A few questions before I start my grandest mission ever

[Shade0017]

So I had this idea that I turned into a plan. Put a probe on the surface to test landing gravity, a Satellite with a Kethane scanner into a 90 degree orbit for obvious reasons and you can never have enough satellites. After that a rover for exploring. All that on every planet and moon where possible.

Then the next stage of the mission create a main ship to fly to each planet and moon. On that ship will be a Kethane mining vessel to go to a near by moon or planet(if reasonable) get some Kethane and refuel the main ship. Then a landing pod to land a kerbal or more on the surface of all the moons and planets to plant a flag. This presents the challenge fly planets like Eve with high gravity, lots of atmosphere or both where landing and returning requires insane amounts of delta v. So I thought about using a ion powered space plane for these planets to get a kerbal down and back. So now to my questions.

Does Gilly have Kethane? Simple question but I haven't been anywhere but kerbins moons and Moho.

I put a rover on Minmus already however due to the low gravity I only managed to get the thing to dance on one wheel. While amusing it wasn't what I was expecting. So anyone have any tips for fixing this? I was using the brown aircraft wheels so maybe that was the issue?

Next ion powered space plane for Eve and such? Good, bad of maybe?

Finally for those of you who have been to the magic boulder. Should I try this mission to include it? I assume it can't be mined or orbited easily but landing on it? Should I just try and go from where I end up?

I'm sure some of my questions could be solved with Google. However I'm looking for answers along with the useful tidbits that come with more experience if anyone has any to share so I stated the question anyway.

Edited October 16, 2013 by Shade0017
Answered

[svdragster]

I think every planet and moon has kethane.

If you want a good rover for minmus, it must be really heavy because of the low gravity. I even have trouble putting a rover which is heavy enough on duna O.o

Eve has a very strong gravity, so it will take years to make orbit corrections.

[Geschosskopf]

Every body in the universe has Kethane. The question is whether it's in a convenient place or not. You want deposits near the equator so you don't have to burn a lot of fuel changing your orbit inclination a lot. You want it in reasonably flat ground, and you want enough of it to do the job. You can go into the Kethane config file and change the minimum amount of Kethane to some nice number (do this BEFORE you scan as it erases any previous scans) but the placement is luck of the draw.

The most fuel-efficient way to convert Kethane into LOF for spaceships is to refine it in orbit, not on the surface. To keep things simple, therefore, you should have a lander with a Kethane tank, drills, enough electricity to run the drills, and enough rockets to lift the Kethane to orbit and dock with your mothership, which has the refining part. All this makes for a pretty big lander so you might do better having a 2-ship flotilla, the mothership and the Kethane drill/lifter separate.

Any place where a Kerbal can achieve escape velocity with his jetpack is no place for rovers. You just don't get any traction due to the low gravity unless you put a small engine on top to provide constant downforce.

I've never thought of using ion engines on Eve but I can see 2 main problems with the idea. First, ion engines produce very little thrust and Eve has both high gravity and thick air, so you'd probably never move fast enough to get back into orbit. Second, ion engines require beaucoup electricity and you'd be limited to the single stick-on panels that won't break in the air, and/or RTGs.

AFAIK, the Magic Boulder no longer exists. It disappeared 1 or 2 updates ago.

[Blue]

For the task of an Eve launch to orbit, I remember seeing a guy who made a Minmus surface lander powered by ion. It had one Kerbal command chair, and two ion engines. Obviously for such a low gravity and atmosphere-free world, to require two ion engines for arguably the smallest possible Crewed load, it would render it completely out of the question by implication, to carry a crew to the highest gravity and thickest atmosphere world that's actually land-able. Unless you feel incredibly dauntless, go with the plan most of us go with: direct ascent with a very powerful surface-launching rocket.

I actually contemplated using an ion-assist glider to do some Evian exploration myself. The testing analog I used was treating it really rough while inside Kerbin's atmosphere near sea level, and seeing if it was powerful enough to take off or land under its own power or control. Results from an ion engine were completely unsatisfactory. Using a small rocket engine was much better for the times in which I needed power, and otherwise it could perform all the gliding tasks I wanted.

Lastly, it's already been said: the Mun is basically the lower limit of what worlds you can drive on with a rover. Any less, and the vehicle will suffer from its own torque vs. its own weight. I recall building a house-sized rover and driving it on Minmus. I put it there for the task of moving base modules around, but it could only reach a top speed of 2m/s (slower than a kerbal running) and due to Minmus's cruelly low surface friction, it was unable to bring its speed under 0.5m/s due to sliding, and I couldn't save the game. I retry'd a landing using a variation that was twice as heavy, had a lower centre of mass and retractable landing gear to halt it once brought to a low speed, but it still couldn't drive faster than a kerbal could walk. It was conclusive-enough evidence for me to say that it wasn't worth trying to bother with any other rover.

