Skycrane delivered Münar rover on the Mün

[b0bl00i]

I downloaded the very nice KSP BigTrak vehicle a few days ago and thought it would be nice driving it on the moon. Then I realized it\'s kinda tricky to land on the moon with a vehicle, so I came to think of the Sky Crane currently being used by Nasa to land Curiosity on Mars. That\'s a cool way to land a rover. I\'m gonna do the same! Easy peasy... or was it =P Here\'s how NASA\'s Sky Crane looks like with Curiosity hanging below.

After some tinkering and crashing and killing good Kerblings I came up with some kind of design which would eventually work. Proved horribly hard to control so I employed Mechanized Jeb to help out in testing.

A few design revisions later I came up with this. (I do apologize for the horribly pink textures on some items)

It\'s nice and stable and can be operated without Mech Jeb, much to Jeb\'s big relief (and ego).

Big powerful delivery vehicle. (Ugly?, yes I know)

Serious rocket power! On to the Mün we go.

Orbit injection and separation from main step. Only rover and skycrane left in orbit above Mün.

Beginning break maneuvers and descent.

Looking good.

Jikes!!!!!!! Time to stop snapping screenshots and focus on the landing. 50 m/s descent and way to close!

Was about to mess it up big time with separation from crane but managed just to put it down. Then a quick throttle up for the crane to brake hover and take of again. Just barely managed to snap a screenshot of the crazy thing thrusting away from me. Close call!

Skycrane crashing down just a few seconds after touchdown, but safely delivered the rover - Did the job perfect.

On the Mün. No speed limits! 8) Jeb is happy.

Houston, we have a problem.... ???

Do we have any other attempts mimicking the Sky-Crane delivery?

[b0bl00i]

.bump.

[deadshot462]

My heavy Mun rover sky crane:

[b0bl00i]

Nice ride Thanks for posting.

[E. F. Kranz]

I tried it, with some of my early rovers. Ultimately I moved to a large lander, from on top of which my rover would blast off, land, then eject its rockets.

Finally, I decided to construct a flying rover, which led to the design I\'m having fun with now - The HoveRover.

[Aegrim]

Looks pretty big, check out mine.

[Houston we have a problem]

Houston, we have a problem.... ???

you called? lol

this is pretty cool, never would of thought of this. it could actualy be a chalenge, who could use a skycrane based lander to drop a munar exploring vehicle!

good work.

EDIT: didnt realise this was already in the chalenges thread =P

[mastere]

I have been playing with trying to put multiple robotic rovers on the mun at once, and here is what I have so far...

I have attached images of the launcher leaving with 4 rovers attached, the lander separated heading towards the moon, the craft landed where you can see one of the tailfins snapped off, and the craft returning post lander separation.

[SmiteZero]

[b0bl00i]

Nice work folks! Keep em coming!

[noneyabidnis]

I love this design. What parts did you use to make the small fuel tanks connect horizontally, and then the engine attach to the tip of the horizontal tanks, but point straight down? I\'ve been looking for the past hour to see if I could find the parts on this site - no luck. Any insight you can provide is greatly appreciated!

[SmiteZero]

I love this design. What parts did you use to make the small fuel tanks connect horizontally, and then the engine attach to the tip of the horizontal tanks, but point straight down? I\'ve been looking for the past hour to see if I could find the parts on this site - no luck. Any insight you can provide is greatly appreciated!

I used 'The Node'. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=5881.0

And I\'m pretty sure the radial 90-degree thingies are from NovaPunch. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=4180.0

I\'m using landing legs as included in the Multi-Joint Plugin. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=9017.0

Keep in mind this was the 3rd iteration of the 2nd design. It took a while to get something that was light enough, had enough fuel and stable enough on liftoff. Even then you\'ll notice I\'m using a lot of extra-strong struts attached to the mesh arms to keep it from doing the banana. I also have some slightly complicated fuel routing on the carrier/lander stage. I believe what happens is after the 2m rocket fires (under the inverted decoupler), the 4 engines on the lander also fire and suck fuel from the 2m tank. That gives me enough in the 2m tank and enough thrust (I found the 2m engine wasnt enough alone) to insert into orbit and get half way through a TMI, then leaving all the lander tanks with plenty of fuel for the rest.

Here\'s the last iteration of the first design. It sucked a bit and didn\'t have enough fuel. I only managed one landing - the first. All the rest crashed due to flameout.

[zack2014]

My attempt at this before I even knew that this challenge was here. Yes I used mechjeb to get most of the way down.

Almost at touchdown

Farther up

Also, BALLISTIC MISSILE!!!

[togfox]

My staple CART delivery rocket has the cart below the central stack with LFE\'s on either side to \'crane\' it down to the surface, decouple and launch again.

[deadshot462]

An interesting thought is whether people would have thought of this technique even if the Curiosity system was never revealed

'KSP player solves rover landing dilemma - NASA agrees it is kerbal enough that it might just work for their own rover missions'

[Elven_sword]

Can someone post the download link for a Munar skycrane lander?

[mastere]

You\'ve gotta build one! Like these!

[Elven_sword]

The craft ft files are right fecking there! Can\'t you just post them?

[zack2014]

An interesting thought is whether people would have thought of this technique even if the Curiosity system was never revealed

'KSP player solves rover landing dilemma - NASA agrees it is kerbal enough that it might just work for their own rover missions'

I did... I didn\'t know about Curiosity beforehand, well, the delivery system anyway.

[SmiteZero]

I\'m not going to post the craft because it uses too many bits from too many packs.

[hebdomad]

The main issue I had is not delivering a rover (that can even return to Kebin) to the Mun, but trying not to go too fast once I\'ve landed.

It can become painfully slow to travel across the surface at 10m/s when your used to moving at ten to a thousand times that speed....

It\'s why when it comes to exploring the Mun, I\'ve stuck to long endurance landers rather than rovers.

[tncm]

Very interesting. I\'ve had the same troubles in landing it and haven\'t though of the sky crane idea. Bravo to the guys at Nasa and to you! 8)

[grawl]

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=10749.0

My solution\'s not actually bringing a rover here, but could well carry it ! What\'s the weight of these beauties?

[kevinlacht]

<snip HUGE quote with all pictures.>

Wow! Good job!

[b0bl00i]

Thanks. It was awesome SkyCrane 2.0 is on the way.