capi3101

Built one of the RTG-powered OKTO-2 core SAS-chassis rovers last night with the ruggedized wheels. Put a quad of Z-100 battery packs on the SAS and the lights on the cubic struts, put my "self-righting system (SRS)" - a toroidal fuel tank on the bottom with two 24-77s aimed upwards - on the bottom of the SAS, slapped a big strutural panel on top and one on the bottom, stuck four chairs on top of the dorsal structural panel and took it out for a test flip. SAS on, had to get it up past 20 m/s before it would flip. Even then, it was still useable; aside from the seats breaking off. SRS righted it and off I flipped again. Had to stop when the SRS ran out of fuel... Tweaked it a little to include a roll cage; put a modular girder adapter in the center of the dorsal panel and connected it to struts on the panel's four corners. It let me put a ladder on the rover, which in that permutation was the only thing that broke off when I flipped it. I need to get on imgur so I can show this stuff to y'all... I don't see why you couldn't use an X200-8 as the chassis. Same general principle; you could still add the SAS for stability, even. You'd probably want eight PB-NUKs so you'd have mounting points for more wheels, I'd imagine. Something else to try out...

For Kerbin, start your gravity turn around ten kilometers, putting your ship on heading 090 at 45 degrees. Follow the prograde marker once it gets down that same way. Make sure your craft has got at least 4500 m/s of delta-V available and a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than 1 (1.6-1.7 at launch is considered optimal). Then it's just watch the map to see when your apoapsis is at it's desired altitude, shut off the engines, coast until you get close to the apoapsis, and fire up the engines until your periapsis is where you want it (or at least above the atmosphere at 70 kilometers). I won't bother with parameters for other worlds right now...once you figured out how to orbit Kerbin you can orbit any other body in the Kerbol system.

Steering issues usually have to deal with how the wheels have been mounted to the chassis...only piece of advice I can offer besides "try restarting KSP". Let's see your rover. A craft file would be helpful too. Rename it Zoolander in the meantime. Okay, maybe not that last one...I'm trying to remember which way he couldn't turn and I'm blanking......

Methinks there aren't nearly enough Aerospikes on that... My activities last night were limited to a refuel of my Typhon 1 tug (finally; this is the one with 25 LV-Ns, the thrust of a Mainsail with NERVA efficiency), a test of a rover using a SAS module as the base chassis (had to work really hard to flip it over; when I did - at 22 m/s, double the flippin' speed of my first rover - nothing crucial broke and the only reason why I had to abandon the mission is because the self-righting system (a toroidal fuel tank and 2 24-77s) ran out of juice. Made yet another attempt to build an Eve lander. On paper it said I should have the 12,000. KER said 6500 and then the damn thing was unflyable...though that's probably because the LV-T45 in the center stack fell off for some unknown reason early in the flight. Had rotten asparagus or something, I guess.

Running 0.20, it's either the file or where you put it in your KSP directory. So, where exactly did you put it on your computer?

Why not? If you get the Kerbals glowing bright enough, you wouldn't have to put any headlights on the rover......

Yeah I saw that. Doesn't seem right...I mean, you've got this big swing in the Isp from 1 to 0 atmospheres, it should work the same from 5 to 1. Maybe that's just the way's it implemented in the game? I dunno. I suppose there could be a concept there that I'm misunderstanding.

Edit your original post. So...would the Isp of an LV-N still be 220 on the surface of Eve? You know, where the atmospheric pressure is 5 atmospheres?

Somebody a little while back had a design for "petals" around their docking ports; basically it involved a quad of structural panels up near the port. The idea was to help two ships align properly for docking. I never heard if it cut down on wobble or not, but I imagine it would. Other than that, use senior docking ports or use multiple ports. A lot of folks have gotten good use out of a stack tri-coupler with three ports attached; guarantees the things will align to one another.

Maybe not...but I bet you could put a structural panel or two on top of it to mount that stuff to it. I don't really know of course; I haven't tried it out my own self just yet. You go with the PB-NUKs and you might get away with not needing the solar panels. As for the battery pack, you might try the undercarriage. Lights, you might be able to put on the cubic struts. Just leaves the chairs...

...and if the electrical storage is an issue for you, slap a battery pack on there. Even the little one will give you more storage than the RoveMate, and even with the Z-500 you're still lighter. Damn, I need to try this out...

It takes somewhere between 8,500 and 10,000 m/s of delta-V to do a round trip Duna mission. Considering 4500 of that (about half) is just getting into Kerbin's orbit, I'd suggest the orbital construction route. You could be sure you had more than what you needed that way, which is dandy when you screw one damn thing or another up. Got Bill and Bob sitting up in orbit now waiting to go; their lander's sitting with a fuel module and a 5 LV-N tug attached. If you're awesome (or if you're a heavy mod user), you can get there with a slightly modded Mun design and the single launch becomes a lot easier. Me, I'm not that great at piloting. Having a low-end box on which to play the game doesn't help matters any either.

If you're up for a bit of a drive or can handle a short "hop", there's some pretty good sized mountains about 80 kilometers to the west of KSC...I land in them frequently when I'm trying to eyeball a KSC landing. You'd probably pick up their foothills awful fast.

And then they will exterminate all impurities....... Well I would, but the thing is I still about 3,000 m/s short... Gave up on my expanded docking pier design. Stupid thing refused to dock...struts were getting in the way of all things. Refueled Typhon 1 (finally). Took a screenshot so I could evaluate my resources and forgot to copy it onto my jump drive...just means I'll have to do that when I get home this evening. Going to spend the day once again attempting to build an Eve lander. If I'm very lucky, I might have enough time this evening to do something else. Something fun...like, I dunno......going to the Mun again in one of my early designs.

