king of nowhere

ok, so the description of the engineer says that he can repair broken wheels or landing struts, when they happen. and i thought, neat, i want always one around just in case. and i made this rover, and it has both parts (wheels on the bottom to drive, landing struts on top to survive accidents), and it's one of my favourite vehicles and i used it a lot. And i really mean a lot. I did drive halfwaty across the Mun, starting on northwest crater, the going to darkside crater, north inside the canyon up to the poles, then southward to farside basin. and then i did drive it around Minmus, again going from the equator close enough to the poles and back to the equator again. and now I did a half circumnavigation of Vall. Plus a few tests on other planets. That's around 5000 km total. And I broke stuff countless times. the rover is rugged and it survives most mishaps, but if i insist cruising around 30-40 m/s on rugged terrain, i can't get lucky every time. I got exploded, and mangled, and i lost pieces. But I never, ever, EVER broke a wheel or landing strut. Destroied, yes. Exploded, countless times. warped around the attachment so they point in the wrong direction, for certain. But given the "broken" condition so that an engineer could fix? Not once. As far as my experience goes, that "fix parts" ability may as well not exhist. So I'm asking the forum, does it ever happen to have the kind of malfunction you can fix with an engineer? did it happen to you? if so, why i've never seen it despite so many opportunities?

when i wanted to fly an airplane around laythe, i made sure it could land and take off from water. much easier that way. if you cannot manage, though, that could be your best option. i don't know the specific place, except to know it's in the big island straddling the equator with a lake on it

a low orbit is best if you have the TWR, but with a low twr you need a higher orbit to gain the time to circularize before falling back. i had the same issue with a nerv-powered vehicle, it turned out i needed an apoapsis over 100 km to have the time to enter orbit. but that's an edge case. most of the time, low orbit is better.

was it even worse than the current magic wings made with thermal shields and "planes" that are a flat forward surface clipped on itself and somehow have no drag?

if you angle your rocket in the VAB, you can make a rocket that perform a perfect gravity turn without touching the controls (except for sas, staging and throttle). if you do a superb job of it, it won't even need sas. of course, if it is inclined in the launch pad, it needs a stabilizer. also, i had some rockets based on the twin boar engine that were unstable enough to need it, even launching straight.

