Looking at the thread (there's some pretty damn epic stuff here), this is pretty low-rent, but it's my first one and I'm pretty chuffed that it even works. I already have a Jeb waiting on the moon for delivery (he's happily landed in between the two ridges on south edge of the giant equatorial crater), so it's unmanned and driven from a flat probe module wedged in between the batteries and the descent stage. It's a 'Vertical descent/controlled topple' landing for now. It seems to drive pretty well, but I've been having a few teething troubles. 1st attempt – Staging errors in liftoff stage (ooops). Only 6 of 13 engines fired. Did actually lift off, so I didn’t notice at first, but broke up while trying to ignite the other engines in mid-air. 2nd attempt (pictured) – Tried to land at local night on the moon. Couldn’t see the surface. Smashy Smashy. 3rd Attempt – Landing lights now fitted, but landing would be in lunar daytime anyway. Landed successfully about 20km from the manned base. While attempting to drive on the moon, the rear kept lifting up (like, 45 degrees up, pulling all 6 wheels off the ground). I initially thought this was just because it was nose heavy, then I wrote it off to stupid wheel reaction physics and tried shutting power off to certain wheels, no better. Actual cause of the problem was that the ‘drive forward’ and ‘pitch nose down’ commands are mapped to the same key, so the control unit’s gyros (at the rear) were pitching the nose down hard enough to lift the tail up. Separating these controls led to successful driving. Rolled and crashed about 10km from base. 4th attempt ("Burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp") – The lights worked perfectly, landed at lunar sunset, 10km from Lander. After the previous roll, switched to front wheel steering only in the hope this would make it skid less on cornering (previous was front and rear steered). Rolled and crashed 5km from base. I think I was on a hill, but it was properly dark by that point and even with the nose light I couldn’t see too well. I think I actually just need to stop trying to corner at 15m/s. Hopefully tonight I'll be able to edit with a picture of it parked up next to the lander. Or at least get some pictures of it driving. Or at least remember to take some pictures when I crash it again.
