Ixamus

Is this also the reason why Final Frontier seems to think that Gael is Kerbin?

It remains to be seen if SSTO from Eve is even possible in stock game with any kind of payload. I think that the cost should be considered in the scope of entire career save and not in the scope of a single mission. If I were to do this I would try to use same infrastructure and hardware in multiple missions + science gathering. I could sen my Eve lander to LKO by ssto, where it could be refueled by Minmus based ISRU infrastructure which would be used in many other missions. Then I could fly it to Eve and it would be empty when descending. On the surface of Eve it could be refueled by ISRU facility which would again be used for multiple missions and purposes. Then I would sen the 900 units of ore to the LEO where next ship would bring more fuel or otherwise take the ore to Gilly. This ship would again be used for multiple missions. I should also try to include more missions like "plant a flag", "take measurements" etc during the flight. Now I could have price tag way bigger than 1.159.000 for all the stuff and still be profitable.

I have conducted new research on atmospheric flight on Eve and designed a few career-save-ready Eve planes using Explodium breathing engines. First I determined that I have a range of requirements I need my planes to fulfill. These requirements don't need to fulfilled by one plane but in a reasonably small number of planes. I need a plane to: Land and takeoff from the Explodium sea, carry lot of kerbonauts, have a very long range, full science kit, be very fast and to be able to land and takeoff from very short runway. Many of there desires have turned out to be very difficult to fulfill. Main issues I have is the range my planes have. On Kerbin it's trivial to build a plane capable of circumnavigating the planet. On Eve I haven't been able to do it. I have fitted one of my planes with full ISRU capabilities so it can refuel itself and that's the best I could do. I could also send more surface based ISRU units to Eve. Without refueling my bigger plane can fly about 2500km and my smaller maybe 1300km (and then be stranded). This is my smaller plane. It can land and takeoff from the seas of Eve and has a full science equipment. Like most flying things on Eve, the plane is very agile and easy to land/takeoff. I believe that the optimum cruising altitude for the plane is about 15000m. The main problem with the plane is that I cant take it more than 600km from my Eve surface base, since it couldn't come back for refueling if I did. If I send this to Eve in my career save the plane will be dependent on surface bases that have ISRU. As I have pursued the goal of a long range Eve aircraft I have had two routes. The route of low speed and the route of high speed. This plane represents the low speed approach. It's a very large and tremendously heavy plane with range of 2400km and cruising velocity of 220m/s in the optimum height of 20000m. The plane can carry 20 kerbals and has a full science kit. It can also refuel it self independently (albeit it is a slow and tedious process). It unfortunately has the issue of being slow. If I were to circumnavigate Eve whit it, it would take hours of playtime even with the 4xphysics warp on flight and refueling. I have made some attempts to make a very fast plane with a long range. My problem is that planes won't accelerate to supersonic speed until they are flying on very high altitudes of about 30 - 40km. Getting to that height with engines capable of supersonic flight takes a long time and drains a huge portion of the fuel I got. I have been able to fly 1000m/s on Eve but only a very short amount of time since getting to the altitude had drained my fuel. It's was a 1000km hop and then my plane was stranded. So designing a plane that can go somewhere far away in supersonic speed, land there to do the thing I sent it for and then come back is very difficult and I have not yet managed to it in satisfying way. Meanwhile my helicopter works like a dream

I finished my circumnavigation in 4:57:03. Very quickly built plane with no other utilities but a very long range. The circumnavigation used less than half of it's fuel. The report is under this spoiler. I also tried my hypersonic cargo/crew transport ship. It flew steady 1100m/s but unfortunately it run out of fuel 400km before full circumnavigation. The 12000m limit was too low for it. It was meant to fly so that it speed up on low altitudes (like 14000 meters or so) and then climbs to 18 - 20k area to conserve that speed with minimal fuel expenditure until it slows down again and descents to lower altitude to gain more speed again. This flying style was impossible and the plane had to fly on high fuel expenditure altitude the whole time. Had the plane lasted my time would have been somewhere in the region of 1:15:00 to 1:30:00. I might make a modification to this design and make a new attempt.

More progress has been made! As you see there I haven't been driving straight as I have once again took a detour. This time to visit an anomaly. I intend to visit every biome and anomaly on Vall. This has the problem that it diverts my circumnavigation. To make my circumnavigation legitimate I'll visit both of the poles and cross the equator on points that are directly on the opposite sides of the moon. Images and description of my journey behind spoiler.

