RoboRay

I've never had problems with falling through ramps. Heck, I used to have a mobile ramp for runway access before they sloped the sides.

Starting from where?

Kopernicus, just for Nova. :-)

I would call that "avoiding playing part of the game." Your choice, though.

It also helps to not leave debris in orbit. You can minimize it with a little planning ahead... - Jettison boosters before your Pe rises above 20km, so they fall back and "burn up." - Ensure any part of your launch vehicle that does reach orbit has a probe pod, a power source, and enough propellent to deorbit when you're done with it. - Drop transfer stages on impact trajectories with your destination.

You must not actually read the forum very much.

It's really easy, if you build your rovers in the SPH using the mirror symmetry.

If you want to travel quickly, fly. The rover parts are fine, other than the complete lack of traction on lower-gravity bodies. That needs to be tuned.

Stopping presents some challenges, as well, if you're towing with cables (KAS). Even if the towed payload misses the towing vessel, the shock on the cables when they reach full extension could snap them, if you start thrusting before the slack is all out. If you're pulling with a rigid connection, it doesn't make any difference stability-wise. But there are mods that work much better than using multiple docking ports. I think Docking Struts is still broken in KSP 0.19x... ...but Quantum Struts work great for adding strut connections between docked craft in orbit.

I mounted the shuttle engines on Damned Robotics hinges so I could adjust their angle throughout the flight to compensate for the shifting CoM, once. It worked, but was too much of a PitA to do on a regular basis, so I scrapped the design. I may try it again at some point, but I tend to prefer horizontal launches for winged craft.

OMG, I was about to bust a gut. Great write-up! Yeah, rockoons are not a simple prospect, but it does offer some interesting options for things like Eve-returns. I've only done it for small-scale stuff, like putting satellites into orbit with only what would normally be my upper stage. There have been some real-world experiments...

Good write-up and assessments. You've covered pretty much all the options, I think, so I'll just add some illustrations... My version was slightly different... I detached the rover from the skycrane from approximately a hover 1-2m off the ground because I didn't want the full weight of the descent package coming to rest on top of the rover. Maybe, maybe not. I did it the other way around... Rather than two rovers hanging off a lander, I did two landing-packages hanging off a single rover. Detach one package, move away and turn prior to detaching the other package, so you don't get stuck between them. Ok, you got me on those... I don't have any pictures of that style landing in KSP. I actually did #4 on the Mun once, but that was early in my KSP adventures when we didn't have all the capabilities we have now. It was pretty crude. I do have one other recent design that's somewhat in the spirit of #5, in that the rover has a designated "carrier bay" on another vehicle and is deployed then redocked for long-range transportation...

Lots of precision or lots of corrections. As you noted, tiny delta-v changes make big differences on interplanetary missions. Even if you're not planning to dock during the flight, you may want to bring along an RCS tank and a thruster or two to make the fine trajectory adjustments easier. You can pin-point a precise aerobraking pass from halfway across the solar system like that.

Lol, thanks. Here is the full mission album for the delivery to Laythe: http://imgur.com/a/k9ng3#0 The props would work, but the envelope is not buoyant enough for Duna's thin air... It would need to be three times as big. Yes, it should work great on Eve. Nope, it's purely an aircraft, and not a high-performance one either... Top speed is just 60m/sec and service ceiling is about 6km on Kerbin. They will meet another mission for a crew-swap, at some point, with the new arrivals of Team #2 taking over the airship/rover while Team #1 goes home. I toyed with building a massive airship around the HOME air-mining system, but it's just too heavy (or, the fuel is, anyway, and there is no easy way to get rid of all that heavy oxidizer. A large airship can launch a small rocket from altitude to great effect... The buoyancy gets you above most of the atmosphere. Think about how small a launcher you could use for getting a crew pod into Kerbin orbit if you could launch from a pad 10km tall. It could be designed for that, but mine is not; the rover mass is essential to the airship's balance. The thing would simply hang tail-down if you inflated the envelope without the rover docked. Show us what you come up with! I love taking the best ideas from other people's craft and adapting them to my own designs.

