share your fast rover

[king of nowhere]

anyone who's driven a rover knows that in low gravity worlds, stability is a big issue. and the faster you go, the more stability problems you have. and if you go any faster than 6-7 m/s, you risk exploding.

I had devised a method to couteract this, by covering my rover in landing struts. those can tolerate strong hits, and allow my rover to bounce harmlessly when it capsizes. with this, i can go over 30 m/s safely.

and i thought i had a brilliant idea. but then i saw other people referring to their rovers going at those speed safely, so i realized that either i'm not the only one who had that idea, or there are many other equally brilliant tricks to keep your rover safe at high speed.

With this thread, i would like to see what everyone else did. share your projects for rovers that can go fast, safely, on low gravity environment.

the only requirement is that you actually tested it and it actually works well enough

here is mine

[sir rocket]

does my eve rover count? it could go 25-30 meters per second downhill and 10-20 meters per second uphill

[Pds314]

Friction control is a pretty useful option here. You can make your rover slide instead of rolling in a hard turn.

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, sir rocket said:

does my eve rover count? it could go 25-30 meters per second downhill and 10-20 meters per second uphill

how fast does it go on flat ground? 20 m/s on flat ground is enough, considering that if you try that on mun without special precautions you won't last more than a few minutes

1 hour ago, Pds314 said:

Friction control is a pretty useful option here. You can make your rover slide instead of rolling in a hard turn.

what if your rover jumps around on ground irregolarities? I rarely crash because of trying to turn (i learned that particular lesson well enough). it mostly happens as I take an asymmetric bump, I jump and one wheel land in front of the others. or it sets my rover spinning more than SAS can compensate for.

 

thinking on it, I guess a lighter rover may be easier to control with sas

[Pds314]

4 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

how fast does it go on flat ground? 20 m/s on flat ground is enough, considering that if you try that on mun without special precautions you won't last more than a few minutes

what if your rover jumps around on ground irregolarities? I rarely crash because of trying to turn (i learned that particular lesson well enough). it mostly happens as I take an asymmetric bump, I jump and one wheel land in front of the others. or it sets my rover spinning more than SAS can compensate for.

 

thinking on it, I guess a lighter rover may be easier to control with sas

It depends. But low friction control settings will definitely help, as the wheel won't grab the terrain.

[TheFlyingKerman]

 I routinely drive 50m/s+ for hundreds of km

https://kerbalx.com/TheFlyingKerman/Sparo-3B

 

[king of nowhere]

5 hours ago, TheFlyingKerman said:

 I routinely drive 50m/s+ for hundreds of km

https://kerbalx.com/TheFlyingKerman/Sparo-3B

 

so... if i am retroengineering this right, you rely on 2 factors to keep you whole:

- the rover is very light and has strong sas, it stays upright with it

- the rover is small and the wheels are big, so that if it tumbles, it hits the ground with the wheels, which are very resistant

am i right?

[Jimmidii]

The rover I used to drive to the North Pole is untested on low gravity worlds, but would probably work pretty well.

It relies on a wide wheelbase and low centre of gravity to remain upright, and has a lot of mass due to carrying a lot of fuel and running on fuel cells.

If somehow it does manage to flip, it's a lost cause, but on Kerbin at least, on anything that's not really rough, I can let it run forward at full speed without paying too much attention to it as it's incredibly stable. The slightly offset height on the front and back wheels helps it negotiate slopes and deal with landing after small jumps.

[Fierce Wolf]

It needs to be fast?

Or useful?

I made fast rovers, they tend to explode quite nicely

[TheFlyingKerman]

20 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

so... if i am retroengineering this right, you rely on 2 factors to keep you whole:

- the rover is very light and has strong sas, it stays upright with it

- the rover is small and the wheels are big, so that if it tumbles, it hits the ground with the wheels, which are very resistant

am i right?

Yes. The rover can actually right itself if it rolls over, and some devils in the details with wheel settings to better absorb impact.

[king of nowhere]

11 minutes ago, Fierce Wolf said:

It needs to be fast?

Or useful?

I made fast rovers, they tend to explode quite nicely

it needs to be fast, and to not explode too easily.

it's better, but not neccessary, if it's also useful

[paul_c]

Mine can do 20+m/s on the flat:

but its far more than "just" a rover. It was delivered using the big fuel tank in the middle and a small jet engine underneath.....and they still work, so it can fly too. Very handy if it tumbles or bounces into the air (just hit the throttle when its pointing up) or if one of its jobs is a little too far away, or the terrain too awkward to drive to. Does slopes well too, about 30-35 deg I'm happy with, maybe more if I'm brave. And it has a docking port on the back, it can move around and tow modules:

Other features include 8x solar panels. It only needs 1 or 2 to keep up with normal driving, so I only put 1 or 2 up at a time. I've broken 3 but still 5 left. 

[sturmhauke]

My Kerbal Dakar 2020 rover could hit a top speed of about 65 m/s, without losing too much speed on slopes. However, it uses KF wheels, which have some weird bugs making them hard to use off-planet. They break at odd times and don't seem to be fixable by engineers, unlike stock wheels.

 

[king of nowhere]

49 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

My Kerbal Dakar 2020 rover could hit a top speed of about 65 m/s, without losing too much speed on slopes. However, it uses KF wheels, which have some weird bugs making them hard to use off-planet. They break at odd times and don't seem to be fixable by engineers, unlike stock wheels.

 

KF? is it a mod?

also, how do you keep it stable? is it just low baricenter and some driving skill, or are there additional tricks?

[sturmhauke]

26 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

KF? is it a mod?

also, how do you keep it stable? is it just low baricenter and some driving skill, or are there additional tricks?

KF is Kerbal Foundries.  It has some cool parts but also some weird quirks. As for driving the rover, those wheels have heavy duty suspension with a lot of tuning options, plus there are reaction wheels in the chassis so that I can orient the wheelbase with the landing zone after a big jump. I also worked on a version using stock + BG robotics, which after a lot of fiddling produced similar handling results but didn't have the speed I wanted. I ended up reusing some of those suspension ideas for this Munar cargo hauler and construction vehicle:

[chadgaskerman]

Breaking ground is a dream for heavy duty suspension.

https://kerbalx.com/chadgaskerman/ZMK-9