Rovers! Post your pictures here!

[Stormpilot]

On 5/2/2021 at 5:52 AM, king of nowhere said:

 

 

Oh wow. You exceeded 100m/s which is about 300 KM/HR (186 MPH) that’s fast! Nice rover!

Edited May 8, 2021 by Stormpilot
Hey llok new page

[SBKerman]

This is the Chibi rover from my Spaceborne mission report.

Here it's being tested at the desert facility by kerbonauts Sarah and Siglas. Once approved for use, the rover will be sent to the newly established Placidity mun base. A prototype of the base can be seen in the background.

Spoiler

The rover, which can be powered either by solar panels or the front-mounted fuel cell, carries a suite of experiments and has enough supplies to support a descent excursion. After the test run, the kerbonauts agreed that the vehicle is equally practical and adorable.

In this image, Bill is testing the resource transfer system between Chibi and a Touchstone supply craft prototype. Touchstone is designed to land tools and supplies on the Mun and is a modification of the Keystone Enhanced which serves the various space stations in the Kerbin system.

Next, we have the Odobenus rover. The job of this autonomous behemoth is to bring supplies from landed Touchstone supply vehicles over to the Placidity mun base.

This is the second prototype being tested out in the desert. The first one was destroyed in an accident.

Spoiler

Odobenus 1, the first operational rover of the type, was launched with a folded skycrane attached to its front section.

Then a Nebula space tug docked with the rear section of the rover and brought the whole package to the Mun.

Because of a problem during launch, the tug lacked the fuel necessary to get the combined rover and crane to the planned munar orbit.  To solve the problem, the crew of mun station Tranquility took their Explorer 1 lander over to the stranded vehicles and corrected the orbit. They also fixed the crane's arms which had come unlocked.

With everything set up correctly, the skycrane extended its arms and moved itself from the front of the rover to the docking port on the top. It then began the automated (thanks to Mechjeb) landing procedure.

Having safely put the rover down, the skycrane returned to orbit. In this image, a crashed Touchstone can be seen in the near distance. A second, non-crashed Touchstone is standing just out of frame.

The next step was to bring down a crew in Explorer 1. Their job was to transfer supplies between the Touchstones and Odobenus 1.

Finally, the rover drove itself (thanks to Bon Voyage) to Placidity base. Once the first expeditionary crew get there, they will hook the rover up to the base.

Those are my current rovers so far.

[Zacspace]

I recently picked this game back up and started tweaking an old rover that i had built just for fun to see how small I could make one and still have it look car-ish. I realized that I had actually managed to make it small enough to fit in a mk2 cargo bay, so naturally I built a mk2 lander for it and made it into a serious piece of space hardware. The included lander can put it down on most planets and moons, and then pick it up again and either go to another LZ or back into orbit.

I submit for your consideration, the Rover Mini S.

Spoiler

 

[Cavscout74]

My most recent rover, driving off its landing cradle

Another relatively recent one that did better than expected service on Mun:

And my favorite one I've ever made - intended for Moho, but tested first on Mun:

Spoiler

Even though KSP has no real environmental mechanics (ie the intense heat from Kerbol on Moho), I built this to act like I actually had to worry about protecting my kerbals from the intense sunlight - the spine is a rescaled Modular Girder Segment XL, with additional girders branching off to create the wheel mounts.  Restock provides the "filled in" appearance option.  Several structural panels form the overhead protection, with solar panels covering most of the exposed area.  A single triangular panel sticks out from the side and has a folding solar panel to provide power when the sun is low on the horizon, plus an RTG in in the aft end of the spinal girder for night operations.  Underneath the structure is a Mk2 lander can for the crew, with a structure panel platform extending aft from the door.  Later versions had a small crew cabin in the aft as well.  Underneath the walkway are radiator panels to shed some excess heat.   Life support supplies are mounted on either side of the lander can to provide additional insulation on the sides.

Preparing to land:   The Landing cradle has its own large relay antenna to allow long range communications between the rover & Kerbin, with it's own solar panels & probe core.  A retractable docking arm secures the rover to the cradle via small docking ports - with careful driving, it IS possible to re-dock the rover and the cradle can perform biome-hops if enough fuel remains.  I was able to perform one hop on Mun.   On my Moho mission, the cradle experienced a kraken attack & suffered a spontaneous existence failure although the rover was undamaged.

