kahlzun

Hi all! I am currently doing a self-imposed challenge to drive around each body in the Kerbal system. I have a rover and launch platform which will safely land on every body, however for Eve, Kerbin and especially Laythe, the lack of land routes presents some difficulties. I have attempted to build rovers with attached stock propellers or paddles to travel across these bodies without any real success. Can anyone suggest/provide a stock or stockish method of traversing large liquid bodies which is also land-capable for these 3 bodies? Alternatively, can anyone suggest a route for Kerbin or Eve which allows one to circumnavigate terrestrially? Cheers, Sam

Never use RCS unless the ship must dock as part of its plan (ie: space station) Dont assemble in orbit if at all possible. Build one craft for every planet: ie, a lander/rover must be able to land on every planet and moon without needing changes. I tend to use Ion return pods for my larger craft (you can get ~6800 dV out of a Mk1 Can with a total weight of 1.38 T. See here for an example: http://imgur.com/iFfMqAV. Thats enough dV to get you home from anywhere

Back a while ago, the forum servers had a brainfart and lost a massive amount of posts that hadn't been backed up. Entire accounts were deleted.

Or you could use KER to get the dV and look it up yourself.

But what does it actually do? Mechanically, i mean?

One of the changes I have noticed in 1.0.x is the inclusion of a "deployed" section under the menu for all control surfaces. I have not been able to figure out what this option does, if anything. Anyone able to help me out?

As he said, lower apoapsis or higher periapsis. You can also try burning 'up' as you start to enter the atmosphere.

I want more Easter eggs! I was SO disappointed when Eeloo and Dres came out with stuff all on them. Pol too. I remember seeing an old mod, which randomly rearranged the solar system for each new persistance file. I think that was before the forum-splosion.

I would say it does. Frankly, anything that doesn't have thrust or wings and travels over land is automatically a rover to me.

Frankly, go for something rugged, with redundant parts. Circumnavigsating Duna is a 2000 km drive across deserts and rampy goodness. You wouldn't try that in a jalopy.

Ok, i'm gonna take a stab at this. I have a rover design i'm pretty confident in. Gonna use MechJeb as I CBF driving it manually. My newest rover 'innovation' has been to include landing gear in addition to powered wheels. This means if power is low, I am going downhill, or there is a risk of a hard landing, I can deploy the gear & prevent the tyres from popping. I think I will start with Duna, as I quite like the planet. Day 1: Landed approx 72Sx78E, heading north. Debris from my skycrane will be taken as my point-of-reference. Planting flags every 20km or so, heading due north. 4 flags and 67 km later, stopped for the night. Day 2: Still heading north. Passed 45S, starting to get red sand. Approx 167 km away from landing site, 9 flags.

Mechjeb RCS BuildAid Kerbal AlarmClock Hyperedit HeatWarning is pretty useful too, but YMMV.

I am amazed noone has linked to this as yet. Basically the exact same question, just from the 'go faster' side of things: https://what-if.xkcd.com/85/ "Rocket golf". Note that it name-drops KSP within the first 3 paragraphs.

Essentially, try to burn from launch into the plane of the orbit. Failing that, burn to the eccentric orbit and then turn the orbit at apoapsis. If you could share the specifics of the current orbit vs the planned one, that would help. Remember when building satellites, less gives more dV. A small engine can take you a LONG way if the craft is mostly fuel, and you don't need a powerful engine unless you are planning to land on somewhere.