[tstehler1]

AFAIK, the Magic Boulder no longer exists. It disappeared 1 or 2 updates ago.

I've heard otherwise. I thought I read that it still exists.

(Disclaimer: I do not guarantee this information to be accurate.)

[Shade0017]

For the task of an Eve launch to orbit, I remember seeing a guy who made a Minmus surface lander powered by ion. It had one Kerbal command chair, and two ion engines. Obviously for such a low gravity and atmosphere-free world, to require two ion engines for arguably the smallest possible Crewed load, it would render it completely out of the question by implication, to carry a crew to the highest gravity and thickest atmosphere world that's actually land-able. Unless you feel incredibly dauntless, go with the plan most of us go with: direct ascent with a very powerful surface-launching rocket.

I actually contemplated using an ion-assist glider to do some Evian exploration myself. The testing analog I used was treating it really rough while inside Kerbin's atmosphere near sea level, and seeing if it was powerful enough to take off or land under its own power or control. Results from an ion engine were completely unsatisfactory. Using a small rocket engine was much better for the times in which I needed power, and otherwise it could perform all the gliding tasks I wanted.

Lastly, it's already been said: the Mun is basically the lower limit of what worlds you can drive on with a rover. Any less, and the vehicle will suffer from its own torque vs. its own weight. I recall building a house-sized rover and driving it on Minmus. I put it there for the task of moving base modules around, but it could only reach a top speed of 2m/s (slower than a kerbal running) and due to Minmus's cruelly low surface friction, it was unable to bring its speed under 0.5m/s due to sliding, and I couldn't save the game. I retry'd a landing using a variation that was twice as heavy, had a lower centre of mass and retractable landing gear to halt it once brought to a low speed, but it still couldn't drive faster than a kerbal could walk. It was conclusive-enough evidence for me to say that it wasn't worth trying to bother with any other rover.

The point of this little plan of mine is one crew using the same set of ships that it brought along for all the celestial bodies. No staging past getting off Kerbin allowed. Partly to challenge myself and to help myself get better at the game because I am far from being good at it. Phase angles makes my brain hurt for example. The sliding on Minmus is a good thing to note. Maybe potential for a Kerbal amusement park, complete with Minmus slide of doom?

Every body in the universe has Kethane. The question is whether it's in a convenient place or not. You want deposits near the equator so you don't have to burn a lot of fuel changing your orbit inclination a lot. You want it in reasonably flat ground, and you want enough of it to do the job. You can go into the Kethane config file and change the minimum amount of Kethane to some nice number (do this BEFORE you scan as it erases any previous scans) but the placement is luck of the draw.

The most fuel-efficient way to convert Kethane into LOF for spaceships is to refine it in orbit, not on the surface. To keep things simple, therefore, you should have a lander with a Kethane tank, drills, enough electricity to run the drills, and enough rockets to lift the Kethane to orbit and dock with your mothership, which has the refining part. All this makes for a pretty big lander so you might do better having a 2-ship flotilla, the mothership and the Kethane drill/lifter separate.

Any place where a Kerbal can achieve escape velocity with his jetpack is no place for rovers. You just don't get any traction due to the low gravity unless you put a small engine on top to provide constant downforce.

I've never thought of using ion engines on Eve but I can see 2 main problems with the idea. First, ion engines produce very little thrust and Eve has both high gravity and thick air, so you'd probably never move fast enough to get back into orbit. Second, ion engines require beaucoup electricity and you'd be limited to the single stick-on panels that won't break in the air, and/or RTGs.

AFAIK, the Magic Boulder no longer exists. It disappeared 1 or 2 updates ago.

I just tested a simple small space plane with Ion Engines. No luck. Another thing to note is I was testing my Ion powered satellite last night and it had 4 of the big solar panels on it. Forgetting to make it fancy I decided to deorbit it for kicks. I had MechJeb keep the satellite pointed retrograde while I burned and went and made popcorn. I came back with the satellite around 20k above the surface. Those 4 solar panels made it to the ground in one piece. I can only assume with my limited knowledge that because the panels were not side ways that they were able to stay in one piece for the decent.

[capi3101]

Rovers - try driving it in docking mode and turn on SAS when you don't want to turn; if you have a probe core on the rover, it'll have a tendency to self-correct when it wants to flip over that way. You can get away with rovers on Minmus, though the heavier the better. If you need continual downforce, try ion engines; you can leave them on without having to constant hit a button (like RCS thrust) and they last a good while longer.

[Motokid600]

You might want to wait until after .22 is released before launching this mission. Unless your quick.. I am not lol.

[Shade0017]

You might want to wait until after .22 is released before launching this mission. Unless your quick.. I am not lol.

.22 is the reason I'm doing this. I want to get at least a little better before then to make the new science system easier.