Unloading:

 

Early ground tests on Kerbin, showing the docking arm:

From the Moho mission - most of the pics didn't turn out very good  as I was near the Mohole and every pic was either washed out by Kerbol (like this one) or in near total darkenss

 

 

Edited May 27, 2021 by Cavscout74

[king of nowhere]

The mention of fitting inside a cargo bay has reminded me of an ancient failed project i mostly forgot about: the helicopterover + helicopterocket

Helicopterover was basically an helicopter designed for eve, except it also had wheels because i would never be able to pilot it with the required precision to scan surface features or, worse, put it into the cargo bay.

Because helicopterover was meant to be loaded in  a cargo bay, by a fully automated robotic arm, and then carried on and off from the surface of Eve.

The whole project failed because helicopterocket was supposed to be an Eve ssto, which I never came close to achieving. And in fact, even though it reaches over 15 km of altitude with the rotors, Eve's atmosphere is still thick enough to make those helicopter blades a losing proposition. Not to mention, 6 tons of payload between helicopterover and cargo bay would have been way too much, for any reasonable eve rocket.

The last nail in the coffin came when I actually learned to pilot planes, and i saw them much easier than helicopters. I never figured how to land helicopters, preferring instead to just use parachutes.

But I have this video of the robotic arm left as a reminder

 

Edited May 28, 2021 by king of nowhere

[Klapaucius]

This is an old design that I thought I had lost (with a lot of others) when a harddrive failed.  I was cleaning up files on my computer not long ago and found a backup I did realize I had, so I have been slowly posting these older projects to KerbalX.  

This was originally built as a lark for @Kergarin's Breaking Ground Walker Speed Challenge.  Let's just say it took the tortoise approach to the race.

The craft file is here: https://kerbalx.com/Klapaucius/Harry-Exploration-Rover

 

 

 

[king of nowhere]

15 hours ago, Klapaucius said:

This is an old design that I thought I had lost (with a lot of others) when a harddrive failed.  I was cleaning up files on my computer not long ago and found a backup I did realize I had, so I have been slowly posting these older projects to KerbalX.  

This was originally built as a lark for @Kergarin's Breaking Ground Walker Speed Challenge.  Let's just say it took the tortoise approach to the race.

The craft file is here: https://kerbalx.com/Klapaucius/Harry-Exploration-Rover

 

 

 

beautiful!

I would not want to try and send it to orbit, thought...

[Hotel26]

A collection of rovers.

Pacemaker  I'm currently doing a Kerbin circumnavigation with this and, in the plains, it's easy to maintain 45-50 m/s. 

    

 

KW Jetta enormous fun on the Mun.

 

Invader  my stock standard with lots of aerial transports for it.  Krew: 8 kerbals.

 

AFF Scooter  original idea from AFF, but his was mono-prop propelled but I discovered that it could be RW-propelled.

 

 

Edited May 30, 2021 by Hotel26

[Astrionix]

Taurus, a rover for 10 crew and can be used to haul cargo with the ports.

 

Spoiler

 

My inspiration was from this Pat Rawlings artwork and the Parker Brothers Concepts mock-up.

 

 

Edited May 30, 2021 by Astrion

[Mythos]

This is the M4 Kerman. It does fit into a 5m Service Bay (Tweak Scale), where since 1.11 some ramps can be attached and retracted by an engineer. I have not yet planned a mission to move that garage around 

 

[Rakete]

The Wild Rover (tm) is equiped with refueling capabilities and can couple to a landed spaceship via it's multifunctional claw on the front. It's also equipped with many science experiments. It's truly autonomous and self sufficient. Currently it's crewed with Miles O' Kerman and Keiko O'Kerman. Maybe there will be more kerbals after leaving it alone for some months

 

 

Yes, it uses a little part clipping but only for aesthetics, as all my crafts. Nothing too cheaty.

[dok_377]

[Zacspace]

The last rover I posted was the smallest seriously useful one I've yet built, this one's the largest. The Heavy Refueler. A while ago, I made a cool looking but useless rover with the rovemax wheels. Later I missed a transfer window because my mobile base took to long to refuel my ssto, so I turned my cool oversized rover into an overkill mobile refinery to address the problem. It steers with a hinge in it's center like a front end loader and then since the normal wheel steering wasn't doing anything productive, I decided to abuse the tank steering glitch making this thing hilariously fast. It easily tops 50m/s, though it's virtually guaranteed to suplex itself into the ground at that speed.

with a max level engineer its 24 drills can mine ore as fast as a convert-o-tron can convert it. It has 4 convert-o-trons though and can run them all at once if you're carrying that much ore or don't have an engineer.

