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I tried a 4 legged config similar to yours but I experienced some bouncing issues during a little bit harder than usual landings. Moreover I wanted to have at least 2 bays close to the terrain level, one for the rover and the other one with a pod to allow for an almost ladderless ship. I kept the extra ISRU as a ballast cause I did not want to stretch it too much in the sense of height putting just one ISRU at the bottom. The landing footprint is already pretty small for such a tall lander. Mainsails may experience hard times to lift you off the sea level if you fail to go supersonic as soon as possible, meanwhile if they are your second stage and you already reached 10000m they are wonderful. After 35000m you can safely go with anything with a TWR of 1 or even slightly less. Do you launch it full or empty? Did you test it on Eve yet?

I quoted just this sentence but I completely agree with you. I ended up with a bigger rocket in 1.02 compared to 0.90, so I added the ISRU to save on the total fuel weight. I "borrowed" Mesklin's ascent vehicle and I added my descent/drilling module, dual seater rover, transfer stage and booster. Do not bother the gigantors and the oversized useless drilling system, the picture refers to my first succesful landing there in 1.02 and at the time I was not aware solars do not work there. My current design has got less drills and more RTGs and cells.

There is (or at least there was back in 0.90) a way to actually reproduce it the same way it should be without mods, I've seen it done around here but I could not remember who was the designer. It was tricky but not to hard to execute so with some tweaking it might still be doable. Btw, the design used was a very nice spaceship one/white knight mock; he went for an almost vertical climb on top of the KSC up to 75000m with the carrier, he released the ship for the suborbital flight and swiftly turned 180° to land back at the KSC before the ship reentering the atmosphere, preserving both crafts.

To begin with your data gathering I can tell you the atmo starts at around 90Km as usual, it gets consistently thicker between 67k and 65k and it gets really thick around 8/10 Km. The most of my experiences are in the polar zone, so the atmo there could be less thick than the one you could experience in the equatorial area based on Kerbin observations only.

There are 10 exposed struts, 6 on the bottom of the landing gears, connecting to the mammoth and 4 (that you can actually see in the pic) linking 4 hidden cubics attaching on the tank to the top mainsail propelled stage. I did not download Mesklin's design, I eyeballed it from the pics and I could not attach struts in a worthy way directly to the fairing ring. There are 4 more reinforcing the "serial mammoth" connection but they are enclosed in the bell fairing and 2 connecting the mainsail stage to the terrier one that are enclosed in the cone below the pod There are 3 wing strakes too, I could not handle the second ascending stage w/o them but Mesklin's one is wingless (apparently). All the struts are connected bottom to top due to the aero researches I've read around here.

I will go on by points The place is next to the gulf at the north pole (2 mins ride to the beach), ore concentration is up to 60% - among the highest I found around here - and just next to a few other biomes too. That's more or less why I was asking you in your post about the landing gears of your design, Eve is mostly hilly (no such steep slopes but feels like parking in Frisco) in my experience I left megatons of scrap metal on Eve due to lack of landing devices Gigantors are, alas, useless there. My new design is completely nuke/fuel cell powered. You apparently do not receive any light down there, so no solar energy. The readings on the panel state for an expo of 0.83 with 0.00 energy generated. Same goes for the rover, the solar powered one you can see in the pic had a short life. The ship in the pic goes on just on "half drilling power" thanks to the cells. I discarded 2 of the drills in the new design due to the lack of power. To be honest one ISRU would be more than enough but I kept both, I just could not find a better ballast. The ship is sleek thanks to Mesklin's efforts (ascending from Eve in less than 35 parts is, to me at least, pure art), I had all my design ready but the ascent part was too heavy until I saw his Eve for Valentine. My bit is the serial mammoth trick (tm) add on to attach the drilling system. The bell shaped fairing helps to keep re entry heating away from the pod.

Hi mate, you are right from what I've seen there so far. BTW, has anybody found a 70%+ ore deposit on Eve? I couldn't.

You always need to deploy a 100t+ lander and this time it must be sleek too. However I would say it is almost the same in terms of "pure piloting" apart from the re-entry, you just need a different design compared to 0.90.

