why is duna considered the easiest place to go to after kerbin and its moon?

[Tiron]

A question for those who have issues landing with just parachutes.. What is the periapsis you use for aerobraking?? In my experience the sweet spot is between 12-15k. Anything lower will in my experience not work as well and anything higher might result it in you just skipping the atmosphere and then escaping.

I usually even ditch my engines before i go for the landing and still mostly have success. I also find that it is very important to add some extra drogue chutes or else the main parachutes might snap when they deploy.

Oh and actually using engines to help kill horizontal velocity when doing aerobraking i also find screws it up, as on duna with such thin atmosphere you want to stay in the atmosphere as long as possible. If you do 12-15k i will usually start going up a bit before i come down giving it time to slow down even further when i get back down to 12-15k.

Whatever Mechjeb's landing module says will put me at my desired orbit's apoapsis. Or won't have an apoapsis out of the atmosphere, if I'm going for a direct landing.

It's one of the loveliest, and so far as I know absolutely unique, abilities of Mechjeb: Aerobraking simulation.

There IS an external calculator now, but Mechjeb's is part of the landing module. Somewhat obviously, it can also predict landing sites. And it updates both types of predictions in realtime, so it's a lot handier.

I do sometimes wish there was another mod that could do that which I could suggest to the Mechjeb haters, but so far as I know there isn't one. So for them I say 'you can disable functions and modules in the cfg file if you don't like them'.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Tiron

[spikeyhat09]

well, the only other competitor would be Eve, and i would consider it more difficult for a number of reasons:

1) Eve's atmosphere is very thick, and while this makes landing easier, it makes returning to Kerbin nearly impossible.

2) Eve has a much bigger difference in inclination relative to Kerbin than Duna. Duna and Kerbin's orbits are nearly co-planar

3) By the time the average user has mastered the Mun and Minmus, they will have only mastered going from a LKO to a target in orbit. Going to Eve, however, is going from one object in orbit to a lower object in orbit. The only way they would have had experience in this skill is if they practiced going from Minmus to the Mun.

[FenrirWolf]

I'd love it if Kerbal Engineer Redux had that.

[cmoody]

That or they program the rover in feet and you use meters....

Ok I know that was technically an orbiter but it just wouldn't feel right not making that reference here.

Key word right there.

[Merinsan]

2) repack your chutes before you get home... Trying to repack them while in your deorbit is chancey and a little nerve racking

Alacrity

I did that once. I was in deorbit and realized I needed to repack the chutes. Got out and successfully did it, no problem.

Unfortunately, getting back in was a problem as I watched helplessly as the capsule drifted further and further away.

[lammatt]

protip:

dont trust the altimeter at the top of the screen, use the radar altimeter in the IVA view or any data readout mod

find a flat spot to land, slope is your enemy

use a chute

use rocket to cushion the touchdown

if you manage to get to less than 3m/s i dont think anything will break

[THE META]

protip:

dont trust the altimeter at the top of the screen, use the radar altimeter in the IVA view or any data readout mod

find a flat spot to land, slope is your enemy

use a chute

use rocket to cushion the touchdown

if you manage to get to less than 3m/s i dont think anything will break

once again, I was using a non-returning probe, so I didn't have a altimeter to use, however my parachutes just seems to act as drougue chutes, they didn't have enough drag to slow me down. thanks for all the input people have put though, I may try use this to next time I go to duna, but for my next lander probe I will just go to eve, cos my lander seems to be just a bit to heavy for my parachutes to work.

[Levelord]

Use the orange parachutes, they are much gentler on your craft. I managed to land a pretty hefty probe lander on Duna recently with just 2 of the chutes (with a little help of the smaller Rockomax engines).

[Tw1]

Yep, help from rockets are the way to go. Unless you use a lot of chutes.

To maximise drag, you want to come in low, and horizontal, as said.

Here's a "hard mode" landing:

Straight from hyperbolic orbit:

Hit stage at just the right point:

I can see why nasa uses autopilots for this kind of thing.

Skycrane!

Time to explore.

Got to get timing just right. Without Mechjeb, I'd need more chutes. And to aerobrake before landing.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Tw1

[aNewHope]

Duna is by far the easiest to reach & return with a single ship. The fact that it has an atmosphere makes aerobrakes possible (around 12-13km) and you can use parachutes for a hybrid landing (u need very low thrust drogue chutes and normal parachutes). Also the thin atmosphere makes it very easy to return from.

I once made a minimalistic "Duna & back" craft and it was smaller than any munar vehicle I made before.

