First stop?

[SiliconPyro]

I've landed on Mun and Minmus plenty of times. I suck at building rockets, but I'm ready to head to another planet. I did borrow a .craft and made it to Duna, but I touched down at a brisk 500m/s. M question is, which planet is easiest to get to? I'm not dead set on a round trip, just want to make it there and land safely. So I guess a planet that's easy to land on and requires the least Delta-V would be ideal. Or should I aim for another planet's moon first?

[Nibb31]

Duna is probably the easiest to get to. When landing, forget about the atmosphere, because it's too thin to use parachutes for more than a little bonus. Go for a powered landing like on the Mun, but with higher gravity. You can train by doing powered landings on Kerbin.

EVA is slightly harder to get to than Duna, but once you're there, landing is a breeze with the thick atmosphere. You can parachute yourself all the way down. Forget about taking off again though, because of the high gravity and think air.

[SiliconPyro]

Yeah, my parachutes didn't do me much good on Duna, hence the 500m/s impact. I've done powered landings on Kerbin though, so it shouldn't be too much trouble. If you have the fuel for it, I think more gravity actually makes a powered landing easier.

[Wayfare]

Surface altitude matters on Duna - you can get quite a bit of mileage out of parachutes if you aim to land at a low spot. That said, due to Duna's low gravity, a powered landing should be doable, especially if you don't need to reserve detla-v for the return trip.

Why did you land so hard? Did you run out of fuel? If not, maybe try and use the quicksave (F5 = save, hold F9 = load) to practice your landings.

[SiliconPyro]

I landed particularly hard because my intercept with Duna was quite direct. I didn't settle into an orbit first. I found myself trying to retro burn with a NERVA and it just wasn't slowing me down fast enough. I dumped it and tried my landing stage with parachutes, but the chutes just popped off. It just wasn't a very careful and deliberate approach. I don't have much experience with the capabilities of the NERVA engines.

[EndlessWaves]

Eve is the easiest to land on because you can just parachute down but extremely difficult to get off from. Duna is probably a better first destination if you want to think around a round trip though.

[maltesh]

You can land on Duna on parachutes, but yeah, you really need to aerobrake first if you're coming in off an interplanetary trajectory. Makes it a lot more difficult to pick a specific landing site, but lets you shed enough of the incoming velocity that you can safely trigger the chutes.

[SiliconPyro]

Alright, I'm going to make another shot at Duna. Now I just need to build a proper craft.

[Wayfare]

NERVAs take a loooong time to burn anything of any mass around - but they're so fuel efficient, they're really the engine of choice for interplanetary journeys. Just remember to start your capture burn (the one that turns your fly-by into an orbit) well ahead of your Duna periapsis - take ten minutes as a ballpark number. A decent 100km parking orbit gives you a lot of room to consider your final landing. Go for a shallow descent so you maximize the effect of Duna's thin atmosphere slowing you down. And don't aim for a mountain

If you're feeling cocky, try dipping your inital periapsis a few km into Duna's atmosphere and see if you can get an aerobrake (using the atmospheric drag to slow you down) to get you into a capture orbit.

There's a few mods out there that will really help you to get a good capture, offering you things like orbital information and closest approach figures, but I don't want to spoil your manual experience just yet. Shout when you want them

[SiliconPyro]

Well, I've been using MechJeb (mostly for true altitude) and I just downloaded Kerbal Engineer. I also downloaded crewable empty pods, but won't be using that for this trip. I've been playing since . . . 0.14 I think. I just don't play often and I'm really quite awful at rocket design.

[Wayfare]

MechJeb and Kerbal Engineer will give you a lot of help. One mod I really recommend is the Protractor, which takes all of the nasty NASA math out of your hands. After all, you've got highly qualified pinheads flight controllers down at Mission Control to do those for you, right?

The best part about the Protracor is that it gives you a line in the map screen indicating your closest approach - so even if you don't have an encounter just yet, you have something to go on and adjust your trajectory to.

[Markus Reese]

Duna is still the easiest planet to land and return. Remember that when landing on duna the parachutes can only suppliment and the thin atmosphere makes it a bit more challenging to decelerate. Primary thing when landing at Dune is never plan your line up for an actual touchdown. Focus on atmospheric braking and let the air slowly bring you down. If you can aim it for a crater landing, that will give yourself more atmo. You also need to combine the parachutes with engine braking. The last bit when actually touching down is entirely engine landing, the parachutes only get you close.

[Vanamonde]

The last bit when actually touching down is entirely engine landing, the parachutes only get you close.

I find it to be the other way around. I use engines down to the last few thousand meters/300m/s or so, then descend entirely on chutes. Five large chutes bring down a lander

at a nice 9m/s or so. The lander comes down with full tanks in reserve for the ascent and orbit to meet a Kerbin-return ship.

[SiliconPyro]

I find it to be the other way around. I use engines down to the last few thousand meters/300m/s or so, then descend entirely on chutes. Five large chutes bring down a lander

at a nice 9m/s or so. The lander comes down with full tanks in reserve for the ascent and orbit to meet a Kerbin-return ship.

Care to share more about that mission and your craft design?

[Vanamonde]

Care to share more about that mission and your craft design?

Would I? I already devoted an entire narcissistic thread to it. Ignore my earlier modesty; craft files are halfway down page 2. Edited October 12, 2012 by Vanamonde

[SiliconPyro]

Would I? I already devoted an entire narcissistic thread to it.

Well played, sir. Well played.