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KSC2 Mountain Buggy Challenge


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The goal of this challenge is to reach the highest altitude you can in a rover from KSC2/the Inland Space Center.

Rules:

1. Absolutely no thrusters of any sort. All powered movement must be derived from contact with the ground. No stock props. No ladder exploit.  No RCS, rockets, or jets.

2. You may use any method to get your rover to KSC2.

3. There is no rule against wing surfaces.

4. Mods-wise, as long as it's not brokenly OP and it's in a published mod, it's fair game. Please tell me what you're using though. Kerbal Foundries anti-grav units are not permissible.

5. You must carry all energy onboard for your journey. No solar panels or RTGs. You may use fuel cells if you wish. This challenge is time- consuming enough as it is so please no ISRU, lol.

6. You may lose parts, but a kerbal is not a "rover."

7. If you use more than one vehicle. The higher vehicle counts.

8. Please put a Kerbal in your rover.

 

Mount KSC2 awaits you.

Inland_KSC_launch_pad_and_VAB.png

 

Achievements:

These are not scored bonuses, rather, the goal is simply to accomplish them.

Never give up: have an unforseen accident disable the vehicle. Use an unplanned solution to get it working and continue the mission.

Summit: reach the highest altitude peak on mount KSC2.

Or die trying: a Kerbal is killed before your goal is reached. 

And die trying: a Kerbal is killed after successfully accomplishing your goal.

Expensive hobby: trash your rover without dying.

Easy way out: return to the KSC2 using a glider.

You left the car where?: return your Kerbal(s) to KSC2 by parasail.

Honey, I'm home: return in more or less the condition you left in.

Mountain road: use a heavy duty vehicle with either an orange tank worth of LF or LFO, or at least 50 Kerbals onboard, or a Mk3 full size cargo bay and over 16 tonnes of cargo.

Out of juice: run out of electricity without a way to get more or move under power.

Coasting: return unpowered on the ground.

Edited by Pds314
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Val and Jeb climbing the mountain, they're half way up but have only burned a third of their fuel.
e7qseqi.png

I broke so many parts to get up here, but wow, I made it!
lyH3ePm.png


But the worst, was yet to come... I try to do a controlled descent. It does not end up being so controlled. I have destroyed by gas tank and am running on battery power now.
4zTbfKl.png

Bill is in the car, trying to right it:
8AFs98o.png

Bill got out of the car and tried to right it. It worked but something terrible happened. Bill EXPLODED into a cloud of dust when he got trapped in the front compartment!
Bill has not died in vane though! Val holds a short funeral and begins driving down the mountain.
uU5isNM.png

Maximum altitude: 4436 meters:
Time to maximum altitude: 21:34 from KSC2.
Achievements:
Summit. Reached the highest peak!
And die trying. Bill exploded to flip the rover.
Never give up. I didn't plan to use Bill to explode to death and flip the rover.
Expensive hobby. The rover lost its gas tank, headlights, taillights, dash, grill, and rack. I'd say it's pretty destroyed despite having a microscopic 300 units of battery capacity and working wheels.

Note that my rover is somewhat significantly under-powered. The maximum power 4 wheels can consume when stationary is 14 units/second. The maximum power it generates is 6.0. It only really can power the wheels in a sustainable way above  33 m/s.

Edited by Pds314
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Sounds like a fun challenge!

I haven't had a lot of free time lately due to work, but I've been fooling with a rover design for this challenge, just thought I'd drop a teaser pic, hopefully spark some interest in this thread! I'd love to see some more entries, rovers can be a lot of fun.

Spoiler

8929602196D2324A4DC6E647F1D63069DA4C1CEA

As you can see, it's one of my patented "indestructible" style rovers. Not sure if it's easy to see in this pic, but it's got 6 sets of double wheels for a total of 12. It climbs steep hills really well, and quite fast too! I'm hoping to make an attempt at climbing Mount KSC2 sometime this weekend. (On a side note about rules, I have two Juno's buried inside it facing upwards. They are mainly for back up E/C generation via their alternators, the only thrust they can provide is up into the sky, is this within the spirit of the rules? I can remove them if need be, they aren't really needed with all the fuel and fuel cells. I just thought it was a neat idea.) I'm hoping to reach the top, and roll off it the nearest steep drop towards KSC2, see how much of it survives cart wheeling down the side of the mountain lol.

