Fastest Surfumnavigation of Kerbin

[Tsevion]

Well, my idea hasn't really panned out, I'll share here what I did in case it inspires anyone, but I could only get 25-30 m/s out of it.

Over 400 parts, but it can run literally forever, so it could definitely make the trip. It does about 30 m/s on land and 25 m/s in the water. I'd go for a full circuit, but it would take a while, and for some reason the distance measurement is totally broken with a rolling craft like this. In the last shot you can clearly see I've made it 10km from the runway, and it only shows an overland distance traveled of 3 km.

Craft File: Ultrawheel III

[burnoutforzai]

You know what. I'll start this is in a week as a youtube series. That'll be fun...er...

[Ezriilc]

I wanted to ask about the final picture though. From my experience with the Polar Challenge, if you save/load at all it resets the stat screen (unless they changed it in 0.23.5). Is the intent of the challenge to do it all in one sitting? Because my Polar Challenge took 12 game hours. Even at 3-4x, it took me a while and I couldn't do it all in one straight shot.

That's a good point. I'm not sure about how we should judge this, but the honor system should stand for something.

Also I'm thinking about building a boat for this one. Are boats allowed? Or only ground vehicles?

An amphibious boat is the only way to be competitive that I know of. That's what I'm running - boats are kinda my thing, yo.

And I saw the "no adding or losing parts," but what about refuelling?

You need to read the OP again - Rule 5: "No refueling." This is about one ship, one trip, straight shot, around the marble. Edited June 29, 2014 by Ezriilc
typos

[sdj64]

You could do an almost land-only polar circumnavigation, but it would be really slow compared to the speeds possible with a boat. Plus, with a boat you don't actually have to be playing the game constantly while it goes, you can just leave it at a heading at 4x warp. With a rover you actually have to play to make sure that it doesn't crash and to navigate the terrain.

I've got a submission running in the background while I'm writing this. Fuel's gonna be a little tight, though. I'd hate to run out after such a long challenge.

[Claw]

You need to read the OP again - Rule 5: "No refueling." This is about one ship, one trip, straight shot, around the marble.

Thanks for the clarifications.

And sorry for missing that rule. (There's so many circumnav threads that sometimes my poor brain goes crosseyed. )

[Pds314]

I would like to point something out.

Going at 37.7 m/s, it would take at least 100000 seconds, or over a day.

Also, out of curiosity, are parachutes and hang-gliders allowed? I.E. things that make a car/boat fall in a controlled, possibly directional manner?

[ThePsuedoMonkey]

MET: 6d 5h 20m 27s

Average speed: 25.33m/s

I wasn't able to do it all in one go, but I did eventually complete it! I've uploaded most of the screenshots to Imgur, and mapped out the course that I ended up taking. The ship uses the radial intake glitch to travel over water which messes up the distance counter, making the total distance only add up to around 1106km. I thought about using RTGs to power the wheels during the night, but that didn't seem like much of a challenge so I only used Ox-Stat panels and five medium batteries to drive the four wheels. You can really reduce you power use by only driving a single wheel, but you won't always have good traction on it. Reaction wheels and lights drained a lot of power before I realized it, so I had to turn them off for much of the trip. I only had to spool up the jet engine during the first night in order to keep driving, and during the others I was able to ration my power use much better. It turns out that you can reliably drive it at 2x time acceleration over land and 4x over the water, but there is more drag when using time acceleration over water which causes you to use a lot more fuel.

DOWNLOAD!

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[Ezriilc]

MET: 6d 5h 20m 27s

Average speed: 25.33m/s

And we have a winner!

My ship is still sitting halfway around the planet, and now that I've got a new project, I don't know when I'll get back to it.