Munar Rover with stock parts ... !

[Bekiekutmoar]

Well, I actually managed to fabricate a Munar Rover with currently available stock parts ... ! Its appearance is however a bit odd; squid-like and no wheels.

The first \'version\' of my Munar Rover was made of a capsule, RSC-tank and a number of RSC-thrusters. It turned out the RSC-tank was very fragile and prone to destruction upon contact with Munar surface, even with speeds just around 5 m/s. The brilliant solution was spamming a row of landing legs on the RSC-tank, improving the strength of the improvised Munar Rover dramatically.

The last test was an enormous succes; despite terrible piloting the Rover survived for almost 2 minutes ... !

This design has some drawbacks:

-Capsule is now weak point

-Very hard to control

-Kerbals cannot return to Kerbin

-Still prone to destruction

[GoodGuy]

How does it work, exactly? does the landing legs propel it?

[Anachronda]

I suspect he uses the RCS to roll it along. I guess it\'s appropriate that his Kerbonauts look dizzy.

[Bekiekutmoar]

How does it work, exactly? does the landing legs propel it?

The Rover is propelled by RCS indeed (hmmm, I saw I typed RSC instead of RCS ... ). The landing legs functions more or less as protection for the fragile RCS-tank. I have yet to figure out some form of protection for the capsule however.

[Cykyrios]

I\'m not sure, but I guess you could actually roll if you fold the legs and put the module on its side. Hard to control as well, but it should go more or less straight.

[sal_vager]

I just tested rolling a thing like this on it\'s side on the launchpad, and the legs explode when they contact the ground, they need to be extended

Maybe 2 RCS tanks would be enough to get you home, but all those legs weighs quite a bit.

[Bekiekutmoar]

Yeah, folding the legs inevitably causes the RCS-tank to explode upon contact with the ground even with low speed.

The Rover doesn\'t function on Kerbin due to stronger gravity ... !

[sal_vager]

Yeah RCS tank + ground = boom, and so do folded legs + ground.

But, I have a working Munar rover with RCS thrusters as the tires, I have to be careful to land on them and not the tanks, also the top RCS tank tends to break off the top of the capsule and no amount of struts will prevent that.

[Bekiekutmoar]

Just flew to the Mun again to do another test with the Rover. The spacecraft crashed on the Munar surface due to fuel depletion but the Rover somehow survived. However, I messed up with the controls again and the landing legs couldn\'t absorb an impact with 80 m/s. Looks like my design is a bit flawed ... !