mind. Hope it helps!

[Frank_G]

You can add some vertical built in Vernor thrusters, slow down to almost zero horizontal velocity, then land it vertically with controlled boosts from those engines. You can switch RCS thrusters on and off using action groups, so during the landing only the Vernors will fire and during maneuvering only the RCS blocks will. They are also massless parts, so they don´t add to the profile of your spaceplanes mass. If you like to do the math, go for approximately .9 of TWR on Duna, so you can fire them constantly during landing without taking you back up. Works like a charm.

[timsfitz]

I've landed small single ion planes on Duna. Both had just command chairs for the Kerbals. I found than using RCS was helpfull both to slow the plane down, and for a VTOL capability. Best in a vary light setup. A single ion drive on a light plane can actually fly back to orbit as well, though it takes awhile.