Post your Rover MEGATHREAD

[paleorob]

Brake check!

And then I F5 instead of F9. Only 2.5 km from my destination. DOH!

[Deaf3279]

Brake check!

And then I F5 instead of F9. Only 2.5 km from my destination. DOH!

OH! It happen to me many time. I know that's sucks!

[automcdonough]

TWR doesn't matter for it so a pair of ions would be better for inner planets by far than using rcs or an ant. Outer ones however you'd have to test out their actual effectiveness. Ant will probably be better but uses much more fuel by comparison

Typically I try to land near an anomaly and hoof it from there, no 3 hour long treks. So an ant might be better for me, but I'll keep the ion around in case the mission calls for a long journey. In either case, once it's up to speed you can turn it off to conserve fuel until you need traction for something. TWR might not matter but overall thrust does for sure. If i use the RCS to pin it down, it sticks to the ground like I'm driving on Kerbin.

[Darren9]

Darren9: .craft, please.

~snip~

I put it Here

[Pontiac]

After many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, *takes breath* MANY hours of trial, error, swearing, alcohol, and coffee and with a LOT of help with the tool I'm writing called "S.A.T.U.R.D.A.Y. - Simple Archiving Tool Users Really Do Always Yearn"** (Shameless plug, yes. Fire me.) that helps with going back to the drawing board with rovers I made a few hours previous, I present for your viewing pleasure, Unity. The mobile workhorse.

The purpose of Unity is for exploration in any environment. The goals of Unity...

• Be 100% self sufficient solo
  
• Be 100% mobile and stable. 5m/s seems to be the limit before I start to tip when turning.
  
• Have extra room for rescue missions if needed. Note room for 8 more Kerbals............ high hopes and all. ahem.
  
• With the docking clamps, have the ability to get the craft home if needed. Extra hardware will need to be designed for this activity.
  
• Allow for easy moving of as much of the base at once. Think "Do the Locomotion". For you older folks... Yes... Yes I did go there.
  

I've not yet landed Unity anywhere other than on Kerbal for testing purposes. Most of my time was spent launching it straight up, and landing it, correcting issues, launching, lather... rise... repeat... swear... fix... repeat... swear some more... fix... repeat... swear a LOT more... repeat.. .. well. you get the idea. For testing, I had fuel cheats on as this Skycrane has enough power to get Unity vertical and in orbit from Kerbin, but when I do launch, it will be on top of a lot of rockets. PWOMISE! Unfortunately I found automatic landing software (I'm looking at you MechJeb2 - You're awesome, but, you are quirky at times) that'd get about 3 feet from destination, then go all crazy, and I'd lose the payload. It didn't ALWAYS happen launch to launch, but I didn't want to lose the payload on the real run. So I learned a more manual method of doing the landings and have had a 100% landing success rate since then.

So thinking of how I'm going to land Unity, I decided to go with the Skycrane option as Chutes won't work in an airless environment. Some of my earlier prototypes (Lost as I didn't have SATURDAY at the time) had Chutes, which threw MechJebs landing procedure off and ended up in failures 100% of the time. Then the thought of "no air resistance at the Mun" kinda made me rethink the whole thing.

One of my major, but easily fixed, problems with the Skycrane was to manage how the thing left the precious cargo. When I decoupled, the thing would go straight up, then straight down almost crushing Unity. One came so close I lost half sight of Unity because of the explosions. No damage to Unity, but still... So the fix? 20 small SRBs later....

(4 grouped + 1 loner SRB per tank). I initially had one of the four groups of SRBs angled slightly to add a twist and lessen the vertical power, but, decided, meh... Whats a couple extra pounds? Not to mention, I can position Unity in the appropriate direction to properly dispose of the Skycrane. Worth the weight.

This kinda worked out to my favor, so fortunately the game isn't perfect with clipping yet.

Pre-launch EVAs

Ladder system to get the Kerbals out the door. That was fun figuring out. I tried metal plates, extending ladders... Just didn't work all that great.

