Experimental exoplanet lander

[Vanamonde]

(Oops. I meant to put this in how-to. Sorry.)

This is my experimental lander for other planets with atmospheres. It's a proof of concept kind of thing, so it's far from finished. Anyway, here's what I'm trying.

As others have suggested, since we can't dock yet, I'm thinking of flying it to the destination world as a one-way ship in itself. There it will descend on parachutes.

Then it will deploy one explorer.

Then the whole thing lifts off again, gets most of the way to orbit, and then the outer ring of boosters are discarded. This leaves just the little rendezvous module to return the explorer to a 3-man, non-landing return vessel.

This module would then be discarded, of course, so the final version wouldn't need the decoupler and chute that are currently used to return my test pilot.

Questions and concerns: Do the larger parachutes currently confer any additional benefit, or would I save weight by using the smaller ones (they're both listed as 500 drag units)? Does anyone know why the lander stage sometimes seems to be glued to the ground after landing with the chutes, even though it obviously has enough thrust to lift off? Can anyone guess why, upon booster ejection, the booster stages roll to the left at the same time that the rendezvous module rolls to the right?

Edited September 2, 2012 by Vanamonde

[Clouds]

Questions and concerns: Do the larger parachutes currently confer any additional benefit, or would I save weight by using the smaller ones (they're both listed as 500 drag units)?

I'm not certain. It'd be pretty easy to test though I haven't yet bothered.

In practice, not in careful tests, it seems like it does, though. And, it's plausible - the drag rating in KSP is more like a drag coefficient for how much drag is applied to the part's mass (for whatever reason). The larger parachute, which is more massive by 3x, could drag 3x as strongly.

Does anyone know why the lander stage sometimes seems to be glued to the ground after landing with the chutes, even though it obviously has enough thrust to lift off? Can anyone guess why, upong booster ejection, the booster stages roll to the left at the same time the that rendezvous module rolls to the right?

Buggy terrain? (Try lifting the gear while under thrust.)

Subtly asymmetrical/not-centered placement of the boosters on the decouplers?

We can only guess.

[Atomictank]

I am almost 100 percent sure that the larger parachutes work better

[cardgame]

There's a pretty simple way to test for that.

[Vanamonde]

Okay, I put a small chute on one fuel tank and a large chute on the other, then dropped them from a plane. Suspending the same weight, the small chute brought the load down at

while the large chute brought it down at

Clearly, the big chutes have more effect despite the same 500 drag unit rating, whatever it means. I'll run the test a few more times to be sure.

Edited September 3, 2012 by Vanamonde