Thinking too massive?

[envivor]

Hi! First post here. Been playing KSP for a few weeks and browsing the forums for equal time. You sound like a great community and I'd love to pitch in.

So far I've been spending days trying to get stuff into orbit (and successfully landing a HOME habitat on Duna!) but now I want to expand that base with a rover and other fun stuff. I spotted an anomaly on the map and want to go there!

I try to think of how I'm gonna land the rover most efficiently without getting too massive. I try to build frames around the payload that decouple when I've landed, but it just becomes a big block and I think I could improve on that. Should I launch the rover vertically? Or maybe in parts? What are your designs for getting those vehicles out there?

[Giggleplex777]

Can you post a screenshot of your rover?

[Ringer]

Make the rover bisymmetrical and have it hang from your lander stage. Then you can just decouple it and it'll drop a meter or two onto the surface.

The rover itself should really go light. Use a probe; command pods are heavy. Have some wheels, a little battery storage, and solar panels; the little flat ones are good, because they're less likely to get ripped off if it tilts over. A light or two won't hurt, but wheels take up enough electricity that you might want to just keep it to daytime driving.

Make sure to land CLOSE to where you want. It's disappointing how slowly rovers move, but KSP is granting us a lot more than real life; Curiosity probably isn't capable of more than 1m/s.

[Tristavius]

I prefer large manned rovers where possibly, often weighing quite a few tons, so deployment has always been a big issue. In the image below is one of my smaller rovers I landed last night (top 4 wheels) but pulling a rescue pod behind it, off to get some guys who've been stranded on Duna for years. It's still slightly shorter than my full length one but you get the idea.

I always deploy them upright... for moons I usually use 3 engines (120 degree angles) which makes it very easy to tip in the direction I want to. Due to instability entering the atmosphere of Duna last time I tried something like this I used a 4 engine design last night and it was flawlessly stable with more than enough power. As it was, I was landing on hill, so all I had to do is a last minute rotation to point the wheels downslope so the frame fell forwards correctly. If you're on a flat, simply disable 2 of the engines on the side you want to fall to and use the others to topple over. On moons the frame doesn't take any damage but on Duna the tanks and engines fell off but that doesn't matter, it's just scrap metal anyway.

Once tipped over simply release the rover... I always give myself a choice of just decoupling it's rear docking port or ejecting it with a decoupler so I can choose the most appropriate. I was worried that on Duna the fall many damage the rover but it didn't do it any harm at all.

I've seen much more eloquent methods to land them on their wheels etc, but for ease of landing large rovers, and not having to worry about symmetry, an upright deploy works excellently.

[Tristavius]

Also: the above was a total over design in the end... it landed with 2/3rds fuel, even having done most of it's own orbital maneuvers after leaving the carrier ship. It also had more engine power than it needed. Having had some failed Duna designs in the last week though I was over-compensating to ensure I didn't waste my time.

My usual moon landing configuration is 3x Mark 55 Radials and one X200-8 tank on the bottom.

[CalculusWarrior]

I go with a skycrane approach for my rovers, though they're all unmanned. I should probably attach landing legs to it, because I've had problems with burst wheels and...well...this: