Good spaceplane landing spot on Duna?

[carazvan]

I've been trying to land my latest SSTO on Duna but I'm having problems since the nice flat lakes are gone and every landing I've tried I can get close (land on ground going about 50-80) ... and then I hit a small bump and go flying off at angles to high to correct before coming back down.

Does anyone have a good landing spot for the new Duna landscape they'd like to share?

Note: I'm asking about normal horizontal spaceplane landings not vertical

[M4ck]

Not really, but maybe adding some chutes to the back will help you stop on surface fast enough to stay and not get bumped up again? You can later repack and reuse them if you want.

[AnalogAddict]

I haven't been to Duna since the remodel, I think this sounds like a good reason to get my lazy bum out there.

[saik0]

Not really, but maybe adding some chutes to the back will help you stop on surface fast enough to stay and not get bumped up again? You can later repack and reuse them if you want.

Chutes suddenly "close" when you hit zero vertical velocity. I dont think they are suitable for horizontal landing brakes. I know the b9 pack has some aerobrakes, also looking into finding some flat spots.

[saik0]

40.502, -0.716. (lon, lat). A quick glace at the map data showed many decent horizontal landing and takeoff areas. This was the first large enough area I found with sufficiently low roughness running east-west along the equator. It looks bumpier than it is from the regular Duna surface texture, it looks about as smooth as the terrain around KSC. You could put a couple probes on each end to mark a "runway", in fact, i might just do this later tonight.

[pa1983]

This is nice. Upload the save please when your done.

[saik0]

This is nice. Upload the save please when your done.

Here you go, the area is starting from the rovers current location to the east.

[Tripzter]

I ended up landing on a spot between the ice and the red area (by choice to see both).

I ran 6 parachutes and made it on the first shot. You just have to kill all your side velocity and just touch off.

Battery recharge before landing. (Panels got retracted before landing of course)

Fairly smooth and flat landing. Just barely touched the RCS tank. Didnt matter thought those parts got disconnected.

[carazvan]

Here you go, the area is starting from the rovers current location to the east.

thanks saik0 will try landing later today and see how it goes there but it looks decent and only 500m altitude should help

P.S. didn't see the way to change this post to answered but maybe a moderator can help there

Edited August 7, 2013 by carazvan

[Geschosskopf]

I'm in the process of trying an alternative strategy. Instead of making an SSTO, I've made a SSTOL (SERIOUSLY short take off and landing) plane. Very light, huge wing. Stall speed on Kerbin is less than 15m/s but it can easily reach 300m/s by the end of the runway and climb vertically right off the ground. I'm sending it off to Duna on top of a rocket, launched vertically, because making it an SSTO would make it way too heavy to fly as slow as it does.

The reason for doing it this way is precisely to avoid having long takeoff and landing runs on Duna. I don't yet know how it will fly there (if at all), but given how slow it can fly on Kerbin, I have hopes it will behave reasonably well on Duna. We'll find out in a few days. But the thing is a pure airplane, no space capability of its own. It's just got those jets that burn raw Kethane in non-oxygen atmospheres. So it will deorbit, drop its booster, and hopefully fly down under control, but then never leave Duna.

[pa1983]

I landed my STOL ssto spaceplane on duna to day on the old dry lakes. I use chutes to slow down and 4 aerospike engines to slow decentrate. Ssto was 184 tons at take off and I landed on duna at 38m/s. Gona do a video oncenthe craft works well enough but I got back to kerbin to.

[chaos_forge]

I've found that your best bet for reliably landing planes on rough terrain is to use parachutes: you go in as for a normal landing, at ~70 m/s, and once you're 1-2 seconds away from touchdown you fire your chutes and hit the ground going ~15 m/s, which is pretty easy to bleed off using the brakes