The Far Wanderer-Class Mobile Base

[NGTOne]

This vehicle represents an experiment by the Ministry of Improbable Spacecraft in large surface vehicle and mobile-base design, as well as a quantum leap forward in skycrane technology, in order to fulfil (and then some) a mission of permanent habitation and exploration.

Design Goal:

A large, single-launch mobile colony base, capable of being deployed onto most bodies and of operating there indefinitely. While it is not currently designed for long-range missions (Eve and Duna are at the edges of non-refuelled range), that is an option being explored for the next version. Several variants, with varying scientific and other payloads, are also planned.

Specifications:

Mass:

Mass to LKO: 2800 tons

Vehicle Mass: 673 tons

Vehicle + Skycrane Mass: 1200 tons

Payload:

1x Far Wanderer-class Mobile Base

Crew:

Normal complement of 243, can accomodate up to 497 (not recommended)

Engineering:

2x onboard nuclear reactor

4x Rubber Band Aircraft Inc. Mk. V Track Modules, capable of sustained speeds of up to 1.3 m/s over a planetary surface

40x greenhouse module, for food production

Development Notes:

The Far Wanderer-class represents a scaled-up version of an earlier attempt to land a mobile base on Eve (that version failed due to using wheels rather than tracks, which could not support the weight of the base under Eve's high gravity). Orbital assembly of the base was deemed impractical, as it is designed to operate under gravity, and might have broken apart upon landing if it were not designed monolithically. While this vehicle is fully operational and flight-ready, experiments with deep-space refuelling (to reach more distant destinations) are ongoing (but have thus far been impractical due to the extraordinarily large fuel capacity of the transfer tanks).

Album:

KER New Home, the first of the Far Wanderer class, lifting off from the KSC.

Dropping the last lifter stage before circularization.

In LKO, with a nice view of the crater.

Coming in towards Eve.

Upside-down aerobraking.

Coming in for a landing. The chutes aren't there to help slow it down, but rather to prevent it from flipping over from the uneven drag forces along its length.

A leisurely 10m/s descent towards the Evian surface using airship envelopes. Sure beats rockets.

Landed on the surface, a few degrees off the Evian south pole.

Our way off this rock flies away (the airship envelopes had some buoyancy left, which made disposal significantly easier).

Fully unpacked, with a few surviving bits of skycrane lying around.

It's not a perspective trick. He's standing a couple of dozen meters in front of the thing.

Full album at this link.

Downloads for this craft and other fine Ministry of Improbable Spacecraft products can be found here.

Edited July 16, 2013 by NGTOne

[1096bimu]

More like a quantum leap in over powered air buoyancy parts.

[OtherDalfite]

Yeah, sorry but those baloons really killed it for me. There's no way something so small could hold up over 600 tons of rover, even WITH Kerbal-universe physics. Honestly I would have prefered parachutes and rockets, even if that meant more time and weight.

[NGTOne]

Yeah, sorry but those baloons really killed it for me. There's no way something so small could hold up over 600 tons of rover, even WITH Kerbal-universe physics. Honestly I would have prefered parachutes and rockets, even if that meant more time and weight.

I tried landing it with chutes and rockets for about a week before I gave up. The lag was too much for me to be able to handle the throttle accurately enough to make the landing, and MechJeb overcompensates for the forward motion and smashes it into the ground at a weird angle.

[OtherDalfite]

I tried landing it with chutes and rockets for about a week before I gave up. The lag was too much for me to be able to handle the throttle accurately enough to make the landing, and MechJeb overcompensates for the forward motion and smashes it into the ground at a weird angle.

What you could try is having disposable parachutes. Make pairs of four across the rover and have them each go off in about 3 stages. Even though the first two will rip off, they will slow your decent a decent amount, engage the next stage, those slow you down some more, then deploy the last stage, which should hopefully lower it to the ground in one piece. You could also give it a lithobraking panel of struts and allow it to smash those under it, cushioning the landing.

