Don Quixote

Goodbye Kerbin... Hello Duna! (click for larger image)

Bob: "This is insane!" Jeb: "This is brilliant!" Bill & Doner: "Wheeeee!"

It doesn't, actually, if you're careful with the SAS controls - as long as you keep it more or less vertical (leaning less than, say, 30-40° in either direction) it won't touch the ground, no matter how fast you're going. However, the wheels start breaking at 60 m/s so that's the limit for driving on the ground. If you want to go faster, just take off with the rocket engines. The segway is great, by the way!

I was bored with regular four-wheel-rovers, so I've cut one in half: It's called the Easy Rocket Rider MkI. Against my expectations it actually works fairly well and is a lot of fun to drive. The rocket engines are primarily intended to accelerate up to 60 m/s, but they can also be used to fly the bike for a short distance (it has about 1100 m/s of delta-V with two Kerbals on board). The "kickstand" can be used to absorb the shock during landing, as seen in this picture: craft file: (all stock, 39 parts) https://app.box.com/s/1dqcr4gdn1sd4ym3tb8t Driving it is somewhat... adventurous, but it can be done with a little practice. I highly recommend to separate the controls for throttle from the standard WASD configuration, otherwise the w and s keys will not only control throttle but also the SAS. Personally I have set the rover controls to the arrow keys on the numpad, which works great in my opinion, for all rovers. Make sure to listen to this song while driving:

Yes, it drains both tanks, although the order is reversed - the lower one is drained first. This could possibly influence the way the COM behaves, although I have not noticed any difficulties with RCS thrusters placed where they would normally be. I've already flown a mission to Moho with a "hidden NERVA" service module, so I'm fairly confident that it is working. (pictured with tanks from the Stretchy Tanks mod, which is really awesome)

The following may be perfectly obvious to anyone but myself, but anyway: I've always wanted an Apollo-ish looking service module for many of my designs. Now, if you're planning to go anywhere farther out than Duna, NERVAs are usually the prime choice for engines. This usually results in a service module looking something like this: Looks awful if you ask me. Now, why not hide the NERVA inside the fuel tanks? For the solution shown here, the correct spacing was achieved by placing an inverted cubic strut on the surface of the first fuel tank (not on the connection node!). The NERVA is then mounted on the top node of the strut. The lower fuel tank is then attached to the node of the upper one and covers most of the engine except for the bell. Visually much more appealing in my opinion. Note that you will need to use a radial decoupler instead of a regular one, otherwise the engine fairings will rip the ship apart during staging. Of course this can also be done with multiple NERVAs, which may be the preferred way due to the low thrust. In this case, the necessary decoupler can look something like this: The hidden NERVAs do not overheat, by the way.

For me, the main motivation to visit planets is sightseeing - i.e. visiting various landmarks. Now, that's easily accomplished, just land there, take a few screenshots and leave. What has made things much more exciting is using a rocket-powered rover that allows me to reach multiple locations, even distant ones, in a single mission. A regular rover can do this as well, but it can take hours if your target location is more than a few dozen km from your landing site. With a flying rover you can get nearly anywhere in no time at all, and of course flying is a lot more exciting than just driving there. And since Kerbals + Rocket-powered rovers = accidents, I also enjoy staging rescue missions if Jeb crashes his rover (again). Another thing that has made landings more entertaining is setting myself certain engineering goals. For example, one such goal was to have an emergency ascent vehicle, i.e. a device that allows the crew to reach orbit even if the main lander should fail for some reason. Inspired by the Lunar escape system, this has resulted in the creation of the VSPEV (Very Silly Planetary Escape Vehicle), as seen in the picture below on the left. Flying it is not merely dangerous, but in most cases suicidal, and, needless to say, a lot of fun!

My Kerbal engineers set to the task of reducing the weight and size of a rocket-powered four-wheel-rover by half. The result was this... According to Mission Control, Jeb and Bill had Steppenwolf's "Born to be wild" playing in their headsets all during the trip, and have requested sunglasses for their next mission.

