Smokey the Bear

@purpleivan I'll take you up on your cracker offer @Hotel26 care to join?

@purpleivan @Hotel26 @Castille7 Gentlemen of the board... I believe an amalgamation of the ideas presented would be the best course of action. A tiered system of badges, denoted by exquisite color and sheen, would be simple to implement, yet help to both increase the prestige of the organization and provide for some fun advertising. Thus I propose: · Three tiers (bronze, silver, and gold). My thoughts with this are to make getting bronze a relatively simple task, but achieving the higher levels to be an act requiring persistence and interest in achieving True Exploratory Prowess. I invite criticism for the point values themselves, as I don't know what constitutes as too much or too little o Bronze Tier: 10 points on leaderboard o Silver Tier: 30 points on leaderboard o Gold Tier: 70 points on leaderboard · Dicovering a landmark would adorn the badge with a triangle (per purpleivan’s example) · Discovering a landmark, with an explorer planting a flag, would qualify adorning the badge with a planted flag image of some kind (this would encourage landing craft on sites instead of simple fly-bys) · Discovering a landmark, and having 5 explorers visit said site, should denote a badge adornment of some kind but I can’t think of something witty at the current moment. The idea behind these three adornments is to encourage more involvement in expeditions, and create a simple yet alluring addition to the challenge of the Club. I think more adornments / permutations should be considered, but as a baseline I think this should be a sufficient start to a badge initiative

Ok so firstly, I dedicated WAY too much time to this endeavor to the depths of Kerbin's seas, but here it is.... Davey Jones' (Left) Locker Designing a stable submersible with adequate range, then crunching the numbers on how much weight would be necessary to make a Kerbal neutrally buoyant, then attaching the submersible to a rocket, then putting the rocket right on top of the "eye" of the locker... it was a good investment of time and mission planning. I have attached my calculations below, but the important numbers are as follows: Summary of Calculated Data Volume of Kerbal 0.16582m^3 Mass of Kerbal 93.654 kg Buoyant Force Kerbal (in water) 1625 N The amount of weight necessary to make the standard Kerbal neutrally buoyant is 72 kg (This can be achieved via KAS/KIS) If any of my math is wrong, A) wouldn't be surprised, I'm rocking a killer headache, B) please let me know, I hate loose ends.

Sweet Jesus that's beautiful. What editing software are you using?

I mocked up the Bronze/Silver/Gold scheme on the bezel of the compass, and the color of the oars. I could make one for "visiting a location first", just need to think of something witty or meaningful to put in the center. Anyways, mock up's below... I'm going to see what they look like with metallic texture added, I'll update this post when that happens

Yo I'll paint up any scheme / change elements at request. I'm not a graphic artist, but I do have a lot of time on my hands. I'll do some mock ups and see if anything looks good, and add various flairs and such. Gotta go mow the lawn first

Original Post for Reference Today, I sallied forth to plant my own flag upon the peak of Mt. Keverest. Coming in at 6,763 meters (measuring from Jeb's boots), it's certainly the loftiest ground I have scaled. I've found a bit of a discrepancy in the recording of the true measure of Keverest's peak, as my own data is a few meters different from @purpleivan 's original submission to the club. I shall chalk that up to differences in measuring devices, my altimeter is basically an antique. Thanks fam, I'm just diggin' the challenge. It's proper fun and a constructive use of all this quarantine time I have! Also... is there any opposition or restriction to purely air and land travel? I would love to do some exploration of the seafloors of Kerbin, but there's not many resources for nautical charting or seafloor landmarks. Most of Kerbin's seas seem to be "landmark-less" as best as I can judge from my expeditions to the sea basin East of the KSC. If anything, just getting to a specific point below the surface of the ocean (ex. coordinates) would take considerable effort... I'm going to do some runs with an exploratory submersible and see if I can find anything interesting. Map for Reference

@Chequers Atmo dV: 3149, I'll launch another mission (same craft) and grab the 'recovered cost' metric. I'll update this post with that info EDIT: Ok I lied, apparently sandbox doesn't report recovered cash money? I'll just write it off as a loss, no biggie.

I had some free time the other night and felt inspired to make a badge of sorts for the challenge. I formally submit it to the board for assessment.

Alright, so I did the challenge before the update of the rule criteria, so I just did it as an SSTO with chutes, as the wording was "All Kerbals and Craft must return". Call it being eco-friendly then, I suppose. Anyways, here's my submission: the Rusty Bucket Mission Report Enclosed

Right on both counts! Ross Bay looks a wee bit different in your shot but that's definitely just a shader thing, good show!

Back 'Atcha with another polar expedition... I have discovered a tucked away bay in the polar regions of Kerbin. It is distinguished by a large spit (seen at the bottom of the second frame) that is two to three kilometers long. The peak of the spit is well over 360 meters tall, unfortunately, my altimeter failed in an ensuing blizzard that quickly fell upon the peak. The bay is named for Sir James Clark Ross, an Arctic Explorer who made his journeys by sea and sail, as opposed to the wonders of air travel in our modern expeditions.