Part 4: soaring quite unlike an albatross From now on, I've been using my three vehicles simultaneously, swapping from one to the other whenever there was a pause. For practicity, I'll present them one at a time, starting with Not Albatross because it was the first to finish its targets. 4A: inside Jool It took a loooong time aerobraking, but eventually I shed enough speed. I discovered that the conditions to survive a Jool reentry are quite strict, and a slightly wrong trajectory can still make Not Albatross explode. Reaching the lower atmosphere of the gas giant is a grueling ordeal of burning in the atmosphere with your heating indicators inching ever closer to the breaking limit, hoping to have made no mistakes and powerless to do anything about it. It's also a lenghty process, over 10 minutes with accelerated time. I already included the video, greatly accelerated, as presentation for Not Albatross on kerbalx, but here I include the long version because, well, it's quite an experience. Video is cut short because, as free user, I have a 15 minutes limit. Includes sending Val out of her cockpit to get a crew report. I have no idea what kind of science one can hope to get by listening to a pilot hanging for their life from a ladder on a speeding plane, buffeted by winds faster than sound and uncomfortably close to burning up. Actually, on retrospect, we did get some science: we proved that kerbals are indeed made of iron, that Val is capable of holding herself in position on the ladder against winds at 500 m/s and close to atmospheric pressure. What kind of stamina would that take? We also learned several new and interesting curses while listening to her open communication while at it. After taking the measures and getting out of the atmosphere, I still have Val stranded around Jool, without enough fuel to get to Laythe (increasing apoapsis in low Jool orbit is damn expensive). That was taken into account, now Christmas Tree (which, after a couple refueling trips from Dancing Porcupine, had enough fuel to land on its own and refuel more efficiently) is coming to rescue her. Using a Laythe gravity assist to lower Jool periapsis Not Albatross didn't have enough fuel to reach Laythe, but raising apoapsis as much as possible makes it cheaper to recover it. Christmas Tree has some 4000 m/s available, but 1800 of those are to take off from Vall and land back, and it needs to refuel Not Albatross. There isn't so much to spare. From this orbit it's only a few hundred m/s to reach Laythe Next step is Laythe exploration. Besides resupplying, Not Albatross needs to swap pilot. I need to restore the science jr and mistery goo at every biome, this requires a scientist on board. Val, your task is ended. You can leave your cockpit and get inside the crew storage module. You will have 10 cubic meters, all for yourself! Mandocia, it's your turn to drive. Don't worry about being trained as scientist and not as pilot, the remote guidance unit will help you with stability. As for manuever planning, that would require a connection to ksc that we don't have, so you'll have to eyeball them. The first part is getting into a polar orbit to get a gravioli reading of all biomes in low and near space, and a spacewalk in near space. Being very close to Jool, I figure changing my inclination to aim for polar insertion would be too expensive, and I decide instead that I will go to Vall (where Christmas Tree is headed anyway for refueling, may as well tow Not Albatross), and from there go for a polar insertion. I take advantage of another Laythe gravity assist for it Now, I cannot plan manuevers with a scientist on board, but I can plan manuevers with Christmas Tree and then replicate then with Not! Albatross. See Mandocia, those experts here will guide you step by step. 500 m/s. Going from Jool would have probably been cheaper, but whatever. Having isru, I don't have to worry about fuel economy anymore 4B: Laythe explorer After all those missions spent avoiding the thick Laythe atmosphere, I finally have a vehicle sturdy enough to perform aerocapture! I could even land directly! In fact, I had to find the right altitude for this manuever by trial and error, as I wanted to stay in orbit. A moment of aerobraking. The stock airbrakes are unsuited to this because they are not heat resistant, but who needs airbrakes when deploying your landing gear achieves exactly the same effect? I also needed some course correction, because my orbit wasn't exactly polar and I was a few degrees shy to get the biome. Anyway, this is the end result. An eccentric orbit, one side lets me do biomes in near space, the other high space. Passing over them all was quite a chore, as some of them (crater island and crescent bay) are tiny, most orbits will miss them, and even when I am spot on I only have a few seconds to make measures. Now I need to dip into high atmosphere, as the spectrovariometer can make measures in biomes there. This is the most complex task here. I can fly up to 10 km on propellers, and I have a lot of autonomy in space with the nerv, but high atmosphere? I can't stay there indefinitely. Exploring that region where there is not enough air to fly, but too much to orbit, is actually more difficult than exploring remote planets. Luckily I don't need to get in that atmospheric region. I only need to enter atmosphere; 49.5 km are adequate for this. So I enter a very low orbit. As long as I keep a periapsis above 50.25 km, I can still accelerate time And when I see my next orbit will pass over a biome, a very slight dip is sufficient. Not Albatross is very aerodinamic, and coupled with the high altitude, I'm losing almost nothing to drag. If needed, a small burn with the nerv compensates. Overall, it took two weeks in-game, but I got all the space and high atmosphere science. Time to land. And for another video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RHjbSO9DQQ End result, Mandocia plants a flag at the south pole. Not! Albatross is a pleasure to drive. It's not as stable or manueverable as some (a trade-off to let it take off from water), but once I am in stable flight, I can take my hands off the controls and it will fly straight. It also can make sharp manuevers in the pitch direction, though too much yaw will send it spinning. It generally can recover from that, though. I also enjoyed finally being able to land. I took the chance for some daring manuevers, some of which left me as a smoldering crater on a hill. And with a cruise speed over 200 m/s and no worry about fuel, I can explore the whole planet fast and leisurely. So, time for a gallery. At this point, though, I discover a terrible weakness in my plan: it's impossible to take seismic and atmospheric readings while landed on water. But it's possible to take them from the ocean floor (yes, you can measure the atmosphere from below water, but not from above. Don't ask). Anyway, the tragedy is, Laythe has 5 all-water biomes, and I will not be able to gather those measures from them. But gathering those measures is, in theory, possible. So MISSION FAILED Well, nothing to be done at this point. But I know the current record holder for this challenge has not taken measures from the ocean floor either, nor from inner Jool atmosphere. I should still be able to make a new record. At least I managed to collect those measures from the shallows biome, due to a glitch in biome distribution (no, those are not lakes) Since I was on Laythe, with a vehicle capable of gliding on water at 50 m/s indefinitely, I decided I'd also take the chance to pull an Elcano challenge: circumnavigation of a planet from the ground. I reported it here Long story short, it didn't involve doing much, but it was rather boring. It made me decide to not try and replicate it with Dancing Porcupine on Vall, despite already having to tour half the planet. All is done on Laythe. Time to take off. There are videos of Not Albatross reaching orbit in the craft presentation on kerbalx, but the vessel is not graceful while at it. When it starts burning with the darts, it becomes rather unstable, and the pilot has to fight with the commands. All to reach a high apoapsis, then slowly, sloooowly circularize with the nuclear engine, trying to finish before reentering atmosphere. And in all this, i'm too busy trying to keep the ship straight to take pictures. On Laythe it's not too difficult, though. And while I spend quite a bit of fuel before arriving, I had more than enough for orbiting Not enough for leaving Laythe's orbit, though, so I had again to send Christmas Tree (who had refueled in the meanwhile) on a resupply mission There are no more atmospheres left to scout, but Not Albatross still has one mission: among the crafts I sent to Jool, it's the lighest, and the one with more deltaV. Especially if I refuel it only with liquid fuel, as I'm doing. I need something in high orbit to take measures from the polar regions of Tylo. Changing inclination is gonna be expensive, hence a low consumption vehicle. 4C: orbiting Tylo I don't need a scientist anymore. Val already had her turn driving Not Albatross. So this time I'm sending Jeb, who hasn't yed had a chance. Tylo's outer space starts at 250 km, so I'm sure to get it. Tylo has 9 biomes, 3 of them are prevalent and the rest are scattered in very small batches. Overall quite difficult to plan a passage over, but Tylo rotates very slowly, so all I need is waiting, and all the biomes will pass underneath. I'm focusing on high space science because, for near space, all I need to do is take off with Dancing Porcupine for a short suborbital flight once I reach the biome on the ground. With all the biomes measured, Jeb has now to wait Dancing Porcupine and its 50 days to refuel before rejoining the rest of the mission. Sorry Jeb. You got the boring part of the mission.

