Elcano Challenge: All Planets/Moons Complete

[Geschosskopf]

Well, bon voyage .

I'm surprised you don't have any rudders. I found rudders necessary to keep the boat tracking straight ahead at high warp.

[Claw]

I'm surprised you don't have any rudders. I found rudders necessary to keep the boat tracking straight ahead at high warp.

I did find during my initial trials that the craft wanted to drift left when under warp while using Stability Assist. Using Hold Prograde seemed to work better, and also forced the boat into a slightly better trim condition.

So I left them off to keep drag down as much as possible. Although now that I'm underway and using hold prograde, I am finding that it wants to wander a bit. So yeah, probably should have tried adding rudders.

Cheers,

~Claw

[Claw]

"We will not make them idly..."

Scientists and engineers scramble on a collaborative effort to put a resource scanner in orbit. Nobody is particularly pleased with the results.

The director is starting to have second thoughts, feeling that the rush to launch might have endangered the crew.

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Travel Day 2

I’ve made nearly 10% of the way around the globe on the first day. Not too bad, but it’s probably only 7% of the actual journey. I was actually debating whether or not to abort this run and start over after uncovering some faults with the hastily modified prototype. However, for the sake of seeing how this pans out, I’ve elected to push on. Most notably is the aft CG causing the ship to "dig in," and the tendency for the ship to wander without a rudder, both of which are problems under warp.

There is definitely risk to the kerbals here, especially when I make landfall. I’m also concerned about refueling operations now, since I have to do them more frequently and in some places I hadn’t considered before the most recent jet engine changes. I’m definitely a risk adverse player, but rather than back away from this one and starting over, I’m going to press ahead and see what other risk mitigation I can try along the way.

So, first step is to launch a resource scanner into orbit, before the crew has to wake up. The scientists and engineers whip up a quick orbital scanner probe and get it to orbit uneventfully. As alluded to earlier, the results aren’t particularly promising.

Turns out the little peninsula I was looking to refuel on initially (which the Cockroach is currently parked next to) doesn’t have much of a resource concentration (actually there’s no color on it at all). This refueling stop isn’t critical, but I was going to use this one before making the big traverse across the open ocean on the way to the land pass. I could still go there and accept the slow production rate, but it’s feeling overly risky for such a poor stop. I already know how the shore is there (a bit steep), since an unmanned prototype made a stop there previously.

Now, it looks like I need to either hug the coast to make a stop later (Options marked A or , or aim for the large island in the middle of the ocean (marked C). I’ve ruled out changing the route to Option D since I hadn’t surveyed that path: it’s rougher terrain and there’s no water to capitalize on. Way too risky for pretty much zero payback.

After surveying the map for a while (at kerbalmaps.com) I elect to aim for the island, and start underway. While enroute, I continue messing with the CoM and let most of the LF burn down. Eventually it’s balanced enough that I can run full throttle at 4x warp! Yay! The downside of this is that it requires a lot more attention to balance fuel, ore, and electrical charge. At one point the pilots were listening to youtube and didn’t notice the electrical charge ran out. It went unnoticed until executing a minor course correction which resulted in the ship spinning out. At the end of the day, I close within sight of the island and stop for the crew to sleep. After sending the ship out of control earlier, I don’t want to risk a night landing with a tired crew.

I still have about one third of fuel remaining, and now have a bit of a debate: Execute this refueling, or skip it and try to make it to reach the land pass. The large island is also surrounded by several steep shores. Also, lower fuel holdings means the ship is capable of traveling at 4x warp. However, it’s proving very difficult to determine exactly how far the ship needs to travel (and how much fuel it needs). Plus I am not confident about what the shore looks like.

At least I’m feeling better about putting the crew to sleep for the night.

---

---

The scientists work feverishly through the night and, with the concurrence of the engineers, develop a plan for the director.

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Travel Day 3

Further map study through the night reveals a promising option. The large island has a few landing areas, but more detailed analysis of the outlying archipelagos shows that the eastern barrier island might have gentle slopes. Additionally, it appears the option exists for the Cockroach to drive straight across the island if necessary. Again, in the rush to deploy, the engineers now realize the faulty decision to not include a means to drive in reverse. The option to “drive through†the island will reduce the risk a bit.

