kBarin

Wow, good thought! Not very realistic perhaps, but good! Should be easy - I'll try to do it. The only thing - it won't stick to the bus, as it's only other parts that get attached to the command module. So I'll have to make an extra attach point on the rear of the bus. Won't be difficult.

I heard there are some problems with physics with such an approach; I'll see what I can do. Also, I wanted the vehicle to be independent of the command pod, so you could separate it on the other planet, drive it, then return to command pod and take off.

Yes, you just have to edit CrewCapacity value in part.cfg.

UPDATE! LiAZ-677 is now powered by Carts plugin (therefore, requires KSP v0.16+). Now you can really take this baby for a ride! The wheels happily turn, the lights shine, and the size is now (roughly) consistent with Kerbals' height.

I'm talking about track prints, not monoliths.

Try to find it yourself! ;-P But if you really wish... It's on the near side of Minmus, right in the center of it. I wonder if there's more?

Recently I've found something that looked peculiarly similar to giant track prints on Minmus. Signs of alien activity, perhaps? The small figure at the lower right of the last picture is Bill (or maybe Bob).

Lol, I\'m glad you liked the idea, guys. ;P It dings when the stage with the command module activates. Usually it\'s the same stage as the parachute, but you can assign it anywhere else, of course.

I know what you mean, and it would be really great! Recently I had some ideas about it too. I hope you do it sometime.

I would make this possible if I could, but it requires some coding, and I know next to nothing about it. Besides, it\'s not currently possible to have EVAs, so I decided not to bother.

With a BANG! Just kidding... you can attach a parachute on top of it.

Recently Kerbals have been fascinated with the idea of space elevator. While most of the scientists rejected it as being 'not possible at the current level of technological development', Kerbal engineers decided to prove again that the sky is not the limit. Luckily there were some old elevator cabins being replaced at VAB at the time... Features a mandatory 'Ding!' at landing! 8) Yeah, I\'m sorry it\'s just a command module, not that kind of space elevator...

Nice idea! When we get animation support, I guess you could do animated robotic hand with a scoop and a broom to collect samples.

I really hope we\'re gonna see some ker-women at some point.

To everyone who thought that the 'backstory' in the original post was truth - I\'m sorry, I thought it was obvious it was not. This buses were always broken-down and barely driving, but at the same time had some 'cosy' feel to them. So they became somewhat iconic to us, probably no less then The Magic School Bus for Americans. In fact, this WAS a sort of a school bus for Russian kids (that is, there were no school buses in SU, but some kids had to take bus to school). So I saw this pictures and thought: 'Why not recreate this in KSP?' Glad to hear there\'s still some of them in working condition somewhere.

Yeah, someone should make it too! =P

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you a wonder of the Soviet car industry, the legendary LiAZ-677 bus. Some folk call this bus 'lunokhod' (lunar rover), but few know that this joking name has more truth to it than it seems. As we all know, in 60s the Soviets had their own secret moon program, that demanded building a lunar rover. To maintain secrecy, the vehicle had to be disguised as an ordinary passenger bus, and its details had to be interchangeable with already existing road vehicles. Likino Bus Factory took the task and in 1967 successfully produced the vehicle codenamed LiAZ-677 ('L', of course, stands for 'lunar'). But then the lunar program was cancelled. To put the developed technology to good use, it was decided to continue producing LiAZ-677 as an ordinary bus. An unmanned lunar rover was still sent to the Moon later, but it was a far less advanced piece of technology. For nearly forty years LiAZ buses roamed the roads of the Soviet Union and its successors, giving each passenger a chance to feel like a cosmonaut. Every small bump in the road created a brief sense of weightlessnes in the cabin. That's how the Soviet Union secretly trained its future generation of space explorers. Now we have a unique opportunity to launch LiAZ-677 into space, as it was intended. And what's more - now you can drive it! After successful merge with the Carts plugin, the wheels happily turn, the lights shine, and the bus can hold up to 10 (ten!) Kerbals! (Its real life prototype could accomodate about 3 to 10 times more people, let alone Kerbals... but let's imagine that most of the internal space is occupied by high tech equipment.) It also doesn't need a command pod to be attached. So what are you waiting for? >Download!< Carts v1.34 included. Some things to keep in mind: You may want to ride the bus without anything stuck on top or bottom of it. To do that, turn a decoupler upside down and mount the bus onto it, then separate. The only thing with it - after separation the game counts the bus as 'debris', and (probably) may suddenly delete it from the game with all the crew inside. I couldn't tune the bus speed to be realistic (slow) enough without constantly getting it stuck in the ground... but more speed is more kerbal, right? It still gets stuck occasionally, but a quick timewarp usually helps. >Download!< Released under Attribution & Share-alike Creative Common Licence. (except for .MU and .MBM files, which cannot be modified. They're under CC BY-ND license.)

Why, thank you!

For anyone who gets invisible texture, replace the texture file with this.