Duna VS Laythe - What is more base-worthy?

[Levelord]

I have two questions about this, which looks amazing, btw!

How do you manage water landings in spaceplanes? Presumably vertically and then letting them tip forward once you've landed?

Having done that, how do you take off again? I've tried doing takeoff runs in water and it ... ends badly.

The answer to both questions is experimental VTOL technology.

@4:50 water landing

[Brotoro]

I almost always wreak my VTOL when I try to land it in water and take off again.

I've quit messing with VTOLs... I'll see how they do later with the new ASAS.

[ComradeGoat]

With vertical lifting jets.

Do you have to manage your centre of mass shifting very carefully?

[Tw1]

Do you have to manage your centre of mass shifting very carefully?

Yes.

Position tanks carefully.

[Brotoro]

Yes.

Position tanks carefully.

Yes...yes... But Levelord's VTOL was able to fly with and without the front cockpit/rover attached. How is balance maintained? This is wizardry!

[magnemoe]

Duna is far easier to run missions to and from, but Laythe is a more easily habitable planet. If you can give your colony on Laythe a decent degree of self-sufficiency (e.g. through Kethane mining), then Laythe becomes a lot more attractive than Duna, which like you say is basically a "dead rock". The radiation isn't a big issue if you build your base underwater, which is entirely possible with mods.

The irony is that since most of Laythe covered with water and the rest is mostly to mountainous for an base Duna is far easier here.

With the launchpad mod you would want to build it on an location with ore and skip in fuel with an miner lander doing an suborbital jump.