a hinge with a flat panel works, but it is incredibly heavy, results in a steep slope that most rovers can't climb, and is often unstable. I tried it. I had some success with a robotic arm made of some hinges to pick up and deploy a rover. there is a ramp piece, but the entrance is fairly narrow, meaning it cannot accomodate a large rover. and all those solutions are frustratingly expensive

both. it''s a glitch, but can be prevented with design as far as i can tell, the problem is landing legs. the ship is bouncing on them too hard. the ship works on kerbin, but eve has higher gravity. the ship weight is pressing down hard against the landing legs, causing malfunctions. i have encountered a similar problem. possible solutions: - try to add landing legs - try to tamper with spring values in the landing legs - try to use a different model of landing legs (i only had this problem with that specific model) if you can find a solution, please tell me which one it was, since i had the same problem myself

KF? is it a mod? also, how do you keep it stable? is it just low baricenter and some driving skill, or are there additional tricks?

you should post this in the gameplay questions section. anyway, making rovers.... a big argument. and at the same time, a small one. the simplest way to make a rover is to stick some wheels on your spaceship and landing it. it tends to not make particularly good rovers, though, unless you can really optimize. when we go to basics, a rover has 4 things: 1) a control core (either manned or unmanned) 2) wheels 3) a power source 4) a way to land on the surface. without knowing exactly your specific problem, i can give you some basic tips: - make the wheels large, and the center of mass low; it will make the rover more stable - build it in the spaceplane hangar; it has lateral symmetry, more suited for building a rover - use solar panels as power source; on duna, they work well - for landing, use a mix of parachutes and rockets. as an example, this is a simple rover this one has a rocket on the bottom so it can take off and land under its own power. it's not visible from here, but it has a parachute on the other side, for landing on duna (with the rocket helping at the end, because you still come down at around 30 m/s). wheels to move, solar panels, and science experiments aplenty. the docking port at the top because it is supposed to travel around with a mothership. this not a good rover. it has a high center of mass, so it is rather unstable in low gravity. it is slow. it has limited energy. however, it is very light, and it is reusable, so it is exactly what i needed for the mission i made it for. this is an example of an adavanced rover it has rockets to take off and land on its own on, isru equipment, rt for night driving, advanced probe core and communication, room for multiple kerbals, and an armor to protect it from tumbling. this is a rover that can land somewhere, run all the way around the planet collecting science from every single biome there, then refuel, take off, move on another planet and repeat. but it is very heavy and very expensive. it's great if you want to explore the whole kerbol system with a single vehicle, but way overkill for a simple duna mission. I'm sure there are many rover tutorials around. i wouldn't know what to suggest to start from zero. I suggest you try to make a simple rover, land it, and then eventually you come back here asking what didn't work and how it can be improved

