cubinator

First! Thanks for keeping this challenge up, @Claw!

Yeah, for whatever planet the exhaust mirrors crash into, I guess! It also moves the spaceship slightly.

So, photons exert a tiny force when they reflect off of something. I was thinking about the EMDrive yesterday, and how it supposedly uses radiation pressure for thrust. Then I had this ridiculously funny and impractical idea of how the EMDrive is supposed to work, according to the physics we know. It would best be explained by a picture: It would use mirrors as fuel, and would leave a stream of mirrors in it's wake as it slowly gets pushed along. It's completely impractical, but would work. I thought it was a funny idea...

Thanks, and good luck to you too!

-58 [-] Join the dark side

Burning downwards! -58 [-]

THE PROJECT TO COMPLETE A 100% GROUND-BASED CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE PLANET KERBIN USING A SINGLE VEHICLE, AND TO GET A SHINY BADGE FOR DOING IT: NOTE: I have pretty much stopped work on this project due to a bug. You can read about said bug more here. Meanwhile, I have decided to start another Elcano run, this time on the Mun and in a completely bare-bones stock install. You can read the new run here. I'd like to start off by saying this is going to be an immense project, and I'm not sure I'll actually finish it unless someone is pestering me about it. That's why I'm making this thread. So that you guys can encourage me on my way around the planet. It's also going to be easier if I post a few screenshots at a time for a long time rather than what I did for my last giant mission, the Jool-5 And Then Some project. I'll try to make a bit of a story to go along with it, because stories are more fun than raw mission logs. Especially when the raw mission log goes like: 0d 0h 18m 46s: Drove over hill. 0d 0h 22m 6s: Braked for quicksave. 0d 0h 45m 0s: Avoided tree. etc. So, here goes nothing: INTRODUCTION Kerbalkind had been exploring space for decades. They had visited all the other planets in the system and planted flags. There were stations around Duna, Minmus, and Tylo. Bases on the Mun, Ike, and Gilly. Probes had mapped almost all the bodies. Then, one day, a couple of interns working in the R&D department were looking in the Science Archives for pictures of Kerbin's southern night sky. They looked on every shelf, asked everyone they could. No one knew if there were any such pictures. The interns, Jogy and Kerzy, discussed this strange fact over their lunch break. While they were eating, another Kerbal came running up to them, panting. They recognized him, he had been working in the Science Archives earlier that day. His name was Dereny. He said: "Hi, um, sorry to interrupt, but, you were looking in the Archives earlier, right? For pictures from Kerbin?" "Yeah, that was us," Jogy replied. "What's wrong?" "Dr. von Kerman says he wants to talk to you about that." Kerzy almost spilled her juice hearing that. "Werhner von Kerman wants to see us? Why?" "We'll see him right after lunch," said Jogy. Both girls could hardly contain their excitement and wonder as Dereny jogged away. "What's so important about us not being able to find something in the Archives? Wouldn't he rather talk to someone who actually knows where to find things?" They finished lunch, and went to Werhner's office. Kerzy tentatively knocked on the door. "Come in," said Werhner, who was sitting at his desk, drawing something on a sheet of paper. He frowned and crumpled it up. There were several such crumpled sheets, but a few were not crumpled at all and had been set aside. They looked like drawings of a big, complex rover with crew pods on it. "Sit down, make yourselves comfortable," he said. "So, why do you want to talk to us so badly?" asked Jogy. "Vell, it haz come to my attention that zere is not a single picture from Kerbin's surface in ze Science Archives. Zis has made us realize zat ve have conquered ze solar system, but zat ve have not at all conquered Kerbin itself. So ze engineering team haz come up vith a rover design, and ve have determined zat it should be able to go to vatever place on ze planet. I have decided zat ze best vay to show ze vorld how amazing Kerbalkind really iz, iz to bring zis rover all the vay around ze planet. I propose zat you, Jogy and Kerzy, take zis craft around ze globe. It vill be ze most perilous journey, but you vill be vorld heroes if you return. Do you accept ze challenge to become ze first Kerbonauts to be true Kerbinauts? Jogy and Kerzy looked at each other in awe. "You vould have two more crewmates, to help on your journey," said Werhner. "We're in!" both said at the same time. PART I The full crew was: Jogy Kerman, Commander and Pilot. Kerzy Kerman, Primary Engineer. Tedrick Kerman, Secondary Engineer. Dereny Kerman, Scientist. The ship was tested, they were reassured, and it would be able to go over all the terrain they would encounter. They were given a map, with the path they were to take marked in black pen: The ship had 10 all-terrain wheels, an ISRU unit and 2 drills, jets for the inevitable periods of sea travel, solar panels, SAS, batteries, crew cabins, snacks, everything one would need for a long-duration ground-based mission. The journey would be about 5080 kilometers long, and would take about 130 hours of driving time. Finally they were ready to set out. Kerzy went and planted a flag right in front of the Astronaut Complex for all to see. The team would drive around the planet and return to that very flag. "All right, time to go!" said Jogy. Jogy and Kerzy were in External Command Seats, while the guys stayed in the Mk2 crew pod for the first leg of the journey. They would rotate positions driving over the course of the mission. Jogy planted a flag on top of this hill, naming it "Farewell Hill" because it was the last glimpse of KSC before they came around in the north. They would travel southwest and around the Kerbal Mountains for the first part of their journey. "Good thing we brought snacks," said Kerzy. Everyone chuckled as Jogy turned the rover down the hill. SADLY, PROGRESS WAS HALTED DUE TO A BUG. THIS ATTEMPT WILL NO LONGER BE CONTINUED.