The director has agreed to this option, on the condition that the Cockroach execute a reconnaissance pass around the south end of the main island while enroute to the eastern barrier island. When possible, islands of opportunity will also be surveyed on the way. The final spot will be chosen after team collaboration.

The scientists also offer another option to attempt: Offshore drilling. It’s risky and requires some reasonably flat land. The director okays immediate deployment of the Calamari prototype to conduct feasibility testing at the shores around KSC to determine feasibility while the Cockroach is enroute.

Turns out the offshore drilling option isn't very good. The ship doesn't like going into and coming out of warp like this, and it tends to drift while drilling at 1x speed (not to mention that it's slow drilling). At least one wheel has to be on the ground so it qualifies as landed, or the drill doesn't even work.

In the end, there actually isn't much traveling this day, as it's primary goal is to make landfall and start pulling ore. I circle around the big island and make landfall on one of the smaller islands on the east side. The roll-on roll-off style works out great. I fast forward a couple days and only pull enough extra ore to make it to the land bridge. I might have been able to make it without stopping here, but I didn't want to take the risk of getting stranded at sea since I'm not fully certain about the range of this thing yet.

Technically the "end spot" for this day is right at the refueling site (since it takes a couple days), but I'll cut this "Travel Day" at landfall on the land bride.

Edited July 12, 2015 by Claw

[Vanamonde]

This is a crazy amount of time and effort.

[Geschosskopf]

Turns out the little peninsula I was looking to refuel on initially (which the Cockroach is currently parked next to) doesn’t have much of a resource concentration (actually there’s no color on it at all)

Why are you paying any attention at all to what the "shockingly inaccurate" (Roverdude's own words) orbital survey tells you at all? It tells you NOTHING about where Ore actually is. It only tells you where most of the surface in an area the size of Texas is composed of 1 or more biomes that have, on average, more Ore than other biomes. That's all it says. It's utterly and completely useless at actually finding decent Ore where you need it.

Please tell me La Cucaracha has at least a surface scanner aboard, maybe an NBS? No? Well, no problem. Just assume that every inchi of the Shores biome has about the best Ore you'll ever see on this trip. I'm sure it'll be 5-7%. If it's there, the drills will find it even if you don't know what the concentration is.

The reason the Shores never show up on the orbital survey is that they're so narrow, they get lost in the vast Ore-less wastelands of Grasslands and Ocean adjacent to them on both sides. The only place you'll see the orbital survay show color for the Shore biome is on a few small islands that are pretty much all Shore, way out in the ocean far from land. These show up as large hotspots but most of that is ocean which is hard-coded to have zero Ore so apparently the survey just ignores ocean entirely.

[Claw]

Why are you paying any attention at all to what the "shockingly inaccurate" (Roverdude's own words) orbital survey tells you at all? It tells you NOTHING about where Ore actually is.

Because it's the only large scale planning tool there is. I've also not done a lot of prospecting, so I'll admit to my lack of experience here. Really, I'm trying not to use my inside knowledge to simply bowl through my first real ISRU usage. I know it's horribly inaccurate, which actually leads me to the one thing that really drives me crazy in this game: The utter lack of planning tools. Then, one of the few planning tools that exists is nerfed beyond usefulness.

Also, I didn't include a ground scanner on the ship because it isn't a prospecting mission. So, unfortunately, when I have to stop it won't matter what the concentration is. I have to accept it because I need fuel. The mission report lags a bit, but I've already scanned the shores around KSC and it's 3 or 4%. Unfortunately this map is pretty lacking, but since time is irrelevant, it won't matter how long it takes to refuel (which turns out to be three weeks for a full load when I stop).

Though it might be somewhat late to apply to this mission, I do appreciate your insights. Thanks!

Cheers,

-Claw

[Claw]

“That’s the beauty of nature; it always comes up with these wonderful surprises.â€Â

---

The scientists are astounded, the engineers relieved, and the pilots are just happy to be alive.

The director is left scratching his head, as if his worst concerns had been confirmed.

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Travel Day 4

This post is about crossing the narrow-ish land bridge at the north end of the big eastern continent, the most nail-biting portion of the journey. Map study through this area shows that it’s smooth but rolling terrain. So long as the crew can stay away from the edges of the water (steep terrain) or the mountain foothills (excessively rolly), they should be okay. Although the crew does aim to find spots to drop into the lakes along the way and take advantage of the higher water speed. As it stands, they did encounter a few problems on this leg of the journey.