No Deep Purple fans here? "Fireball" and "Burn" are two appropriate songs that come to mind... You're racing like a fireball dancing like a ghost You're gemini and I don't know which one I like the most My head is getting broken and my mind is getting bust But now I'm coming with you down the road of golden dust Oh my love it's a long way Where you're from it's a long way And of course this one:

I always use escape towers on my rockets. More than a few kerbal lives have been saved this way... The only problem is when jettisoning escape towers - usually at a high altitude with little or no athmosphere - I've repeatedly crashed into the spent escape tower. NOT pleasant. I've solved that problem by adding a Sepatron that fires sideways to the nose of the tower.

That's a neat solution! How'd you manage to balance the lander with the fuel tanks on one side though? Plenty of SAS modules?

For heavy spacecraft: Add small engines in front of your vessel, facing prograde. For small speed corrections, switch between these and the main engines (using a hotkey). This saves a lot of time and nerves as opposed to flipping your craft 180 degrees around or using thrusters. Also very useful for docking.

Great thread! For me, reading several books on Apollo (as well as other US and Soviet space programs) has greatly helped me understand and appreciate the techniques involved in an Apollo-style-mission. in KSP, technically it's easier to build a simple one-stage-craft (not counting the launch vehicle) without the need for a separate command/service moudule and lander. However, after you have worked out the basics of orbital maneuvering and landing, a more complex mission is much more fun. I've not really tried to recreate an actual Apollo mission, but in an attempt to build a small-ish vehicle capable of reaching Duna without NERVAs, I've uninentionally built a craft which has a mission profile almost identical to Apollo. It seemed to be the most efficient way to complete the mission, I only noticed the similaties later. Mission Profile: -3-stage-launch vehicle -3rd stage accelerates spacecraft to reach the Mun on a free-return-trajectory -CSM separates from 3rd stage, rotates 180° and docks with the lander which is stored above the 3rd stage -combined CSM & Lander execute orbital insertion burn -Rover lands on the surface remote-controlled [to avoid a huge lander, the heavy rover (about 2.5t) needs to be landed separately. A lighter one could be attached to the lander though] -Two Kerbonauts switch to the lander vehicle, one stays in the CSM -lander undocks from CSM and lands on the surface -kerbonauts have fun on the Mun and ride the rover -lander lifts off, rendezvous with the CSM -CSM completes docking with the lander -Kerbonauts move to the CSM, the lander is jettisoned -CSM accelerates to return to Kerbin -command module separates from the service module and reenters, then splashes down in the ocean. One of the hardest things to do in KSP for me is attaching a rover to a lander - the only half-decent looking solution I've been able to come up with is this: I'd really like to see how other people have solved this problem. It would be great if you guys could post some screenshots of your lander-rover combinations.

Two spacecraft rendezvous before racing each other to Duna. The two commanders, Jebediah and Billy-Bobald, meet on neutral ground between the two ships for a fistfight... errm handshake.

Hi there everyone, First, thanks so much for this great mod. I've been enjoying it a lot. However, I'm having some issues and I'm not sure whether I'm doing something wrong, or if it's just a bug. The situation is this: I've got a ship + lander orbiting duna. The lander uses the hitchhiker pod for "Kerbal storage", which means it needs to be remote controlled. So far, this has worked nicely. Now I also have a satellite in a higher orbit around Duna. This satellite is supposed to relay the signal from KSC to the ship, which in turn relays the signal to the lander. The satellite has a connection, but it seems that it doesn't get to the lander - no matter what I do, I can' get control over the damn thing. Both the ship and the lander have several probe cores, as well as multiple dishes and omnidirectional antennas. Could this cause some parts to interfere with each other? Is there a way to "properly" channel the signal? I've been using v1.10 of RT2, but after encountering this problem I've updated to 1.2.6, which hasn't changed anything.