Race to the sky... On the ground.

[Pds314]

The goal of this challenge is quite simple: using a rover, reach a specific target altitude on the ground as quickly as possible from the KSC without flying.

 

Challenge categories:

*Sprint* reach 750 meters as quickly as possible.

*Jog* reach 1500 meters as quickly as possible.

*Hike* reach 3000 meters as quickly as possible.

*Trek* reach 6000 meters as quickly as possible. (PSA: you'll need to go to some taller mountains then the ones near KSC)

 

Challenge rules:

1. No flying.

2. Propulsion and aero surfaces are allowed if you don't use them to fly.

3. Traveling on or underwater is allowed. I will be very impressed if going on water ends up being the competitive route for anything but the Trek mode.

4. No cheats.

5. No glitch-powered reactionless drives.

6. Must be Kerballed.

7. No parts mods. DLC is allowed.

 

Challenge achievements:

[Landlubber] do not touch water even though it was obviously the shortest route to your destination.

[Seafairer] go more than half the journey on, or under, water.

[Slip n slide] set friction control to minimum on all your wheels.

[Purist] don't use thrust engines, i.e. make your craft entirely wheel-driven (or surface driven. Mech legs are fine).

[Puritanical] don't use witchcraft reaction wheels, fuel cells, thrust engines, aerodynamic surfaces, solar panels, RTGs, or mining. Note that this doesn't prohibit the use of the gas turbine engines to turn a wheel directly.

[Gasser] use gas turbines and no electricity.

[Pretty dense] go across water but instead of floating, drive along the sea floor. I will not be held responsible if you fall into the black hole at the center of Kerbin.

[Certified Organic non-GMO] don't use wheels or reciprocal rotary motion of any description but rather some sort of mech legs to complete the challenge.

["Big-boned"] complete the challenge with a rover that's over 200 tonnes AT COMPLETION.

[The little engine that could] complete the challenge with a rover that weighs under 1 tonne AT LAUNCH.

[Flawless] don't lose parts.

[At any cost] lose at least one Kerbal.

[There and back again] return to the KSC after completion.

[Solar roller] have at most 100 units of EC, supplemented only by solar power.

[Check yo staging] do not include any staging off of components.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Pds314

[sturmhauke]

My Dakar 2020 entry would have been good for this, except for the "no part mods" rule. Oh no, I'll have to make a new rover!

[vyznev]

Since no-one else seems to have entered yet, I decided to have Val grab her motorcycle and head for the mountains. 

Now, while cool and fun to ride, this bike is hardly the fastest thing on Kerbin's plains, and I'd done no route planning besides "let's aim for that mountain pass, it looks potentially climbable." But it's pretty stable, so I could leave it running while surfing the web, and after a little under half an hour of leisurely cruising Val had made it to the foothills and reached the first altitude target of 750 meters above sea level.

Of course I didn't stop here, but kept heading for the mountains. As it turns out, this bike is a pretty decent little hill climber. Its top speed is mainly limited by the maximum RPM the rear wheel can handle before starting to glitch, not by engine torque, so it'll barely slow down when going uphill and can handle slopes of up to 20° quite easily. Thus, only seven minutes later I was already at 1500 meters and climbing.

And in just a few more minutes (most of which were spent getting the bike back upright after I accidentally flipped it over on a steep slope) I was well on my way to 3000 meters…

…when the bike flipped over again and this happened.  

(You can't really tell from the still image, but the bike is actually happily cruising down the slope with nobody at the controls!)

As it turns out, the bike came to a stop still in perfect condition (well, expect for the missing headlight that was lost in an earlier crash ).

But it's not gonna drive itself back uphill without a pilot, and it'd take way too long for Val to walk down to fetch it (especially since she keeps tripping if she tries to run down the slope), so I'm ending this run here. Maybe I'll do another one later and record a video of it. (I tried to do it this time, but because my laptop is old and I was playing at a too high a resolution, I was only getting about 1.5 FPS out of it so I gave up and decided to just do a test run without video.)

BTW, riding this bike in the hills is totally awesome!  At the risk of engaging in self-promotion, if you have Breaking Ground I highly recommend downloading it and giving it a try. The controls take a bit of getting used to, since it basically steers by weight shifting (bound to roll controls) and countersteering, like a real motorcycle, but once you get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun and can handle some pretty extreme maneuvering.