Edited by Rocket In My Pocket
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4 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

(On a side note about rules, I have two Juno's buried inside it facing upwards. They are mainly for back up E/C generation via their alternators, the only thrust they can provide is up into the sky, is this within the spirit of the rules? I can remove them if need be, they aren't really needed with all the fuel and fuel cells. I just thought it was a neat idea.) 

If they're pointing directly at another part, they're probably thrust-blocked anyway and generate no net thrust. Although sometimes the colliders used to determine that can be kind of weird, so just because an engine looks like it should be blocked doesn't necessarily mean that it is, and vice versa.

I suppose you could test it by using Alt+F12 to set gravity to the minimum value (0.01 times normal, IIRC), roll your rover upside down (should be easily doable with reaction wheels in minimum gravity) and see if it can fly on those engines or not. If not, there's almost certainly no net thrust there.

(If you want to ensure that there's no net thrust, another way to do that would be to place the engines symmetrically and pointing in opposite directions, so that the thrust forces and torques cancel out.)

Anyway, having jet or rocket engines that point straight up vertically can actually be quite useful for a mountain-climbing rover, since they'll push the rover against the surface and can allow it to climb up slopes where it would otherwise just slide down backwards. I can't say if that means they should be forbidden or allowed (that's really for the OP to decide), but they do make a difference.

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6 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Sounds like a fun challenge!

I haven't had a lot of free time lately due to work, but I've been fooling with a rover design for this challenge, just thought I'd drop a teaser pic, hopefully spark some interest in this thread! I'd love to see some more entries, rovers can be a lot of fun.

  Hide contents

8929602196D2324A4DC6E647F1D63069DA4C1CEA

As you can see, it's one of my patented "indestructible" style rovers. Not sure if it's easy to see in this pic, but it's got 6 sets of double wheels for a total of 12. It climbs steep hills really well, and quite fast too! I'm hoping to make an attempt at climbing Mount KSC2 sometime this weekend. (On a side note about rules, I have two Juno's buried inside it facing upwards. They are mainly for back up E/C generation via their alternators, the only thrust they can provide is up into the sky, is this within the spirit of the rules? I can remove them if need be, they aren't really needed with all the fuel and fuel cells. I just thought it was a neat idea.) I'm hoping to reach the top, and roll off it the nearest steep drop towards KSC2, see how much of it survives cart wheeling down the side of the mountain lol.

My inclination is to say cover the outlet of the Junos otherwise they will provide the ability to cling to walls, but even if you do cling to walls with them, it would still be cool to see the rover in action.

I like the idea of having such a huge number of wheels in a tiny package too!

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7 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Sounds like a fun challenge!

I haven't had a lot of free time lately due to work, but I've been fooling with a rover design for this challenge, just thought I'd drop a teaser pic, hopefully spark some interest in this thread! I'd love to see some more entries, rovers can be a lot of fun.

I don't normally ask for other people's craft files, because I like to figure things out on by own, but I'd LOVE to pry that thing apart. Any chance of a craft file?

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6 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

I don't normally ask for other people's craft files, because I like to figure things out on by own, but I'd LOVE to pry that thing apart. Any chance of a craft file?

"Pry that thing apart."
Do this, but literally pry it apart with giant claw arms and stuff. Figure out its tensile strength via destructive testing.

Edited by Pds314
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14 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Sure! I'll be happy to upload it when I get some free time soonish.

Thank you kindly. No rush. :)

 @Pds314 I gave it some serious thought, and the answer is: NO. :D

I CAN however, drive it to destruction. I'll use the ground and momentum as the pry bars.

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11 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

Thank you kindly. No rush. :)

 @Pds314 I gave it some serious thought, and the answer is: NO. :D

I CAN however, drive it to destruction. I'll use the ground and momentum as the pry bars.

Had a few minutes before work, enjoy!

https://kerbalx.com/RocketInMyPocket/Kodiak1C

I rolled it down the mountain a few times during a test run, most of the time it survived unscathed, if it gets rotating really fast though things can start exploding lol.