I got a RC drone that's about 4cm across. It flies for about 10 min and only takes about 5 min to charge, so it's pretty great.

Here are instructions to what I did: 1. Go to the Kerbal Maps dowload page. 2. Scroll down to the "kerbin_[numbers, etc.]" files. The first one is a color relief map, the second one is an elevation map, the third and fourth are duplicates of a slope map (shows how steep hills are), and the last one is the true color map shown in my pictures. Download all of them if you'd like, but I would just use the last one for starters. I downloaded mine as a .zip, but you can do whatever you want as long as it gets onto your computer. 3. Once the map(s) is done downloading, find it in your file directory and make sure everything's fine with it by opening it in an image browser. Then remember where it is in the directory, because that'll be important later. 4. Open up Google Earth (I'm assuming you have it already since you're on this thread). On the top left of the screen, go to "Add > Image Overlay." It should open up a window. Go to "Location" in the window, and put in the following values: North: 90, South: -90, East: 180, West: -180. This should wrap the green box around the whole globe. Now go to the text box labeled "Link:" and click on "Browse..." Now go to your map in the file directory and select "Open." The app may get stuck for a few moments, this is normal as it's a very big image. When it's done, the globe will look like Kerbin. Name it if you want, and click "OK." 5. Enjoy! 6. You can repeat this process with the other maps too, if you'd like. 7. Ask me if you have any problems doing any of the above steps, except for #5. I can't help you with that. All credit for the maps goes to @saik0. I had no part in the creation of them, all I did was paste them into a different app.

I just downloaded the Kerbal Maps data provided on MEGA, and it does give the full global map in the highest resolution available on the website. I will paste the color map into Google Earth, and then figure out how to convert the distances properly (in case it's not just d/10). Edit: Nevmind it is just d/10*. That's not too hard, I can live with it. Edit 2: Here's the hi-res map, with my potential circumnavigation path (5071 km on Kerbin): Much better, isn't it? *It's actually d x 0.942 because Kerbin isn't exactly 10x smaller than Earth.

Yeah, I figured Google products wouldn't be very moddable... I would contact @saik0, but he seems to have faded away from the forums, at least from looking at his profile page.

Wow, thanks for all the feedback! I'm trying to use an existing map, Kerbal Maps is probably the best source. @JacobT11, I remembered that Kerbin is way smaller afterwards, so I'm wondering now if there's a way to add it as a new planet, like the Moon and Mars maps. That would be useful, but I can convert the distances if I have to. The most important part would be finding a full high res map of Kerbin. If I have to stitch small parts together that would most likely be ok too. I'm downloading all the Kerbin data from Kerbal Maps, but I'm away from my house and computer right now so I'll see what I've got when I get home. P.S. If I bribe you guys with a Kerbin add-on for Google Earth, will you help me? Disclaimer: I have no idea how to do it at the moment so all help appreciated! Edit: I might be able to do some of this with some "Maps Engine" sorcery that I'll have to check out when I get home. Edit 2: Apparently Maps Engine is not getting support anymore, so I'll try looking in the Google Earth file directory as a last resort, hoping it's got some .cfg's for the planets that I can copy and edit. Edit 3: Hey, look! This is my 100th post!