The Cockroach drove into the deepest part of the inlet before finally climbing onto shore. Getting up onto shore went as well as in previous sea trials and was relatively uneventful.

Once ashore, the real fun began.

The first anomaly happened while cruising along down a small ridgeline and across a valley. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but it looked like the glitch where the wheels catch the seam in the terrain. If you’re unfamiliar with this glitch, the terrain in KSP is composed of large “grids.†There are seams where these grids meet, and sometimes wheels crossing these seams can get hung up. As it was, the crew was rolling along at 2x warp when the front left leg of the Cockroach caught on a seam and bent, rotating approximately 90 degrees from where it should be. This caused the Cockroach to trip forward and drive shoulder first into the ground. Below, you can see the wreckage from this event. Somehow, miraculously, the crew cabin survived.

So after this, I was stuck in a bit of a “what to do?†The craft crashed under warp due to a glitch, and the crew survived. The only restriction I placed on myself for quickloads/quicksaves was that I wouldn’t use it to escape a fatality that was my fault. Well, when I flipped over to see what else I could do, the kraken ate my save. So, pretty much no choice but to go back a save and try again.

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After that event, I decide that time warp isn’t going to be as much of an option. The result is that the rest of this leg of the journey was spread over a few real days, which necessitated some saving/loading. For the most part, that turns out okay until about the half way point...

At roughly the half way point, I loaded up the game and discovered the Cockroach sank into the terrain all the way to the landing gear wells. Cycling the landing gear a few times didn’t work, so the crew decided to throttle up the engine a little to see if they could rock the Cockroach loose. Turns out that was a really bad idea.

The wheels broke loose all right. The legs sheared off and the body of the craft basically exploded (looked more like some sort of kraken attack). The Cockroach erupted into a ball of fire and explosions, leaving nothing but legs and (by some miracle) the crew. Literally nothing else. I feel even less guilty about quickloading out of this one, since it turned out that a full restart of KSP was required...

After that, the rest of the leg was uneventful, though it was definitely my biggest concern for the mission as a whole. To keep the Cockroach’s weight down, the mission director waited till the end of the leg to stop for refueling (which took about three unremarkable weeks of time warping). However, the crew did spend some time to take in the scenery, which I’ll share a bit of below.

Cheers,

~Claw

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[damerell]

I got fired into the air by a "seam" on Minmus, but I did see it coming and drove over it anyway.

[Claw]

“Anticipation of completion is nearly as exciting as the arrival itself.â€Â

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Travel Day 5

After the seemingly rough trek through the land pass, the second half of the journey passed quickly by. The land bridge was a little less than half the distance of the trip, but marked the end of the most difficult phase of the mission. The crew now has a much better feel for how the ship handles.

As a result, maintaining trim on the ship is a lot easier which ends up yielding a better average top speed, and (by extension) better fuel economy. The crew still stops for rest at night, but after three weeks of sitting around (refueling), they eagerly press ahead into slightly longer travel days.

Except for a couple quickload hiccups, these travel days are relatively uneventful. During the day, the crew spent a little time exploring an island in the middle of the ocean they didn’t know existed. By the end of day 5, the crew has nearly made it to the main equatorial pass and drops anchor for the night.

At this point, the Director anticipates the Cockroach will have to stop at the end of day 6 to refuel and select a peninsula which looks like it’ll be far enough along to be the final refueling stop. (Which I'd mark on a map, but it's in the pictures below).

Travel Day 6

After traveling so much in the open ocean (for all but the land crossing), the crew follows the coastlines south then east, and head for the peninsula that harbors the final fuel stop.

I found myself paying less and less attention to the craft as I was plotting and planning things out. Because of the design, it actually doesn’t take much attention to drive, but does require some attention to the systems. On at least one occasion, the ship ran out of LF because the crew forgot to convert more Ore when required. On another time or two, the ship ran out of electrical charge because the converter was left on. Not a big deal, but resulted in spinning out when trying to make a course correction.

Not a lot of excitement on these two days, but here is a bit more scenery from Day 5 & 6...

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Cheers,

~Claw

[Claw]

I got fired into the air by a "seam" on Minmus, but I did see it coming and drove over it anyway.

Heh. Yeah, it's been a while since I have done this much ground coverage. I had forgotten about that little "feature."

[Claw]

“Complacency is a friend of fearlessness. When working together, they can make great and terrible things happen.â€Â

---

The pilots vow to never speak of this again.