[NGTOne]

What you could try is having disposable parachutes. Make pairs of four across the rover and have them each go off in about 3 stages. Even though the first two will rip off, they will slow your decent a decent amount, engage the next stage, those slow you down some more, then deploy the last stage, which should hopefully lower it to the ground in one piece. You could also give it a lithobraking panel of struts and allow it to smash those under it, cushioning the landing.

My chutes-and-rockets landing procedure was like this:

1. Use chutes as air brakes in upper atmosphere, to prevent vehicle from flipping end over end due to uneven drag.

2. Slow down descent at chute deployment altitude using rockets, to prevent the craft from being shredded by the stress of a near-instantaneous 50-60 m/s deceleration.

3. Use whatever fuel is left in the tanks to attempt to soft-land on the ground (the chutes alone were insufficient, and these are the HOME 3M chutes, which produce 5 times as much drag as the stock units - even at zero altitude, my vertical velocity was about -10 m/s, which is far too high for this thing to survive. Not only that, but as soon as they cut when any part of the vehicle touched the ground, the rest of it would go smashing into the ground at a good deal more than 1 m/s (my maximum "safe" landing speed)).

4. Inevitably fail, due to slight but noticeable forward motion caused by incredibly powerful rockets straining against their structural reinforcements, as well as chutes being automatically cut at an inopportune moment (i.e. as soon as the slightest bit of the vehicle touched the ground). When your object is 50 meters long and weighs almost 700 tons, having 3/4 of it slam down to the ground at a speed well above 1 m/s because the chutes were cut automatically is beyond fatal, especially given that the landing envelope (in terms of performance) is very small - the TWR only rises above 1 on Eve for the last 350 m/s of dV or so, out of about 1200 m/s carried by the skycrane.

In short, I installed the airship components mostly out of sheer frustration, and a desire to move on to other projects without marking this one as a failure.

And, if it makes any difference, the fuel tanks were almost empty during the descent into Eve's atmosphere, which means what landed on the surface clocked in at a good deal less than 1200 tons. And this thing could NOT have flown on Kerbin (I don't think, anyways), even with the envelopes fully inflated - Eve's atmosphere at sea level is 5 times as thick as Kerbin's, and I landed no more than 150 meters ASL. If I'd tried a stunt like this on Kerbin (or, God forbid, Duna), I would very likely have gone smashing into the surface.

[Hooligan Labs]

Hey, I love the design!

More like a quantum leap in over powered air buoyancy parts.

Yeah, sorry but those baloons really killed it for me. There's no way something so small could hold up over 600 tons of rover, even WITH Kerbal-universe physics. Honestly I would have prefered parachutes and rockets, even if that meant more time and weight.

Now I am the one who has been updating and running working on the airship designs for a long time now. The mod was originally done over a year ago by a guy named Ludo. I focused on adding more precise controls and new shapes and capabilities rather than buoyancy realism. The math is right, but the scale was off.

But I did just release in beta the ability to change over to recalibrated "realistic" values. Check out my last post here. If anyone is interested in testing it out and posting your thoughts to my thread, please go ahead.

[Rainbowtrout]

Dear NASA,

Build one. Build one.

PS Epic!!

[NGTOne]

Dear NASA,

Build one. Build one.

PS Epic!!

I actually took some inspiration from NASA's crawler-transporters in designing this thing, go figure...

[hoodedarche0]

I was wondering if you could tell me what addon you used for the body parts of the craft? I know I have used it in the past but the name escapes me right now.

[NGTOne]

I was wondering if you could tell me what addon you used for the body parts of the craft? I know I have used it in the past but the name escapes me right now.

It's the Lack Luster Labs pack, which can be found here.

[OopsThatNotWork]

This vehicle represents an experiment by the Ministry of Improbable Spacecraft in large surface vehicle and mobile-base design, as well as a quantum leap forward in skycrane technology, in order to fulfil (and then some) a mission of permanent habitation and exploration.