another option i could use is putting the small rgu inside a cargo bay. that, by itself, would increase weight, because the cargo bay alone is 0.5 tons. but the rgu only takes a very small part of the cargo bay, so if you already had stuff you wanted to put in a cargo bay, then it's a good compromise. I also fit a mk1 rgu inside a mk2 cargo bay once.

i would place the small rgu between two other 2.5 m pieces, attach the two pieces with struts, and clip the rgu. same visual effect, same - or even better - resistance, 300 kg of weight saved.

also, when you are on the ground, map view will show your coordinates.

it needs to be fast, and to not explode too easily. it's better, but not neccessary, if it's also useful

don't confuse something you don't use with something that's genuinely useless me too; but doing it during a transfer window costs 900 m/s starting from LKO or 500 m/s after refueling at minmus. doing it out of a transfer window costed me 3000 m/s. anyway, transfer windows are not a feature of the game. they are just an emergent feature of any planetary system the kodiak is the best first stage engine of its size. the ant is supremely useful for small probes. i rarely make them these days, but they can hugely increase deltaV available by reducing rocket mass. the wheesley is the first jet engine available in the tech tree. if you play sandbox it's useless, but in career you will need it for early recon contracts. the rapier is one of the last technologies to be unlocked the mite is the only engine you have when you start a career. unlikely to ever need it again, but most people have used it once. same for the bacc. i've never used the shrimp, having the separatron available for removing some discarded pieces, but I know some people take on a self imposed challenge to do rockets with only solid boosters; for them, the shrimp is great for manuevers, as its small thrust and mass makes it suitable for slight course corrections. I agree its uses are limited, though. generally the reason for using solid boosters is the cheap thrust the large wheels are actually the faster wheels in the game because of a glitch; if you move forward they cap at 15 m/s, but if you keep quickly steering on both sides alternately, you accelerate to over 100 m/s. that wasn't an intended use, i think, but it gives the wheels its niche utility. on the other hand, they are unsuited to their intended purpose, that of propelling very big rovers; i tried to make one for several hundreds tons just as an experiment, and they can't accelerate it decently. i'm surprised anyone would consider the deltaV display useless; sure, you can do those calculations by hand, but why do calculations by hand when the game can do them for you? furthermore, this game is difficult enough to learn on its own; imagine if the tutorial instructed new players to bring out paper and pen and start solving equations the administration building is useless in most circumstances - too inefficient, you need to sacrifice a crapton of science to get little money, or viceversa - but there are some challenges with low money/low science, like the no contract career and the caveman challenge, that are made easier by it

so, the kraken feasted on my propellers again. what's interesting is that it had started eating already a while ago, but it wasn't immediately visible because the blades were folded inside cargo bays. at first, they get scrambles around their position, but still they mostly stay in place. then, gradually, they tend to move more and more outward, until they get out of the cargo bay and i see them. by then, the attack already started several hours earlier. I can buy @vv3k70r theory that it's caused by them being used in the vacuum, because while i was running around an atmosphere they were more stable. thoughit's not as clear-cut. perhaps it is connected by using rockets (which also spins the propeller blades, which then keep moving forever in vacuum) and then saving the game or changing vessel. though i had one instance of it happening inside an atmosphere, but it was an isolated accident. I will try to activate the brakes when i am in space from now on, let's see if this stops the kraken. anyway, i discovered how to edit the saved game file, copying the propeller parts from an old save where they were functional, to fix them. it takes some 10-15 minutes to find the parts, not as bad as i assumed. Hey, now that's just victim-blaming. next thing, you'll be asking how the spaceplane was dressed

i nominate the large remote guidance unit. it weights 0.5 tons. it does nothing that is not accomplished already by the small remote guidance unit and a reaction wheel, for a fraction of the mass and cost. if there is a reason to ever use it, i must yet find it. the whole business is made worse by there being a high tier technology devoted uniquely to unlocking it, making it a further trap option.

