Motorized Landing Gear?

[TheEpicSquared]

I was just thinking the other day when I was taxiing my passenger plane to the runway. I was thinking, it would be really useful if the landing gears had motors in them so we don't have to use our engines (and therefore expend fuel) to taxi to a specific location.

Let's say you sent a resupply SSTO to Duna, but you overshot the base. It would be much better to use in-built motors to taxi to the base, instead of expending valuable LFO just to travel a kilometer or so.

Of course, the motors would use electric charge and have maximum loads, much like actual rover wheels in KSP.

So what do you think?  

Edited November 21, 2016 by TheEpicSquared

[DrunkenKerbalnaut]

I'm not opposed to this, but in the interim, you could always build one of these guys with ruggedized rover wheels: 

[Sharpy]

16 minutes ago, DrunkenKerbalnaut said:

I'm not opposed to this, but in the interim, you could always build one of these guys with ruggedized rover wheels: 

Landing gear with a docking port?

[DrunkenKerbalnaut]

3 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Landing gear with a docking port?

Or find a way to hook the nose gear with something. But yeah docking port jr should do the trick. One on the planes "chin", and another above the rovers COM. 

Edited November 21, 2016 by DrunkenKerbalnaut
Speeling

[Wallace]

What I did when I made a powered glider/rover for duna was, I have it landing gear and rover wheels on the front, the landing gear sticks lower than the rover wheels so it can land on that, then I retract the front landing gear so the rover wheels touch the ground and can drive around, then for take off again, I put the landing gear down again. 

 

[DrunkenKerbalnaut]

3 minutes ago, Wallace said:

What I did when I made a powered glider/rover for duna was, I have it landing gear and rover wheels on the front, the landing gear sticks lower than the rover wheels so it can land on that, then I retract the front landing gear so the rover wheels touch the ground and can drive around, then for take off again, I put the landing gear down again. 

 

Disregard my solution. This guy knows how to Kerbal. That's how I make my forklifts  .

[TheEpicSquared]

2 hours ago, Wallace said:

What I did when I made a powered glider/rover for duna was, I have it landing gear and rover wheels on the front, the landing gear sticks lower than the rover wheels so it can land on that, then I retract the front landing gear so the rover wheels touch the ground and can drive around, then for take off again, I put the landing gear down again. 

 

I often do that as well, but the problem with that is that the motorized wheels create a lot of drag.  

[NeoFatalis]

If I remember correctly there was once a mod called adjustable landing gear and it had an option of motorized wheels altough it is broken since 1.1 because of the wheels update

[TheEpicSquared]

18 minutes ago, NeoFatalis said:

If I remember correctly there was once a mod called adjustable landing gear and it had an option of motorized wheels altough it is broken since 1.1 because of the wheels update

Yeah, I could never get that to work  

[juanml82]

It would also work great for storing rovers in cargo bays, since motorized landing gear can be used for rovers and it's retractable.

I usually try to set the wheels wide and give some clearance for the rest of the rover, and the resulting design won't fit an MK3 cargo bay. With retractable motorized landing gears, they'd fit.

[Rath]

Motorized landing gear should be pretty slow and big, so that they dont replace normal wheels

[Scientia1423]

On 11/21/2016 at 2:24 PM, DrunkenKerbalnaut said:

Or find a way to hook the nose gear with something. But yeah docking port jr should do the trick. One on the planes "chin", and another above the rovers COM. 

Use the AGU to dock with the plane. But what if my plane has no chin?

 

Also the idea seems to be a good one. I have trouble driving rovers as the landing gear is not motorised.

[DrunkenKerbalnaut]

8 hours ago, Scientia1423 said:

But what if my plane has no chin?

Mk1 or mk2 (depending in which profile you are using) shielded docking port at planes CoM, facing down. Then another on top of rover CoM. Like the way people move surface base pieces. 

Or ISRU. 

[Wyzard]

If you use KAS, you can put a KAS attachment point on the front of your plane, and a KAS winch on the back of a rover, and connect the winch cable to tow the plane.  If your base has ISRU, you can use the same attachment point to connect a fuel hose to refuel the plane.

[TheEpicSquared]

1 hour ago, Wyzard said:

If you use KAS, you can put a KAS attachment point on the front of your plane, and a KAS winch on the back of a rover, and connect the winch cable to tow the plane.  If your base has ISRU, you can use the same attachment point to connect a fuel hose to refuel the plane.

Yeah, that's how I do it currently.