Design Goal:

A large, single-launch mobile colony base, capable of being deployed onto most bodies and of operating there indefinitely. While it is not currently designed for long-range missions (Eve and Duna are at the edges of non-refuelled range), that is an option being explored for the next version. Several variants, with varying scientific and other payloads, are also planned.

Specifications:

Mass:

Mass to LKO: 2800 tons

Vehicle Mass: 673 tons

Vehicle + Skycrane Mass: 1200 tons

Payload:

1x Far Wanderer-class Mobile Base

Crew:

Normal complement of 243, can accomodate up to 497 (not recommended)

Engineering:

2x onboard nuclear reactor

4x Rubber Band Aircraft Inc. Mk. V Track Modules, capable of sustained speeds of up to 1.3 m/s over a planetary surface

40x greenhouse module, for food production

Development Notes:

The Far Wanderer-class represents a scaled-up version of an earlier attempt to land a mobile base on Eve (that version failed due to using wheels rather than tracks, which could not support the weight of the base under Eve's high gravity). Orbital assembly of the base was deemed impractical, as it is designed to operate under gravity, and might have broken apart upon landing if it were not designed monolithically. While this vehicle is fully operational and flight-ready, experiments with deep-space refuelling (to reach more distant destinations) are ongoing (but have thus far been impractical due to the extraordinarily large fuel capacity of the transfer tanks).

Album:

KER New Home, the first of the Far Wanderer class, lifting off from the KSC.

Dropping the last lifter stage before circularization.

In LKO, with a nice view of the crater.

Coming in towards Eve.

Upside-down aerobraking.

Coming in for a landing. The chutes aren't there to help slow it down, but rather to prevent it from flipping over from the uneven drag forces along its length.

A leisurely 10m/s descent towards the Evian surface using airship envelopes. Sure beats rockets.

Landed on the surface, a few degrees off the Evian south pole.

Our way off this rock flies away (the airship envelopes had some buoyancy left, which made disposal significantly easier).

Fully unpacked, with a few surviving bits of skycrane lying around.

It's not a perspective trick. He's standing a couple of dozen meters in front of the thing.

Full album at this link.

Downloads for this craft and other fine Ministry of Improbable Spacecraft products can be found here.

Not gonna lie thats an awesome/dope/kickass/sweet/impressive ride (take ur pick of adjectives). Im more impressed you even got it off the ground.

[OopsThatNotWork]

Also what mod are the greenhouse modules from? ive been looking for those.

[NGTOne]

Not gonna lie thats an awesome/dope/kickass/sweet/impressive ride (take ur pick of adjectives). Im more impressed you even got it off the ground.

Then it should excite you to know that I'm working on an even bigger model, with even more goodies than this one

Also what mod are the greenhouse modules from? ive been looking for those.

They're not part of any mod, as far as I'm aware - so far as I know, they were created as a third-party addon to the Ioncross crew support mod. I don't have Ioncross, but they still look really cool. They can be found here, if you're interested. Careful, they're lagtastic.

[jbaltus123]

Its stops in one week please vote!

[THENEWJOEMAMA]

mods used?

[NGTOne]

mods used?

I listed all the mods I use in my spacecraft company thread.

One of these days, I'll make a complete list for each of my projects (I just have to remember - there's a lot of them in something this big).

[Jivaii]

Aww man, I gots to gets me dis nao...NAO! =D

[Meltro]

---Deleted---

Edited October 7, 2013 by Meltro
Post in wrong thread

[Galacticruler]

Wackjob of the rovers.

[jtaylor13]

LOVE the vehicles.I wished the mods would load but they don't>Can you update the mods and zip into 1 pack PLEASE.

I will buy it.

[MaverickSawyer]

Make one with a REALLY big gun on top, and you've got yourself a SheVa!!!!