And the final goal:

Aaand, last, but not least, the garbage man

---

**RE: SATURDAY - If anyone wants a hint to what the application can do, drop me a note. If enough interest comes up, I'll make a thread.

[magnemoe]

Flight test of an new rover with dockable skycrane, landing was almost successful.

Touched the wall of the wab this caused the lander to tip over just 5 meter over the ground, Yes I was aiming for the wab.

The 8 legs are for docking, the lower four lift the skycrane so high I can drive under the other four is to prevent tipping if the docking ports don't connect.

[BJ Quest]

Good Morning/Afternoon;

My mining drill and rovers are up and running :-) One ship for the drilling head and one ship for the two fuel rovers :-)

Drilling rig with rovers can be moves with landing gear put up. :-)

http://imgur.com/AVUj8rv

http://i.imgur.com/AVUj8rv.png' alt='AVUj8rv.png'>

The design and building went well. Production started on first try to the mun.

BJ Quest (Happy Industrialist)

Edited May 15, 2013 by BJ Quest

[spudcosmic]

Here's my mini mobile kethane miner with VT,VL capabilities.

[Junedax]

Here's a few pics of my rover in action,

http://imgur.com/a/lPRxx#0

Testing on Kerbin for structural integrity and handling

Mun Approach

Arrival on the Mun (nailed the landing first try, was beyond stoked) What a P I T A this thing was to fly.

[Deaf3279]

After many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, *takes breath* MANY hours of trial, error, swearing, alcohol, and coffee and with a LOT of help with the tool I'm writing called "S.A.T.U.R.D.A.Y. - Simple Archiving Tool Users Really Do Always Yearn"** (Shameless plug, yes. Fire me.) that helps with going back to the drawing board with rovers I made a few hours previous, I present for your viewing pleasure, Unity. The mobile workhorse.

Since I saw your design of S.A.T.U.R.D.A.Y. I really like it. You have some mods that I don't have any. So I decide to try mimic of your design with what I have... Mostly stock designs. (probably all of them are stock)

I only have 3 mod and they are...

MechJeb (it's big MUST for me)

KW Rocketry (I like to make my rocket look like nasa style)

ISA MapSat (I like to able to mapping planet before send unmanned/manned lander)

Here My design similar to your...

I has not work on crane for put it on mun yet. I'm take break from KSP and It's time for going gym

[Pontiac]

Actually, SATURDAY is a tool I am writing to backup all my crafts and persistence files WHILE I play the game. Unfortunately, I found out that in order for me to post any application, I have to release the source code, which I'm not sure I want to do for this particular app. However, since it isn't KSP centric, I might just put it somewhere else.

The mobile lander is actually called Unity, and she's one heavy beast. I haven't quite figured out the rocket part as of yet.

This was my first attempt. Ran out of gas, couldn't maintain orbit.

This was my second attempt. Bigger gas tank, bigger engine, more gas for the rover. Got to orbit... 'JUST'.... I think I might have to put on a few SRBs for the initial launch, or, rethink Unity.

So now I'm thinking I need to start on a station and a couple more rockets and payloads. Thinking of getting the station up with an extension where I attach fuel tanks with engines, then dock the rover on top of the tank, detach, and head for my destination.

Edited May 17, 2013 by Pontiac
Corrected image link

[Jaedinator]

My Huge Rover with 4 Small Probes each of them able to fly and land with ~1100m/s dV.

Rover got just enough fuel to land it without falling into pieces, but I still haven't figured out how to get it to another planet/moon.

[koshelenkovv]

Here is my new rover.

It have a battery and RTG and can run for 5 minutes in darkness and recharges in 12 minutes (3.5 / 5 without a seat which have extra battery)

Steers very easilly and almost never flips over even on a steep slopes. It tends to get up on wheels after tripping over.

It have very low center of mass

It have DEMV Ex3 seat and can be used manned and unmanned.

