Aerol

A great question, they are multipurpose really. Their first and most obvious use is to serve as low friction running rails to move over terrain and control steering. On Minmus once I get up to speed(say 20m/s) I can coast across the entirety of the Greater Flats at its widest point loosing very little speed. Less obvious is their use as lithobreaks which allow the craft to survive a faster harder landing than would otherwise be possible* regardless of vehicle orientation(IIRC touchdown speed at Kerbin with chutes is still something like 10.2m/s). Lithobreaks are also quite forgiving on landing terrain requirements, for example on my first trip to the Mun with this particular vehicle I undershot my landing zone and ended up landing on 60degree slope which I promptly tumbled down from till I could fishtail slide and come to rest on a 20 degree ridge some 150 meters or so below that. *water landings not recommended above 7m/s Third and probably one of the most interesting uses on a low gravity body like Minmus or The Mun is to, in combination with the reaction wheel, allow the pilot to lateral roll the craft turning it into a large spoked wheel to gain speed or travel up hills, all while using no propellents. This can take a bit of practice to get used to navigating precisely but it is quite a useful feature. Edit: Oh and also lots of headlights I forgot about that...

A few people in the Welcome forum really liked my high mobility exploration craft and suggested I post it here, I wanted to build something to get around Minmus easier and get more science per trip. Now in revision 4.6 it seems to be in a mature development state. I have variously called it the 'Bobsled' and 'Minmus Rail' but since confirming it could operate places other than Minmus I gave it a new name. So here it is now open for commentary. Vehicle Name: Porcupine Rail (current version 4.6) Role: Exo-atmospheric Exploration Science Vehicle Dry Mass: ~3.74t Wet Mass: ~10.45t Total Dv(vac): ~4-5km/s (Depending on Maneuvers and Configuration) Maximum Thrust: 42kN TWR(min@Kerbin): 0.41 Docking Ports: 3 'Tiny' (Dorsal, Ventral, Forward) Unit Cost:apx $95m /w full science suite(x2) Pre-Thread Feedback: Images: At Minmus, Greater Flats (Ver 4.5 'Minmus Rail') At the Mun, Midlands (Ver 4.6): Its Immediate Predecessor(Ver 3, 'The Bobsled'), on return from Minmus:

I haven't downloaded any pre-made stuff I've been sticking to a nearly vanilla career mode for now, the only mods I have are MechJeb (great for stats and Dv, Vehicle status, node editor), and Kerbel Engineer(which identifies the Dv including fuel needing to be manually transferred better than MJ in engineering mode).

Here's the end of my latest log, similar ship a variation on my Rail, landed on the Mun, moving over terrain apx 3m/s game crashed when mousing over the menu bar. HandleD3DDeviceLost HandleD3DDeviceLost: still lost Skipped frame because GfxDevice is in invalid state (device lost) (Filename: Line: 1617) HandleD3DDeviceLost HandleD3DDeviceLost: needs reset, doing it FullResetD3DDevice ResetD3DDevice dev->Reset D3Dwindow device not lost anymore Flight State Captured (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) Saving Achievements Tree... (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) Saving Achievements Tree... (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) Saving Achievements Tree... (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) Saving Achievements Tree... (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) Saving Achievements Tree... (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) Game State Saved as persistent (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) [AutoSave]: Game Saved (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) [PlanetariumCamera]: Focus: PorcupineRail-e (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) Camera Mode: AUTO (Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49) tlsf_create: Pool size must be between 3208 and 1073745020 bytes. Crash!!!

I thought it could pull it off and it did, nearly the same ship that landed on Minmus now on the Mun. The only scary bit was landing on a heck of a slope and fishtail sliding to keep from going over the edge of that cliff. (Dv Stats do not include the fuel in the side tanks, which I have left to manual transfer only, all in would be around 3.35km/s.) I guess I can't call it the Minmus Rail anymore, since it can go places other than Minmus.

