How To Get Over The Bane of Mini-Rovers

[NASI Director]

As someone said

Edit: They are free? How? You must tell, in a new post.

So I will tell, in a new post.

This was my situation

I soon learned that it happened to a lot of other people too, so that made me want to free them even more. Ladies and mentlegen, the real answer to how I freed them was the suggestion of another user on this forum: Tw1, and I was encouraged even more by this most inspirational quote:

Are you kidding me?

We have to keep throwing Kerbals at the Wall of Science until one of them sticks!

Anyway, all I did was use the strongest Kerbal, one who is not scared of explosions and laughs in the face of danger, one who is not afraid of sudden-poofs, but one who embraces them. He is the 6 dollar Kerbal. He is... Jebediah Kerman.

[Johnno]

So you did exactly what? Kept bumping into the rovers until they were free?

Why not just learn from your design flaws and build better rovers? Use 6 wheels instead of 4, make the rovers longer, go at it with more speed, anything really.. Are you seriously going to send kerbals to nudge rovers you get stuck on other planets rather than redesign them to work properly?

[SuperWeegee4000]

So you did exactly what? Kept bumping into the rovers until they were free?

Why not just learn from your design flaws and build better rovers? Use 6 wheels instead of 4, make the rovers longer, go at it with more speed, anything really.. Are you seriously going to send kerbals to nudge rovers you get stuck on other planets rather than redesign them to work properly?

There won't be grooves like that on other planets, and if you want to go as small as possible, the mini-rover should be the one to call on.

[OdinYggd]

Pretty sure its a known issue with the current runway, but it shows an example of a very real problem.

NASA has managed to get at least one Mars rover stuck in soft ground, in a situation where it isn't as easy as having someone walk down the runway to give it a push to get it out.

I do a lot with Microrovers as well, most of them built around the 1 meter square plate with four wheels. If you put half a meter or so between your wheels, there's a good chance in many cases that at least two of them will remain on solid ground and can pull the craft out of the ravine.

Here's one of my microrovers- one of the Leafa class exploring the base of a mun arch.

These days the only testing of rovers I do is rolling them on the pad a little to make sure they turn on command. I don't go very far.

Edited August 3, 2013 by OdinYggd

[Tw1]

I meant post, not thread, but meh.

The runway is the challenge most rovers must pass to get anywhere on Kerbin. If you can get of the runway, you're halfway to anywhere.

[GoDores]

This made me laugh so hard.