(Tip: I recommend driving mostly at about 70% throttle, which gives a speed of about 20 m/s; while the RPM controller will let you go a bit faster than that, the handling gets a lot worse. Also, briefly tapping the brakes will very effectively stop an unwanted wheelie. Just don't hit the brakes too hard or the bike will flip over the front wheel instead! )

Ps. I believe this should qualify for the Purist and Check yo staging achievements, and would've almost qualified for Flawless if I hadn't lost the headlight to a stupid steering mistake early on while still in the grasslands. I don't think this qualifies for Certified Organic non-GMO, although technically there are no wheel parts on this vehicle — just rotors and grip pads.

(Also, I'm not 100% sure how to actually interpret the description of Certified Organic non-GMO. Did you maybe mean to forbid rotary rather than reciprocal motion of any kind? That would make more sense to me, and would definitely make this vehicle not qualify for it.)

Edited October 18, 2020 by vyznev

[NH04]

I might try to join the challenge, even though I play on console. Is that alright? Or do we need to be able to submit craft files?

[sturmhauke]

Not the OP, but most challenges don't require craft files unless they specifically ask for them. I don't for mine.

[NH04]

1 hour ago, sturmhauke said:

Not the OP, but most challenges don't require craft files unless they specifically ask for them. I don't for mine.

Thanks for the info! Waiting on an OP response for 100% confirmation. 

[Pds314]

3 hours ago, NH04 said:

Thanks for the info! Waiting on an OP response for 100% confirmation. 

You need not submit craft files.

On 10/18/2020 at 12:56 PM, vyznev said:

Since no-one else seems to have entered yet, I decided to have Val grab her motorcycle and head for the mountains. 

Now, while cool and fun to ride, this bike is hardly the fastest thing on Kerbin's plains, and I'd done no route planning besides "let's aim for that mountain pass, it looks potentially climbable." But it's pretty stable, so I could leave it running while surfing the web, and after a little under half an hour of leisurely cruising Val had made it to the foothills and reached the first altitude target of 750 meters above sea level.

Of course I didn't stop here, but kept heading for the mountains. As it turns out, this bike is a pretty decent little hill climber. Its top speed is mainly limited by the maximum RPM the rear wheel can handle before starting to glitch, not by engine torque, so it'll barely slow down when going uphill and can handle slopes of up to 20° quite easily. Thus, only seven minutes later I was already at 1500 meters and climbing.

And in just a few more minutes (most of which were spent getting the bike back upright after I accidentally flipped it over on a steep slope) I was well on my way to 3000 meters…

…when the bike flipped over again and this happened.  

(You can't really tell from the still image, but the bike is actually happily cruising down the slope with nobody at the controls!)

As it turns out, the bike came to a stop still in perfect condition (well, expect for the missing headlight that was lost in an earlier crash ).

But it's not gonna drive itself back uphill without a pilot, and it'd take way too long for Val to walk down to fetch it (especially since she keeps tripping if she tries to run down the slope), so I'm ending this run here. Maybe I'll do another one later and record a video of it. (I tried to do it this time, but because my laptop is old and I was playing at a too high a resolution, I was only getting about 1.5 FPS out of it so I gave up and decided to just do a test run without video.)

BTW, riding this bike in the hills is totally awesome!  At the risk of engaging in self-promotion, if you have Breaking Ground I highly recommend downloading it and giving it a try. The controls take a bit of getting used to, since it basically steers by weight shifting (bound to roll controls) and countersteering, like a real motorcycle, but once you get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun and can handle some pretty extreme maneuvering.

(Tip: I recommend driving mostly at about 70% throttle, which gives a speed of about 20 m/s; while the RPM controller will let you go a bit faster than that, the handling gets a lot worse. Also, briefly tapping the brakes will very effectively stop an unwanted wheelie. Just don't hit the brakes too hard or the bike will flip over the front wheel instead! )

Ps. I believe this should qualify for the Purist and Check yo staging achievements, and would've almost qualified for Flawless if I hadn't lost the headlight to a stupid steering mistake early on while still in the grasslands. I don't think this qualifies for Certified Organic non-GMO, although technically there are no wheel parts on this vehicle — just rotors and grip pads.

(Also, I'm not 100% sure how to actually interpret the description of Certified Organic non-GMO. Did you maybe mean to forbid rotary rather than reciprocal motion of any kind? That would make more sense to me, and would definitely make this vehicle not qualify for it.)

I guess yeah. Rotary motion is the thing I'm trying to stop. So wheels are out, pistons, servos, and hinges are in. Mainly the goal is to stop someone from using a "leg" that's actually a wheel, or a propeller sled or something.