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Travel Day 7

Day 7 is pretty uneventful, until the end. The crew decided to stop slightly early near an island within a day's travel of home, in hopes of squeezing in a relaxing victory swim. Things are going fine, until a Kraken from the deep shows up and swallows the whole ship. No kidding, the whole ship just blew straight into the water, pulling the swimming crew down with it. Most of the ship disintegrated, and the crew was pulled about 300m below sea level.

After that, I decided to quickload and just timewarp to the next morning (sometimes this game can be a little buggy...)

Travel Day 8 - Homecoming

So, day 8 was actually a little bit of an eye opener, which contributed to the quote at the top of this post. In my Travel Day 5 & 6 day post, the crew learned that it's easy to set the autopilot and let the ship just drive at full speed. That nearly caused a problem when the ship was rounding the southern point of the main continent that KSC is located on. The ship was nearing the coastline and had been drifting to a northern heading. Only a slight heading correction was needed, but resulted in a nasty spinout since the CG had shifted and there was no electrical charge remaining.

I actually don't have any pictures from that event. The reason being is that as it spun out, the crew started to panic since it sent the Cockroach hurtling at the shore bank. The pilots were frantically slamming the throttle between idle and 100% in an effort to use the gimbal thrust to point the Cockroach in any direction other than right at the shore line. It was nearly catastrophic...

In any case, the Cockroach made a full recovery and was able to continue on home. The crew definitely payed attention for the remainder of the trip.

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And for documentation sake, here's the full route map.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

~Claw

[damerell]

Bravo. You've completed this in less time than it's taken me to chug around the Mun... admittedly, the broken toe didn't help.

[Claw]

Bravo. You've completed this in less time than it's taken me to chug around the Mun... admittedly, the broken toe didn't help.

Haha. I didn't understand why the broken was a problem till I read your thread.

Thanks, and good luck!

Cheers,

~Claw

[damerell]

Thanks, and good luck!

Short of walking into any more heavy objects, I think the final stretch should be a fairly routine exercise.

[Geschosskopf]

Congrats! Nifty ship, too .

I had a rather nerve-wracking time crossing that same neck of land going in the opposite direction. No Krakens, though.

Do you think all your Kraken problems were due to using intakes for floats? I sometimes get the feeling that once an intake touches water, the game gets confused from then on as to what part of the ship should really be in contact with the terrain.

[Claw]

I suppose that's possible. Or maybe even not specifically that an intake is in the water, but maybe all that splashing around does something? The one that caught me off guard was the one that happened while swimming around. It was very sudden. I wasn't switching vessels, climbing on anything, or really doing much. Maybe the only unusual thing was one of the kerbals standing on the one of the intake floats. That happened naturally as the ship drifted around a little (I didn't put him on there). So Idk if that contributed.

Cheers,

-Claw

[Claw]

Okay, so I've decided to continue on with my Elcano adventure in this thread.

Originally I was going to simply abandon this and post the "short story" of those adventures. These things take a really long time (which I'm always short on) to write up. Also, I have no real idea how far I'll be taking any of this. As of this writing, I've actually finished Minmus, Laythe, and Mun too. I'll start catching up on posts while I can. I'm not sure if anyone really reads these for mission/craft design philosophy, but that's part of what I'll probably inject into this.

I've updated the original post of this thread to reflect this change. Let me know if you guys are actually interested in this, or if I should save my time to spend elsewhere.

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Minmus Adventure

"We choose to go to Minmus. We choose to go to Minmus in this decade and do the other things, not because it is" hard, but because it is easy."

Yes indeed, Minmus was easier than I expected. I won't say it was easy, but it was easier than I thought it would be. EVA on Minmus isn't one of my favorite things, because the kerbals pretty much just flop all over the place. So I was expecting the same from my rover.

To start with, I went back to my original Polar Expedition Jeep, pioneered by Wilsey and Bartiger.

Here's a repeat of an earlier picture. You can see that I've pulled the engine core out of it. These probe cores no longer produce torque, which was required to flip the Jeep after crashes. Also, those control surfaces aren't going to be needed on Minmus.

So I ripped the thing apart a bit, and put it back together. In the interest of ruggedness, all of the parts are still encased within the modular girder segments. Additionally, the vehicle has redundancy in all of the major systems. As with the Kerbin circumnavigation, crew safety is paramount.