Some notes:

I use IJKL to drive, so the reaction wheels don't try to lean the vehicle constantly. So turn SAS on, and don't use WASD, that's how I recommend doing it anyways or it's pretty tippy at high speeds. Still a bit of a work in progress but it's 90% done I'd say.

Action groups:

1+2: Pusher legs for rolling yourself back over.
0: Turn on Fuel cell array.

R: Toggles front wheel motors on/off. (For fuel efficiency when driving on relatively flat areas.)

Edited by Rocket In My Pocket
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Ok! So... The Kodiak was awesome and everything, but I think I got carried away making it armored/cool looking. Lol. I may have been more concerned with it surviving falling off the mountain than I was with it actually making it to the top. It was making it up the mountain, but slowly; like way slower than I was willing to put up with since I wanted to record it.

I switched gears a bit and went back to the drawing board, it's older brother; The Grizzly isn't as cool looking, and is only minimally armored, but it climbs like a goat! 18 wheels, and over 30,000 units of E/C!

286D0912F67BC32C25DC4CAC9C8630084855A59B

I have completed my journey to the top of KSC2 and reached a height of 4,450 meters. Just barely! I'll be putting the vid here as soon as it's uploaded, and you'll see that I coast to the summit on fumes lol. (Or whatever the E/C version of fumes is.) The entire trip took about 15 minutes.

Videos! I had to do it in 2 parts because the Bandicam free version only allows 10 mins of recording.

 

Edited by Rocket In My Pocket
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I have a fully stock entry to the challenge with an altitude of 4873m.

For my vehicle I just took my six wheeled racing rover from the Races! Hot laps challenge, slapped some extra batteries on it and called it a day.

I had it in mind to make it up to the tracking station, which appears to be on the highest point in the mountains near KSC2. To get to it I had to make my way around the back of the mountains, on the far side from KSC2. I had a crack at a frontal assault on what would have been a very quick route to near the top (straight ahead in the first image below), but my rover didn't have quiet enough grunt to make it.

I through a bit too much in the way of batteries on the rover, given that I only used about 70% of the charge in them, but better to have it and not need it... I did lose a couple of 400 unit batteries off the rover at about 4km up, when I hit the bottom of a short slope and they pinged off the back where they were mounted.

Here's a few pics of the trip... full Imgur album is here. Just ignore the mission elapsed time in the later pics, as I had to warp near the end of my journey to get a better sun angle for driving and taking pictures.

7i5nWxq.jpg

N5880Q4.jpg

0XEdzMB.jpg

F8DCrGv.jpg

f6n1IUW.jpg

Lz1u5lR.jpg

Y1SiLsp.jpg

 

Some very nice views up there... and a lot of cloud.

Edited by purpleivan
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Just been looking at the video by @Rocket In My Pocket and I have the terrible feeling that I've scaled the wrong mountains. From the top of their climb I can't see the commnet station or the sea, which was visible from the commnet staton at the top of my climb.

I've been playing the game far too long to be confused between Woomerang launch site (accessible directly from the VAB) and KSC2 (ermm.. is it the same place), but I might have done that. Are the two the same, or not?

If the two are the same then I'm fine, if not then I need to get rolling again tomorrow.

 

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9 minutes ago, purpleivan said:

Just been looking at the video by @Rocket In My Pocket and I have the terrible feeling that I've scaled the wrong mountains. From the top of their climb I can't see the commnet station or the sea, which was visible from the commnet staton at the top of my climb.

I've been playing the game far too long to be confused between Woomerang launch site (accessible directly from the VAB) and KSC2 (ermm.. is it the same place), but I might have done that. Are the two the same, or not?

If the two are the same then I'm fine, if not then I need to get rolling again tomorrow.

 

This confused me for awhile as well, but yes; they are different places.

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Woomerang_Launch_Site

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Inland_Kerbal_Space_Center

Still, an impressive climb nonetheless! It looks every bit as steep and high as the intended mountain, I say it should count!

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1 minute ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

This confused me for awhile as well, but yes; they are different places.

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Woomerang_Launch_Site

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Inland_Kerbal_Space_Center

Still, an impressive climb nonetheless! It looks every bit as steep and high as the intended mountain, I say it should count!

