Minmus slippery rovers?

[makinyashikino]

I sent a fuel rover to Minmus to ferry fuel from my Kethane base to my Ore one, except the rover seems to take a couple minutes to slow down to a stop. It was empty when I tried to stop it, so it didn't have much intertia. Is it because of the low gravity or is it because Minmus is icy. Pic related, it's the rover connected to the base

Edited March 18, 2014 by Cavenyanson

[mike9606]

I think this problem is caused by the low gravity. Also, that rover looks awfully top heavy and looks like it would flip if you tried to stop too abruptly.

[sal_vager]

It's the low gravity, rovers for Minmus and similar planets/moons can really benefit from having their own rocket propulsion

Ninja'd!

[vger]

The rover I settled on for Minmus was essentially a jump-rover. The only reason it had wheels was so I didn't have to waste fuel to touchdown. Gravity is so light there that using wheels for acceleration is scarcely feasible. I even had an incident where I had to invert and thrust down because I had accidentally reached escape trajectory, just by rolling up a mountain.

[MoonMan22]

Minmus has extremely low gravity as stated above. Some of the best tips i can give you are:

• Wide Wheelbase

• Low Center of Mass

• Make sure to disable all reaction wheels on your rover this way your nor flipping over due to torque.

Good luck!

[Kasuha]

Make sure to disable all reaction wheels on your rover this way your nor flipping over due to torque.

Actually, no. Clever use of torque is essential. First of all remap your rover keys away from WASD. Because you need to control the rover's steering and torque separately. So map them to numpad, IJKL, arrow keys, whatever suits you.

Use SAS to keep your rover from rolling in turns and when braking. Use WASD to turn it back. Only switch SAS off when you want to regain proper contact of wheels with ground when not braking.

[SilentSkills]

Explore the possibility of using RCS driven "rovers" in low gravity environments.

[Kryxal]

You know, the topic sounds vaguely dirty...

[vger]

Actually, no. Clever use of torque is essential. First of all remap your rover keys away from WASD. Because you need to control the rover's steering and torque separately. So map them to numpad, IJKL, arrow keys, whatever suits you.

Use SAS to keep your rover from rolling in turns and when braking. Use WASD to turn it back. Only switch SAS off when you want to regain proper contact of wheels with ground when not braking.

I just drive it in docking mode with the reaction wheel enabled.

The only time I drive in stage mode is if I need to 'fly' or turn on a dime.

[Specialist290]

Another tip that might be useful: When driving on low-gravity bodies, disable the drive on the rear wheels. Otherwise, your rover will want to pivot nose-up, pulling the front wheels off the surface and making it difficult to control.

[makinyashikino]

I think this problem is caused by the low gravity. Also, that rover looks awfully top heavy and looks like it would flip if you tried to stop too abruptly.

Don't worry, it has two 2.5 metre Reaction wheels in case it starts to flip.

It's the low gravity, rovers for Minmus and similar planets/moons can really benefit from having their own rocket propulsion

Ninja'd!

It also has a LV-909 on the bottom that I used to land it, so I could use that to send it the 15km I was originally going to use Mechjeb's Rover autopilot for.

Thanks all of you for the help!