+1 for a new klaw model. Love it a lot, wonderful concept. Have rep

You could try with vernor engines close to the top of the rocket to correct the instability, they worked for me. To minimize the reentry heat I burn retrograde just before reaching 90000m to decelerate under 3000 m/s (or as close as possible). To avoid the most the overheat damages I tried to enclose as much as I could in fairings. The lander has got a fuel converter, so it lands almost empty with just the fuel in the descent module. The ascent part is clearly Mesklin inspired (I certainly miss his finesse, I need a 3000t rocket to get this on Eve. Moar boosters FTW).

Do you have some screenshots? Could you provide us more datas like an ascent path idea? Do you have any advice about it? (kinda like "never land on steep slopes" or something...)

I am not completely positive this design can get the job done the proper way. Do you have any pic of it working on Eve? (as far as I am aware the forum's custom is "pic or it didn't happen")

Pardon me, the one in the pic is a F-5E Tiger II... (Top Gun's MiG-28 for old kids like me).

Hi all, I had a strange issue both with the Jr. docking port and the small decouplers. To make a long story short, I built a Duna lander and I wanted to hang a small rover on one of the sides. To allow for an easier attachment on both sides, the rover (that is mainly built using cubics) has got a central pylon (pics below). As you can see in the first pic I kept an eye on things that could badly influence the outcome, like unintended clipping or sudden combustion due to the engines emission. Everything seems fine, this is built using the 1.0.2 version of KSP but the same concept was perfectly working till 0.90. I tried a first project using the Jr. docking port, landing was fine and I happily went to EVA to detach my rover and go for a ride. Right click on the docking, left click on decouple node... and one of the wheels simply fell off. Keep in mind, just one of the wheels. The rest was still hanging on the "wall". I tried again to decouple the node and the central pylon was fired at several hundreds of m/s in the other direction. Well, sounds like an unwanted clipping of the wheel and the dock due to the vessel "reconstruction" after a space center switch. Lets rebuild it with a stack separator (the docking port might be the issue) and lets try to flip the rover docking it from top instead of bottom (the wheels might be the issue). I had the exact same results: the wheel fell off and the pylon was launched. I hope I made it clear enough, if you want some more pics just let me know or if you want me to reproduce the issue I can do it practically at will. Has anybody experienced such an issue with this kind of components? Any workaround ideas? I must add I already tried with 3 different rovers and the outcome is always comparable.

La velocitàdi rientro su Duna è sufficientemente bassa da poter fare a meno dello scudo. Nelle foto qui sotto ho rallentato usando solo i motori e comunque la velocitàiniziale della discesa non arrivava a 900 m/s.

And the last thing I see is my pod, still burning....

Resistance is futile, you will be HYPEd!

I've got a few ideas to experiment with...

HYPE! in lovin' memory of the bunch of "days off" that were wasted in Europe waiting for the release.

More HYPE! for a good cause.

Adding my HYPE! to the cause.

Malware Bytes + Avira. Looks like MWB already got its share of fans so I will not speak 'bout it. On the other hand the Avira antivirus is light, not "invasive" as others I can recall, upgraded as often as MWB (sometimes 4 or 5 times each day) and with a very good security rating and last but not least it is free. There are paid releases too but I really will not pay any money for an antivirus in a "private" environment.

To save money during career games and to take the best from my rides I made a SSTO with a rover on top. Latest models are lighter than the one depicted here, more resembling a bike than a car. The rover itself packs around 3000 m/s D/v to allow for a comfortable Mun (or wherever) landing and ride. The rover is pretty tough too, it can stand hits around 45 m/s . I have some "interplanetary" designs where you can slap the same rover on the side of a bigger rocket, standardization FTW. The plane design is really "outdated" now, I learnt new tricks. Full K-prize mission (to the Mun and back) here.

I tried to replicate the issue and, indeed in 0.90 it is something different. Now you've got "left kraken" and "right kraken" depending on the turn side. To add to the fun, now the issue is present with "root angle snap". I took off the working "no angle snap" 0.90 mk1 cockpit with wheels from a build and simply stuck it to another and if you place the cockpit with angle snap you have the kraken attack. W/o you are free from it. Angle snap is a weirdo.