I should really know these things... I've been to the KSC2 a few times, even airdropped a rocket on a mobile launcher there, to do a minature Apollo style mission from it.

Thanks for saying that my effort (in the wrong place) should count, but I'll probably still take a crack at the slopes in the correct location though.

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5 minutes ago, purpleivan said:

I should really know these things... I've been to the KSC2 a few times, even airdropped a rocket on a mobile launcher there, to do a minature Apollo style mission from it.

Thanks for saying that my effort (in the wrong place) should count, but I'll probably still take a crack at the slopes in the correct location though.

Like I said, I was equally confused at first because I assumed (I think the same as you did) that they renamed the "easter egg KSC2" to the official version; Woomerang. I never launch from it so I had no clue what it looked like either, lol.

No prob, Looking forward to seeing the pics!

Edited by Rocket In My Pocket
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2 hours ago, purpleivan said:

Just been looking at the video by @Rocket In My Pocket and I have the terrible feeling that I've scaled the wrong mountains. From the top of their climb I can't see the commnet station or the sea, which was visible from the commnet staton at the top of my climb.

I've been playing the game far too long to be confused between Woomerang launch site (accessible directly from the VAB) and KSC2 (ermm.. is it the same place), but I might have done that. Are the two the same, or not?

If the two are the same then I'm fine, if not then I need to get rolling again tomorrow.

 

I don't have Making History so yeah, Woomerang is not even available for me.

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I had a crack at climbing the (correct this time) mountain this morning and made it up to the top, at an altitude of 4450m. I managed to get up there in a time of 10:28. It looks like I could have left half my batteries behind as I got to the top with over 50% left in the little juice boxes.

This journey was quite a bit shorter than my climb last night to the top of the mountain near Baikerbanur, which needed a more elaborate route to get there.

 

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10 hours ago, purpleivan said:

Just been looking at the video by @Rocket In My Pocket and I have the terrible feeling that I've scaled the wrong mountains. From the top of their climb I can't see the commnet station or the sea, which was visible from the commnet staton at the top of my climb.

I've been playing the game far too long to be confused between Woomerang launch site (accessible directly from the VAB) and KSC2 (ermm.. is it the same place), but I might have done that. Are the two the same, or not?

If the two are the same then I'm fine, if not then I need to get rolling again tomorrow.

 

I'm glad I read farther down. I've had on the backburner a comnet dish challenge, and I thought I knew where they all were. For a second I thought? "Where did that one come from?"

 

Anyway, I fly around Woomerang a lot and know that area reasonably well. That is an impressive climb you did and warrants some kind of special merit badge even if it was not the proper challenge.

1 hour ago, purpleivan said:

This journey was quite a bit shorter than my climb last night to the top of the mountain near Baikerbanur, which needed a more elaborate route to get there.

 

Wait, so Baikerbanur is Woomerang?  I always thought it was the inland space center...

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12 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

Wait, so Baikerbanur is Woomerang?  I always thought it was the inland space center...

Nope. Woomerang is in a different location to the inland space centre (which is the same thing as Baikerbanur).

I might do this challenge actually. I just need to build a powerful enough rover.

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Just now, RealKerbal3x said:

Nope. Woomerang is in a different location to the inland space centre (which is the same thing as Baikerbanur).

I might do this challenge actually. I just need to build a powerful enough rover.

I know Woomerang and the Inland Center are different. I just did not know what the name Baikerbanur was supposed to signify.

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9 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

I know Woomerang and the Inland Center are different. I just did not know what the name Baikerbanur was supposed to signify.

I believe Baikerbanur is a fan-made name for the Inland Centre.

Edited by RealKerbal3x
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3 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I believe Baikerbanur is a fan-made name for the Inland Centre.

Yes, this. Although actually Baikerbanur is the official name, and Inland KSC/KSC2 is the fan name.

"The Inland Kerbal Space Center (sometimes called KSC 2, officialy Baikerbanur) is a second spaceport on Kerbin. It is generally considered an easter egg. It is not possible to launch any vehicles from this space center (unless using certain mods or plugins)."

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I'm getting somewhere on this challenge, but having difficulties.  I can't quite make the grade (as in gradient) just yet.  Tips on how to improve this craft would be appreciated.  I really want to know purpleivan's secrets.  I've tested rovers similar to his and I flip those over really easily.

