MythicalHeFF

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Dres and Eeloo are the two most boring places to visit in the entire game in my opinion. Dres has a canyon, and that’s pretty much it, and canyons can be found on other celestial bodies too, such as the Mun and Duna. You can even fly through the latter with a plane, as Duna has an atmosphere. The only unique thing about it is the asteroid ring that spawns around it, but this pretty much only matters if you want to refuel, which you could just do on the surface anyway thanks to the low gravity. Eeloo is even more boring in my opinion, as it barely has any terrain features to explore (no mountains, and only has those brown cracks in the ice). It also lacks terrain scatter, and is just so far away as to not be worth the time after you’ve done a science mission or two. I think I’ve only ever visited Eeloo twice in stock KSP; every other time has been in OPM, in which it’s a moon. Eeloo has no atmosphere on the surface according to the barometer I believe. On the map screen, the info panel also says it has no atmosphere present.

The devs have already said that they do not intend to alter the Kerbol system from its current setup, so I don’t think it could be GP2. I personally think the one in the upper image is probably just the ringed gas planet from the trailer, at an angle where the rings aren’t visible, while the one on the lower image might just be Jool. The lighting does appear to have a slight green tint to it, after all.

I discovered that Vall's south pole is not for the faint of heart. It's basically a gigantic cliff face that rises 5 kilometers above the surrounding terrain, and it has a huge gap in the terrain where anything that falls in is destroyed. It's also surrounded by extremely rugged terrain that made even getting to it in the first place difficult. Once I actually reached the pole, which was at an elevation of more than 7,500 meters, I discovered that the actual pole was on an extremely narrow "tightrope" of terrain with sheer cliffs on both sides. So that was fun for Jack Kerman to walk to. Once actually at the pole, the camera angle flipped 90 degrees, as it often does when you go to the exact pole of a celestial body. However, this was made more terrifying by the fact that I was literally suspended over the void. Needless to say, I planted a flag and got out of there quick. Then I just messed around driving a rover into it for a bit.

June 7, 2016. Version 1.1, when wheels were completely busted.

That possessed Bill would make a great profile picture.

I went looking through old screenshots on Steam, and found this one of my first ever Mun landing. The fact that the Kerbal is overjoyed despite the engine having blown up and the useless winglets on a Mun lander get me every time. “Jack’s first ever Mun landing (2016, colorized)”

I don’t believe it is tidally locked, at least not from my memory of playing the mod

2022: A Laythe Odyssey (AKA basically the boat version of the Odyssey rover and totally not named this because Laythe kinda rhymes with space)

Built a gigantic spaceship, the Kilonova, and then realized how absurdly impractical a Jool-5 to-the-max would be with it. 1 kiloton, 900 parts and 12 FPS for the win. This thing is probably going to end up in my dust bin of “really cool ideas that were dropped for the sake of my CPU”.

I’ll probably just do a quick little Apollo style mission to the Mun like I always do when I start a new sandbox save or when I want to test out new parts that were added with an update/mod I installed. I’ll probably end up using a bunch of wacky sci-fi engines without even knowing what they’re capable of. Me using an antimatter engine to go to the Mun, circa 202X:

Yup. @Beamer

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I began developing sub-vehicles for the as of yet unbuilt mothership, the Kilonova, of a Jool-5 mission that I want to do. I’ve done a fair few of these missions already, one of which was a part of a larger grand tour that I did back in 2020. However, I want this mission to be taken to the absolute max, complete with rovers, a boat for sailing around Laythe, and even a mission to Jool proper (I want to get as low as I possibly can and still make it back out without using a gigantic rocket.) So far, I have made good progress on developing three of the vehicles: Vehicle #1: The main lander, called the “Bivouac”. Bivouac is to be the main workhorse for the landings in this mission, and I want to use it on all moons apart from Laythe. It went through two major designs. The original design consisted of just a lander and an additional couple of asparagus stages for Tylo descent. Here you can see it on Tylo in a test simulation: Upon liftoff, the upper stage would then separate from the lower base Apollo style, leaving the descent stage on the surface. It would then be used as a lander in and of itself for Vall, Bop, and Pol. However, this design did not include compatibility with any rover I may want to send with it, and as such I redesigned the Bivouac. The new design would maintain the two-stage design, however this time it would be compatible with a small rover to be used on Vall, Bop and Pol. It has a small docking port at the bottom which is mounted on a piston, thereby allowing the rover to be re-attached and reused on another moon. The lander is powered by four Cub engines mounted on cubic octagonal struts, with grip pads below them to provide sufficient clearance for the landing legs. It still needs landing lights and another ladder, however. The rover will not be used on Tylo, however, as the attachment node is already taken up by the descent stage, and, even though I could have worked around that, the Bivouac wouldn’t have had enough thrust to lift off again. Also, I’ve literally roved all the way around Tylo already, and as such I’m not really that interested in doing any more driving there. Speaking of rovers, allow me to introduce Vehicle #2: “Fortitude Lite” Rover The Fortitude Lite is a small rover, designed to be both sturdy and lightweight. It weighs in at just under 2 tons, and has grip pads and structural panels sticking out in various places to protect some of its more fragile parts. Testing it on Vall, I was able to drive at 30-35 m/s reliably in the mountains, suggesting that I can go significantly faster down in the basins. Vehicle #3: “Marvin” Jool Probe This one’s just a simple little probe, which will be sent on a one-way suicide mission into Jool. Named in honor of Marvin the suicidal robot. Vehicle #4: “Seamoth” Laythe Boat This is a small boat that I plan to do an Elcano with on Laythe as part of this mission. Named in reference to the submersible from Subnautica, it has a range of roughly 300 kilometers in its current iteration. I plan to hop between the small islands scattered around Laythe to refuel it using the drill and small ISRU unit. It’s currently a little bit back-heavy however, and it travels at roughly 50 m/s on open water. I’ll probably optimize the design further, and, as much as it pains me to do it, remove some of the more unnecessary aesthetic parts such as the upper deck.

And here I was thinking that Tylo’s north pole was crazy! I gotta say, how does one not lose their sanity crossing through those deep valleys over and over again? Great mission report so far by the way, I’ve been reading every entry as soon as I get the chance.

“backrooms”. Screw this zombie-infested reality, I’m noclipping out of here!

I love the New Horizons planet pack, it’s easily my favorite one of all time along with OPM. I did a whole career playthrough of it back in 2017 with version 1.3. I’m curious as to how you got it to work in 1.12?

My Mun circumnavigation is complete! I decided to just stick with the Fortitude design of rover, which is what I used in my previous Duna Elcano. The mission's setup was a little bit different, however, as this time I did not use an SSTO, but rather a simpler rocket and lander setup. Once landed on the Mun, the rover would simply just drive off of the fairing plate onto the Munar surface. Originally, I wanted to create a ramp using hinges, but this was cancelled when the hinges ultimately failed and would barely budge despite having their motor power set to 100%. Launch of the Fortitude III: Mun Landing (near the location of the Armstrong Memorial): Armstrong Memorial: Monolith! More major landmarks/milestones: Ring of flags around the Mun:

Thanks! I remember reading about your Mun Elcano a while back, and truth be told it is what inspired me to try the challenge for myself. Tylo actually wasn’t so bad to drive in terms of difficulty; the high gravity makes it possible to drive really fast without any risk of flipping over, and the terrain is fairly smooth in most places. Honestly, if I hadn’t used such an impractically oversized rover for the mission, I probably would have considered it to be easier than my subsequent Duna circumnavigation, in which the constant rolling hills and lower gravity led to much slower driving and many more explosions along the way. I’m also just about finished with a Mun circumnavigation myself. I found it more fun than the previous Duna one, as there weren’t annoying hills everywhere, but I still had to weave my way around deep craters. If you really want a difficult place to drive, though, I suggest you check out Slate from OPM. @king of nowhereis currently working on his own mission report about an Elcano there, I suggest you give it a read!

Eh, I can’t see the images because my internet is being slow, therefore Dres still isn’t real.

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CoalJ

Definitely going to go and take this thing for a spin later.