you nailed the problem. robotic parts are not so sturdy that they can take a rocket pushing agains them and stand still. there are two ways to counteract that: 1) use more resistant robotics 2) use more robotics for 1), as far as i know, bigger is more resistant. and yes, it is awfully inefficient; you generally don't have much spare mass on an ssto, now i'm telling you to put several tons worth of hinges or servos. yep. vtol looks cool, but it's not terribly practical. for 2), try using multiple servos and attaching one engine to each. perhaps they will be able to resist the push from one single engine. I have a rover that does vtol from tylo, and i used 8 terriers attached to 8 hinges; this way, every hinge is not too stressed. i tried using more powerful engines, and the hinges broke apart. there is also option 3, instead of angling your rockets, you may be better off adding different rockets. they may be cheaper than all those servos. I would suggest a vector, it has a high thrust for its mass and it doesn't take up too much space. you may be able to fit it decently inside a cargo bay. or perhaps you could use a propeller; it may be lighter than a rocket, but it will screw up aerodinamics once you fly, unless you can put it inside a cargo bay. or you can try a mixed system.

one counterintuitive thing i learned to land planes: you should not try to slow down as much as possible. sure, you need to slow down, but not too much; you must still be fast enough to stay in the air. then, very carefully, you go down. your angle should be less than 5 degrees below the horizon. in the beginning, i was trying to slow as much as possible while still in the air, that caused me to fall too fast because my plane could not fly anymore. and nobody explained it to me. i had to discover it by accident.

so... if i am retroengineering this right, you rely on 2 factors to keep you whole: - the rover is very light and has strong sas, it stays upright with it - the rover is small and the wheels are big, so that if it tumbles, it hits the ground with the wheels, which are very resistant am i right?

i delete mine periodically. i keep a few at key points (and i give them real names), otherwise i produce hundreds upon hundreds of saves

just tried the bay, it works fine, and i can do it with less than 1 ton. thanks to all

i have heard they don't work i have a lot of experience with propellers, but seeing how difficult it is to submerge anything, i never made dedicated experiments. still, i would prefer to use weight. more convenient.

I was on laythe with a boat for a jool 5 science run (i'm writing about it in mission reports), so i decided, since i was there, i may as well get an elcano too here is my boat what? you're saying that's not a boat but a plane? let's see: it is a floating vehicle, it moves on water... so it's a boat. according to the dictionary, a boat is a small vessel for travel on water, this thing is for travel on water, so it is a boat. but it can fly too. so what? it's a flying boat! Jokes aside, i like my vehicles to be adaptable to multiple functions. this is a space seaplane, i flew around the planet to get all the biomes, now i will sail it to get an elcano. propulsion is by propellers, nuclear-powered by 7 rtg, so i don't have to worry about refueling. I can keep a cruise speed a bit above 50 m/s, so hopefully this won't take too long this is my start, 1 N 158 E. "ammarato" means "landed on water" in italian and it confirms that the plane is, indeed, being used as boat.since there are no obstacles over the ocean, i basically kept the game open in background while i was doing something else. and here i am, where i started, 18 hours later. even though i spent most of the time not paying attention to the game, it was still quite exhausting. i have a rover that completed half a circuit of vall for the biomes, and i don't think i'm going to complete that. too long.

actually, there are all kind of remote analysis that you can do from afar. when we send a spacecraft around a new planet, you already have a pretty good idea of what to expect. and we have all manners of facilities to simulate space conditions in testings; from gax mix simulating mars atmosphere, to vacuum testing chambers, to running your rovers in the desert. plus you can do a whole host of mathematical simulations that you cannot do in ksp. when they sent cassini around saturn moons, they planned in advance something like 30 orbits, that were constantly changing with gravity assists at every flyby. i know no way to simulate that far in ksp without the game collapsing in some way. what's unthinkable is to send a space mission, with all its huge costs, withOUT already having a very good idea of what to expect. and in every mission you get a few things you didn't anticipate that may compromise it, but you must keep those to a minimum. space is difficult enough already without going in unprepared.