Even though this needs to be crewed for the challenge, I've left the probe cores on so that in the event the crew are ejected, I can still activate the emergency brakes and stabilization. (i.e. Crash less hard...)

---

So, rather than dragging it out, here is the end result. Here's the route I ended up taking. And for no particular reason, it just so happened that I landed darn near the center of this particular map...

The ship to get to Minmus is pretty bare bones. It's pretty much just a fuel tank attached to the Jeep. (What else do you need, right?) With the low gravity, I didn't even bother building a "proper" lander. Just landed it on the engine nozzle and let the torque slowly drop it to the ground.

I did discover that to get started from a full stop, I had to torque the tail up in the air to put pressure on the front tires. After the rover reached a couple m/s, it would continue to accelerate just fine. I also had to disable the rear motors, because it would cause the rover to fishtail when accelerating, and sometimes flip the nose into the air (and onto it's back). Thankfully the gravity there is quite forgiving. Also, oddly, I didn't have much of a problem with flipping when steering. I think that's because I disabled the rear wheel steering and had enough torque to make it stick when I turned.

The first cliff was quite a surprise though. Minmus is (for the most part) very smooth. Even when the terrain goes up and down, it's not very sharp. However, the cliffs are quite sheer, and I dropped off of one where I thought the slope was a bit more gentle. I did pop several tires on this journey, but for the most part it was relatively uneventful.

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Cheers,

~Claw

Edited September 10, 2015 by Claw

[Claw]

Munar Start

So I started out with the same rover design as I used on Minmus. It seemed to work quite well there and on Kerbin, so I thought it would work out there as well.

The delivery was basically the same as for Minmus. I launched the rover up crewless and delivered it to Munar orbit. Then sent a crew recovery vehicle to Minmus to deliver Julella and Obemy to the rover in Munar orbit.

Here's the initial track that they took:

The crew took a bit of a detour here, as you can see on the map, which I will discuss shortly.

The crew set down inside a medium sized crater. It's not too big of a deal, but quite frankly, I had forgotten how jagged the edges of the craters can be. So leaving the crater was in itself a bit of a fun time.

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The initial foray on the Mun wasn't exactly what I was expecting. The terrain is much more jagged, on par with the foothills on Kerbin. There's a lot of ups-and-downs, with very sharp edges. You can see from the route and pictures, that the first leg of the journey went through one of the major craters. This turned out to be a really (really) bad idea. The whole thing was absolutely littered with craters, causing quite a slow down and a lot of damage along the way.

At the end of this first leg, Obemy has to ride in one of the side seats because his seat was destroyed. The rover has also lost a light and some nuke generators. I can't recall, but it might have lost a torque wheel by this point also.

In any case, I've learned a bit more engineering work for the rover through this phase. Although something happened, which distracted me from completion.

Fengist (the owner of the Elcano challenge) posted a new badge...

So the crew made a slight detour to Laythe.

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(More to follow for Laythe.)

Cheers,

~Claw

[zekes]

I think I'm going to try this now/again. It's an interesting challenge.

[Claw]

It's an interesting challenge.

It certainly is if you're interested in seeing more of the planets, and see more of the scenery. I've also been enjoying the engineering aspect. Though many of my designs are not be the most "optimal," I'm trying different concepts and continuing to tweak my mainstay Jeep as well as it's delivery.

[Claw]

Conquering Laythe

The mission director announces a change in plans, with immediate preparations for delivery of the Cockroach to the Joolian system.

---

---

So, as I said earlier, Julella (the pilot) and Obemy (the engineer) were currently in the beginning stages of circumnavigating the Mun. In a strange twist, Fengist released a new badge for the Elcano challenge. Though I'm not really in this for the badges, Julella became spontaneously excited at the chance to drive the Cockroach around on Laythe.

Since I said I would include some engineering pictures in these posts, here are some pictures of the modified Cockroach (now dubbed La Cucaracha).

The original Cockroach remains completely unchanged, but La Cucaracha adds interplanetary engines and parachutes. Lots and lots of parachutes.

The idea with this design is to aerobrake at Laythe (since Jool is a time bomb). Both interplanetary engines are retained for the entire flight and aerobrake. Once established in the atmosphere, the bottom fuel tank (nestled between the La Cucaracha's legs) is jettisoned.