Testing it on the launchpad

It performs well even with one wheel broken

Just to show how small this thing is. It weights only 433 kg.

[CptNuts]

It crossed my mind, I had pictures in this thread before The Purge, so I shall have again pictures posted in this thread

See Project Cilia in all its glory (WARNING IMAGE HEAVY!):

Version 1

Version 2

Version 2.5

Version 2.5.5

And Jeb on its way to meet up with Dave:

(Size comparison of Cilia to a life size Kerbonaut)

[Znath]

Latest iteration of my rovers. I've been away for a while so all my old landing-gear based rovers were obsoleted. This one is built for high climbs on Duna so it has the ion thrusters carried over from my old Iris program. I managed to take this one from the south pole to the edge of the ice so far.

And this guy is the Gigas II I'm thinking of putting lights on it next time... oops

Landing it was a royal pain, and it landed with 2 tanks worth of fuel left. Which isn't much considering the giant rocket that got it here. It's a rover right now, but I'm going to land some Kerbals to drive it eventually. So it's a base/rover.

[ammonia_ocean]

The "Perigee" is a mid-size (~1t), unmanned scientific rover purpose-built for exploration on Duna. It has 6 fixed solar panels for driving up steep hills or rough terrain, and two SP-A deployable panels for when it's stationary or moving on flat ground. A skycrane brings it down with 4 parachutes and a drogue, then decouples on landing and uses 9 sepratrons to fly away and crash.

Edited May 18, 2013 by ammonia_ocean

[Uncle Mort]

[Polar Bear]

Being inspired by many others (it has come to my attention that CptNuts post was so long I thought it was several people) on this thread I made this:

I call it the... (I don't know).

Can totally communicate with other Kerbals.

Sorta drivable from IVA, also notice how batteries double up as railing.

Will probabaly be able to do terrain.

Did you see those solar panels on the plates? Cool... But wait! There's more!!

Decent ground clearance (I think that's what it's called).

MOAR ELECTRICITY!

A place to put rockets.

Also has a gravity detector thing and a thermometer, might need added ladders though....

Edited May 19, 2013 by Polar Bear

[Stealth2668]

^ How are you getting that to space Polar Bear!?

[spudcosmic]

I'm going to take a wild guess here, but probably by sticking a rocket under it

[Stealth2668]

But the size of the rocket will need to be so big the frame rate will drop unbearably low. He'll be dead before it gets into orbit!

[Pontiac]

If he manages to get the thing airborn on Kerbin with a small rocket, then, the unlimited fuel cheat would do the trick. That thing is huge, and certainly weighs a lot more than my Unity rover, and I'm FINALLY done banging my head against the desk trying to get the thing up!

Its taken me building a resource platform at a 100k orbit, repeated launches to fuel the platform, and a modification to the rover itself, just to get ONE rover up.

I plan on shipping more fuel tanks up. Once I establish a routine, and perhaps a better way to get the fuel to this station, should be easier to get more Unity rovers out and about. I could potentially slap one of those orange tanks with the large engine and ship Unity out to the furthest planet without any issues on fuel consumption.

What is surprising is that the huge part of that station was easier to lift than my dinky little rover. The thing must be made of tinfoil or something. :]

[_Aramchek_]

One of the stranger things I have built, that worked out pretty well actually.

It's a crew recovery/Kerbin exploration vehicle, with a jet engine for climbing those tough to climb hills.

[teuchito]

Mun Rover, with a broken antenna

Slightly modified version of the above, in Minmus

[satcharna]

This is the beautiful CHI ECV (Extreme Conditions Vehicle). It's probably going to be my main manned rover. It's standing next to its landing vehicle, which carries enough fuel to put it back in orbit around most moons. It's first trial run on the Mun worked great, and it's currently being fitted with more efficient nuclear thrusters to allow it to reach worlds further away. It can carry extra fuel tanks for reaching outside Kerbin SOI, and is fitted to be dockable with the CHI interplanetary tug.