On my way to Laythe. Can you suggest a good landing spot?

[EndOfTheEarth]

By this point I'm so used to missions where either you don't need to think about how much the atmosphere is affecting your landing zone, because almost anywhere will suffice (Kerbin, Duna) or where there is no atmosphere whatsoever, meaning that throttle control and direction is in the only variable in choosing where you land (Minmus, Pol)

This is my first time going to Laythe, and I plan to operate from an equatorial orbit for the sake of making Docking easier once I get back up into orbit. My reason for this is that my lander barely made orbit during tests on Kerbin, so I doubt that it would have the fuel for inclination changes once it gets into one around Laythe.

1) Is there a particular landmass that's easier to go for a landing on?

2) If not one accessible from an equatorial orbit, is there one more easily accessible from a non-equatorial orbit?

3) Also, any tips for estimating where the atmospheric drag will set you down?

Edited September 21, 2014 by EndOfTheEarth

[Xavven]

For Laythe, I prefer to include a bunch of practice drones with my mothership/manned-lander. I choose an equatorial, circular orbit at some arbitrarily determined altitude, then practice deorbiting my 6 or so drones until I get a feel for where I'll end up. Once you've got a formula down (periapsis at x altitude will land me y kilometers to the west of it) send the manned lander.

[Carter]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/93685-0-24-2-%28Atmospheric%29-Trajectories

The only stock alternative I know is save-scumming.

[ArmchairGravy]

On an equatorial orbit, you will see a landmass running N/S with a small lake in the middle and an island just off the east coast. If you put your trajectory on the island, you should end up by the lake.

[KerikBalm]

Well, there's some good news: If your lander can make orbit on Kerbin, it can easily make orbit on Laythe.

The orbital speed in low orbit is about 1875 m/s - compared to ~2300 m/s for Kerbin.

This means in stock, you can exceed orbital velocity on jets alone, and you need very little to circularize.

The gravity is 4/5th that of kerbin

The radius is 5/6ths of kerbin

The proportion of required dV that can be supplied by air breathing engines is much higher.

I'm sure you looked at this, but look again... Kerbin orbit 4550 m/s - Laythe 2880.

Your lander should have dV to spare.

In NEAR/FARyou can alter your trajectory much better with wings... but with stock you can exploit air breathing engines even more.

Light up your air breathing engines on descent if you find your trajectory is off too much.

Is your lander a space plane? or just something that lands on parachutes and ascends vertically using thrust alone?

[bsalis]

Picture below shows what is probably the best island to land on from an equatorial orbit. There is a large flat area where the flag is.

As for estimating the landing point. It's much like Kerbin, you will fall short of where the orbit line intersects the surface. However, you will land closer to it, from the thinner atmo, but mostly from Laythe not spinning so fast.

[cantab]

The landmass pictured above and the others around the antimeridian are the largest. You still might need some trial-and-error or a mod to help, since they're small targets.

Personally I suck at precision landing on Kerbin, never mind Laythe, so I just built a lander (actually, a boat) that could set down on water or land.

[EndOfTheEarth]

Is your lander a space plane? or just something that lands on parachutes and ascends vertically using thrust alone?

It's a lander, but it it uses a pair of TurboJets for the initial ascent. The Jets are each attached to Mk1 Jet fuel fuselages (set to 50% full, since I never use more than that), and each gets air from a Ram Intake.

These detach radially from an x200-16 fuel tank, which is fueling a Poodle. No crossfeed between the x200-16 and the Mk1s, but I am aware that fuel can be transferred across the radial decouplers if necessary.

The ascent profile that I used while practicing on kerbin was jets up to around 13km and a speed of 350m/s, then detached and went ahead with the Poodle.

The descent profile that I used was to let the atmosphere handle most of the slowing down until around 5km, then activate my four Mk2 radial chutes. This gets me down to a speed of 12-14m/s buy the time the chutes are fully open. From there, I have a single landing light to give me a visual altitude check--once I see the light reflecting off the ground, I turn on the poodle just enough to give me a 5m/s landing.

[KerikBalm]

The ascent profile that I used while practicing on kerbin was jets up to around 13km and a speed of 350m/s, then detached and went ahead with the Poodle.

You can do far better than that on turbojets. Like... 1000 m/s better, easily....

And make it a single stage to orbit so its reusable.

But... as I said, if you got to orbit around kerbin with it, you'll get to orbit around laythe with it with a few hundred m/s to spare