Testing on Kerbin shows that this tank needs to be jettisoned aft of the flight path, and it effectively catches the air and is pulled away without the aid of sepratrons. Parachutes at the aft end of the top tank are then deployed to help flip the ship around into a streamlined, prograde direction in preparation for landing. Those initial chutes also provide some drogue and ensure that the chutes are actually safe for deployment.

To keep the part counts down and craft sizes manageable, La Cucaracha was kept minimal on the launch pad. La Cucaracha was nearly able to SSTO itself, but needed about 4 BACCs to get to orbit... But once established in LKO, La Cucaracha needed refueling.

La Cucaracha was sent up without any Ore fuel but a full load of LF in the tank (360 units). This kept the interplanetary mass low enough that the ship itself didn't need to be huuuge. The plan was to land on Laythe hopefully close enough to land that the boat could motor over and make landfall for refueling.

The lack of sufficient thermal protection was apparent during reentry, but La Cucaracha packed enough dV that the powered aerobrake option was used. This required some slowdown prior to reaching Laythe's atmosphere, then additional powered braking during the reentry.

The only real bear of this system was getting the tank off the back of the ship. I probably should have included some sort of active separation system, but I thought I could just roll it off the back. Turns out that was pretty tricky on Laythe, and required some precise timing with splashdown. Right at splashdown, I had to rock the ship enough to keep some sideways momentum, then jettison the tank before it pulled the boat all the way over.

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The trip itself was relatively uneventful. I did not have the rampant ragdolling and kraken attacks that I encountered on Kerbin (no idea why). The craft did have a slight tendency to wake more when full of fuel than it did on Kerbin, but for the most part it drove the same. The other thing of note was that I had to drive much farther inland than I was expecting in order find some ore. The biomes are a bit deeper inland than they are on Kerbin.

Getting back off of Laythe ended up being an ordeal also. The recovery craft had plenty of dV, but was way too blunt (which means it really didn't have enough dV). So the return to orbit consisted of Julella and Obemy jumping ship and circularizing on jet packs. The orbital return vehicle was then repositioned for rendezvous, which was also quite a feat since it didn't come with a whole lot of bonus dV.

That's pretty much it. And with that, the Master Mariner badge is complete.

Cheers,

~Claw

Edited September 12, 2015 by Claw

[Claw]

Munar Return/Completion

After a short detour out to Jool, Julella (pilot) and Obemy (engineer) return to Kerbin’s SOI and prepare to return to the Elcano Mun expedition they left nearly five years ago. (The Munar Start post can be found here.)

It isn’t long after returning to the Munar expedition when the Julella realizes how good they had it running a boat on Laythe. The Munar terrain, as punishing as ever, quickly reminds her of how much attention is required and how much terrain planning needs to be done on the Mun.

Looking ahead to the rest of the route, Julella decides that the best course of action is to avoid the major craters. For the most part, this is a solid plan since the next two major craters just barely cross the Munar equator. The last major crater along the path, just west of the start point, might be more of a factor.

---

So while circumnavigating the rest of the Mun, it quickly became apparent that it was impractical to not use F9. The problem was actually not the craters or hills themselves, those were easy enough to see and plan around. The problem actually became in the flats, where it looked safe to speed up to 3x or 4x warp, but there would be an ever so slight bump in the terrain. Many were small enough that Julella didn’t really even see them until some random piece of the rover would get blown off...or it sometimes it would simply catapult into the air. In any of those cases where the crew survived, they would continue on with what they had. Several times the crew ragdolled in the seats or turned into debris (a known issue), at which time the only recourse was to reload a previous save and try again.

Eventually the crew got into a grove running mostly at 3x speed and really watching the terrain closely. When coming up on any terrain seams or anything even slightly unusual, they slowed down to 2x (or even 1x) to negotiate the terrain. In several areas, 4x was still possible (though with caution). For the most part, roving around the Mun felt a lot like roving around the foothills on Kerbin back when Wilsey and Bartiger made their foray to the North Pole. (I think I said this earlier, but it is probably worth repeating for those of you who want to test out your rovers.)