[RoboRay]

If you try to dive steeply down at the surface from orbit, then no, parachutes alone probably will not suffice.

If you make a very gentle atmosphere-grazing reentry, where you reach Pe and actually start rising again as drag pulls your Ap down into the atmosphere, you will shed a lot more kinetic energy and parachutes may be sufficient. I prefer parachute-augmented powered landings, though, where the 'chutes stabilize you in a nose-up attitude and provide some deceleration, but you make a short rocket burn just as you touch down for a gentler landing.

[cypher_00]

Hehe yeh, you should have seen my first Duna probe. It had about 11 parachutes on it because I kept smashing into the ground at high speeds. This was before I discovered aerobraking... Now i can do it with 1 small chute and a small engine to slow down the last few meters.

[Tiron]

The general gist of it is: Don't go straight in, and use more parachutes than you would on Kerbin. Some rocket assistance for the parachutes is not a bad idea on heavier craft.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Tiron

[ZenithRising]

I can't speak to landing on Duna, as I haven't attempted landing on anything yet. But I've sent orbital probes to Eve, Duna, and Jool, and I would say Eve was the hardest out of those. Something about where Eve's orbit was relative to Kerbin made it a huge pain, but with Duna and Jool, I just escaped Kerbin, and from an orbit around the Sun, found a maneuver that would put me in their sphere of influence.

Once I was inside the SoI, it was simple enough to reduce my velocity and settle into whatever orbit I chose, Including flybys of the various moons (3 out of 5 for Jool). Now for Jool, I was down to just an ion drive, so I used aerobraking through both Jool and Eve for a lot of the delta-v I needed to make a tight orbit, but it was simple enough to build a low-mass, high delta-v probe that reached the others with plenty to spare.

Now, getting landers and Kerbals there will definitely be more difficult, but as others have pointed out, the delta-V required for Duna is much smaller than the others.

[Tiron]

I can't speak to landing on Duna, as I haven't attempted landing on anything yet. But I've sent orbital probes to Eve, Duna, and Jool, and I would say Eve was the hardest out of those. Something about where Eve's orbit was relative to Kerbin made it a huge pain, but with Duna and Jool, I just escaped Kerbin, and from an orbit around the Sun, found a maneuver that would put me in their sphere of influence.

Once I was inside the SoI, it was simple enough to reduce my velocity and settle into whatever orbit I chose, Including flybys of the various moons (3 out of 5 for Jool). Now for Jool, I was down to just an ion drive, so I used aerobraking through both Jool and Eve for a lot of the delta-v I needed to make a tight orbit, but it was simple enough to build a low-mass, high delta-v probe that reached the others with plenty to spare.

Now, getting landers and Kerbals there will definitely be more difficult, but as others have pointed out, the delta-V required for Duna is much smaller than the others.

The thing here is inclination: Kerbin has a perfectly circular 0 inclination orbit. Duna has 0.06° Inclination, which is not quite the same but close enough it doesn't really matter. Jool has 1.34° inclination, which again, isn't all that much, though it's enough it might require some small adjustment. Eve has 2.01° inclination, which is right about where it starts to get significant. Moho, Dres, and Eeloo all have inclinations in excess of 5°, so they're much much harder again. And Eeloo's got major Eccentricity too, which makes it very much harder.

Also, something I forgot to mention earlier...Didn't they fix the Moho overheating bug a few patches back?

[maltesh]

The overheating effects in the atmosphere that Moho had in 0.17 was a design choice, not a bug.

[Levelord]

The overheating effects in the atmosphere that Moho had in 0.17 was a design choice, not a bug.

They removed it anyway because it wasn't realistic, which was the right choice.

[BrotatoSalad]

In those days even Scott Manley couldn't land on Moho from the overheating effects.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

In those days even Scott Manley couldn't land on Moho from the overheating effects.

Interesting Necro!

Expect this to get locked now though, as you haven't really added anything new, just a throwaway comment...

[Norcalplanner]

In case nobody has said it yet - tweak the opening height of your parachutes! I used to have a hard time landing on Duna, then I changed my parachutes in the VAB to fully open at 1200 meters instead of 500 meters, and everything fell into place. I'd encourage you to give it a try.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

In case nobody has said it yet - tweak the opening height of your parachutes! I used to have a hard time landing on Duna, then I changed my parachutes in the VAB to fully open at 1200 meters instead of 500 meters, and everything fell into place. I'd encourage you to give it a try.

Now this adds something xD

and nice tip, why the heck didn't I think of that before?!

[AmpsterMan]

I'm going to lock this because the discussion has pretty much run its course already.