@KerbolExplorer Nope. It's just a rover. I'm conducting an elcano voyage with it on Vall. You can read more about it here:

Progress has been made! I made the decision to towards north for my circumnavigation. Also I will mark my trail with flags that will be placed about 100km from each other or if I otherwise feel like setting up a flag. Also I won't be driving perfectly straight all the way around. Instead I'll try to hit all/most biomes, anomalies or interesting sights. You can probably see that I have already made a minor detour to visit a mountaintop. (The flag placed on the top says "Mt.Elcano") Then some images! (Most of the text is also behind the spoiler)

Group photo taken from a mountaintop on the surface of Vall near (but not at) the northern polar region. In the background you can see Laythe, Tylo and Jool.

When I sent a SCANsat satellite to Eeloo I was afraid that I messed it up when I forgot to add any rtg's. I was wrong. Four gigantors made it to work just fine. No issues as long as the satellite stays out of shadows. Solar power seems to be useful in all areas of the Kerbol system.

I didn't even know that there is such a thing as thread of the month. Hopefully this added visibility encourages others to design and share aircrafts for non-Kerbin atmospheres.

I'll attempt this during the next few days. This kind of circumnavigation is actually something I have once started as a test for my design, but the game crashed so I never finished it. Lately all my long distance flight on Kerbin have been ultrasonic high altitude flights which break the altitude sealing of this mission. It might be time for more laid back slow speed mission. I would have more time to appreciate the scenery at least.

I have had this same contract offered but I declined it as inconvenient as I haven't returned anything from the surface of Eve. I have my suspicions that this isn't actually possible to do so that it would be profitable, but I haven't given too much taught to it. At the very least it would be quite high labor and low profit contract.

That looks like a cool plane! Seems very capable. Although I don't think I will use it on my career. Maybe I could hyperedit it to Eve and take it for a leisure flight. Primary reason is that I wont' be needing LF/O engines or tanks while in Eve atmosphere. They do help the plane to get to Eve in the first place, which is of course crucial to all atmospheric flight on Eve, but on the destination they become a burden. I'll probably make a plane that has no vacuum capabilities of it's own and attach it to a delivery vehicle that can take it to Eve. I am not yet sure about how I'll make the plane survive the re-entry. Possibly with a very shallow dive to the atmosphere and some kind of implementation to introduce lot of drag. I hope I don't need to use heatshields for this.

This thread is about my rover trip around Jool's moon Vall. This is meant to be an Elcano/Elkano attempt where I carry out a polar circumnavigation of Vall. Here I intend to provide enough screenshots to document that I actually do the complete circumnavigation and to show the beauty of Vall scenery. Also I allow my self to use f5/f9 as much as is neede. Why to circumnavigate a celestial body by land in KSP? I will have to admit that a land circumnavigation of a celestial body in KSP is very lengthy and tedious process. Nevertheless I have wanted to do so ever since I heard that the Elcano challenge exists. I have former experience from a lengthy rover science gathering mission on Mun. Despite hours of tedious driving around the gray landscape of Mun, I did find the mission quite fulfilling and rewarding. Partly just because it took a long time to get anywhere. I expect this mission to be similarly rewarding experience. Why Vall? Previously my goal was to perform a similar circumnavigation of Eve, since is Eve my favourite planet in the stock Kerbol system. My plan to perform this circumnavigation in reasonably short time and fun way, was to use the Rovemax XL3 wheels, and exploit the fact that they can accelerate the rover to extremely high velocity if you tap the keys "a" and "d" while pressing "w". Unfortunately the challenge maintainer of the Elkano challenge was adamant, that this is cheating and not allowed. After trying out a rover that obeys the rules on Eve I felt that it was frustratingly slow and couldn't climb the hills and mountains of Eve. So the circumnavigation would take a very long time and be more frustrating since I couldn't scale hills and mountains. Vall was the next best option. A lot smaller, but sill reasonably beautiful celestial body, whit low gravity to make rover faster and better at climbing mountains. Relevant mods Voyage to Vall This is the rocket at launchpad. It devotedly follows the design principle "There is no such a thing as too much deltaV!". It has several thousands extra m/s of DeltaV to make sure that Vall is actually reached without shadow of a doubt. This was my first ever manned flyby or orbit of Jool. :-) Successful landing! The land voyage may now begin. The blue flickering is from the Sci-fi visual enchancement mod. I'll soon make a new post once there is progression to show. Thank you for your time!

