How to make this rover indestructible.

[Motokid600]

So this rover I've been toying over for the past few days has yet to leave the surface of Kerbin unfortunately. I want this thing to do everything. One rover that can easily and safely traverse all planets.

So this one here is the best one out of the.. three that I made. And Im quite proud of it. Its fast and very durable. Four Kerbals aboard and it can hit 25m/s. But if im going to be going this fast that presents a problem. Flipping a rover isn't a matter of if its a matter of when. Now.. at 20 or so m/s the four kerbals survived. I don't know if I got lucky, but I hope not because then that makes all this pointless. The rover explodes when it flips over. Violently I might add..

Here some more views. ( Disregard the probe and decupler they are for the upper stage )

The engines you see poking through are roll over jets. They work perfectly. I have two of the small radial mono tanks slightly clipped into the craft which are also supplying two rcs ports on the side if you can see them. I angle them up slightly for stability and it gives me a 10m/s boost. Which can possibly knock off hours of travel for long trips.

And heres a top and bottom view.

I put the control probe on the bottom.. For the longest time the probe was the first to go when it flipped. This worked significantly, but now if I bottom out im screwed. Im going to chance that seeing is how there is pretty much nothing to bottom out on. ( Haven't been to Minmus though that terrain could be a rough. ) Yet despite all this the damn thing still falls apart if it rolls over at speed.

The longest Ive traveled is 33km. And it was terrifying. One wrong move and an hour was lost. Quicksave only works when your stopped which sucks, but it does present a nice challenge. So every 5 km or so i have to come to a stop, save and move on. And the less gravity there is the longer that takes. On the mun it took me over 2km to bring my other rover to a halt from 20m/s. That rover is a crane, but I imagine this rover will be traveling close to its wheels max speed.

I don't know if im going to have any power issues. I have no idea where i can squeeze in a generator so im just going to add more panels and hope for the best. ( It has two small batteries. ) I need this rover to be efficient and safe as possible. It has asas and sas so flipping this thing should be hard to do, but as the late and great Forest Gump said "**** happens."

EDIT: Let me know if you guys cant see the images.. steams library isn't the easiest to navigate.

[suzin.felipe]

25 m/s are, if I'm correct, 90 km/h. As far as I know nothing will survive intact a impact at this speed. Nor in real life, nor in KSP.

You could use some airbags from a mod http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/cp-airbag-system/, and deploy them if you are about to crash.

Hope that helps.

[Guest]

One thing that might help is to build without using the smallest rectangular and octagonal struts. Both of those parts have a tendency to setup some sort of disastrous vibrations (or something) when they're jolted. You might also want to consider some sort of roll cage. But honestly, rolling at 25m/s is going to be hard to survive.

[Motokid600]

The rectangular struts haven't been an issue..yet. it'd be nice to make it survivable at those speeds, but truth be told the thing detonates at 15m/s , 10, even sometimes at 5 if it hits right. Not sure what I can do..

[falofonos]

Do the wheels break or is it a spontaneous disassembly problem?

[ASnogarD]

Have you considered using a small engine like the ion engines to push the rover down, and possibly angled to counter rolling over... especially on low gravity planets ? I got something working with small radial engines but the rate the fuel got used up was insane ...RCS thruster require the driver to react rather than being a preventative system.

I just thought of electrical powered engines... I think thats the ION engines ? Slap some RTG's and those engines on and see if that keeps the rover firmly planted on its wheels.

[automcdonough]

check out the thread in my sig. can take hard turns at 60m/s on kerbin. I used a docking port up top as a rollcage part to keep things from breaking.

[Motokid600]

A docking port, eh? You can roll that thing over at 60m/s with out it falling apart? I don't need engines pushing this craft down though. It's very stable. It's very hard to flip. But like I said **** happens. Flipping over is only a matter of time and I don't want to loose hours of my life here because I forgot to stop and quick save 5km back. And no the wheels don't break. The craft only falls apart if its upside-down. It's a beast on all fours.

Automcdonough...in that thread you mentioned something about drifting. I'm using the same wheels as you. Minmus/Mun will be this rovers first destination. Which is drift city. Is there something to look out for with these wheels? Also..what base did you use there?

[Motokid600]

This is actually getting kind of annoying now.. this rover is ready to go, but for the past hour now ive been scratching my head at the probe orientation. No matter how hard I try I cant get the damn thing to point north and the controls are reversed. I'm completely stumped...

[ASnogarD]

Tried moving to the different hangars, and putting the probe in there ?

Its a total guess but some aspects of the craft building do change in the different hangars and its possible it will change the orientation if you take the current probe out in the SHP and put the same type back in (I assume the probe is the parent part).

Just run a silly experiment to test it out first...a basic beam with wheels to see if the orientation is suitable.