Gulliver - A 3 man rover delivered via Skycrane in honor of Curiosity

[wildkittyv1]

Edit: View bottom of the post for the .craft and part.cfg file and instructions

Imgur Album - 13 photos: http://imgur.com/a/u3gqz#0

Photo album contains all of the images below in non-composite state along with a few extras.

Well, I've been meaning to get a man-able rover to the Mun since I upgraded to .16. I've been toying with designs and brainstorming a bit while dealing with some other projects in KSP, but I figured I'd put it together and get it up there this afternoon in honor of the Curiosity rover landing on Mars in a few hours. I didn't want to do it in the same ho-hum fashion most rockets are done, so I came up with a design for a skycrane style drop-off and set out to deliver the rover to my Mun base near an arch. On a side note, this thing went entirely untested save for the fact that I had previously run a mission with a drop pod style vehicle, so I knew roughly how much the radial thrusters on the skycrane could hold, and how much fuel they needed to slow down. The only thing I really tested was making sure the skycrane decoupling and "take off" went smoothly, and I did that on the launchpad. Anyway, onto the slideshow!

I went with a Soyuz style launch vehicle from the KW Rocketry pack. The fairing is also from the KW Rocketry guys and houses the Gulliver rover - this thing is massive, but the payload only takes up about half of the vertical space of the fairings, but there were no options to use smaller walls. The second image is of the delivery vehicle making it's Trans-Munar Injection burn.

Here we have Gulliver jettisoning its fairing capsule and activating the thrusters on the sky crane delivery module. I was landing on the dark side of the Mun, but thankfully the cart I used as the rover base came equipped with headlights, so I could see the ground approaching as I got close. It was still somewhat difficult, but I managed it on my first go. I didn't bother getting too close to my base (and the base itself is 3km away from the arch, which is why I decided to send a rover to them) as I wanted to test out the rover's stability. It's a bit top heavy and touchy, but I was comfortably rolling at 20m/s, at times getting up to 30m/s when I knew the ground was flat. Going up the edge of the crater I slowed to 10m/s and the rover handled it pretty well.

Here's two photos of the sky crane ejection process. It decouples from the command pod and simultaneously activates four radial boosters which burn for 20 seconds, I got them from Captain Slug's Assorted Hardware and also used them on my drop pod style vehicle, which I'm still working on, though have posted an album on reddit if you also visit there. It goes smoothly and gives you something interesting to look at as the only boosters that suited my needs in terms of strength and time were "anti-roll" boosters, so they power at an angle and spin the sky crane away like a firework.

And finally, a few photos just showing the progress of the trip to Methodios Base Alpha.

Anyway, it was a fun build and a fun flight. If people request the .craft file, I'd be willing to upload it, I just have to get a mediafire account or upload it to somewhere safe where I don't need an account. If anyone knows of a secure site that doesn't require registering, let me know so I can upload this easier.

Mods used and their parts:

DYJ Crew Tank (.cfg edit) - did a .cfg edit to rescale it down to 1m and hold 2 Kerbonauts, roughly balanced the stats using not-science

Kosmos - ASAS, part of the "body" of the rover

Nova Punch - Adapters, Fuel Tanks, decoupler and engines

KW Rocketry - Soyuz style first stage, engines and the 3m-4.2m payload fairing adapter and panels

Tosh's cart/rovers - Cart base

Captain Slug's Assorted Hardware - Radial thrusters and boosters

ISA Mapsat

Muon detector

I was originally going to use Damned Robotics and Katerpillar wheels to make the rover, but I couldn't get the parts to work the way I wanted and I was tired of fiddling around with them, along with wanting to get this done today. If I upload the .craft, I will also post what I did to the crew tank part.cfg to get it how I did. It is very easy and functions exactly the same as the regular crew tank, just smaller and with a 2 Kerbal capacity instead of 5, along with rebalanced stats.

Anyway, thanks for reading and spread the word about the Curiosity landing tonight. The more people that watch, the more people we know are interested in space and science and might spark some interest in redoing the budget. It's not likely, but we can hope, right?

Cheers

EDIT: Forgot I already had a mediafire account and I went and uploaded the .craft and part.cfg files

EDIT2: Totally messed up the download links after like 33 people downloaded the .craft - why didn't anyone tell me it was the same file twice?

Downloads

.craft - http://www./file/8z3x3z66ikp3z64/Gulliver_Mun_Rover.craft - 11.1kb

part.cfg - http://www./?wk80vkhy2yy187b - 1.38kb

NOTE: Copy the DYJCrewtank folder and rename it to DYJCrewtanksmall or something, then just paste the part.cfg file into there and overwrite the old one. If you want to make your own custom crewtanks by just modifying a part.cfg, reference the original one and compare it to the edited one to see the changes I've made. This is the easiest way to get different parts into the game and there are many variables you can change amongst the parts.

Edited August 7, 2012 by wildkittyv1

[BlazingAngel665]

Well for sure the budget need redoing! Loving the landing type, I used the Lionhead aerospace skycrane/rover, works pretty well. Out of curiosity, what partpacks do you use for your main base?? and how do you launch/land it, as I have had some difficulty with my bases. Thanks.

