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LiAZ-677 bus - now driveable!


kBarin

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Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you a wonder of the Soviet car industry, the legendary LiAZ-677 bus.

liaze.jpg

Some folk call this bus 'lunokhod' (lunar rover), but few know that this joking name has more truth to it than it seems.

As we all know, in 60s the Soviets had their own secret moon program, that demanded building a lunar rover. To maintain secrecy, the vehicle had to be disguised as an ordinary passenger bus, and its details had to be interchangeable with already existing road vehicles. Likino Bus Factory took the task and in 1967 successfully produced the vehicle codenamed LiAZ-677 ('L', of course, stands for 'lunar').

But then the lunar program was cancelled. To put the developed technology to good use, it was decided to continue producing LiAZ-677 as an ordinary bus. An unmanned lunar rover was still sent to the Moon later, but it was a far less advanced piece of technology.

For nearly forty years LiAZ buses roamed the roads of the Soviet Union and its successors, giving each passenger a chance to feel like a cosmonaut. Every small bump in the road created a brief sense of weightlessnes in the cabin. That's how the Soviet Union secretly trained its future generation of space explorers.

Now we have a unique opportunity to launch LiAZ-677 into space, as it was intended.

And what's more - now you can drive it!

After successful merge with the Carts plugin, the wheels happily turn, the lights shine, and the bus can hold up to 10 (ten!) Kerbals! (Its real life prototype could accomodate about 3 to 10 times more people, let alone Kerbals... but let's imagine that most of the internal space is occupied by high tech equipment.) It also doesn't need a command pod to be attached.

So what are you waiting for?

>Download!<

Carts v1.34 included.

Some things to keep in mind:

You may want to ride the bus without anything stuck on top or bottom of it. To do that, turn a decoupler upside down and mount the bus onto it, then separate. The only thing with it - after separation the game counts the bus as 'debris', and (probably) may suddenly delete it from the game with all the crew inside.

I couldn't tune the bus speed to be realistic (slow) enough without constantly getting it stuck in the ground... but more speed is more kerbal, right? It still gets stuck occasionally, but a quick timewarp usually helps.

>Download!<

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Released under Attribution & Share-alike Creative Common Licence.

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(except for .MU and .MBM files, which cannot be modified. They're under CC BY-ND license.)

Edited by kBarin
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Guest GroundHOG-2010

Likinskij Avtobusny Zavod or LiAZ (translated Likino Bus Factory) was the producer of the LiAZ 677. The L doesn\'t stand for lunar. It was designed to replace the LiAZ-158B in 1960. None of what you\'ve said is true, and should have a sentence saying that it is a fabrication.

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Likinskij Avtobusny Zavod or LiAZ (translated Likino Bus Factory) was the producer of the LiAZ 677. The L doesn\'t stand for lunar. It was designed to replace the LiAZ-158B in 1960. None of what you\'ve said is true, and should have a sentence saying that it is a fabrication.

Where would the fun in that be? He\'s clearly joking about it. Just because some people are too serious about a game that is mostly about blowing up silly rockets to take a joke doesn\'t mean that it should ruin the fun for everyone.

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It looked like the truth to me when I first read it.

Rover, bus, sold as product after decommisioned. REALLY? REALLY? You honestly thought that was real? The Russians didn\'t have a lunar rover since they barely finished their lander before the N1 went boom.

Russian lander

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK_(spacecraft)

russian robotic rover

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1

A Friggen Bus

800px-%D0%9B%D0%B8%D0%90%D0%97-677.JPG

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Guest GroundHOG-2010

Rover, bus, sold as product after decommisioned. REALLY? REALLY? You honestly thought that was real? The Russians didn\'t have a lunar rover since they barely finished their lander before the N1 went boom.

Russian lander

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK_(spacecraft)

russian robotic rover

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1

A Friggen Bus

800px-%D0%9B%D0%B8%D0%90%D0%97-677.JPG

Yes I know I am an idiot.

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Yea? I saw him today. Can do a photo tommorow. :3

????? ???-?? ? ???? ?????, ??????. :3

Thanks, photo\'s not necessary, I remember \'em quite well ;). I had been riding \'em a lot in early 90\'s... until they\'ve been replaced with PAZes, Ivecos and Otoyols (most of them being far worse than a \'cattle-wagon\', to be honest :D).

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To everyone who thought that the 'backstory' in the original post was truth - I\'m sorry, I thought it was obvious it was not. ;)

This buses were always broken-down and barely driving, but at the same time had some 'cosy' feel to them. So they became somewhat iconic to us, probably no less then The Magic School Bus for Americans. :) In fact, this WAS a sort of a school bus for Russian kids (that is, there were no school buses in SU, but some kids had to take bus to school).

So I saw this pictures and thought: 'Why not recreate this in KSP?' :D

liaz667mspacebig.png

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Glad to hear there\'s still some of them in working condition somewhere. :)

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took the time to Translate that Russian 3 The city somewhere in the ass of the Urals, eslicho. 3

;D

Yes, this translation is correct. \'Eslicho\' = \'BTW\'.

I even thought of posting translation for that phrase but then I decided it\'s Spandaxe\'s responsibility ;)

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