roket

Time to explore other planets. E 501 is firstly designed for Astronaut Michael L Gallagher. In result of many test on Kerbin surface including driving up and down, fast, sudden brake; the rover was finished in short period of time. It is initially designed to drive on a planet with no atmosphere and less gravity than Kerbin. The crew can travel safe in the vacuum capsule. The most amazing thing about this rover is E 501 is able to jump over large radius of deep volcano about 20km far and land safely. I have studied the Mun surface and seems like there are very rough fields with large craters and stiff cliffs. And I came up with an idea why can’t we jump over it to reach the destination. The engines are quite efficient that enables the rover to jump app.x 20-30km (I guess) should be three times far than jumping distance in Kerbin.

The vehicle is not yet tested on the surface of Moon. Michael L Gallagher is working on the other test and updates, preparing it for a payload to Mun.

During landing or jump, you have to select the upper core on the rover to have a good direction of the prograde and retrograde. Once it landed on the surface you choose the capsule to have horizontal direction. Please press F5 before you jump, I assume it would require a bit skill to jump.

LANDING PROCEDURE

Decouple from main ship around 3-4km high and velocity of around 40m/s
Press F5
Select the upper core pressing “Control from here”
Press T and R
Press retrograde on the side of the navball
Press X to limit thrust
Activate engines (6 jets)
Turn lights on
Press Break
Switch to surface mod
Carefully work with the altitude indicator but more important is look at the surface and try to land with velocity of no more than 1.5m/s

BEFORE LANDING CHECKLIST

Upper core selected? Check
Retrograde selected? Check
Autopilot and RCS activated? Check
Engines on? Check
Landing lights on? Check
Wheel brakes on? Check
Switched to surface mod? Check

AFTER LANDING PROCEDURE

Press X
Deactivate all engines
Select stability support
Select capsule pressing “control from here”
Turn off RSC
Keep Reaction wheel on
Drive no faster than 10m/s = 36km/h

AFTER LANDING CHECKLIST

Engines off Check
Surface mod Check
Stability support Check
Capsule selected Check
RCS off Check
Reaction wheels on or idle Check

JUMP PROCEDURE

Press x to minimize thrust
Activate 6 engines
Press T and R
Wheel brake
Press F5
Select capsule “control from here”
Stability support
Reaction wheels on or idle
Hold shift to lift off
Keep the level indicator lower than 0 degree -15 is ideal
For efficiency turn off the engines and turn it on when rover falls
When the fuel is half tank consider to reduce velocity and land
Keep the level indicator upper than 0 degree 10 is ideal and try not to tilt the rover
Once you reduce velocity choose upper core pressing “control from here”
Press retrograde
Carefully level off with velocity of no more than 1.5m/s
Land

The other good advantage is that reaction wheels will support the stability of the rover during landing and jump. Also if the rover is flipped on surface it will help to turn around. When you payload connect the main ship with the frame located below the rover.

Flipped_Turtle3

If you are going to add something on this vehicle please consider the COT and COM, they should be in a same vertical line to jump properly.

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Good luck E501 make good job on Mun.

E501 rover