[Zacspace]

Not to take over the thread or anything, but I took the concept from my last post a little further.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it might be a little too large. I was able to solve a lot of survivability issues with my Heavy Refueller and it's pretty safe to drive fast now, but this monstrosity still goes nuclear if it encounters certain the terrain in just such a way sometimes. I suspect it's seams in the geometry of the ground that are doing  it. it's a shame because apart from suddenly crashing into nothing it preforms really well. It can drive all over the crawlerway out in front of the VAB with no trouble, reach 75m/s on flat ground, and it's ISRU gear is inexplicably much faster than the refueller's despite having the same set up. I apparently have no idea how resource harvesting works.

For anyone else building ridiculous things with the rovemax wheels, I found that tipping them forward (or is that backward?) 5-10 degrees increases the angle of slope you can survive encountering at speed all the way from "none" to "some". 

Spoiler

Rover Mini S from a few posts back, for some reason when it's launched from in here the wheels commit sudoku on contact with basically anything

I'm super pleased with this minimal mechanism for loading either this small plane or my standard lander on top. There are panels with same vessel interaction enabled up there, I enable the same on the landing gear/legs and keep the crane attached for transit. Nice and secure, no flopping through geometry or crashing into itself.

 

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by Zacspace
accidentally an extra word

[Cavscout74]

33 minutes ago, Zacspace said:

and it's ISRU gear is inexplicably much faster than the refueller's despite having the same set up. I apparently have no idea how resource harvesting works

Did you have an engineer on board one & not the other?  Or two different level engineers?

Nice rovers, btw.  I've done my own monstrosities of similar size that were a lot of fun - even on the Mun:

[Zacspace]

39 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

Did you have an engineer on board one & not the other?  Or two different level engineers?

Nice rovers, btw.  I've done my own monstrosities of similar size that were a lot of fun - even on the Mun:

Max level engineer both times, but the mobile base's drills were able to feed 8 converter processes instead of just one (and the converters were able to run 2 processes each without overheating which I don't think they're supposed to be able to do) I was in an area  with lower ore concentration too for that test. That's not even all that was weird about it. I hope KSP2 is better documented.

I'm guessing those cargo bays on your rover have landing thrusters in them? Your rover looks like it's even wider than mine, I bet getting it to the mun was trouble.

[Cavscout74]

14 minutes ago, Zacspace said:

Max level engineer both times, but the mobile base's drills were able to feed 8 converter processes instead of just one (and the converters were able to run 2 processes each without overheating which I don't think they're supposed to be able to do) I was in an area  with lower ore concentration too for that test. That's not even all that was weird about it. I hope KSP2 is better documented.

Ok, just weirdness then.

14 minutes ago, Zacspace said:

I'm guessing those cargo bays on your rover have landing thrusters in them? Your rover looks like it's even wider than mine, I bet getting it to the mun was trouble.

Actually, they house the drills & convertor (aft) and living quarters (front).  The landing rockets (thuds) were radially attached & jettisoned on landing.  And yes, it was a pain to get there, but was actually still reasonably stable to drive around.

[SPACE-MAN]

 

Hello Ziblins

[Zacspace]

I've worked out the kinks with the giant mobile base I posted earlier and put it up on Kerbalx. Turns out the secret was more wheels, surprising nobody except me I'm sure. KSP 1.12.1 and it's nerf of the Rovemax M1 was also a great help. Keeping the rover together at it's new top speed of only about 50m/s has been much more achievable than the previous 75. It's also what prompted me to add more wheels since the climbing power of the M1s was reduced by nearly two thirds. I came for the torque and stayed for the not-dying-in-a-spectacular-shower-of-explosions.

It doesn't look all that different so I'll spare you the pictures, but here's a link: Exoloper Mobile Colony

I have a version up with a launcher and landing system but frankly it's trash. How do you guys tend to land your huge rovers? Brute force?

[VTOL Frog]

Here is my Fold-A-Rova A science gathering rover with a wide wheel base for stability in low gravity

It folds up(thus the super creative name) and can be squeezed into a 1.25m fairing pretty easily.  Requires a little EVA construction for the bumper rack and boxes.  It handles really well!  usually my rovers just flip if I try to corner at high speed

 

a couple more shots

Spoiler

 

 

 

[tswain]

Here are a couple of Rovers.  First one is called the "Munbus"  Holds 9.   Not stable enough for steep inclines.

Here is is on the launch pad

My East Crater "Pinnacle Base" This is called the "Mini Tower"

Pulling up to the "Great Tower of Mun" @ PInnacle Base East Crater.

This is "Crater Crawler 1" Holds 3. This is version 1 I have a better version..

This rover is great for going up and down  steep inclines.

 

Now you can see it is a "Hybrid" If I drop the gear  we drop onto electric wheels so if it runs out of fuel it can make it to a fuel depot.

And  here it is on the way down

 

Oh yes the "Goliath 2" Rover Lander & Fuel Factory.

