damerell

For a bit of a change of pace, I'm at least thinking about RSS Earth (by sea, I'm not completely mad). It seems at least fairly feasible to cross the routes of the Suez and Panama canals by land; the terrain is flat apart from the occasional inexplicable pinging-up into the air, but in a brief test those haven't been destructive, just alarming - and I'm definitely willing to use quicksaves to work around random invisible lumps in the ground when on real-Earth I'd be _in a canal_. The Earth's circumference is more or less 40 million km. The Kerbian Sea Monster will do 100 m/s full, 130 m/s half-empty, and 200 m/s dry. This suggests maybe its overall average speed is 140 m/s or so; the ten Goliaths guzzle a total of 5.8 LF/sec, the four big tanks and assorted smaller ones hold 76,200 LF (16000 per big tank), allowing us to go 1,840 km on a full tank. This is a bit odd since this would not have got me around Kerbin, and the real KSM topped out at 206 m/s, but it will do for a thumb-in-air estimate. This would mean a bit over 20 refuellings. Each tank would burn for a bit under 4 hours, making for an 80-hour journey - assuming, for the sake of argument, that refuelling took no time at all. Endurance obviously could be increased by adding more tanks or removing some engines, at the cost of making the trip still longer. I tried both ideas. Nine big tanks gives 156,200 LF; almost exactly 7 1/2 hours to burn a tank. This will do circa 80 m/s full, 110 m/s half-full, and 155 m/s dry. 115 m/s average, 3,000 km on a full tank, or circa 13 refuellings in a 100-hour trip. Four engines gives 60 m/s full, 90 m/s half-full, and 145 m/s dry. 98 m/s average, 9 hours a tank, 3,200 km a tank, again circa 13 refuellings but now we are looking at 112 hours. With some hydrodynamic adjustments and 16 big tanks - and the addition of one slightly cheeky nuclear thermal jet - I get 72 m/s full, 96 m/s half-full, and 165 m/s dry. 111 m/s average, so still a 100-hour trip, but at over 12 hours a tank there would be "only" around 8 refuellings - and on the NTJ alone I can limp along at maybe 30 m/s, I can't be stranded. The roughly 5,000km range this represents would let me cross the Atlantic from Saint Vincent to Cape Verde, and let me stop at suitable islands in the Pacific - assuming I find I have to land to refuel. If at all possible, I'll come up with a way to refuel at sea.

Tragedy averted! It looked bad for the four kerbonauts on Tylo, but two ideas came to mind. First of all, the "auxiliary" LFO engines are normally only used to smooth out landings and for fine manuever control, but there's no law against using them for a takeoff, and with full tanks they represent about 700 m/s dV, enough to make up the shortfall. Secondly, the rovers in the hangar can be raided for Supplies - extending the time we can stay on the surface doing ISRU (this doesn't help much because when both engineers' habitation timers are exhausted, the rate of drilling drops dramatically, but it's better than nothing) - and for their LFO, which gets us close to those full tanks; and since there's another rover waiting for us at Eeloo, one of them is another 50-odd tonnes to ditch. It doesn't matter that the hab timers are exhausted; the remote guidance unit and 8 kerbals on the QA let us control the Hangarmoth remotely without the 200 second lightspeed delay from Kerbin. I'm not sure I understand USILS hab timers. Everyone's were exhausted on the surface - I'm sure of this because of the ISRU effects - and yet when we get into orbit one of the engineers (the one who remained on the Hangarmoth) is happy again? Docking up with the QA. Not a lot of LFO dV left, and I'm down to my last 150-odd pulse units, but it was enough to get me home. What a relief! It would have been maddening to lose these kerbals, since there are about 200 more pulse units on the QA - the blithe assumption that I don't need to drag down all that mass just wasn't safe with a world as big as Tylo. It might just about be possible to do Vall and Eeloo with what's left, but I'm not even considering chancing it. Now everyone's back safely on the QA, the thing to do is send a resupply mission - circa 24k LFO and 22k monoprop would fill my tanks, and 800-odd pulse units will be ample. (People who use USILS may be saying, hang on, USILS doesn't kill kerbals; but I regard a kerbal who runs out of Supplies (including the 15-day grace timer) as dead.) Thanks, although much of the time I feel I'm just flailing at the keyboard to pass the time. There's a limit to how much one can write about, say, roving up one grey hill and down another. I almost found myself missing slugging over horrible cliffs on Moho in the dark.

Tragedy, however; there are not the atomic pulse units to lift the Hangarmoth off Tylo. Even if I wait until the kerbals are almost out of supplies, and dump all excess weight, there is no way they can return to the QA. The Elcano program has four more dead. Supplies on the QA will keep the 8 survivors alive. A followup mission must be planned.

I've been through this Mara biome. What, I ask myself, is Mara, other than inconveniently dark? I stopped for a couple of hours - why rove in insufficient light when I'm days from takeoff? Some less-flat terrain to liven up the roving. The end is in sight! And home at last. What a slug Tylo was.

I am around Tylo; the last of the screenshots to follow. ETA: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/146923-elcano-iv-circumnavigate-all-the-things/&do=findComment&comment=4239493 is the start of Tylo, and it now goes through to the end.

I'm plugging on; this is just where I shut down for the night (IRL). I think I have now had Enough of Tylo. The Hangarmoth is landed about 2 degrees south of the Equator, but I intend to touch the Equator again before making a beeline for it. I'm outroving Kerbol, but I don't yet think I'm outroving it enough to be in dark before I get home.

I'm very glad I only had to refuel the Kerbian Sea Monster once in my sea circumnavigation. RSS Earth is still lingering in the back of my mind...

Some jagged hills coming up. Indeed, in them I had a spin - which I regret I did not capture on a screenshot - and knocked off more of the rollcage. Mountains ahead. But mostly from there easy roving, albeit with one or two steep climbs, to cross the 180 degree mark. The Hangarmoth is at 116 degrees East, so I am past 3/4 distance, but what a slog it has been.

I'm up to the Mk VIII (en route to Eeloo), I know what I'd change on a potential Mk IX (if only there were some planets left), and at that, that is rolling the iterations of the Minmus and Mun rovers into one Mark each. I know the feeling.

Spotting what proved to be the rim of Gagarin a long way off. Out of Gagarin, in the relatively small gap between craters. Not so dramatic a climb out as Grissom. Into Tycho. Could this be the far rim? It's lighter coloured, but there's no sense of distance under these conditions. I think it was, but I'm honestly not sure. Out of Tycho. Now to head North back to the equator. Past halfway round, and no more craters, just a steady slog back to the Hangarmoth.

I'm (once again) admiring the ingenuity of @Pouicpouic's "one way up for land, one way up for water" design. I wish I'd thought of that.

Do you have a craft file for the ground vehicle, please? As you may infer, I've seen this before, and I'm trying to bring to mind what I fiddled with that fixed it.

What happens when you try?

Into the Gagarin crater. Also no dramatic crater wall, but the ground is much darker inside it. It also has long extents of dead-flat ground, unlike what I saw of the Grissom crater.

No screenshot, but somewhere around the Grissom crater I found I was outdriving the dawn, so stopped for about half a Tylo-day to get Kerbol high in the sky again.