What all that trial and error taught me was that the physics system was really only capable of handling an equivalent speed of about 80 m/s for this rover over the terrain (given bendy ships under timewarp and all). What I mean by that is I multiplied the rover’s speed by the timewarp value. So if the rover was traveling at 20 m/s, it could safely handle up to 4x warp (smooth-ish terrain). Traveling at 30 m/s, the rover might handle 3x warp okay (equivalent speed of 90 m/s) but often needed 2x warp over sharp terrain bends (equivalent of 60 m/s). So at 2x warp, the maximum speed was 40 m/s (80 m/s equivalent speed). Keeping to that rule of thumb ended up working out great for the timewarp / speed / physics engine / rover / terrain roughness combination. I recall similar results from driving earlier versions of the rover on Kerbin, though the numbers were a bit lower (no doubt due to the higher gravity). In absolute terms, the maximum practical speed for the rover was 50 m/s anyway. Beyond that, it became nearly impossible to steer or keep on the ground, and usually ended up blowing tires on even small bumps.

In any case, you’re probably here just to see the pictures below. Here’s the route the crew took across the Mun.

After the side trip to Laythe, the crew landed back next to the rover and continued the journey. As noted earlier, the restart was a bit rough. They definitely learned a lot along the way with this particular rover, but at about the half way point so many pieces had broken off that the rover that it became useless. Eventually it crashed, destroying the last torque wheel, and couldn’t be flipped back over. The crew tried to flip it on EVA, but it didn’t quite work out.

In total, the first rover lost two RTGs, both headlights, all torque wheels, the probe core, the engineer seat and one of the side seats, and one of the modular girders.

Thus a replacement rover had to be sent. Since the engineers were sending a new one, they took advantage of Fengist’s rule that “minor design changes are allowed.†As such, the rover took no new parts but did have a couple engineering changes. With the “time warp ground strike†hazard in mind, they took some steps to further isolate the crew and major components from the terrain in an attempt to improve survivability.

• Headlights were recessed further into the nose
  
• Forward RTGs were angled up and outward slightly
  
• Pilot and Engineer seats were moved upward to increase ground clearance
  
• Side seats were moved outward (away from the rover body) to improve side impact survivability
  
• Rear probe core flipped and moved slightly up

The actual changes are probably hardly visible, except that the kerbal heads stick up out of the rover now (because the engineers forgot to test it with a kerbal onboard before launch...). However, these changes improved survivability quite a bit. There were still some random flips and crashes resulting in lost parts, but right off the bat the crew noticed a reduced number of ragdoll events. This probably has to do with the moving the side parts away from the crew. The replacement rover did experience loss of the side seats (but not the girder structure), which makes me think that during crashes the side girders and seats were being pushed into the crew area causing them to ragdoll.

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The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful, consisting of flipping the rover, fixing popped tires, and snapping some more pictures of the terrain. The last big decision came when approaching the final major crater. Julella had planned on passing to the south of the crater, but as the crew approached they realized that there was a deep gully out the southeast side which would pose a problem. That left three choices: 1) Drive through the middle of the crater (no thanks); 2) Drive around the North End (a long way out of the way); or 3) Drive past the gully and backtrack (also not appealing).

The crew was going to run the third option but as the Jeep approached the south rim of the crater, they discovered that the south rim was actually reasonably passable. There is a shelf that runs along the south rim and slopes down into the crater on the east side. So the crew followed this, dropping into the crater right where the gully starts. They proceeded through the crater here and came up on the north side of the gully, just a few klicks away from the landing zone.

After that was the home stretch, experiencing one last set of blown tires about 23km from the finish...

[Claw]

Duna System

There isn’t necessarily any Elcano content here, but the engineering team thought you might be interested in how the Duna expedition was designed.

As with any mission, design started from the inside out. The engineering team started with the tried-and-true Jeep design with its most recent Munar modifications. They took it a step forward and refined it a bit more by further adjusting the crew area and adding some additional redundancy to the systems. The rover is extremely overdesigned and costs over $100K, but the expense was deemed worth it to avoid waiting for another Duna launch window if a spare was needed.

To conquer the Duna Elcano, at least two rovers are required (since the rovers are usually left in place after use). One rover needs to have a powered system capable of safely landing on Ike, the other rover needs to safely land on Duna. The mission director also decided it was best to send spare rovers in the event that the primary for either became too broken for use.

The Ike rovers include about 20% excess deltaV to transfer from a low Duna orbit (planned at 70x70). The Duna rovers use a single sepratron to reduce their orbit from a 70x70 to a 70x40, and a set of decoupling parachutes for gentle aero landing on Duna. The design was iterated several times in order to keep the total weight as low as possible. The end result is docking carrier module with four rovers, weighing in at a total of about 10 tons.