BA665

[rkman]

6 hours and 50 minutes to go

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

[wildkittyv1]

I've never tried using the Lionhead sky crane, but I read the thread and people said they were having issues with it or something so I never bothered. I'm more of a fan of just having parts capable of doing a variety of things and putting them together in different configurations myself rather than having pre-built or modular stuff. I still take the parts from the Kosmos command pod and throw them on other craft, along with the stuff from the Thor and Odin landers from the NP pack.

Regarding the stuff for the base, I use Kosmos for it. The only other pack out there that you could really use for space station/base construction is the BACE pack, but I'm more of a fan of the textures of Kosmos and the variety. It comes with a lot of parts, but the station body components are all under the scientific and utilities tab to make finding them easier. I normally rename all my folders when I download packs to work with a sorting system I have to make finding parts easier.

As for launching and landing, I pretty much just throw it on top of a big rocket and tie it together with struts. I also take the time to calculate how much weight is on each side and do my best to balance, usually trying to get within .1 KMU of each other. Here's an album of two other things I've built with Kosmos: http://imgur.com/a/Fry3Y#0

The first three photos are of KLOSS IV (Kerbin Low-Orbit Space Station) and the last three are Nebo Orbiter which is circling Mun, so neither are equipped to land. Nebo is also using the centrifuge from the Deep Spack pack. In the case of landing Methodios on the Mun, it basically comes down to good balancing. I don't have any special kind of engine on it, it's just a 175 thrust engine from NP I believe, and I stuck two of the RCS blocks from Kosmos (normal RCS has a thrust of 1, the stubby ones from Kosmos are 3 I believe) on each of the long ends and landed it like I would anything else. Each side of the base has landing gear, so there's 4 legs in total. Nothing besides some good piloting and keeping it balanced.

I put a bunch of extra fuel on my bases/orbiters/space stations because I like them to arrive at their destination with as much capability to move as possible, both RCS and liquid fuel, so I'm allowed the luxury of an extremely slow descent in the case of the Munar base. I don't really have to worry about picking it up and moving it (though I could, I probably have enough fuel on board to get back into orbit around Kerbin and return to the Mun and land again), so I just take my time, keep it upright, leave RCS on and listen to some chill music.

[wildkittyv1]

I totally forgot I had a mediafire account already and I went ahead and uploaded the .craft file for Gulliver and the part.cfg for the smaller crew tank.

You still need the other mods to make the craft work, and I apologize if it's a lot but I enjoy experimenting with my builds and mixing and matching parts. It's a bit unstable at launch, but that's an issue with the 3m - 4x1m KW rocketry adapter and the engines - launch quickly or else it will break apart on the launch pad. If you take the engines off and go to the pad, you will see that it doesn't break apart, so it's not an issue with how I built the craft. It does fly and get to the Mun.

The .cfg edit is easy, just read the instructions at the bottom of the first post. Let me know if I forgot any mods and I'll update it. Sorry for the complication, but I make odd vehicles.

[xclusiv8]

I would love to see you do this in a video =) Hard to imagine how it works with pictures.

[wildkittyv1]

I would have no problem doing it in a vid if I had a laptop decent enough to record it. I don't game a whole lot so I have no reason to invest either.

It's pretty simple though. It's a standard rocket with enough fuel in the second stage to get the rover/sky crane setup to the Mun, establish orbit, and slow down to descend vertically. It has enough to also slow down during the vertical descent, which I used, and that's why the fairing ejection is vertical instead of horizontal - I dumped those at about 4km up, landed on a 1.2km high area.

Anyway, after the fairings get ejected, you activate the retro thrusters and just slowly descend as you would with any other landing vehicle.

The descent thrusters are the bigger ones on the outside. I was originally going to lower the craft and drop it, but it was too dark to really see, so I just touched down. After descending, activate the next stage and it simultaneously decouples the sky crane from the command pod and activates the smaller thrusters you see in the picture. Those bring the sky crane safely away from the command pod and you just drive around with it as usual.

It's not much different from a regular lander except that I put a decoupler on top of the command pod, attached a fuel tank to that, then attached two plane structural fuselages to mount the boosters on and give clearance past the rover. The thrusters that get activated along with the decoupling are SRBs, so once they're activated they burn for 20 seconds and give you plenty of time to get out of the way. I think they went up to like 5km or something like that before falling back down. I uploaded the .craft and .cfg edit for the crew tank to the first post, so you can give it a go if you want but it's a lot of mods to download as I used only a few parts from a bunch of different packs.

Edited August 6, 2012 by wildkittyv1

[SmokyMiner]

It appears the links are the same, they both lead to the craft

[wildkittyv1]

wow, thanks for the information

There was like 33 downloads on the craft (even if cut in half that's still 16) and nobody posted anything saying it was the same link

Sorry guys

[emfolkerts]

i cant seem to find the

DYJ Crew Tank

Kosmos

Captain Slug's Assorted Hardware - Radial thrusters and boosters

can some one link me to them