Landing on Minmus, Eve or Duna is easier than on Mun?

[merendel]

All told since minmus got biomes a few patches back its become the ideal place to get early science. Its really easy to send a ship up there on your second launch and skip through several bioms hoovering up science to power up the tech tree. You can even do it first launch if your comfortable with explosive decoupling although might be a tad harder with a low funds limit than it used to be.

It does not take all that much more dV to aim for reaching minmus than it does for mun. Any ship that could mun land and return (single biome) could go to minmus and visit 3-4 biomes and return easy. the low gravity makes it extreamly forgiveing to land on as well as pod torque can right a craft that tips over in most cases.

[Sirrobert]

Yea, but good luck getting back

[Zylark]

"We choose to go to Mun. We choose to go to Mun this first week and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our guesstimates and luck, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to succeed with, and the free snacks helps as well!"

- Jebediah Kerman speech at the opening of the KSC

[SRV Ron]

All told since minmus got biomes a few patches back its become the ideal place to get early science. Its really easy to send a ship up there on your second launch and skip through several bioms hoovering up science to power up the tech tree. You can even do it first launch if your comfortable with explosive decoupling although might be a tad harder with a low funds limit than it used to be.

It does not take all that much more dV to aim for reaching minmus than it does for mun. Any ship that could mun land and return (single biome) could go to minmus and visit 3-4 biomes and return easy. the low gravity makes it extreamly forgiveing to land on as well as pod torque can right a craft that tips over in most cases.

If you do your first two missions by placing a pod on the launch pad and runway and doing an EVA, you will collect more then enough science to unlock the tech for a proper Mun or Minmus flyby, even landing and return, while carrying Goo Pods.

[magnemoe]

If you do your first two missions by placing a pod on the launch pad and runway and doing an EVA, you will collect more then enough science to unlock the tech for a proper Mun or Minmus flyby, even landing and return, while carrying Goo Pods.

Yes, however it can be smart to do cheap probe missions fast to get the payoff for Eve and Duna who will also unlock Jool early.

[skeevy]

If you do your first two missions by placing a pod on the launch pad and runway and doing an EVA, you will collect more then enough science to unlock the tech for a proper Mun or Minmus flyby, even landing and return, while carrying Goo Pods.

Even better, connect 4 pods end on end, turn them sideways 90 degrees, and go rolling around the KSC. I was able to get soil, eva, and crew reports for 9 different KSC biomes on my first "launch" before I ran out of electricity to roll around and transmit. I could have gotten more if I figured out the quirks of driving it faster. Quick and easy 109 science points without even firing up a rocket.

Do it like that, only put an extra pod on each end with antennas on the tips, maybe a few more in the middles just for backups. Try not to roll faster than 9m/s or you'll explode yourself or the launchpad or a building...

[magnemoe]

Even better, connect 4 pods end on end, turn them sideways 90 degrees, and go rolling around the KSC. I was able to get soil, eva, and crew reports for 9 different KSC biomes on my first "launch" before I ran out of electricity to roll around and transmit. I could have gotten more if I figured out the quirks of driving it faster. Quick and easy 109 science points without even firing up a rocket.

http://www.zimagez.com/miniature/screenshot-10142014-011205pm.png

Do it like that, only put an extra pod on each end with antennas on the tips, maybe a few more in the middles just for backups. Try not to roll faster than 9m/s or you'll explode yourself or the launchpad or a building...

Smart, I have done this on runway with material labs and goo containers.

Note that you don't have to transmit, do crew report, eva and do stuff then take data from pod and store all back.

You can now do an new crew report, repeat and profit.

[herbal space program]

The difficulty of landing on a body is not determined solely by the deltaV required to get there. I actually found Minmus a fair bit more challenging to land on than the Mun, because the low gravity made everything all bouncy and also because the terrain was so steep. For Duna, you can say that you'll land on only chutes, but you'll need a heck of a lot of them to slow you down enough. As to Eve, there's the problem of not landing in the ocean. And of course the other thing is that Real Kerbals don't just want to land, they want to get home again. Try doing that for Eve and then tell me how hard it is!

[metaphor]

If you want to go solely by delta-v, then the Mun is one of the hardest bodies to land on in the game, with only Tylo, Moho, Vall, and Eeloo being harder, since you can get pretty much anywhere else for the same delta-v you use to escape Kerbin's SOI (with gravity assists). But delta-v doesn't matter as much in KSP as it does in real life, since it's scaled down. There's many other things that make the Mun easier in other ways, like being very easy to get to without planning.

Incidentally, it's also true in the real solar system that it takes less delta-v to get to the surface of Mars than to the surface of the Moon, even including ~1 km/s you would need to slow down from terminal velocity to land large spacecraft.

[lordlundar]

If you want to talk straight landing from orbit out of that group, then Eve is the easiest of the bunch with it's really thick atmosphere.

Then you factor in getting there, establishing orbit, landing, taking off, and returning, then suddenly Eve is easily one of the more difficult ones and easily the most difficult of the list.

[cantab]

Eve return is indeed one of the game's biggest challenges, but a one-way mission is probably the easiest interplanetary trip you can make.

[NFUN]

Eve return is indeed one of the game's biggest challenges, but a one-way mission is probably the easiest interplanetary trip you can make.

I don't know, I always seem to end up with a trajectory that gets me captured by Jool.

[KerikBalm]

My first few duna landings were rather poorly executed....

Many areas are surprisingly not flat, even if you think they are.

First aerobraking tries: didn't stop, PE was too high used to much dV in insertion

Next: PE was too low, direct landing, came in too fast chutes ripped apart.

Then there's landing where you come down too hard on chutes, or tip over (though I often tipped over on the Mun too), or come in over uneven terrain (once your chutes have popped, you pretty much can't change your trajectory any more, I could at least try to avoid steep slopes on the mun during final approach).

Also, if you get a little bit good doing stuff on minmus, you'll try to optimize for duna (given the chute weight, and diminishing returns, less chutes is better as long as you have at least 1 and do an efficient "suicide burn" for a soft landing) - which of course leads to some hard landings from poor powered descents (or worse, chutes autocut from a momentary hover).

But after you know the good spots to land.... I play with NEAR now, and the proper aerodynamic lift means planes work better on duna - even with small winglets, I can steer quite well on reentry, and land in the "good" places, and don't have much trouble.

Minmus was always quite easy once the inclination thing (its not that hard) is figured out. Its a lot easier to land on the minmus flats, than it is to avoid some small crater wall inside one of the big craters.