OgreMagi

thanks for the replys, I managed to get mech jeb to get me to a crash landing, after multiple attempts. the lander crashed but my rovers survived intact,.. only lost a light or 2 on them. ( I use a space staton cupola as the base the seem to resist damage better.) I saved a picture of the crahs, but I do not know how to load pic's to the page, but I used the rovers solar panels to right them and well it was a unmanned lander with unmanned rovers, ( the rovers were being staged for when the kerbals returned for a manned landing, similar to the mars direct concept I read in science fiction analog years ago.) Well I will try to redesign the lander, less fuel ( or half the fuel in the tanks to reduce weight since I don't really need it) and more parachutes, still it is kerbal space program nothing more dangerous than a atomic power rocket....... just cant cannot seem to find it in my heart to put a less dangerous rocket on it.. thanks again for all the advice.

thanks for the answers. I have a 4 nuke engine lander ( standard nuke engines no mods) 88.98 tons total mass with 12 tons of detachable ground rovers, with 4 Mk 2 radial parachutes. This design landed easily on kerbin and eve, using mech jeb, but has a problem landing on Duna using mech jeb. I have the kethan mod and want to land in a kethan rich area to reuse the ship but mech jeb will not work properly. this is what I happened and what I have tried to do to correct it. first try I select the site using the landind guidance feature of mech jeb, then warp to high orbit, let mech jeb correct for the landing site and wait for the braking burn. then its stops working, I watched it deorbit without firing the engines and have the vehicle ripped apart from the chutes deployin usually just as the main engins come on around 10k meters So I try again, set the point let it do the de orbit burn then try to keep the orbital speed low enough to deploy the chutes but not so much to move my landing site out of the kethane field. I get the chutes to deploy then active mech jeb to land anywhere when it is low enough, then I have trouble. But mech jeb does very odd things, the engines stutter, comming on and off in rapid succession and the landing speed never gets low enough to make a safe landing . I have tried the burn high up but my landing points moves to far from the kethane field. even near the ground mech jeb on land anywhere simply does not function very well with parachutes. I will try manual landing but it is such a pain to do. Ogre

Hello I am a new player to the Kerbal space program, I downloaded the free version and decided that I would try the advanced version. So far doing great, I played with the stock version and only down loaded mechjeb to help with the tedious parts. I made several trips to the mun, minius, and eve. all landing with one a few fatalities ( my manned rovers needed some redesign). but the problem is DUNA...... Mech jeb is making it hard to make a landing, I have tried my similar approach I used on eve, Parachutes to slow to final desent and enough rockets to get back up but landing with mechjeb assistance is impossible. Whats the issue with mech jeb? I tried deaccelerating and then deploying the chutes but it never slows the lander to a safe landing speed, even when I burn my ship to only 100m/s in the atmosphere. any ideas on what I may be doing wrong?

not bad, but I used a much smaller rocket but I didn't plan on returning. parachutes work well in eve atmosphere,