How to land rovers?

[magnemoe]

This base is technically an rover as it 14 wheels, not designed for long trips but to drive to better locations or up to landed ships to refuel.

Four integrated engines, a huge fuel tank so it can land on Moho and take of after refueling. 

As for launching here its just brute force, massive ignorance and 4000 m/s.

Edited September 9, 2016 by magnemoe

[Hydrothermalventclam]

I had this small rover packaged inside of KAS containers, and assembled it on site.  

It worked really well until I hit a bump at ~20 m/s.

[Tex_NL]

I've done pretty much all of the above. Sky-crane, below lander, side mounted, assembled and/or constructed on-site, self powered. I even used Francois method of boxing them in.
One method I used that I haven't seen mentioned here is on top of a large fuel tank, After landing retract a single leg to tip the entire thing over and detach. Often a good idea to strategically place some additional legs to prevent the wheels from popping.

[foamyesque]

5 hours ago, eddiew said:

Back in 1.0.5...

<snip>

But then wheel blocking happened, so it tends to be mk3 for buggy wheels or mk4 for ruggedized - and neither makes for a good dropship, with the result that I'm doing a lot of spaceplanes.

You can fit ruggedized wheels into a Mk3 bay, and do either a drive-off-a-ramp or bombardment-style deployment. The chassis for it can be built up into pretty nifty jeep-looking rovers.

[Guest]

Mako style.

 

I'm surprised this isn't an option for the poll. Putting engines on the rover itself occured to me as the most intuitive solution. They provide the added utility of being able to flip the rover back over if it ends up on its back.

Edited September 9, 2016 by Guest

[DDE]

Guys, just to be clear, the following is a really, really big rover.

For me, anyway. Plus, I prefer aesthetically clean Sandbox designs.

That's why I was wondering if a mixture of KAS part storage and an EPL survey stake would work out well. Well as in like

Yeah, I'm a snob.

 

[eddiew]

1 hour ago, foamyesque said:

You can fit ruggedized wheels into a Mk3 bay, and do either a drive-off-a-ramp or bombardment-style deployment. The chassis for it can be built up into pretty nifty jeep-looking rovers.

Yeah, I've managed to get a decent rover in for one-time deployment...

Spoiler

...but I wasn't able to get a model that worked with the cargo ramp and could reattach. Or at least, not one that would have this sort of wide, stable wheelbase. Needed MKIV for that

[nascarlaser1]

Since I so far only deliver them to the north pole of Kerbin, I strap em to the top of a giant launcher with fairings, then just strap a heck of a lot of parachutes to the side to slow down in time. After landing, eject pylon, flip rover onto wheels, drive away.

[foamyesque]

30 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Yeah, I've managed to get a decent rover in for one-time deployment...

  Reveal hidden contents

...but I wasn't able to get a model that worked with the cargo ramp and could reattach. Or at least, not one that would have this sort of wide, stable wheelbase. Needed MKIV for that

 

I have:

 

 

I've actually got the base chassis up on dropbox, here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/560xa5rxx49wrn9/Rover Chassis - Mk 3.craft?dl=0

It can go in and out of a Mk3 cargo ramp, no problems.

EDIT: It doesn't have as wide a wheelbase as yours, I grant you, but I've got a reaction wheel tucked away to keep it stable in low-grav, and on high-grav (Kerbin, Eve) it's perfectly adequate.

Edited September 9, 2016 by foamyesque

[John FX]

6 hours ago, Majorjim! said:

Albums cannot be posted at present. Single images can just copy and paste the url. It should be the one ending with the image type. 

Ah, last time I tried albums could be posted.

 

[tater]

I thought this was gonna be about my 1963 Series II 109.

