Undy

I'm having a bit of an issue with a rover I'm building just now. The vehicle uses both bilateral and angular symmetry, so I built the main body in the VAB before switching over to SPH to add the wheels and supporting structure. When I go to test drive it though, the parts with bilateral symmetry start duplicating as in the picture below. I'm guessing it's been caused somehow by moving the .craft file across from the VAB to SPH folder. Is there an easy way to fix this, or do I need to strip it down and start again?

Yeah, I'm needing to make some serious changes to the rover. I got the command pod into a low Mun orbit then released the rover, but only managed to slow down the tangential velocity to about 120 m/s before running out of fuel and mono. Another less-than-impressive crash landing. Even attempting to reconnect with the command pod was an exercise in futility. Then efforts to return the crew to Kerbus ended with them endlessly circling the sun. Which was supposed to be the role of the Icarus series of probes. Still, much further forward than yesterday. EDIT: I'm going to call this rover a write-off. Completely incapable of landing on Mun at anything other than utterly destructive speeds. At least on the second attempt the crew made it back. I think Caelus IV will be a bit less ambitious about retrieving the rover. If I can get something there that can just land safely I'll be happy.

The actual lander section is within the body of the rover - an FL-T200 fuel tank with eight 24-77 radial engines. The section above was intended to remain in Mun orbit, awaiting the return of the rover (no idea if the eight 24-77's is enough to lift back into a low Mun orbit). As you can see, I tacked on an extra fuel tank in the hope of getting a bit of extra performance. When I added a stage beneath the rover before (X200-32 tank and poodle engine) the whole thing went to pot with various boosters refusing to fire etc. A ground-up rebuild should probably fix this though. From what I've seen, the turbojet engines give good performance getting the main section out of atmosphere - should these be replaced with asparagus'd liquid boosters too? The SRB's on top... Well, we can all have a good laugh about them. Initially they were intended to raise the centre of thrust on lift-off, but the whole thing was arcing at about 500m and heading for the sea. Angling them on the top capsule was an exercise in the absurd born out of frustration while actually resulted in a very stable launch. I still have no idea why a perfectly symmetrical lifter (I tried with something a lot smaller than you see there) would arc on lift-off, but arc it did. The winglets on the upper stage are there to help with control on the return journey. Perhaps I'll focus on getting to the destination first though

I've had it reach Kerbin orbit and it's reasonably stable from launch. The wacky design comes from me having no idea how to use the available parts to best lift and deploy a rover. I've seen plenty of nice rover designs but no real deployers for them.

Caelus landed on Mun. Or rather, Caelus ran out of fuel and crashed in a ball of fiery disaster. A top-down redesign was required for Caelus II, including a larger, more functional rover. This presented... Difficulties. The current configuration of Caelus II lacks the firepower required to reach Mun, but is the stablest configuration I've had for her yet. I figured adding an extra fuel tank and poodle engine into the midsection might help, but this led to the whole thing glitching out, with solid boosters refusing to fire and launch supports refusing to detach. I checked and double-checked the staging, but had to revert to the previous design. Is anyone willing to help me out with this? Even without the lack of firepower, the design is lacking in a couple of places - the disconnect between the midsection and the underside of the rover/lander (designed to be an all-in-one to land the rover, explore around, then fly back up to reconnect with the orbiting manned section) isn't great, and the section around the rover could probably do with a bit of extra stiffening. I want to get the rover onto Mun, look around for a bit, then re-attach and return to Kerbin, but I'm really running out of ideas to improve the design that don't result in an uncontrollable wreck. Caelus II can be downloaded here.

I've been doing it in VAB so I can attach it to my lifters. The mirror symmetry is one issue, but more than that I'm just frustrated at trying to connect various girders and structural panels together and having them either refuse to attach, or insist on attaching in some peculiar way, such as through the centre of girders.

How do you guys go about assembling your rovers? Even when I have an idea for a rover I can never convince the assembly environment to play ball.