BigDog

Well the pics have a rover in them, my K-100 Explorer, hanging form the boom of my boom truck. That rover weighs 5 tons so I am happy with the truck. And an early K-100 version that is wandering about Kerbin.

I like using the TT-38Ks for mounting outrigger type I beams on. Also in that pic I posted all the SRBs at the top are coupled with these as well. In my limited experience as long as a booster or tank does not hit an engine it really does not matter much. I have some designs where I have SRBs that bounce off of the AV-R8 Winglets with no harm done.

I use different placements based on what I want to do. Look closely in the first pic and you can see the single sepratrons mounted at the tops of the orange tanks. I place them on an angle so that they spin the top of the spent stage out and down. The ones on the SRBs at the top are to blow these out and slightly up. The 2nd and 3rd pics show the results of these placements.

That was the point I was trying to get across,MechJeb is MUCH more than an autopilot. Look at this attached pic with some of the MechJeb windows open. Notice on the bottom left one the 2 options, create and create and execute. With this window up when my apoapsis crosses 100k the yellow warning goes away. I can then chop throttles and create my node to circularize. If I pressed create and execute then the autopilot would fly it. These windows that are up allow you to crate nodes without all the clicking and guess work. Orbit info is handy for setting up satellites to map planets, which is useful for other mods mostly. The Delta V window is invaluable for building ships. I can tell if it will reach orbit or the Mun or wherever in the VAB based on knowing what the Delta V requirements are roughly for what I want to do, ie orbit Kerbin is roughly 4500 DV. Again this takes all the guess work and go fly and hope approach out of it. I think MechJeb is probably the most miss understood Mod there is. It seems a lot of people assume it is an autopilot, I know I did. In reality it is full set of flight information and node creation tools that just happens to also have an autopilot, that is 100% optional to use. I hope you put up a pic of that base on the surface, I am assembling/building a base for Duna and may steal a few ideas!

Get the MechJeb Mod for this. See that window open in the VAB pic, that is from MechJeb. MechJeb is very handy with lots of info available, it is worth it alone for its manuver node planer to place and tune nodes,instead of clicking and playing around until you find what you want. It does have an autopilot function but that is entirely optional to use. Oh and the payload on what I posted is 340.3 tons. Weight on the pad is 3000.6 tons. That is a nice looking base, whether it has too much fuel or not. I figure over kill is much better than under kill in these situations.

How about a circular orbit with enough D-v to reach the Mun? I think apo time was around 60 on that flight, didn't see it as I had my hands busy. I need to add some RCS so I can dock this bomb and note the time. Rocket is 1 orange tank with one small tank below for over heat control, 8 of the small radial engines, and 28 SRBs for that pin ya to the seat acceleration.

I was a bit unclear about the apoapsis or me being above 70k at 90 seconds. If it is just the apoapsis, this thing should be able to circularize and dock easily. Blasting straight up at fuel burn out apoapsis was 484,600m. This is the first time I have seen re-entry heat going up! Apoapsis above 70k at 47 seconds. Rocket above 70k at 81 seconds. Actual times may be a second less, to say this thing is moving fast would be a massive understatement. So what is it, Apoapsis above 70k at 90s or rocket above at 90s?

1330 parts leaving the pad. Editor parts count is 1366 counting the 36 clamps to hold it up on the pad. View inside the VAB to give you some idea of the strutting involved. Payload is 340.3 tons, which is 8 full orange tanks for fueling, plus some maneuvering rockets and capsule, and such. Some tips I have learned. At a minimum on large rockets stacked joints will need 4 evenly spaced struts, but most likely will need 8. Stack couplers are about as strong as glass, in other words, they aint. Notice at the bottom of the payload in the VAB pic I have I beams on radial decouplers to allow strutting of the stack coupler joint. Try to plan ahead for your strutting needs. They are easier to place as things are being built, and you will use less of them than trying to pile them on as things fail. Triangles and X's are your friends when it comes to strut placement. Really heavy loads may need some assist with rockets at the top to reduce some of the force coming up from the bottom. This next pic shows my arrangement on this application. I beams on radials, to outrigger some SRBs. I use SRBs for this as they have better Max power than any of the small engines. Also by staging them one after the other the amount of force applied remains constant, with rockets of this size the dead weight of the future stages is just a drop in the bucket. Lastly, I have found that large, especially long rockets can not be flown like smaller rockets. A grav turn with this rig at 10,000m will put pieces all over the place. I have to do a very slight turn at about 15,000 followed by a gentle tip to about 40degs at around 45,000ms, any more than that and gravity breaks off the lowest radial stack. Also throttle setting is limited to 3 clicks from full. Any more than that and it will break at joints at certain altitudes. This last bit may just be personal preference, but I do not use asparagus staging, I use the onion method instead. I prefer to keep the stresses I am applying to these contraptions equal. Part count has nothing to do with stuff breaking, it does have something to do with lag however. But as stuff gets staged away that goes away. Now here is to a successful launch, and an assurance that it gets easier as you get more designs successfully launched under your belt.

