I want to land a rover on the Mun.

[EDS_Pilot]

Okay, so I want a Mun rover for science collection, but I don’t know how to land a rover, so, any tips?

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions, since this is a question about "how do I...?" and not a tutorial that explains how to play the game to other people.

1 hour ago, EDS_Pilot said:

Okay, so I want a Mun rover for science collection, but I don’t know how to land a rover, so, any tips?

Well, the shortest (but unhelpful) answer is "with an engine, same as you'd land any other rocket". 

I realize that's totally unhelpful, but... it would help to have a better understanding of the problem space, i.e. exactly what trouble you're having?

For example, is your situation "I've landed regular ships on the Mun with no problem, but not sure how to do a rover"?

 

A few thoughts, which may or may not be helpful depending on exactly what problem you're trying to solve:

There's nothing special about rovers.  They're like any other craft in KSP; they just happen to have some wheels on them.  There are a few different ways to solve some of the problems they present.

One thing about them is, they tend to have really horrendous aerodynamics.  Streamlined, they ain't.  So part of the problem some people have is, "how do I launch this thing."  A common solution is to put them at the top of the rocket as payload, and encase them in a fairing.  This makes it easy to launch.  Then just do your whole flight and landing, all with the rover coupled on top.  After you land your craft, decouple the rover and you're all set.

Some people have designed craft that hold a (small) rover inside a large service bay, designed such that when the craft lands, the service bay is on the bottom of the rocket, either resting on the ground or just above it.  Then they open the service bay doors and drive the rover out.

My own personal favorite thing to do is to just give the rover engine a small fuel tank and a rocket so that it can land itself.  For example, if I've built a small rover whose main axis is 0.625m in diameter-- typically with a HECS probe core and Octagonal Struts making up most of the body-- then I'll just stick an Oscar tank or two with a Spark engine on the back end.  That's plenty of dV to descend from orbit and land itself, tail-first, like any rocket.  Then it just flops down onto its wheels and drives away. 

Not sure if that answers your question, but does this help?

 

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

Option 1- stick it on top of a rocket, land it like a normal lander, decouple from rocket bits and drive off- broadly similar to what was used by the Jade Rabbitb/Yutu rover on the Moon. 

Option 2- put a small fuel tank on top with radial engines on that, use that to land directly on the wheels then decouple the skycrane- similar to what was used by Curiosity rover. There’s a stock vessel called ‘Rover + Skycrane’ which gives one example of how you can do it, but it’s possible to do a lower tech version by sticking Oscar-b tanks radially onto a central part with Ant engines underneath, or putting Spider engines directly onto a central Oscar-b tank(s).

Option 3- put the rover in a payload bay then use radial engines on the lander stage; land, decouple rover and drive away. If you have Making History, use structural tubes instead as you can drop the rover out the bottom of the rocket instead of having to wriggle out the doors of a payload bay.
 

Option 4- stick wheels on one side of a rocket, land rocket then make it fall over onto the wheels, drive away.

Edited October 26, 2020 by jimmymcgoochie

[HansAcker]

If possible, I opt for a "skycrane" style landing (no cables & winches).

In this example, MechJeb does the landing but it's easy to land manually, too:

Spoiler

 

 

[Echo__3]

Here are a couple methods that I have used.

 

[radonek]

If it's really really tiny ordinary lander with a ramp may work, but for anything else I'd go with skycrane too. Just slap decouplers on sides, add engines and fuel to taste – what could be easier?

[Cavscout74]

Skycrane is my preferred option - works across a large range of sizes. 

 

7 hours ago, radonek said:

If it's really really tiny ordinary lander with a ramp may work, but for anything else I'd go with skycrane too. Just slap decouplers on sides, add engines and fuel to taste – what could be easier?

It doesn't have to be really tiny to use a platform with ramp.....

'

Admittedly, this was more about "To see if I can" rather than it being an actual good idea.  It was possible to recouple the rover & platform to perform a short biome hop so that was useful.  This was the test version - the full mission was a launch to Moho.   Landing went well but the landing cradle had a spontaneous existence failure shortly after the rover drove off.