 

My rover evolved roughly as follows.

Wheel design:  Front steering unpowered, rear drive wheels non-steerable.  I'm not sure if I can fully defend the idea of using unpowered front wheels, but it's simple and it works.  The training wheels are valuable for some of my other rovers to prevent flipping, this design might not need them because the aero-surfaces are so good.  

Aero-surfaces: testing at KSC it seems to me that vertical stabilizers and spoilers are invaluable for making a nearly unflippable rover.  This craft uses elevon 3 for spoilers.  All degrees of freedom are disabled in rover mode, but pitch and roll can be turned on to glide.  An early idea was to use the kerbal parachutes for wings.  That worked in preliminary testing, but for some reason would not work while descending from orbit.  The MK2 cab was originally intended just to load 4 kerbals.  But then I figured they would want some snacks on this mission, and it turned out to help the glider performance anyway.  I was once able to land this craft undamaged from orbit with zero parachutes but that was hard to repeat.  I added a docking port to have an extra control node and one little parachute makes landing easy every time.  

Aero-dynamic spoilers generate a small amount of lift in the reverse direction, which limits top speed a lot.  I wonder if this reduces my hill climbing performance, but I don't think it would when the speed is close to zero.

 

I tested this craft by running over the crawlerway at KSC in every concievable way.  It is virtually unflippable with traction control and friction control on auto.  When I stalled climbing the mountain at KSC2 I fiddled with the friction controls.  I think setting friction control to 5 and drive limiter to 100 is supposed to give best hill climbing performance ?  Is that correct.  The craft becomes flippable with friction control turned up.  

The two most obvious redesigns I can think of are 1. reduce weight 2. increase torque.  The crew cabin could be removed, but I've started to like it... I guess adding a lot more rover wheels would increase torque...

BTW: I eventually figured out how to get to KSC2 by cheating into orbit and using a detatchable swivel engine to start the descent.

 

vkRXs8V.pngkVVCqSn.png

Edited by farmerben
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5 hours ago, farmerben said:

I'm getting somewhere on this challenge, but having difficulties.  I can't quite make the grade (as in gradient) just yet.  Tips on how to improve this craft would be appreciated.  I really want to know purpleivan's secrets.  I've tested rovers similar to his and I flip those over really easily.

A few things I can see.

For hill climbing you're going to want a lot of traction and the heavier the vehicle the more traction you're going to need. Your vehicle appears to have only 4 powered wheels, but a mass of 5.4 tons, compared with say my rover which has 6 powered wheels, but only weighs 1.5 tons.

I've used aero to create downforce on other rovers, e.g. for my jet powered entry to the Dessert Derby challenge, but that spent almost all its time travelling at 50-70m/s. At those kind of speeds aero makes sense, but climibing up steep slopes, the speeds will be much lower and that aero will end up acting as unnecessary weight. Additonally as the wings are mounted high up (even if they are fairly light parts) they'll be raising your center of gravity a little, so it's a little more likely to roll over.

Another thing is that it looks like most of the mass of the vehicle is forward of the larger, powered wheels. I don't know what kind of sideways friction the small landing gear at the front have, but I'd imagine it's a lot less than the big rover wheels at the back. That means that when climbing up a steep slope, if you are not going directly up it, then the mass at the front of the vehicle, coupled with it's low traction, is going to tend to make the front end swing around to point downhill. It's not something you'll notice on lower slopes, but when you get up to the really steep stuff, I think you'll have troubles heading up them, without the front end drifiting round to point downhill.

One last point regarding flipping. I found that this was mainly an issue when travelling at speed towards the base of the mountain, but once I was climbing the steep slopes, flipping wasn't really an issue, as the speed was rarely high enough for it to happen.

 

BTW... to get yourself quickly to the site, one option is to use the Vessel Mover mod, but if you do, use the Github rather than the Spacedock link, as that seemed to have the wrong mod in the supplied zip file.

Alternatively if you have a save file at KSC2 and have Hyperedit installed, then note the current location in Hyperedit, and you then can then place yourself there directly from the KSC.

Edited by purpleivan
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