KerbalX

Details

• Type: SPH
• Class: ship
• Part Count: 62
• Pure Stock

Description

This ISRU SuperCrawler is designed for refueling large vessels or fuel carriers on Minmus’s flats (it can handle any terrain, but the scale of ships it’s designed to refuel may not be able to!)

With 14 Drills, 12 Large Fuel Cell Arrays and a Convert-O-Tron 250 it offers ample mining power under any conditions. The radiator setup is sized to meet all cooling requirements. It should be able to fill multiple large kerbodyne tanks in only a day or so.

A note about usage:

Engineer Level has a dramatic impact on power draw, this setup is really designed for a lvl3 or lvl4 engineer (i.e. it is sized for 100% efficiency), with a lvl5 engineer which causes stuff to run at 125% efficiency you’ll need to shut down 1 or 2 drills to avoid running out of EC - that is with running multiple conversions simultaneously (i.e. lf+ox, lf, ox for increased conversion speed).

Also as it uses fuel cells to provide power an engineer is a requirement to make the whole process over-unity. The small deployable solar panels are only for bootstrap purposes (i.e. if the fuel cells run out of fuel, they allow recharging the batteries)

Ore density will also affect power usage, I designed this rover for hard career where the ore concentrations are pretty crappy, if you’re playing on easier modes or have flats with high ore concentrations you could get by with a lot fewer drills.

The Orange Tank is really only for structure, it is intended that it be kept empty and disabled to keep the rover weight down (altough it can drive around with a full tank it’s less agile). The FL-T400 in the nose is to store lf/ox to operate the fuel cells.

Landing and Delivery

This model has a tail mounted engine, offset to minimize torque. To deploy this rover on the surface, you should touch down tail-first, then while still hovering tip forward onto the wheels - a maneuver I call a hover-tip.

To actually deliver it, load it in the VAB, grab it by the probe core to orientate it vertically, stuff it in a fairing (it fits) and just launch it. Feel free to add fuel to the orange tank for use during the transfer (fully loaded it provides over 2000m/s, easily enough to get to and land on Minmus) but as noted above it’s intended the orange tank be emptied and disabled when the rover is on the ground.

The engine is detachable via docking port as it is not intended that this rover ever return to orbit: However if you do desire to have return to orbit capability, then add a single Large Landing Gear to the bottom of the Viewing Cupola or some RCS thrusters, allowing the rover to aim its nose upwards and ascend directly to orbit.

Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.2.2.