 

That bike is amazing. How is it stable?

Edited October 20, 2020 by Pds314

[NH04]

37 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

You need not submit craft files.

Ok. As I suspected, thanks to info from @sturmhauke. I was just making sure. I will begin drafting a vehicle to compete in the challenge as soon as I find the time to. 

[vyznev]

10 hours ago, Pds314 said:

That bike is amazing. How is it stable?

Very well, thank you.  

It basically stays upright the same way as a real bike: when it starts to lean e.g. left, the contact point between the wheels and the ground moves slightly to the left, which makes the bike turn left, which makes it lean right again.

Also, it cheats a bit by having a small reaction wheel set to SAS only.  But you can turn SAS off and it's still decently stable at low speeds (about 10 m/s feels close to optimal). At higher speeds it tends to wobble without SAS, though.

The wheel geometry matters a lot. The Mk1 version only had a single row of grip pads on each wheel, parallel to the wheel axis, and while it kinda worked it was a lot less stable and harder to control. The two rows of grip pads, tilted and offset with a slight gap in between, sort of approximate the tubular shape of a real bike wheel. I could probably make it handle even better by adding more rows of grip pads to make the wheel surface rounder, but this seems to work well enough.

[NH04]

My rover is ready, still working on attempts on getting to 750 m ASL.

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

Ok, i have a rover, which i have had for over a year. and i replaced its wheels with faster ones.
Eligible for
Purist; did not use any engines
Flawless; it achieved both 750m and 1500m without losing parts (until it rolled backwards too fast)
and Check Yo Staging; no parts staged off, actually, there wasnt anything to stage in the first place!
It uses robotics to turn, and also uses the pistons as suspension

it cruised at about 40m/s

Got to 750m fairly easily, with a time of about 12 minutes

It then achieved 1500m with some difficulty, but still doing full throttle.

unfortunately, a few seconds later, one of the wheel pods flipped when i tried to turn it so it could stop, and that pod exploded...

[kerboknaut]

Tried making an entry for the 'big boned' category ... and rockets are allowed, so I foolishly thought this will be simple, what could go wrong?

It turns out everything, and pretty much immediately. 

I tried adding many more struts but it didn't get very far.

Fortunately everyone made it home ok, just with some bruised egos.

[purpleivan]

I saw this challenge and just knew I had to get The Goat out of long term storage.

It's raced up K2 from the Inland Space Center and from the coast to the summit of Keverest (that climb in 27 minutes), as well as entering the Dakar 2020.

So Jeb slipped on his driving gloves and hit the "road" (full writeup is here), headed for the nearby mountains with a goal of 3000 metres in mind.

The Goat is  a pretty stable machine, with a nice low center of gravity and plenty of power with 10 driven wheels.

But it's a long way to the mountains West of the KSC, so it was a case of thowing some extra batteries (2400 units worth) onto the original Goat design and hoping that they last.

Just gotta make it somewhere close to those mountain peaks.

Make it The Goat did, but only after a spin out and two tumbles.

One of which had him flying backwards at one point, but through sheer blind luck, the thing came through unscathed.

At about 1800m the serious business of mountain climbing began.

With only 1.5% of power remaining The Goat broke through 3K, finally making it to 3200m before the batteries ran dry.

 

Edited October 24, 2020 by purpleivan

[s_gamer101]

This rover managed to get over 3000m :

https://imgur.com/a/UAFf8Zd

The idea is simple: It climbs a wall of rocks using both engines, one is pushing it upwards and the other one is pressing it to the surface. The lifting surfaces were also supposed to help keeping it on the ground while driving at high speed, I rotatet them so that they create lift into the opposite direction, pulling the rover down.

One of my first attempts... here you can see how good this thing is at "climbing". That was the moment when it run out of fuel and i realized that I didn't have anything to stop this thing from rolling/falling down. I had to quickload afterwards because the cockpit didn't survive the crash and I wanted to return Jeb alive.

A few quicksaves later... This time I saved some fuel that I used to get this thing a few meters into the air when it was about to crash, allowing Jeb to escape from it with his EVA-parachute.

About 3120m in 16:55 in-game time. And also without staging. I'd say that's enought for today.

Here's what has remained of the rover:

Edited October 24, 2020 by s_gamer101

[ralanboyle]

Alright, I went for a hike in the mountains near KSC. I earned Purist, Solar Roller, Check yo Staging and Flawless (until I got greedy after the 3000m point.)  Its a pretty standard rover if you generally use landing struts attached to electric motors.