I have a convoy of ships in orbit around Duna, and now I need to pick a spot to land a kethane miner. The shuttle that will ferry the kethane to the orbiting station is very large and I am worried that as it fills, it will tip if it is on a slope. Is there a way to tell how flat an area is before committing to a landing?
I looked at ISA Mapsat, but it looks like it only gives a low resolution height map; bumpy level terrain would appear flat. I tried using a small rover, but it moved so slowly that it would have taken hours or days to drive out of the hilly area; landing balanced on the tip of a peak or in the bottom of a dip isn't an option because I need to land two crafts close to each other.
Best Answer
After a couple rolling crashes and a nights sleep, I think I have a solution: A blimp probe. It will cruise around just above ground level, and then land on a flat spot in a kethane field. Then I will use it's coordinates as a target for landing the mining operation.
That will obviously only work on planets with an atmosphere. For planets without an atmosphere, a possible solution would be to swing down in an elliptical orbit to an extremely low altitude, with a pitch of 0°. I could take screenshots with the camera facing almost perfectly downwards, with the surface coordinates showing. Then I could analyze the photos and pick a location with a landmark to guide a very small marker probe down. If all goes well, I land the mining operation at the probe's coordinates. If it doesn't, I return the probe to the orbiter, refuel it, and try again.