@JadeOfMaar Very nice planes! Both Karbonite and GPP mods are unfamiliar to me. The Galileo's Planet pack does interest me highly. Does the pack contain planets with atmospheric flight conditions significantly different than those of stock planets? Like very different atmosphere thickness vs. surface gravity combinations or something? My own project has progressed even further! I have now flown my helicopter all the way to Eve. This has lead me to a realization that the hardest engineering challenge of creating an Eve aircraft is not the design of the craft it self, but how to deliver it from Kerbin to Eve. I had similar issues when delivering my planes to Duna, but Eve is once again more difficult. Since I don't design my crafts to be SSTO's which could fly themselves to the destination, I need to design a launch vehicle to them. After lots of testing and different designs I ended up making overtly huge rocket to deliver the helicopter to Eve. It has a crapload of extre delta v to make a powered descent to Eve atmosphere, because my attempts to build sufficient shielding from heatshields and fairings proved to be difficult. My descent vehicle tended to fall wrong way down or it was pain to get the helicopter out of the shielding without destroying the chopper. So I opted for rocket powered descent. This also didn't prove to be very safe way and my descent was survivable only be the slimmest of margins. But now it has been done. It finally flies on Eve without hyperedit! Next on my list is a plane for Eve. A plane that could fly significantly faster than my helicopter and circumnavigate Eve, the purple mother of kerbals.

@Ultimate Steve That's magnificent! For some time I thought about trying similar approach my self. At the time I opted to pursue more practical and modded means of aviation on Eve. Although I must admit that my helicopter most likely isn't any more practical than your ESREP. Especially I like the fact that your craft is stock (or at least similar plane could be made with stock parts), which I feel is cool. Even if I use a plethora of different mods, many of which add additional parts, I do believe that doing something with stock limitations has it's value. Also I believe that flying a refueling hopper aircraft could be fun and possibly more interesting (at least for a while) than a conventional aircraft. @Gordon Fecyk I admire your work on this! I'm planning to do at least one or two "career save -ready" aircrafts using your ExV engines. But there is still a lot of testing and designing to be done on the field. Also I would like to thank you for your mod. I use a lot of mods which are a major reason I'm playing this otherwise very unpolished game, but I'm not really giving them anything back or even thanking since I mostly have absolutely no connection to modders.

This is my single launch surface base for Eve that I have been working on for a few days now. It can transport from Kerbin to Eve surface a base with two science labs, ISRU infrastructure, habitat for 12 (if I remember correctly) kerbals and a greenhouse for extra science and coolness. I don't actually use any life support mods. It uses parts from the Kerbal Planetary Base System mod and the launch vehicle requires the Kerbal Joint Reinforcements mod not to explode on the launchpad when physics kick in. It is currently the heaviest craft I have ever used and weights a bit over 2000 tons on the launchpad. There you can see the base just prior to hitting the Eve atmosphere. The craft is very capable of re-entry to Eve and even from very eccentric orbits with ease. But in the picture the craft is being tested in re-entry at interplanetary velocity and it seemed to be too much. The heatshields survived, the structural base and a few other pieces survived, but all the habitation parts and kerbals with them exploded. I tried again with a bit shallower re-entry and it went a bit better. The central hub of the base survived and landed to Eve. I'm optimistic that with an optimum descend profile the base might be able to survive straight re-entry from interplanetary speeds.

My work on crafts for extrakerbin atmospheres has progressed! I have made my first "career save -ready" craft for flying at Eve. It is a helicopter for short to mid-range science gathering and crew transport on Eve and Kerbin. It uses electric helicopter engines from Firespitter mod and the cockpit is from Airplane plus. In Eve atmosphere it has cruising speed of 40-60 m/s and can achieve height of 11km. I admit that in honest comparison with planes using the Explodium breathing engines mod and perhaps most other types of modded Eve planes, this has no practical advantages. It's quite slow, atmospheric autopilot mod can't fly it and it's generally more difficult and hands on to fly. Even so I decided in favor of this to be my first Eve aircraft since helicopters are cool. I have also been testing the Explodium breathing engines mod. It seems to work very well and flying in the thick atmosphere feels maybe even easier that in Kerbin. (At least if I count out the times when my plane could not take the air resistance and wings fell off.)

I admit my ignorance of both of these engine types. Thanks for the clarification. Also I don't suggest that either one of these are easy to do -designs neither do I want to critique anyone for using either of these.

