Storing rovers for landed missions

[r4pt0r]

How/where do you store your rovers on your landers? just slapping it on the side open to the air on launch feels cheap to me.

Just looking for your design ideas, I usually skycrane a rover down to my lander using a separate launch, but that costs alot of snacks now.

[Wampa842]

If there's enough clearance, I usually mount my rovers to the bottom or side of my lander (I use 4 radial descent engines), under the fairings. Otherwise I mount it on the top of a C4N, onto a B9 plastic plate which serves as a platform and skycrane.

[morph113]

For me it depends if it is a rover for the kerbals who are flying the rover to a planet or if the whole rocket is remote controlled. If it is remote controlled, then I use a skycrane to land the rover. I just build the skycrane and rover in the middle of the final stage, with decouplers to the top and bottom. Then when approaching the target planet, i decouple everything and land the rover with the skycrane.

For Kerbal flights, I do it similar, but I attach the rover below the kerbal lander so that when the kerbals land with their lander, the rover is still attached at the bottom and I just have to decouple it and it.

[Arran]

Here an older picture on how i place big heavy rovers onto a rocket..

Here it extended

Made for this one use of infernal Robotis to make the wheels independently raise and lower, since its really top heavy, and thus on slopes it would tip over, this it had to be able to stay level even on 45% degree slopes.

Second part is the storage unit that flew between the Kethane field and the Refuel Space station that i allways have near Minmus..

TBH lately i havent been really doing alot with rovers, since i mastered pinpoint landings now, and had no real need of them anymore

[Frank_G]

How/where do you store your rovers on your landers? just slapping it on the side open to the air on launch feels cheap to me.

Just looking for your design ideas, I usually skycrane a rover down to my lander using a separate launch, but that costs alot of snacks now.

That is a problem in general... i dont launch without the payload packed in fairings... Procedural fairings make so much out of a weird looking rocket...

And for your question, i go with Wampa842´s version. I clipp them to the bottom of the lander (then i wrap the lander / rover in fairings ), so i can release it with ease, or even re-dock it, to take it back to orbit.

The usual way:

The more extreme way...

[Pecan]

1. I don't do rovers.

2. When I used to they go up to orbital construction in a separate launch or inside PF.

3. They'd go down under landers, on their own or with a tug, depending on the design.

Thank you for your signature, by the way - I really must tell people who don't use sensible tools that they're having fun the wrong way.

[r4pt0r]

thanks for the advice guys, seems the general consensus is to have it below the lander. i wish ksp had something like this = http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/000731.html

Im sure there are mods for it, but im a stock purist, and as we all know that makes me better.

Thank you for your signature, by the way - I really must tell people who don't use sensible tools that they're having fun the wrong way.

i really just like to rustle peoples jimmies about not playing pure stock

[Landge]

For small rovers I just mount them to the side. Their mass isn't significant to affect CoM of the main ship.

2 Rovers mounted on the underside of my Munar Habitat which allows for covered parking. The low gravity allows the docking ports to magnetically reconnect.

A couple of my other rover designs.

Before resorting to mods I had to drop the rover and hope for a good bounce. One that would land on the wheels.

The downside was having to leave the rover behind since it couldn't re-dock.

Using Infernal Robotics and Kerbal Attachment Systems I came up with a retrievable rover.

Fairings and cargo bays would be a nice addition of parts that rovers could deploy from. Not too sure how it would work for this though.

Edited July 20, 2014 by Landge

[cantab]

For my Moho ship (which actually never went to Moho, just the Mun) I put the rover on the side of the lander, and the lander went up in a stock fairing below the CSM. I then found out the hard way that you should set the parking brake before decoupling the rover.

Pic: https://flic.kr/p/ntRijg

Unless you have a fast CPU, I suggest using mods for fairings though. Stock fairings really spike the part count.

For Duna I opted to build a lander-rover that simply touches down on its wheels. It was quite tough to build in enough delta-V for the ascent, but that would be made much easier by having a separate ascent stage instead of lifting the whole thing. For launch I just stuck a pair of them on the sides of a big rocket, no fairings.

Pic: https://flic.kr/p/nFyDW1

[Tortoise]

When procedural fairings gets updated ima store it in one.

[Pecan]

... i wish ksp had something like this = [folding, rotating, expanding, internal rover and storage]

Well, yeah, we all wish that sort of thing but it is SO much more complex and involved than anything else even if we had it right now you wouldn't want to use it ;-0 It would be cheating. According to Squad, just wanting to know what your deltaV, TWR and burn time are is cheating.

[Spyritdragon]

Ideally, slung under the lander, but then there has to be enough clearance between the bottom of the lander and the surface the landing legs are resting on, and i have to organise seperate structural support for the lander, since most of my landers are probe-sized or small-sized, not large-sized which the bottom of my landers usually is.

So, usually, i just attach them to the top of a lander with a small skycrane, there where i usually put a docking port. I then land the lander as usual, lift the rover away from the lander with the skycrane and bring it safely to the surface, since i don't like dropping them from the top of my landers xD. Usually breaks things, and its just not safe in general.