"H5" Lander landing on Moho.

 

Edited July 12, 2021 by tswain
MIssed a couple of rovers.

[tswain]

By far this is my biggest ship. I call it the "Mun Hotel"  Or the Space Liner.   Has a pile of pods to stay in and can make fuel wherever it lands. Has a spiral staircase...
Top View;   plenty of pods on top and throughout.

 

 Spiral stairs

This is a work in progress.   It gets up to 20,000 meters and then blows up.     The explosion is so bad that it eats all my ram & crashes windows.
I have 1 part somewhere slipping


 

 

 

[Mechanic]

My first two rovers, maned and autonomous with heavy lander transport that can retrieve the rover and return to orbit. The hardest part is trying to get the docking ports lined up for retrieval.

[Kerminator K-100]

On 5/26/2021 at 9:15 AM, SBKerman said:

Next, we have the Odobenus rover. The job of this autonomous behemoth is to bring supplies from landed Touchstone supply vehicles over to the Placidity mun base.

I love this one! It must be really roomy in there

On 5/26/2021 at 5:29 PM, Zacspace said:

Next, we have the Odobenus rover. The job of this autonomous behemoth is to bring supplies from landed Touchstone supply vehicles over to the Placidity mun base.

That is amazing! I love it!

On 5/27/2021 at 4:51 PM, Cavscout74 said:

And my favorite one I've ever made - intended for Moho, but tested first on Mun:

This one looks really cool

On 5/28/2021 at 7:43 PM, king of nowhere said:

But I have this video of the robotic arm left as a reminder

Its too bad this never worked, this would have been an amazing Eve mission.

On 5/29/2021 at 2:16 PM, Klapaucius said:

This was originally built as a lark for @Kergarin's Breaking Ground Walker Speed Challenge.  Let's just say it took the tortoise approach to the race.

I've never considered making a walking rover. Maybe I need to steal this make my own

On 5/30/2021 at 8:05 AM, Hotel26 said:

Pacemaker  I'm currently doing a Kerbin circumnavigation with this and, in the plains, it's easy to maintain 45-50 m/s. 

oof, good luck with that.

On 5/30/2021 at 8:05 AM, Hotel26 said:

AFF Scooter  original idea from AFF, but his was mono-prop propelled but I discovered that it could be RW-propelled.

I love it!

On 5/30/2021 at 5:11 PM, Astrion said:

Taurus, a rover for 10 crew and can be used to haul cargo with the ports.

This looks so amazingly sleek! I love the tilted cockpit!

On 5/31/2021 at 9:24 AM, Mythos said:

This is the M4 Kerman. It does fit into a 5m Service Bay (Tweak Scale), where since 1.11 some ramps can be attached and retracted by an engineer. I have not yet planned a mission to move that garage around 

I love making huge rovers, they just look so cool!

I've got to sign off for now, I'll look at everyone else's posts in a bit!

[Kerminator K-100]

On 6/7/2021 at 5:10 PM, dok_377 said:

This is so cool! Did you make the Kerbal skin?

On 6/16/2021 at 9:37 PM, Zacspace said:

The last rover I posted was the smallest seriously useful one I've yet built, this one's the largest. The Heavy Refueler. A while ago, I made a cool looking but useless rover with the rovemax wheels. Later I missed a transfer window because my mobile base took to long to refuel my ssto, so I turned my cool oversized rover into an overkill mobile refinery to address the problem. It steers with a hinge in it's center like a front end loader and then since the normal wheel steering wasn't doing anything productive, I decided to abuse the tank steering glitch making this thing hilariously fast. It easily tops 50m/s, though it's virtually guaranteed to suplex itself into the ground at that speed.

The 100 drills make it look even cooler! This is why I love huge rovers, they just exist and look awesome. I'm actually working on a huge one with a walkable interior.

On 6/23/2021 at 5:17 PM, Zacspace said:

I'm super pleased with this minimal mechanism for loading either this small plane or my standard lander on top. There are panels with same vessel interaction enabled up there, I enable the same on the landing gear/legs and keep the crane attached for transit. Nice and secure, no flopping through geometry or crashing into itself.

 

And the plane/rover bay is the greatest idea ever. I'd love to see more of this rover!

On 7/6/2021 at 10:23 AM, Zacspace said:

I have a version up with a launcher and landing system but frankly it's trash. How do you guys tend to land your huge rovers? Brute force?

Just give it a roll cage and drop!

Nah, normally I land it vertical and drop horizontal before jettisoning the lander.

On 7/12/2021 at 7:36 PM, tswain said:

 Dude, you really took MOAR boosters to the next level. Its amazing!