Reusable crane?

[Tux]

Is it possible for a crane to pick up an item or just drop off?

It would be interesting to have a crane that could go up to a moon orbit, pick up something then drop it off on the moon.

repeat.

[Specialist290]

No cranes in stock KSP, sadly. The Kerbal Attachment System has some parts that you could probably use to make one, though, like winches, electromagnets, and grapples.

[Vindelle_Sunveam]

The best you can do at the moment, is to make a skycrane system with 2 docking ports (1 to doch to the payload, and another to the main ship) and refuel it periodically.

But before doing it, make sure it is the most "economic" way of doing it, if DeltaV/Budget/Tonnage is your thing.

[Shna_na]

Kerbal Attachment System has parts that are very useful for making cranes. You just need to know how a crane even works, which is the hard part in KSP. You want to be quick though, KAS is not on the Curse page yet and the Spaceport only has one day left before closing.

[Tortoise]

It's called a sky-crane. With stock, the reason it is difficult is because of an attachment part. As people stated above, with KAS you can make one.

But with stock, your best bet are docking ports.

I used my skycrane to drop things off on minmus and pick things up to move them around.

I also made a land-crane which I don't use.

[LaytheAerospace]

I'd recommend getting KAS. There's some pretty neat stuff in there. My favorite thing so far is my Space Truck, which is a 10t spaceplane with an articulating, extending arm with a camera and winch on the end. When not in use, the arm folds up nice and neat behind the cockpit, and can be strutted down more securely if the slight wobble bothers you (very slight, even while maneuvering). The winch has a 50m cable, and can be fired like a cannon.

So my Space Truck's "docking" procedure is to fly up to the station, point the winch cannon at the station, and fire. It's also quite good at rescue missions, easily capturing ships which don't even have docking ports.