I've thought about it... but I just don't have the time for editing, captioning, scoring, etc. It's all I can do to sort through my screenshots and upload the best ones to Imgur albums.

Thanks! I briefly considered trying to do "fold & stow" wings with Damned Robotics and tucking the whole thing inside a massive payload fairing, but then said "Screw this, I'm going!" Getting it back down is generally easy. I made it harder on myself by not subjecting the craft to any visible reentry heating. Nah, I don't record video. I just spam the screenshot key whenever I see anything interesting.

The answer is to always use a small motor, unless you discover you actually need a big motor. And you will, for many of your launch vehicle lower stages. The road to efficiency is to not build a big rocket that can do a mission, then try to shrink it down... but to build a small rocket that can't do the mission, then add to it until it just barely can. To optimize your craft, you have to figure out delta-v. You need to determine how much change in velocity you need to accomplish to reach your goals, then design a ship that is as small as it can be while delivering as much as you need. Diminishing returns on added mass mean that a small ship is inherently more efficient than a large one. As you noted, you're adding fuel and engines to lift fuel and engines, not payload. Kerbal Engineer or MechJeb can calculate your vehicle's delta-v for you if you don't want to do it yourself. And there are some good maps of the KSP solar system that lay out how much delta-v you need to reach various destinations, such as this one: The requirement to reach orbit varies a bit with the efficiency of your ascent... I can usually reach orbit with 4200-4400m/sec expended. But 4800m/sec offers enough reserve that you can probably reach orbit even with some problems during the ascent. If you want to do the math yourself, start with the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. I can't point you at any specific tutorials because I try to limit my recreational math.

I accidentally found myself landing on Laythe while the sun slipped behind Jool. It ended up offering some of the nicest visuals I've seen... High-mobility Survey Team #1 is ready to explore!

Well, that narrows it down.

Heh, thanks. I try for more realistic designs. Sometimes. I got it to Laythe! Full mission album: http://imgur.com/a/k9ng3#0 (Ignore the crazy launch vehicle... this thing is wicked-hard to get into orbit with all that drag up front.)

The window for a near-optimal Jool transfer is about a week wide, so you don't need to worry overly much about hiring a precise target on departure time going there. It's tighter with the inner planets, though. Moho requires the greatest phase angle accuracy, as it changes so rapidly. If you only push your Ap out to near the Mun's orbit, your period is still measured in hours, not days. If you want to push Ap out beyond Minmus, your period may reach a week. You also only shorten your final injection burn by 150m/sec or so by pushing Ap beyond the Mun with kicks, so it's not a big deal if you only take it that far.

"Leave from a higher orbit" is simply saying "use something other than ion engines for the first part of the trip."

Lol, what? That makes no difference. The design would have just been slightly different if I had taken one. As to making your transfer injection over the night side, this is a niche case where you may want to consider launching into a retrograde orbit. Orbiting to the west would put your injection over the day side, and a small ion probe will not require a much larger launch vehicle to deliver the extra 350m/sec launching on heading 270 requires.

You will greatly improve accessibility of your parts if you use a standard compression format like .zip that everyone has available by default. It's not like .7z's minor advantages make a difference with such tiny files.

I sent a small ion probe to Moho, which is harder to reach than Jool. Here are some pics of the craft: http://imgur.com/a/K1YnZ#0 From your description of your craft, you seem to be on the right path. You need more solar panels if you can't maintain full throttle. And remember that insolation decreases as you get further away from the sun. A probe to Jool is going to need many more panels than one which stays in the inner solar system. Batteries are just dead weight. Leave them at home. Keep one RTG on board if you want to ensure the probe is always under control, but if you have no sunlight you can't thrust anyway, so what does it matter? I would probably plan to aerocapture into Julian orbit, saving you a lot of time and some xenon. But a bigger probe using more conventional propulsion would probably make more sense.