How do you attach YOUR rover?

[Teirusu]

I side mounted this set of rovers.

This was juuust enough space between my engine pods, I was a little afraid when they came off that they'd damage part of the space craft, but it worked just fine!

[magnemoe]

Depend on rover types:

For fast rovers, jeep design around 3x5 meter I put under the lander. They are pretty flat to get low center of gravity. This has the benefit that the rover can be docked to lander and reused.

For large rovers, landing can and up to 150 ton miners and factories they usually keep their landing systems. This has the benefit that I can take them back to orbit or send move them suborbital.

Main reason for wheels on them is to move them 200 meter so they can hook up with KAS.

Pretty much the same with small probe rovers. However here the single unit design is more about reducing size and weight. an 48-7S with two oscar tanks and four wheels on struts can land on Mun and similar.

Using an separate lander would increase weight and part count a lot without making the rover significantly more useful.

An rover who would land on Tylo would use an separate lander because of the dV requirements. However for Vall I would just add an top mounted drop tank. Note that an 45 liter tank on this has an serious dV it can easy take you from LKO to Mun where you drop it after deorbit burn

Bottom docked fast rover in action, an reaction wheel helps keeping it stable in all conditions. it pretty much has to be manned as it pops wheels often.

Probe rover before sending it to Mun. This failed as all solar panels point upwards and was pointing away from sun during transfer. to panels on side on rover solves this.

Booster takes it almost to LKO, top tank is dropped after deorbit burn. Internal tanks give it almost 1000 m/s so you can land on Mun if careful.

Edited October 11, 2013 by magnemoe

[Fendleton]

Generally I use skycrane systems....which includes mounting a larger rover under my lander, then dropping it off before landing next to it. I don't side-mount unless I've got a really good reason for it.

.....and well......here's how REALLY not to do it. I was landing a pair of relatively small rovers (maybe 5-10t each, not all that substantial), side-mounted to a lander. I'd had troubles with them just staying on their ends rather than landing on their wheels. So I figured to tip them over I'd use seperatrons that fired when I ejected the rovers. Turns out that's not such a good idea on the Mun, and it's reallynot such a good idea on minmus (Doing stupid things again only more so for !!Science!!).

[lammatt]

skycrane is the easiest way to build, but harder to fly

while

sideway attachmant requires some weight balance,but landing is easy

it's up to you

[G4S3FR]

I strap my rovers to the sides of my landers, But this is A terrible way of doing it as it is difficult to get the rovers to land correctly when decoupled. I'd reccomend landing them beneath landers, or seperately.

[Simon Ross]

Have generally found mounting 2 rovers off the side of the ship works pretty well. Make sure the spars holding them are at an angle so both rovers fall off onto their wheels when you separate them from the main ship.

Only down side to this arrangement is you REALLY have to make sure you detach them slightly before touchdown as landing on any kind of slope will result in the ship toppling with the rovers attached