I accidentally designed an SSTO last night. I was designing a refueling ship for my Duna Kethane mining operation and noticed that its Delta-v was enough to achieve Kerbin orbit. I think with some tweaks and the right flight plan I might just be able to pull this off.

Another vote for the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro here. I really like having my acceleration and braking buttons mapped to the joystick buttons, it really makes driving rovers fun.

Light 'Em Up My Jool Mission monstrosity (2 landers capable of orbit from Kerbin, 4 rovers, a scanning probe, and probably a partridge in a pear tree) blasting for Jool from LKO. A side view showing what I mean by monstrosity!

I have done what you want to do and can offer up some tips and some pics for inspiration. 1. Know the scale of your Kerbals. Yeah sounds simple, my first effort produced something that looks like an insane shopping cart or a go-kart on steroids. The roll bars are more like seat belts. 2. Save yourself a ton of headaches and build it in the Space Plane Hanger. The symmetry mode there will do what you want as opposed to the VAB. One of my rollbars on the rover in the following pics is a bit off due to my not doing this. 3. Stuff can only attach at one point. So if you build a cage out of beams such as in the following pics you will need to tie them together with struts. 4. Provide a means of flipping the rover back over. I use landing gears and RCS on the one in the following pics. This is probably unnecessary, but I am doing a long distance journey with this and do not want to find myself ending the mission halfway around Kerbin stuck on my back. 5. Provide lots of the fixed solar panels. This allows more driving time. The extendable panels blow apart at around 9 m/s. So to use those you have to either stop or drive very slow. 6. Put lots of batteries on the underside or floor. More weight down low improves roll characteristics and more juice gives more drive time. This first pic gives an idea of the scale of my K-100 Explorer. Lewis and Klark Kerman are charging up after departing from KSC. These following pics are in the VAB, since I had not caught on to the SPH trick when I built this and give some overall views of my revised design. Hopefully these pictures can give some ideas to you or anyone else wanting to build a buggy. I am really happy with this design as it handles very well and is as stable as a rock.

High above Kerbin my interplanetary exploration ship is getting topped off by my heavy refueler. Actually I have launched a reworked version of my interplanetary ship, with Nukes on pods, Delta V is over 9000, so that should take me a few places.

Looking at what you posted in the OP, I would add some T-800 tanks with LV-T30s, either aspargused or onion staged to the orange tanks. These are less weight and empty quicker. I suspect though, since you said this happens on a stage that you need to reduce your throttle some. Also look at the flight report after the failed missions and determine if you need to add more struts. On my heavy fueler there is probably enough weight in struts to build a Mun capable ship. Again such is doable, it just takes quite a bit of trial and error.

Thanks that more or less answered my question. I thought the Kerbal had to be standing on the seat to board. Actually at first I thought if I got him on the seat he would automatically board. So there I am with Bill lying on the seat like a limp jelly fish until I searched and found the right click board command. I think this rover is small enough they should be able to board standing next to it.

I have a fueler design that the payload weighs in at around 340 tons, it is 8 orange tanks plus 6 T-800s with LVT 3os for maneuvering. What I found I had to do was throttle back to 3 tick marks from full throttle and wait until about 15K before slowly doing a gentle grav turn. I also added some SRBs on "outriggers" large I beams up high on my payload to reduce some of the pressure from the bottom. I went with SRBs because their thrust is a fixed amount, and to keep the part count down over tanks and engines. Anything else and I would get the explosions you are talking about. So what you want to do is doable it just may take some more time to find what that design specifically wants as far as throttle settings and flight profile.

The answer is probably something simple, but how do I get my Kerbal on to a rover? I spent a good bit of time last night on a test mission and finally managed to get my Kerbal on to the rover by banging the rover into the first hump around the launch pad until it flipped on its rear. I then could walk my Kerbal onto it and his weight dropped the front end back on the ground. Surely there has to be something easier than this tomfoolery.