mystifeid

Hard to sleep (cough) last night thinking about it so here is Part 2 I'd been wondering what the grasslands would be like compared to the desert and after 250km I had a pretty good idea. They were up and down like a bride's nightie requiring constant attention while shooting my economy to hell. Just as bad were the deviations to avoid the great river and it's tributaries as I made my way toward the northern-most bend in the river where one of the few places to cross it is found. The river crossing itself preyed on my mind the whole time. Would I crash? Would I even have enough power to climb up the other side? I knew there would be a cost and it turned out that the price to climb the 30° 600m high slope on the other side was the fuel for 40km. My projected range shrank and I despaired. One or two big climbs would mean that I wouldn't make the ice shelf, let alone the pole. But as if to console me, the grasslands now evened out and up-slopes which had consistently been 6-8° were now 4-6° and I could see my economy improving. At 700km distance to start, I have covered 71.3° of latitude giving an actual distance of around 746km with approximately 28% of my energy remaining. When I zoom out I can see the ice shelf in the distance, beckoning. The rover uses very little power on the flat and the ice shelf is perfectly flat. It would be great to use the last of my energy here.

No idea - it didn't look like it made any difference - but better safe than sorry. Jeb had a pee too...

I'm a sucker for long rover trips so I thought about trying to finish this challenge so here is: Part 1 (with no guarantee of Part 2) The Dessert was chosen as a start point because it requires considerably less twisting and turning to avoid hilly terrain. Going up an incline of more than about 4 degrees chews power quickly and coasting down the other side doesn't really compensate. I make no apologies for using Mechjeb - I've already been around Kerbin twice without using it or any other mods for that matter. And it appears that this is a trip that may take longer than either of my circumnavigations. Mechjeb also uses power and although 0.3/minute may not seem like much, over the nine hours spent driving today, Mechjeb has consumed 162 units of EC. This requires the fuel cell to use roughly 0.25 LF to generate and which is sufficient to power the wheels for approximately 25km. Driving as fast as possible would have been great but in early testing I got the impression that 10m/s was quite a bit more economical than even 15m/s. Oh my ... There were a few false starts. Originally I tried driving WSW but 10km out, I was swallowed by the landscape and spat back out with parts exploding as I cartwheeled over the desert. Tried driving due West - same thing happened. Tried driving North and 20km out the flag I was using as a start marker simply disappeared but this might have had something to do with how many times I'd had to reload before I could get Jeb back into the rover without tipping it over. Both Jeb and the rover had been vibrating uncharacteristically so I was not unhappy about starting again. The rover was modified to allow stable ingress and egress to the command seat and this time a capsule was placed on the launch pad to use as a marker. The rover was launched from the airstrip and after starting up the fuel cell, Jeb drove over to the launch pad to begin his journey right next to the capsule. Unfortunately KSP's target marker is only visible within a 100km radius. However, Mechjeb's "Distance to target" was a very nice match and it was used almost exclusively after the first 100km but confirmation can be gained from the number of degrees of latitude traveled so far. (Remember that I'm trying my best to head due North) Anyway, with more than two thirds of my fuel remaining, so far I've covered 350km and about 33.75 degrees of latitude. (From memory I think my F3 Flight Results were showing something like 750km) Given the unlikely scenario that: - there are no objective hazards ahead (there are) - no big detours will have to be made (they will) - I can stomach another 18 hours of this (I won't) then I can see no reason why 1100km cannot be attained with Jeb pushing onto the Northern Ice Shelf and maybe even the North Pole.

Typo? 23.4km instead of 234km? I'd tend to believe the waypoint manager.

Huh? See Rule 3 in the OP - fuel cells are ok. If you look at the screenshots you may notice the absence of batteries. Electricity is stored by three things on the rover - the fuel cell, the rovemate probe core and mechjeb but just the fuel cell itself would be perfectly adequate to act as a capacitor as the energy draw from the wheels did not seem to trouble the output of the fuel cell. I'm sort of surprised that no-one has pointed out the obvious (besides the warning by @zolotiyeruki) - 40 minutes driving in a straight line at an average of 10m/s should give me around 24km distance and not 53km as suggested by the F3 Flight Results.

It seemed like about 90% of the fuel I used was consumed while climbing uphill. So maybe driving to a high takeoff point might not be worth it.

No rovers? Maybe I'm cheating unintentionally but they seem more effective. Start with zero electricity. Used Mechjeb to keep a minimum 10m/s speed only. Didn't touch the direction keys once clear of KSC and climbed to over 800m. After using 10% of my fuel I have covered more than 53km. Stopping because it's easily possible to make a lighter rover.

Yeah, I thought that a complete orbit had to overlay the required track but apparently not. Contract complete. Thanks for the reply.

It's been a while and I'm having trouble getting my head around getting a satellite in a retrograde (Duna) orbit close to the orbit of Ike. Any ideas?

Had one not too long ago - unfortunately I can't remember when this one was ticked.

I have multiple KSP installs - some with MJ, some without. I really enjoy playing all of them.

Try Tutorial:Setting up a CommNet system Use a Resonant Orbit Calculator to space the relays in orbit.

I really like the idea behind the scheduling options for the bi-impulsive transfers. Thank you.

Try Kerbal Joint Reinforcement.

Strangely enough, Mechjeb seems to manage staging tanks ok, but put engines under those tanks and it refuses to stage them unless fuel ducts are used. Though maybe I'm missing something.

If you hold the shift key down when using the "w" key, your kerbals will run instead of walk. Like the look of your rover.

Coming from you, that's a heck of a compliment.

Looked like it might be a reasonable time @Klapaucius, so I tried again - here is 4:58. (This is my first ever video upload - apologies if it doesn't work out too well)

Wow, that's fast. What sort of range I wonder? And yeah, my boats suck but I never try to build the Mona Lisa. Twenty hours around Kerbin includes design/test/mission time. I think it would be easy to spend that long just learning to build something that went 400m/s.

Good idea.

Yeah - torque from the reaction wheel and the cockpit flips it really, really easily. Yet once it gets going, SAS keeps it pretty stable at 60 - 70m/s as long the authority limiters of the canards are set correctly. Range is about 300km. Notice this one is still carrying an ISRU.

Q/E keys.

Unfortunately, when Jeb climbs out to plant the flag, he starts his own timer from zero. Anyway, just to get the ball rolling, here's a time of 8:19 - timed after planting the flag and jumping back into the rover. Shouldn't be hard to take a couple of minutes off that time.

I'm sure there are a shedload of great boat designs out there but you're right - the range of the craft is nearly as important to me as speed. I think it took me about twenty hours all up to go around Kerbin and I stopped to mine ore seven times although my tanks were usually far from empty. Without an ISRU, if you had to fly a seaplane in each time, well, that might add to that total time. And for an equatorial circumnavigation of Laythe - using an ISRU to refuel - you need a range of about 1200 - 1300km. The first time around Laythe, I ran out of fuel in the middle of the Degrasse Sea. That left a bad taste so I went back again with the boat below - with two Panthers, it had a range of well over 2000km at speed so after splashing down with full tanks, it needed to be refueled just once to complete the circumnavigation. But it was a pita to drive.

Once you've been around Kerbin in a boat that's also a rover, you can look forward to doing it again in a rover that's also a boat and a polar route is for sure the best for this trip. Helps if the rover can climb up onto the ice shelf. (This puppy went through the water upside down)