I have now made some testing and driven something like 200km on Eve and I have come to a conclusion. I hope I'm not being rude now, but I'll have to ask, if you could re-evaluate your decision. I think allowing the use of RoveMax XL3 wheels and their acceleration by turning method, would be fair in comparison with other things that are allowed here and consistent with the former accepted circumnavigations. I think that stock turboprops and electric propellers are very similar cases and are allowed in the challenge. They are an exploit since there are no stock parts that are meant to be used that way. They are made by taking an advantage from the way physics work in this game, when driven to situations the game developers never thought of. This allows to vehicle to travel in speeds and fuel efficiency it couldn't otherwise travel. I believe that the method of acceleration by turning with huge wheels is the same thing and therefore should be allowed. There has even been a precedent case of using the wheels this way. In the fifth page of this thread you can find Jouni's submission where he has circumnavigated Tylo using these wheels. In his mission report thread he says to have driven speed of 50 - 60 m/s which is not possible by simply pressing the "w" key all the time. This functionality is so major in these wheels that it is actually difficult to use these wheels at all without becoming a perpetrator of this exploit. Finally referring to the rules of this challenge. I know that this is not a mod I'm trying to advocate here, but I think that it's comparable. I don't think that the acceleration by turning method is comparable to "antimatter engines" or "wormhole generators" and it doesn't allow skipping any elements of the challenge. It is a rover that has to be delivered to the body being circumnavigated and it still takes 20+ hours or something to do it. It simply allows to do it significantly faster than otherwise but still within the speeds that many other have traveled during their maritime circumnavigations of Laythe or Kerbin. I hope that you do not think that I'm being rude here. The challenge manager still has the final word on what is allowed in the context of this challenge and I do not ask twice. I simply think that it would be fair and hugely less boring if this would be allowed. Thank you

So my problem is that Kraken destroyed stuff from my rover. I'm using KIS/KAS so I thought that I could save file edit the lost part to the personal inventory of my engineer kerbal. After long good looks to the save files, this seems to be more complicated matter than I thought. Is there tutorials or something to this kind of save file editing? I would like to put Z-1k Rechargeable Battery Bank to my kerbals inventory.

I believe that this is a borderline case. On the other hand this is a clear exploit and uses stock part in a way they were not meant to be used to get them to perform better than they are supposed to. Then the wheels are a stock part and their turning method is quite fundamental to what they are. I also believe than anyone who has used the wheels for anything has noticed that they accelerate when player wants to turn. Not allowing this method makes using these wheels quite problematic in the context of this challenge. While reading the mission reports in this thread I also noticed, that at least one circumnavigator before me has used this method to be faster. But ultimately the challenge maintainer gets to make these decisions and I do understand that this is an exploit after all.

Understood. I will begin my Eve Elcano attempt during the next few days. I just need to rethink my rover design to fit under the rules, while still being relatively fast.

I have a three questions about this thread and the challenge. 1: Is this thread/challenge still maintained by someone? Or is just up to the contestant to do the challenge and report in any way they see fit and assume the right to brag? 2: Is thread only for 1.2.x versions of the game or are versions 1.3 and 1.4 also accepted? 3: I intend to use RoveMax Model XL3 rover wheels and exploit the way they turn to drive faster. If one has a rover using these wheels and one taps a and d keys while pressing w, the rover accelerates way beyond the stated motor speed of 15.5 m/s. My rovers have had "safe" cruising speeds of 50 - 70 m/s and by optimizing I have gone over 120 m/s on the KSC runway. My question is whether or not this is considered as cheating in the context of this challenge.

Thanks for your reply and advise! I'm very positive that your first craft will fly nicely on Duna. Although I believe that it can be relatively tricky to land, since it seems to have no retro- or downward thrust. But I believe that these issues can be mitigated if you will mostly land at low altitudes, which you did in the third video you showed. The Interstellar dual mode nuclear engines seems to be something that I need to investigate. So far I have been thinking about trying the Explodium Breathing Engines Mod. I'm not sure if it has been updated for 1.4.x versions of the game, but I have stayed with 1.3.1 in order not to disturb my career save. Other possible methods that I have been thinking are using these same Firespitter electric propellers but in larger numbers to overcome the high drag, using electric helicopter engines from the same mod or creating a floating vehicle with Heisenberg airships mod. Many of these approaches have the problem that the crafts using these are not going to be very fast and are therefore somewhat inconvenient. At least the electric helicopter approach has proved to be possible in my initial tests. I hyperedited this to Eve and it does indeed fly. It can achieve horizontal velocity of something like 100 m/s, but I kept losing the control while flying it for some reason. Lots more design and testing needs to be done if I'm going to use this helicopter based approach to flying at Duna in my career save.