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.
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.
Good luck E501 make good job on Mun.