Why thank you, its quite fun to play with and it has superb mobility on Minmus, you can even get upto speed on the surface using just the reaction wheel to lateral roll and do some corkscrew maneuvers(learning how to precisely navigate while barrel rolling uphill is a small challenge but not impossible), and with around 4km/s+ Dv in its current configuration I think I can even go a few more places in the system. More than just showing off, the SAS stabilized one and two wheel stands have a practical use in reducing friction and keeping speed up, I normally navigate pitch up a few degrees and just steer with the back wheels; you can go the entire length of the Greater Flats and hardly loose a bit of speed, or get up to the highlands and Bobsled down the channels. I flagged and named my first landing (which was in the highlands near some channels) 'Bobsledders Landing'.

Been having a few crashing problems maybe a video issue or a memory leak, but the exploration continues. (Minmus Rail Version 4.5 pictured)

KSP: 0.25 32bit System: Windows 8 (64bit), Core i7(currently underclock limited to 1.75GHZ), 8gb of RAM, Nvidia Geforce 750m SLI (750m x 2) Problem: While moving over terrain on Minmus if I move my mouse up to the toolbar the game freezes solid the only solution being to kill the application in the task manager. It happens with both vehicles I currently have on the surface, they are similar but not identical(My 'Bobsled' versions 4 and 4.5) they use an inline cockpit running on small gear bays as casters, various ways to get upto speed, but I've been unpowered all the times this has happened. Issue has occurred both in day and night. KSP memory usage is around 1,945mb, application memory use seems to be rising while the game is frozen saw upwards of 2.2gb usage. Mods installed: Kerbal Engineer 1.0.9.3 MechJeb2 2.4.0.0 Shortly Before latest crash: Notes: The issue has not occurred using the same vehicle on the surface of Kerbin. The issue has occurred using nearly the same vehicle on the Mun.

Ah ok, I think I tracked down my problem in the meantime, a slight overlap between a radial parachute and my recently reconfigured solar panels is causing a slight jitter on the vehicle.

I'm wondering if this is similar to an issue that I'm noticing, I'm in 1x watching a return from Minmus, and I'm seeing my Apoapsis and Periapsis fluctuate upward; in the past 30min my Periapsis has raised nearly 0.6km, and my Apoapsis is up nearly the same.

They can definitely work that way, most of the time I come in soft enough though. They also make it quite mobile, a bit of nudging with the RCS can get you rolling quite a ways on the moon. The whole idea was to get to multiple regions on one trip for science. Also once the drop tanks are gone and given a little torque you can even just roll it end over end. All this went to inspire the various versions of my Minmus craft.

If you think that's an odd looking duck, check out my Minmus workhorse(version 3). The Minmus Rail (aka 'The Bobsled'). And I finally got around to rescuing the Kerbel from orbit from that early mission, I think Stanley Kubrick would approve.

Since having to start over I'm trying even crazier things... All packed up and on the way home...

Sad to report latest update killed my jet, back to the drawing board... [edit] Further sad news to report, game was corrupted and needed to be reinstalled.

Thanks, I was wondering what that was, its working quite well now that I've got that down. I can take off and land from anywhere on Kerbin with my fixed wing now. Unfortunately no solution yet to easily parallel park a jet. Jets sporting some experimental radial parachute configs to enable landing even in the mountains.

Sick of constant take-off crashes I made a toy that takes off vertical. Took awhile to dial in the engine outputs but its fun to play with. It's a fairly stable little jet, even managed to land in this bumpy field north of KSC. Now I just need to figure out how to toggle multiple engines on and off at the same time so I've got a bit more control over the VOTL system.

And after many many many fiery attempts I've got a Space plane working with basic parts

Still waiting for the decay, dropping only about 100m per orbit. Every time I hit the atmosphere it knocks me back to 1x so its taking awhile.

Have lots of time to register here while this probe decays, Orbit Currently 63.8 x 1012.3 Km, landing legs ready, parachutes engaged, Electrics are dead, just a waiting game now for my samples.