0.9 Career: Taking readings on other planets - help with design

[darthWes]

So, as the title says, I have a contract to do some readings on another planet (Duna). I'm also under contract to land a large base onto Ike, so I'm thinking of doing both missions concurrently.

Obviously I can over-engineer a giant lander and go take the samples I want. However, I would like to insert a drone and let it gather all the data instead. My issue(s) are basically with design of a rover/drone. I can't find any good resources to help me figure out how to build a rover that doesn't basically tip over/destroy itself. Further, I would really like to be able to complete contracts in the future where I might need to get some height above the target as well. Or I might want to bring the drone back home after picking up the science so I would ideally like somthing super efficient to go down get multiple readings and re-ascend to be captured and taken home.

Basically I'm terrible with drones and I need help actually creating one. Are there any good resources I can check out? Also I'm wondering what the most efficient drone would look like in theory, anyone have that sort of knowledge they'd like to impart?

Finally is there a way I can build the thing such that I don't have to continually rebuild it every time I get a new mission/contract?

Thanks!

Edited January 28, 2015 by darthWes

[KerbMav]

Your questions are a bit broad so it is difficult to start answering them - "most efficient" depends on the circumstances, but usually it is very efficient to only carry with you what you really need.

So a separate lander for your rover leaving the transfer stage behind in orbit for starters; and undocking the rover from your lander will make it easier to build it "less tippy".

Redocking something on the ground may prove difficult (without mods); e.g. if the lander packed the rover under its belly, I would go for landing struts/plane gear to either raise the rover or lower the lander towards the docking port again, but this will require lots of testing and fiddling in the design process.

There are many threads dealing with rover constructions - do not use the forum search, rather ask google "forum kerbal *****" to get better results - basically you want to build it with wheels wide apart and with a low center of mass.

I am not sure, but I think the "gather science from x" contracts do not require building a new probe every time, only the satellite, base and orbital station contracts if I remember correctly.

Also the "explore x" and "gather (unspecified) science from x" contracts only require you to do an experiment and send back the results, they do not even have to give you any science value anymore, so you can repeat this forever with your first probe.