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Cavscout74

[king of nowhere]

there is an easy recipe for a rover.

take your lander, put wheels in place of landing struts, and you have a rover.

once i realized that, i stopped worrying about landing systems. all my rovers have rockets on them and can land on their own. exception for the biggest worlds where you'd need a very big rocket, but those worlds tend to have atmospheres for aerobraking

[radonek]

@Cavscout74 Fair enough, it's possible…  yeah, not a good idea, impractical, but quite possible.  Although you may be up to something here with biome hops. Waaay back (long before robotic parts) I tried this with long legged skycrane and rover with docking port on top. But redocking was tricky and krakenprone. Having a nice, flat platform would be very helpfull there. Also, skycrane like mine can only transport vehicles designed for it, while that nice big platform of yours can in theory (with lots of EVA strutting and if CoM alignment can be managed somehow) transport anything. So maybe there is some use for it.

[radonek]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

take your lander, put wheels in place of landing struts, and you have a rover.

…with a high CoM and hard to fit inside aeroshell.  I mean, yes, I've done this too but I would not call such hack a "rover" any more than a plane with landing gear out can be called a car.

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, radonek said:

…with a high CoM and hard to fit inside aeroshell.  I mean, yes, I've done this too but I would not call such hack a "rover"

well, depends on how elaborate the rover is. yes, i've done some landers with wheels that were  barely capable of reaching the closer surface feature to get some extra science before leaving again.  cheap stuff, generally.

But I've also done this

it's one of my finest creations. its  CoM is low and it is quite stable to drive; I can cruise around Mun at around 30 m/s without crashing too often. while the landing struts make an armor that keeps me alive when i crash at that speed. and it can visit most planets on its own, with ISRU capacity.

then again, it's also not exactly a rover, multipurpose vehicle would be a better term.

but the point is, you can fit rockets on a rover and do a good job with it.  it's not easy to make something that performs well both as rover and as spaceship, but making a sky crane is also not trivial.
 

Quote

any more than a plane with landing gear out can be called a car.

 

I see and raise. I've landed a propeller-assisted spaceplane on water and called it a boat hey, it worked!

[EDS_Pilot]

Thanks, I'll try them, I'll test skycrane and then other options. I do have that Lithobrake mod, so I can do a rover in the service bay, and land it and just drive it out.

[Spricigo]

On 10/26/2020 at 6:27 PM, radonek said:

with a high CoM and hard to fit inside aeroshell.  I mean, yes, I've done this too but I would not call such hack a "rover" any more than a plane with landing gear out can be called a car.

Well, it depends on how you design your Landers. Personally I like to build wide and low landers, specially for airless bodies. 

[vv3k70r]

On 10/25/2020 at 9:11 PM, EDS_Pilot said:

Okay, so I want a Mun rover for science collection, but I don’t know how to land a rover, so, any tips?

Attach docking ports or decoplers on the ends, add a fueltank (slighty bigger then rover) and engine on one end, put rest of the fuel on the fron, set fuel lines, add struts and land it as normal rocket detaching top fuel tank in fuel priority on top so at the end You gonna have a rover falling in lowG from a top of braking/landing engine.

[Eric15342335]

On 10/27/2020 at 4:15 AM, Cavscout74 said:

Skycrane is my preferred option - works across a large range of sizes. 

 

It doesn't have to be really tiny to use a platform with ramp.....

'

Admittedly, this was more about "To see if I can" rather than it being an actual good idea.  It was possible to recouple the rover & platform to perform a short biome hop so that was useful.  This was the test version - the full mission was a launch to Moho.   Landing went well but the landing cradle had a spontaneous existence failure shortly after the rover drove off.

 

Hello! Your craft looks really good! But I don't understand how did you make the platform under the rover? Is it just putting some structual panels under it? Thanks!

[Mikenike]

On 10/25/2020 at 3:11 PM, EDS_Pilot said:

Okay, so I want a Mun rover for science collection, but I don’t know how to land a rover, so, any tips?

There is a BuzzFeed Multiplayer vid where a rocket scientist played KSP, and he worked on the Curosity rover, and he did a pretty good job of making one. Look at that video. 

[Cavscout74]

13 hours ago, Eric15342335 said:

Hello! Your craft looks really good! But I don't understand how did you make the platform under the rover? Is it just putting some structual panels under it? Thanks!

Basically yes.  It has fuel tanks on the side for the landing engines, then a clamp-o-tron jr attached to a pair of robotic pivots that dock the rover to the cradle.  Somewhere I stuck a probe core on the cradle so it could be controlled without the rover.  Finally a hinge & more panels front & back for ramps.  I'm not on my game computer right now but if you're interested I can probably post the design on KerbalX later.  

Edit:  Tried it, but there are parts from multiple mods even after I tried to get rid of the non-stock parts.  I'll look some more, but I know it'll be at a minimum Tweakscale & both DLC's

Edited November 11, 2020 by Cavscout74