Landing rover

[Macko939]

Hello

Ive built myself a rover and a lander to land on the mun, the problem is that I dont know how to connect these two together.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/mackomacko/screenshot/3300316195357429493

Screenshot of both of them at once.

I must be able to separate them so I can ride my rover around the mun.

[Claw]

There is a similar thread about rovers going on here.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/72045-Delivering-Rovers

As for separating them, you can connect your rover with things like the standard decouplers or use docking ports if you want to be able to reattach the rover. Decouplers can provide unwanted forces on your rover so be careful. Also, if the brakes are locked and you separate them with too much force, they might explode.

Some people connect them to the side, on bottom, or on top with a skycrane for delivery.

[Dispatcher]

It looks like you'll need to attach the rover to the top of the lander, since its own top has a transmitter on it. That's problematic, as you will either need to turn the lander sideways and jettison the rover or else use sepratrons to lift the rover off the lander at an angle.

I carry the rover under the lander and use a blue decoupler (which detaches from both the lander and rover). Given your design, your rover is intended to stay at the target, so no need for a docking port.

Here are pics of one of my lander and rover sets, to give you an idea:

Edit: hmmm. Looks like problems with the forum? I use Flickr and have had no problems before, but now I'm not able to post images; the text of the URL only is shown, not even as an active link.

Edit: You can see some of them here, when posting images worked for me: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/72076-My-Two-Rovers%21?p=1014179&viewfull=1#post1014179

Edited March 12, 2014 by Dispatcher

[Macko939]

I think I did it

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3300316195360663941/AE5CAA7872B6CE45FE1156EA106C6DAB882EC44C/

[radonek]

Ummm, hate to spoil the fun, but that rover looks very top-heavy. Did you brought it for a ride around KSC?

[Macko939]

Works fine around KSC, its ment to work on the moon so I think it should be fine.

The problem is, my rocket is rotating like crazy until 15~KM. I dont know how to fix it. :/

[Landge]

Definitely looks top heavy for the Mun. I'd spread the wheels out by placing cubic octagonals. Here's one of mine that's landed safely on every moon except Tylo.

For Tylo I used this... Tylo rover

Edited March 12, 2014 by Landge

[Macko939]

That looks nice.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/mackomacko/screenshot/3300316195362707607

I've managed to land on the mun, but I get only 8-9 minutes of power on battery, which is quite disappointing. But still, works fine. Thank you very much guys for help, this is my first rover on the moon (I'm quite new)

My rover doesn't seem to have any problems, but I need to avoid deep craters because it's not strong enough to go up the hill

[radonek]

I've just made this little fella...

[deltalambdamu]

Or you could've done like I did. I sent my first rover ever to the Mun just two days ago. I mounted it to the top of a two-stage rocket using Asparagus staging. Stage one got me out of Kerbin's atmosphere. And stage two got me into LKO, to the Mun, and landed. Yes, I used the entire stage two as the lander. Just sit the thing down on its engines and tilt it forward so the rover's wheels hit the surface. Stage two had so little fuel left that I didn't feel bad abandoning it. I used docking ports to hold it all together. So I simply undocked the rover, which had an SAS module which made it front-heavy. To fix this, I added a docking port to the very front of the rocket. I lined it up to the docking port on stage two and undocked it from the rover. The module docked to the rocket, and the rover was free to do whatever.

Just make sure that if your rover has a mono-prop. tank, that it is full. I forgot this once.... once. I'll make a video of this soon (now, maybe even).

[XOIIO]

I've just made this little fella...

http://i.imgur.com/KE2TwqU.jpg

Oh man that is awesome, I'm guessing the legs are to right itself?

[cantab]

Bit of an old thread here...

So far I've used a couple of approaches. My lightweight Moho lander had the rover stuck on the side attached to a decoupler, with a counterweight (a detachable science module) on the other side, though I landed it on the Mun without the counterweight. I strongly urge you to ensure you either set the parking brake or can control your rover before separating it from the lander. I did neither and it ended up rolling more than 4 km away! Note that I've yet to take the ship to Moho.

For my Duna mission, I opted to build a lander-rover, capable of touching down on its wheels, and launching back into orbit intact. This was one of the longer and trickier builds I've done though. Getting a rover I was happy with and packing enough delta-V for the launch wasn't easy, since I wanted something that could handle a rollover and I was dead set on using the cupola. Again, I've yet to take it to Duna, but I expect it to work.

(Not a great shot, but best I have.)

For lander-rovers, a 2-stage approach would make things a lot easier, avoiding having to haul up the heavy rover equipment back to orbit, but it lacks a bit of finesse in my view.

[deltalambdamu]

Here's that video:

I tried to have it up earlier, but uploading videos to YouTube eats ALL of our bandwidth. And when you have 80+ minutes to upload the video, there is nothing you can do besides TV. I cancelled the upload twice so we could use the PS3. But it's up now.