I have discovered, and summit-ed, Hill 303, a frozen collection of rocks standing 303 meters atop the sea ice of Kerbin. While not the closest island landmass to one of Kerbin's Poles, it's proximity to the ocean makes it a recognizable, and navigable, landmark upon the bleak ice for the arctic explorers. It makes for a navigational "attack point" from which to orient and continue on with a trip to the pole. The thorough explorer can verify the discovery of the site by reaching the summit of Hill 303, and seeing his altimeter read the eponymous number (Aim for the central ridge). Good hunting!

I have discovered the whereabouts of the Spine of Dres. While the initial clue may have seemed vague, the astute among you will find that the discoverer of the Spine has already provided the information necessary to easily locate the landmark in a prior article... Details enclosed I quite like this elaborate game of Hide-And-Go-Seek!

Aight, made another flight, got some better pictures: The mountains in the background of the shots match up, and the crater is unmistakable

I'll do another flight tonight to get the wider shot, need to test out a bigger aircraft anyways, two birds with one stone!

I have discovered the location of Tylo's Colloseum. I had an idea of where this was, and elected to fly a route contrary to the hint given. Link to Album, "Tylo's Colloseum"

Alright, so here's my submission for the challenge. I've been refining this incredibly simple prop airplane design for a few weeks, just flying it around. relatively low takeoff speed, extremely maneuverable. I came in low, along the "river" of sorts coming from the lake, then dumped airspeed with a few dips, and landed a little bump-ily in the tiny lake. Fun little challenge! Getting out with my craft might be possible, but I haven't been successful yet xD edit: I can't seem to figure out how to make the album appear here... *shrugs*

Would using a craft with a propeller engine mod disqualify a submission?

This really occurred over the past couple of days, but I've been experimenting with submarine design, with the intention of completing the Elkano Challenge by majority use of submarine. I've still go to figure out how to get the thing to cross a continent to do a true circumnavigation. I've been experimenting with a boat-car hybrid, the only drawback being limited fuel and low speed, making it difficult to complete in a timely manner without having to fly fuel to the landship every six hours. https://imgur.com/a/OmYqP In any event, it's kept me busy with a creative outlet, and for that I am thankful.

I have a question on rules, If I have a waterborne craft that cannot complete a journey across land (its a submarine), could I place a land based vehicle at the landing point for the sub, transfer the crew, traverse the short distance across land to the next leg, and then transfer the crew to a waiting 'replacement' submarine on the other side? Otherwise I'll have to design a submarine with wheels that can move across land at an acceptable speed, and I've had enough trouble designing a wonder-sub that can refit and refuel on the move.

I have an odd question, possibly even a request to make... I am currently in the early planning stages of doing an "Elkano Challenge" run, but with a submarine. In order for me to maintain an accurate heading, I have attached a Mechjeb unit to my submarine and have enabled the autopilot mode to assist with the heading issue. However, if I try to set my altitude to anything less than 0, it will not compute. Obviously, I am using this mod in a way it was not intended: I am using an aircraft function to pilot a submarine. My first question is this: is there a variable or limitation I can edit within the Mechjeb file itself to allow for negative altitude setting with the autopilot function? Secondly, can I set Mechjeb to follow a set of coordinates? If, for example, I drop a coordinate point in one spot of the ocean, and a second one somewhere else, can I command the unit to autopilot to the first point, then proceed directly to the second point? I have attempted this, but the sub will not turn to proceed to the designated point, using the Rover Autopilot function. Sorry if some of these questions are vague or nonsensical, I tried to make my statements as clear as I could. If something is confusing or needs further explanation, please let me know.

Hey folks, sorry for the odd question. I'm planning on doing the Elcano challenge (circumnavigating a planet by ground or by boat), except I plan to do it with a submersible. It's gonna be a long haul, but before I run off trying to helm some massive sub, I need to plot my course. My problem is, as one could easily see from a map of Kerbin, there is no direct sea route to circumnavigate the globe. My question is this, then: are the ice caps of Kerbin solid? Would a submersible be able to travel underneath them? It's been a long time since I last visited the ice caps, and I wasn't even looking to see if there was a gap under the ice. Thanks in advance -Bear

So, here's my submission for the circumnavigation challenge: The Marco-3 1 Circumnavigation, with a final time of 1:40:53. Took me a few designs before I finally nailed it. I could probably go faster, but I'm happy with its performance. Sorry it's not in a pretty format, still trying to figure out how to post images on this forum, it's not as straightforward as others I've posted on

So, here's my actual submission to this challenge: Nemo Base Nemo Base is located approximately 20 km from the KSC at a depth of 1 km. It consists of: - 2 Habitat modules - 1 Fuel depot - 1 Comm Station - 2 Storage Vessels, anchored away from the main structure - 1 transport submersible The base can hold a total of 13 kerbals when the transport sub is docked with the base. The base was connected and partially built in EVA by using the mods KAS/KIS. I don't know if the sub counts as a rocket or an airplane, but it can surface and dive multiple times on one tank of gas. If anyone would like any more pictures or has any questions on how I designed/built sections of the base, simply ask