Small, probe controlled return vessels were also designed. They are pretty bare bones and there isn’t much in the way of crew comfort, but they should get the crew back to the mothership. (That’s also what the engineers said about the Laythe crew ascent vehicle, haha.)

In the end, the mission director decided that Julella and Obemy deserved to ride in a little more comfort to Duna and back. The main living quarters came from a converted space plane interior (space for 16) mated to a nuclear engine stack. The engineers decided that although there was probably not a real need for a heat shield for this trip to Duna, they included a new design for testing and possibly use on future expeditions. It will likely see additional testing during the return aerocapture at Kerbin.

The end result is that the mothership has over 7K deltaV while fully mission loaded, and will obviously be capable of more as it sheds mission components. Upon return to Kerbin, it will also be reusable since it includes a rover carrier docking port and recovery vessel docking ports, which can be mated in LKO.

So here it is, on its way to Duna. I actually had to make the trip twice, because I docked the wrong rover subassembly (with the new tanks/engines/parachutes) before leaving Kerbin.

(Doh!)

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Cheers,

~Claw

[Claw]

Ike

With this post, I am getting close to catching up to where I currently am in this challenge. Actually I've already completed the Duna system, but as I said before, these posts take up quite a bit of time...especially since it’s difficult (impossible) to drive, write, and edit pictures at the same time.

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Upon arrival at Duna, the mission director decided to send the crew to Ike first. Partly because it was smaller, and partly because the Mun was so darn punishing that the crew wanted another small moon done and out of the way. Also, one of his other mission director buddies convinced him to send the crew on polar trips in the Duna system, since apparently the poles can be pretty scenic.

So, with that, the aerocapture was done such to remain in an elliptical orbit. This constrained the window for transferring to Ike, but adjustments were made to the orbit timing to make this impact pretty minimal. The crew had to undertake external transfers to the rover seats before heading off. The mothership executed an axial roll prior to decoupling the rover. This ensured the rover pushed away from the rover carrier safely. The engineers had to use a stack separator because, for some reason, using standard decouplers would cause catastrophic failure during testing in LKO. With the ships main solar array retracted, the separation went off without a problem. The crew then proceeded to Ike and landed without issue.

After spending so long on the Mun, Ike was a welcome relief for the crew. Difficulty of navigation was roughly between that of Minmus and Mun. The terrain is more similar to the Mun in terms of rockiness, but less sharp (more rolling hills) and the gravity is lower (on par with Minmus). There were some popped tires and a couple lost parts along the way, but for the most part no phantom terrain catches and the rover held up quite well.

All in all, Ike was quite a treat. It was (for the most part) uneventful, and I will say that the polar route was quite scenic. I hadn’t spent much time on Ike before, and I didn’t realize just how big the mountains are. There are some very majestic ridgelines with peaks rising up past 10km. Amazingly, they are easy enough to drive up, but require some careful navigation when coming back down. The one major problem I did encounter was approaching the South Pole. I’m not saying exactly what’s there, but it’s possibly a gateway to the Kraken’s home dimension.

Spontaneous Combustion Approaching the South Pole

As always, I have a lot of great pictures from Ike, but I’ll spare you the bandwidth and post just a few in the album.

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So with that complete, it’s time to get the crew back to the Mothership so they can prep for Duna. I actually remembered quite late in the drive around Ike that I hadn’t yet sent the recovery craft. I did manage to send it before the crew arrived at the Ike finish, but had to send it from an unusual point in the orbit (remember I left it all elliptical). As it was, the crew was able to take a nap for about three while waiting for the recovery craft to arrive.

The only thing of real note here, and I’m a bit ashamed to admit it, is that I was a complete idiot right at the end. I had locked out the batteries on the lander when it arrived, so the probe core wouldn’t drain all the EC while waiting for the crew to rover over. In classic forehead slapping fashion, I forgot to unlock the battery on launch. I basically flew the whole rendezvous with no torque wheels, which meant I had to fire the engine slightly every time I wanted to maneuver the craft. Quite tedious, and I can tell I haven’t been flying enough bare bones craft lately because I didn’t realize until after it was all over what I had done.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

~Claw

Edited September 19, 2015 by Claw

[Vanamonde]

Kerbal science marches on...