Rover transport

[Tokay Gris]

Once upon a time I did a Jool mission and had a lander with redockable rover attached.

Here is a picture on Pol:

Quite a slope, but it did work.

And here a picture of the same lander with detached rover on Val:

[Roflcopterkklol]

I spent 916,000 to put one of these on my mun, totally worth it.

They are all still up there now, presumably dead they have been there for years.

[Duke23]

Pretty smart, land, drop rover, use science module, on takeoff eiter leave science module behind or drop it at 30 m/s so it get destroyed on impact.

However system looks a bit overkill for Minmus even from LKO.

It's definitely overkill. It was technically a Mun lander, based on an older cannibalized design etc... and it's designed with a failsafe in case something goes wrong. Ideally it would use the outer engines to land and take off from the Mun, then drop them and use the lower central engine for the entire return home. In the event that I miscalculate or something silly happens, it still has the tiny stage at the top to rely on. I used to have a lot of little "oops" moments like that so I just started building it into the ship to save time on rescue missions

[Duke23]

Mine has landing legs fitted at the back for a vertical landing. I then use the undercarriage as wheels for surface travel. The trick is to land on high ground and explore downhill so that you can exploit frictionless wheels to travel long distances. Gentle bursts from the engine can be used to give the lander a push if needed, the fuel useage for this is negligible.

http://i.imgur.com/RRXFgkr.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/aqC5Lea.jpg

That's a good idea, I had a lot of fun with a little rocket powered rover on the Mun before I got powered wheels. It could hop to another biome or two depending on the landing site, and then glide back along the surface using almost no fuel at about 50m/s, as long as you babysit it during jumps and don't hit anything too crazy.

[radonek]

I call this baby Anomaly Hunter, guess why. Note the LT-1 struts on underside of rover, they lift it to lock on docking port. Sometimes docking ports fail to engage no matter what, so rover have a small tank and engine to jump up, also serving as weight to lover CoM. Lifter is a bit on a heavy side since its intended as mobile base for extended periods of time, for a single purpose mission it could probably be made much simpler and lighter.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Werwolf]

I spent 916,000 to put one of these on my mun, totally worth it.

http://i.imgur.com/00tZxHJ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/wkp8Uej.jpg

They are all still up there now, presumably dead they have been there for years.

Holy mother of Kod

[Roflcopterkklol]

Holy mother of Kod

It gets more extreme when you see the command beetles launch rocket, the launch rocket costs about 700,000 lol.

[Overfloater]

Nobody uses planes? o_o

[radonek]

Nobody uses planes? o_o

Real question is, why would anyone use plane? They are only usable on Kerbin and Laythe… and even there, you are better off with some VTOL design for rover transportation.

[Wallygator]

I tried a side/lateral deployed rover on my apollo-style a few months ago - worked ok most of the time...

The rover panel is rotated out for view in the VAB but is flipped up before launch - a radial decoupler lets it pop off the lander, then an inline decoupler fires once the rover is upright.

[mdkendall]

Nobody uses planes? o_o

I love your videos of planes, particularly this one which is hilarious:

[LABHOUSE]

Made a thread like this a while back why not look there?

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/91018-How-do-YOU-land-large-rovers

[Werwolf]

It gets more extreme when you see the command beetles launch rocket, the launch rocket costs about 700,000 lol.

http://i.imgur.com/6QZZKGE.jpg

LOL damn, man.... a 700,000 launcher... I couldn't even launch that thing once, think I have like 400 grand right now hehe... that is extremely cool, good job!