So I've been considering an Elcano Challenge attempt, and to do that you need to know where you're going. I wanted to plan out a route beforehand to see what I would need, especially how far I would have to travel through water. I downloaded a map image and came up with this path in MS Paint: Now that image isn't very high quality for the smaller details like certain islands I could potentially have missed that I can use to refuel my jets. Kerbal Maps has better resolution, but one thing is missing: the ability to plot a path and see how long it is, which is present in: Google Earth. I looked up "Kerbin" in Google Earth, and just got some place in Europe. There are no maps of the planet in Google Earth. I looked around in the settings and found an option to "overlay an image." I set it to wrap the image around the whole globe, and then chose my map from the file location. I got this: Which is not bad for a first attempt. Now, this is still a pretty low-res map for fine navigation, so I was wondering if there was any better way I could do this? I want to use this for finding the exact length of my route. I'm going to try downloading the Kerbal Maps data now, and see what I can do with it. Feedback appreciated if you can help, or think this is cool, or just want to say hi!

We all spend so much time in KSP in big rockets, trying to go to other planets, and we are sad when they drop down to Kerbin and explode. It's like we spend all our time in the game trying to leave Kerbin, and it's beauty never gets appreciated as much as it should. That's why I'd like to try this challenge, to explore all the way around the planet. I will probably have a vehicle ready for the trek in a few days. Here's the first design, which worked pretty well: I drove it on the runway and on the flat land by KSC, testing timewarp (which broke the drills) and solar panels, and turning. It's quite stable on land at less than 2-3x timewarp. Then I drove it off the coast into Booster Bay (that's what it's called right?). The jets give out every couple of seconds, keeping the velocity at a relatively constant 8 m/s. I was able to get about halfway to the abandoned airstrip before the game crashed. Promising design overall, and I've made a second design already. I'll have to post a mission report on it once I get more screenshots of testing. Edit: Here's the in-progress report: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/128682-the-kerbin-appreciation-project/

Well, Jool may be hard to get off of, but at least it's beautiful to look at, the Kerbals love it's green hue. Eve makes them uncomfortable because of it's strange purpleness. Maybe purple is a color that doesn't exist at all on Kerbin? That would explain their uneasiness towards it.

Then electromagnetism would be messed up, and our universe would be unimaginably different. What if Earth is sentient, and things like the wind and storms are it's thoughts?

Sooo...You're on Antarctica? Anyone who's in space has an unfair advantage reading that. Merry Christmas anyway!

Personally, Eve is my least favorite planet. The way it seems to swallow up anything that lands on it, and is almost impossible to get off of, and has such high gravity, and how it's just so purple...It just feels like Eve is the most unforgiving of all the KSP bodies. My Kerbals all seem so uncomfortable there too, the purpleness simply unsettles them so much, even more so than Duna's red. I'd have a hard time celebrating there, but I suppose the Kerbals would wrap Kristmas lights around their ship, sing some kristmas karols, eat some snacks, and play tag while trying not to clip through the surface at 8c from the high gravity. And most importantly, they would have a good time!

Yay! Thank you, Squad, for all the awesomeness you've given all of us, and merry Kristmas! Edit: What does the poster look like?

Granted. It is raining ash because Yellowstone just erupted... I wish I was fast at solving big cubes.

Or Whack-A-Kerbal.

1.1 is in that bag...somewhere...It's a really big bag though, so it'll take quite a while to find. Take your time, Squad, and happy holidays!

If you managed to get outside the galaxy, it would be a lot dimmer than what it looks like from Earth, as you are looking at a much thinner slice rather than through the thick side. Furthermore, it would not look colorful at all, just a big round grayish blob among the endless blackness around it. You wouldn't be able to see anything at all if there are any lights on inside your FTL spaceship due to the reflection on the glass. I've been out to places where you can really see the stars, and Andromeda is still just a barely visible oval blob. You can't even see it if you look directly at it because it gets in your blind spot. That's probably similar to what the Milky Way would look like, just not as big in the sky. If we could see all the colors that those long-exposure false-color images are taken in, it might look as colorful as the pictures, but until we invent better eyes, we're stuck with gray blobs.

Add moar booster.

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