[Xannari Ferrows]

It is a lot more difficult to land one on a body with no atmosphere. With an atmosphere, you can drop them down from space behind a platform with a heat shield. The size of the rover can dictate how many shields you have to use and whether or stand it up vertically or sit it flush into the platform

With no atmosphere, you'll have to rig up something that can land it, making sure the center and vector of thrust is aligned with the center of mass. This gets very difficult with large and/or heavy vehicles, such as a tanker. You also have to account for delta-V, and the gravity of the body you want to land on. The debatably easiest, yet trickiest method of doing this is to build a land that can land the wheels on the surface, with brakes on, release it, and return to orbit, but this is only easy up to a certain threshold of gravity

Air dropping though is the easiest way to land on something with an atmosphere, but may end up requiring someone to go down and repair wheels that might break

[Terwin]

1 hour ago, Xannari Ferrows said:

With no atmosphere, you'll have to rig up something that can land it, making sure the center and vector of thrust is aligned with the center of mass. This gets very difficult with large and/or heavy vehicles, such as a tanker. You also have to account for delta-V, and the gravity of the body you want to land on. The debatably easiest, yet trickiest method of doing this is to build a land that can land the wheels on the surface, with brakes on, release it, and return to orbit, but this is only easy up to a certain threshold of gravity

Balancing a rover stage is no harder than balancing any other payload stage.

Just look at the per-stage torque on KER and adjust things until it is appropriately low for all stages( but keep fuel tanks on the center-line if you don't want burning fuel to make your ship hard to control).

I find that once my payload ship is balanced, the lifter(which is usually pretty simple and using radial symmetry) is usually automatically balanced.

[volcanicshrimp]

I once put a stock crater crawler in a fairing on top of an oversized rocket, facing away from the rocket. To land it, it tipped over with the wheels facing down.

Ridiculously inefficient and awkward, but it was in sandbox mode, so it's OK.

[magnemoe]

17 hours ago, String Witch said:

Mako style.

 

I'm surprised this isn't an option for the poll. Putting engines on the rover itself occured to me as the most intuitive solution. They provide the added utility of being able to flip the rover back over if it ends up on its back.

Yes its my favorite method, it has multiple benefits, as you say it can be used to pull it upright. You can even refuel the rover and take it back into orbit. 
The only downside is small and fast rovers who need to be light and large ones on heavy gravity worlds.
 

[N_Danger]

How about under the lander?

 

[Majorjim!]

I pack rovers into custom made cargo holds inside my lander craft replicas. I like to push the limits of compactness and creativity to make things that may not seem possible at first. Such as my LEM replica and Duna direct craft:

 

Edited September 11, 2016 by Majorjim!

[NSEP]

Never really landed a rover on another body, but i just add a heat shield and some parachutes under my rover and boom, well done 11/10

[njmksr]

Pfft... I usually do skycranes or parachutes, but when I'm feeling fun I drop them out the back of a (heavily armed) spaceplane.

Edited September 11, 2016 by njmksr

[panzer1b]

How to land rovers...

"Mass Effect Style"

Works every time provided i balance the thrusters properly (otherwise it ends up worse then the one shot through the conduit...).

[627]

why is "with style" not an option?

 

[Diche Bach]

@627 Are those hand grenades attached to that thing!? 

[TopHeavy11]

I usually do a combo heat shield-parachute for high atmo planets like Laythe, Kerbin, and Eve. For non-atmo, I use I Skycrane design (preferably re-useable,) and for Low-grav, low-atmo planets like Duna, I use a combonation skycrane-parachute design. I'm not partial. I like variety, but if I had KAS/KIS I would assemble on ground (for manned missions, anyway.)

[eddiew]

 

Reasonably sure I could set this bird down on Mun... there are heavy ventral vernier thrusters courtesy of Space Y, but I screwed up placement and had to come in on the tail. Fortunately, Minmus forgives these oversights.

[n.b.z.]

Atmospheric bodies only:

◯ Mount rover(s) on expendable, crash resistant platform with some chutes, toss that package away carelessly when nearing the landing site, because you've got stuff to do. (Do this if you're just plain crazy.)


(Brief album, but I didn't have time for good screenshots)

◯ Mount expensive, heavy vehicle on platform, then stack even more tons of other crap on top, toss this giant package with chutes off the most valuable asset of your mission architecture, high above the landing site, let your monster asset freefall as far as your nerves can take it, land it pronto, so there's time left to switch to the package, land that thing too if you stand a chance, then ask yourself what the heck you're doing with your life. (Do this if the Kraken calls your head "home".)
 

(Brief album, but I really didn't have time for good screenshots)