Almost all of my refuelling stations permanently have a small SpaceX-Dragonesque shuttle attached to them, so rather than docking via where the rover now is, i put a docking port on the side of the ship and use the shuttle to service it. This has the added benefit of often allowing the rover itself to dock to the lander via this side port to replenish its fuel, since most of my rovers also have a small set of thrusters attached for either grounding, increasing speed, or reversing momentum if i happen to end up flipping end over end 10 metres up from the surface.

Alternatively, if the rover is sufficiently light, ill just bring two and attach them on opposite sides of the lander, low enough so i can just decouple and let them roll to the ground.

[Technical Ben]

Well, yeah, we all wish that sort of thing but it is SO much more complex and involved than anything else even if we had it right now you wouldn't want to use it ;-0 It would be cheating. According to Squad, just wanting to know what your deltaV, TWR and burn time are is cheating.

Not really. Most rocket teams are made of hundreds of people. This is a game, offloading that to some computer stats is understandable... and what the Mission Control and hired Kerbals are for, no?

[Pecan]

Not really. Most rocket teams are made of hundreds of people. This is a game, offloading that to some computer stats is understandable... and what the Mission Control and hired Kerbals are for, no?

Huh? Offloading what?

I'm saying Squad won't put simple and important stats in the game because they think it's inappropriate, despite what 80%+ of the customers think. What are you talking about?

[Concentric]

I haven't done much with rovers. After the first rover was a monstrously large thing hanging off an arm of my Aegis Lander, I downsized considerably. The next rover was for my "Delivery" experiment where I built a cubic box with structural panels, attached drive/landing systems, filled it with a mini rover and an ion probe-lander each with four external seats, then sent it to Minmus surface to meet up with the crew of a pair of one-way landers (descent only). The ion probe lifted them back to orbit and rendezvoused with an orbiting return ship. Because the intention was "send something in a box", it was just a small thing in a box.

The only other time is for my Apollo-Like, where I made a pair of small rovers and put them in a structural panel box container on each side of the descent stage.

So, I guess I just build them to fit in the boxes?

[Technical Ben]

Huh? Offloading what?

I'm saying Squad won't put simple and important stats in the game because they think it's inappropriate, despite what 80%+ of the customers think. What are you talking about?

Off loading the work. You don't run a rocket program single handed. But in KSP we do. Yey people argue "for realism it should all be done by the player". Even the first few rockets in real life had autopilots... yet people say "for realism autopilot should be kept out". Hmmmm... Same with stats. If in real life 10s or 100s of scientists help you with calculations and stats, why ask the player to do it all themselves?

I like an in-between option. Add flight plans to the mission control, and have the option to automatically activate and action all manuvour points (including a launch window/setting). Yet in this mode remove the option for manual tweeks... or require the power and transmission costs of the antennas... that way you get a type of autopilot, but still require the player to plan and calculate the mission.

[Pecan]

Yes, that's always been my point too - I wouldn't trust an airliner that didn't have an autopilot, let alone a space mission. Any director of a space programme that wanted every calculation done by hand would be similarly suspect. Your "Not really" confused me, as I was talking about what Squad have said, not what I believe to be best. R4ptor, in particular, appears to believe anything automated or non-stock is 'cheating', and yet here is asking for an extremely complex, out-of-context, solution just to make things easier. Hence my original comments that even if we had such folding, storable, rovers he wouldn't use them.

[Skorpychan]

Why store it? Why not just put wheels on your lander?

[Yarrula]

I also sling them underneath. It's the only practical way I've found to keep everything in balance no matter the fuel burn for various landings etc. But, since I can't build rovers worth a damn, I usually don't bother. Also, there's very little point to having them around. Once you get there, there's nothing to drive to anyways.

[Geschosskopf]

How/where do you store your rovers on your landers? just slapping it on the side open to the air on launch feels cheap to me.

Well, if you want the lander and the rover to come down in 1 package, there aren't a lot of options:

1. Hang the rover on the side of the lander (or have 2 rovers for balance)
   
2. Hang the rover under the lander between its legs
   
3. Have only 1 vehicle, a combined roving lander
   

The real question you should be asking is, "why do I even want a rover?" If you want to cover long, biome-scale distances, then everywhere except Tylo, it's way more practical, cheaper, safer, easier, and less time-consuming to fly instead of drive.

[Alshain]

UGH. 502 error caused edit to become a second post.

Edited July 23, 2014 by Alshain

[Alshain]

I typically like to put the rover on top of the command pod with a decouple and then a docking port on the bottom of the lander. My rover delivery landers usually have radial chutes and engines. I then do an inversion in orbit, just be careful not to let the decoupler push the rover away too quickly. So then I land on the rover (turn the wheel brakes on), decouple and take off and re-land nearby.

Depending on how it's built you can also skip the decoupler and just use the docking port with no mate, but I use NEAR so usually the rover is mounted vertically on the launcher with a fairing and lands horizontally on the wheels.

Edited July 23, 2014 by Alshain