KerbalX

Description

Want to get a rover somewhere on the surface of Kerbin? This’ll do it. The launch vehicle will help you establish an orbit and fine tune an inclination (if you’re after a specific waypoint/biome/destination). You can also use whatever’s left to initiate your deorbit burn. The final stage (inside the first fairing) is your deorbit control stage. Try to aim for about a 200km overshoot of your target.

As you start getting into re-entry plasma, you can use the final stage to slow down even more, if there’s anything left. Use this opportunity to bring you to within about a 50km overshoot of your destination.

Decoupling the final engine will leave you with a ‘capsule’ with 10m inflatable heat shields on each end. Push [0] to inflate both. This same hotkey will also deactivate the control wheel torque in the cabin of the Lynx rover.

After inflating your heat shields, this will slow you down a lot. The next item in the staging sequence separates both ends of the capsule and shatters the fairing around it, releasing the Lynx inside. The Lynx has parachutes, also staged.

Inside the Lynx are fuel cells (push [1], activate these once you make orbit because the carrier has no solar panels), science (push [2]), and push [3] to deploy the ladder platform for EVA activities.

The Lynx itself is incredibly modular, and this entire system can be adapted to any number of configurations. Have fun!

For the record, I have been able to use this system to successfully drop various rovers, not just the Lynx, to within 5-10km of contract specified waypoints. I never drop outside of 50km. Your results may vary, but it wo’t be a result of this vehicle! Git gud.

j/k, no seriously, this was fun to develop and went through a whole bunch of iterations and kerbal-style failures before I got it to this stage. It can probably be adapted for a whole bunch of stuff.

A mod rocket called Lynx (Orbital Drop) - Ensatra IIIA LV. Built with 89 of the finest parts, its root part is Lynx.Cockpit.

Built in the VAB in KSP version 1.7.2.

Details

• Type: VAB
• Class: rover
• Part Count: 89
• Mods: 8

Mods

• DMagic Orbital Science
• Feline Utility Rovers
• KW Rocketry
• Making History DLC
• Near Future Launch Vehicles
• Squad (stock)
• TweakScale - Rescale Everything!
• Universal Storage II