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Elcano Challenge - Entry #1 - Minmus


KN_Namida

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Hey there folks!

First of all, I feel like I should apologize (at least a bit) about being practically a non-active member of this forum despite being here since.. version 0.20 was around. I'm sorry. I mainly came here to read Squadcast summaries and Devnote Tuesdays, reporting for 1-2 bugs I found and generally staying updated with what's happening to this game. Also, multiplayer, can't wait for that :P

But that's changing now. See, one of the things that convinced me to buy this game back then was the amount of space we have in KSP. Not talking about interplanetary space here, I mean terrain. Square kilometers, there are a lot. Well yeah, it's all barren, empty celestial bodies BUT they are great places to drive on and just generally enjoy the rides.. if any of you has played Fuel and enjoyed it, you problably know what I mean. Driving for driving's sake.

KSP offers me that possibility. Not just that, I can even build the vehicles myself! Awesome. And that's why I'm going to start the Elcano Challenge, cause I want to visit and explore, in a way you couldn't possibly do with a rocket (or a plane for that matter). I'm tired of the "land on a planet, plant a flag, come back home" routine. I'll travel the spheres.

And I chose Minmus for my first attempt, or rather, first mission. I'll do the Mun next, and after that I think I'll tackle Kerbin. If by then I'm still not tired of roving around... well. I could go for all planets n moons, why not. But we'll see.

Also, I've only got the rover to Minmus for now. I have exams next week, so I'll start the tour the 15th I believe. That's when you'll see new updates here.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Hopefully I've done the embedding right.. for Minmus I've decided to go small, building a 4x2 meters mini-rover with some batteries and solar panels, pair of reaction wheels, RAPIER to make my CoM low and a headlight. For my future Mun trip I'll be using something quite more interesting, don't worry :wink:

So yeah, I think the only update I'll post in the next few days will be a map with the route I'll be following. Bye for now.

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Hopefully I've done the embedding right.. for Minmus I've decided to go small, building a 4x2 meters mini-rover with some batteries and solar panels, pair of reaction wheels, RAPIER to make my CoM low and a headlight. For my future Mun trip I'll be using something quite more interesting, don't worry

Notwithstanding the vast tracked things I send out, a rover needs not to be interesting but functional. :-)

I think if I were you I would have put the rovers on the lifter line astern not on top of each other.

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I think if I were you I would have put the rovers on the lifter line astern not on top of each other.

You mean on the sides of the lander? Yeah it was an option.. but that would've made the thing even wider than it already was. The drag would be horrible..

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Ah I see. Well, yes that could've been done.

But I also had to keep the floppiness under control.. the rocket wasn't really super long, but I had to be careful while steering. A longer rocket, hehe, probably would've given me even more problems. But in the end it flew fine.

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Ok, I've started my journey on Minmus and covered a nice chunk of terrain already, placing 2 flags on the way.

Here's the album:

 

 

I learned some important things during this trip. Like, for example, what speeds you shouldn't exceed while descending slopes in order to avoid catastrophic accidents. Or how to use the different SAS options depending on the situation.

One thing's for sure. Travelling for almost 2 hours is tiresome :P and now I really need a nap. I'll continue the journey in the following days, bye!

Edited by KN_Namida
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I just read Claw's report, and the timewarp difficulties reminded me of something I've been pondering for a while.

I used timewarp (via Better Timewarp) only to get up to real time when I had too many parts on the rover for it to run in real time at 1x warp. Am I alone in doing real-time circumnavigations?

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I just read Claw's report, and the timewarp difficulties reminded me of something I've been pondering for a while.

I used timewarp (via Better Timewarp) only to get up to real time when I had too many parts on the rover for it to run in real time at 1x warp. Am I alone in doing real-time circumnavigations?

Well, I think I only used timewarp while I was travelling on the seas, since those are the most easy and "boring" (featureless) bits. Going through hills and valleys, I drove in real time. I had to be careful, my rover started flipping in mid-air a couple of times and I had to quickly close the solar panels and enable the reaction wheels to make it land safely.

I'd not like to do the same under the effects of time-warp, I might not even be able to regain control in time..

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Placed 3 more checkpoint flags during this trip. I went south-west for a while but then travelled the second half of the journey practically going straight north. So there, I'm not taking the shortest route at all, hehe.

 

 

Edited by KN_Namida
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And indeed, we did travel during the night this time, and I liked the experience :)

Except for.. one thing. See, my rover only has solar panels and batteries as means of generating and accumulating electric charge. And driving without the Sun shining above me.. well, it was fine when coming down slopes and travelling across the flats without changes in velocity, since brakes don't consume electricity and moving on level ground does not make you lose speed at all (on Minmus at least).

But when going up slopes.. oh boy. As you'll see, at one point I had to park my rover when nearing 0 electric charge, open my solar panels and wait for the Sun to rise, hehe.

Here's the album:

 

 

Edited by KN_Namida
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Except for.. one thing. See, my rover only has solar panels and batteries as means of generating and accumulating electric charge. And driving without the Sun shining above me.. well, it was fine when coming down slopes and travelling across the flats without changes in velocity, since brakes don't consume electricity and moving on level ground does not make you lose speed at all (on Minmus at least).

I mounted a Universal Storage fuel cell, hydrogen and oxygen tanks, and an electrolyser to convert surplus power and water back into H^2 and O^2. This gave an essentially infinite power reserve for roving at night in a relatively compact form factor.

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  • 2 months later...

Finally uploaded the next bit to imgur, here's the album:

 

 

 

Nothing very exciting happened, except for a funny bit when I went off of a hilltop too fast and landed hard on its side, and one of the wheels broke :rolleyes:

Edited by KN_Namida
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