That would probably help; basically anything that will lower your center of mass will do the trick. So would "driving over a smooth surface", but good luck finding something like that on the Mun. Minmus, now... Problem with Minmus is that you MUST use the docking controls to steer a rover there...even a tiny probe core has enough capsule torque to flip over a small rover on Minmus. I know that one from experience.

Could also put a set of stack separators on the sides of any pre-existing standard Mun lander you've got and attach them that way. Use BZ-52s set radially on the lander's sides and attach the seperators to them, then stick the side of the Rovemate you're using to the seperator. Wheel-side down, of course. Might have to put a strut or two on the far end so that they don't break off during launch.

Self-correcting system - I use two 24-77s and a Toroidal fuel tank slung to the underside of the rover. Put the 24-77s on the same side of the rover and aim them upwards. You flip over, just light them up and goose the throttle to right yourself. GENTLY. You really only need one 24-77, but it looks cooler with two...like a massive set of exhaust pipes... I stick mine to the front of my rovers. Since that's where you've got your RTG mounted, I might suggest you use a different side if you go this route. Wouldn't do if the damn thing were to accidentally snap off while you were trying the upright your rover. Actually, scratch that. The way it works and with your design as you've described it, you'd want the rover to flip over butt first...

Today I carefully planned another Eve launch vehicle. Just like the first one, I wound up with a damn good Tylo lander design (about 6500 m/s delta-V overall). A few hundred tonnes heavier with moar boosters and moar struts and moar chutes, same basic payload. Got 300 m/s of delta-V more... Still trying to figure that one out.

Made another attempt at designing an Eve lander. Only came up 3,000 short on the delta-V, so I'm getting there. Launched one of Temstar's Supernova lifters into orbit with no payload other than a senior docking port and a large RCS tank for payload. Confirmed I could get it into orbit intact but refueling the thing is going to be a royal pain. Attempted once again to dock my expanded pier module to my space station. Closed to five meters when my computer spontaneously shut itself off. Arrrrrrgh. At least I'd made a recent quicksave of the attempt. Still got Bob and Bill waiting in a lander can for the next Duna transfer window. I bet they're about ready to kill one another...

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28248-Is-asparagus-the-best-staging-system-%28might-contain-science%29?p=346702&viewfull=1#post346702 The correction I applied for an Eve payload fraction proved quite insufficient, though I wound up with a solid Tylo excursion module...

No. The first equation is payload fraction (15% of the rocket's mass is payload) leading to the target total rocket mass, the second calculates the total thrust for a 1.6 to 1.7 surface TWR, and the third calculates how much of the total thrust (22%) needs to be allocated to the central stack. That's how Temstar designed his Zenith booster family (which a lot of people are now utilizing, including myself). Now, those equations are for achieving Kerbin orbit with an asparagus-staged booster, so I assume some adjustment needs to be made to the payload fraction assumption for Eve. I just don't know what the adjustment is; I'm assuming I should be using an Eve payload fraction of 1.17% just based on the delta-V requirement difference. You sure air drag loss accounts for most of the fuel expenditure from Eve? Best I can tell it's a little over 6,360 m/s to achieve a 107 km orbit and about 5,640 m/s to account for drag.

Lemme make sure I've got your payload down correctly here: Command Pod Mk1-2 x1, Rockomax Brand Decoupler x1, LT-2 Landing Strut x4, FL-R1 RCS Fuel Tank x1, Rockomax X200-16 Fuel Tank x3, Rockomax "Poodle" Liquid Engine x1, plus fuel ducts and struts. Correct? So if that's right, that's 37.8 tonnes payload, 24 of which is fuel. 390 Isp in vacuum...gives you 3,855 m/s of delta-V. You need 2,480 give or take to perform a round trip Minmus mission once you're in orbit, so yeah, the design should be able to do the job. Makes me think the problem may be more with piloting than design, especially if you're making it to orbit without having used any of the fuel in the payload. How are you doing your Mun descents? For that matter, how are you doing your transfer burns?

Most folks shoot for a 150k Jool orbit so they have a bit of room to maneuver without going in. So far today I've designed (on paper anyway) a lander that should be more than capable of handling a round-trip Tylo mission and had a thought about how I might turn it into a single round-trip Eve lander. Won't know if it actually will work until I get home...particularly the bit where I turn it into an Eve lander.

Out of curiosity, has anybody attempted to put ladders down the center stack of the Supernova? Got a wicked idea for an Eve lander today; if it works, I'd like for my Kerbals to actually feel the planet's surface under their feet. I suppose I do have other issues to sort out with the idea, but this is as good of a place to start as any.

Installed Kerbal Engineer. Figured it was time, WTH and all that. Farted around a bit with my new asparagus lander design; it gets some pretty wicked spin going once it gets down to the final asparagus stage. SAS helped but lowered its delta-V to around 5,200. Still trying to figure out how that happened (remember this is the same design that my initial number crunching suggested would only have about 3600 delta-V). Used it to put Jeb up at my space station and bring Seeley home; he'd been up there for about ninety days. Redesigned a barn burner to be compatable with my superheavy tug. After half a dozen tries, I got it into orbit on the back of a Zenith Supernova booster. Lesson learned: stick the mainsails into the ground a little ways in the VAB so that they're flat on the pad when you go to launch. Otherwise that 130 tonne payload is going to collapse the center stack... Made another attempt to put the expanded docking pier on my space station. Botched the launch pretty badly; burned up all the fuel I had reserved for docking in an attempt to get the orbits in phase. Kind of annoyed at that one. In preparation to send Bill and Bob to Duna; they're riding an Igneo Nex on the Enyo 3 tug with a heavy barn burner. Duna window's in thirteen days. Hell of a long time to spend in a lander can, if you ask me...