king of nowhere

I considered both options, but i wanted to try with wheels alone. now, the rooftop of the vab... much less impressive than devil's tower, but an actual vertical surface. yep, for that you need rockets or propellers.

Conquered Devil's tower! Devil's tower is the highest rock tower west of the KSC. It has near vertical cliffs on all sides. I decided to climb it with a rover. my first design was very diminutive; to climb such steep walls it is necessary to have a very high wheel/mass ratio. that little buggy could indeed keep climbing at angles higher than 70° unfortunately, it became unstable. steering wouldn't work anymore, and the only control was with a reaction wheel. but as soon as it deviated a bit from the ideal inclination, it would flip, and there would be no recovery. I tried many times, once I even got close to passing the steepest section, but to no avail. So I made a larger version, to get a wider base while trying to keep the same wheel/mass ratio The main advantage of this new version is that it can recover from flipping. if I brake and activate the reaction wheels and throttle forward, I can stop the rover on the cliff after it's already started falling. it's difficult driving; I can't use only SAS on the reaction wheel, because I have no lateral control - steering fails when the cliff gets too steep, don't ask me why. If I drive without the reaction wheel, the front of the rover will lift and flip. If I drive with the reaction wheel, the back of the rover will lift, and it will lose traction and slip. I found the optimal balance in driving with the wheel on, but deactivating it for one second every time the back starts lifting. so i could climb up and up there was nothing after that angle, and I found myself suspended over the void. Luckily, the rover could grip the rocky wall and stop its fall. and finally climb the last crest the view is amazing. Devil's tower is probably the most vertical place in all the kerbol system outside of polar glitches

Introducing my newest rover, the Leaping Mantis. Here shown with its sky crane, that doubles as crew return pod And here with ground protection deployed Leaping Mantis is designed for an equatorial circumnavigation of Wal; this OPM moon of Urlum has a ring of mountains surrounding all the equator, reaching over 20 km in altitude; it's also fairly large, with 0.37 g on the surface. To pass this obstacle, I need a rover that's extremely good at climbing and hard terrain. Leaping Mantis has 16 wheels for its 10.8 tons of mass, allowing it to climb easily upward to 40° in this gravity, and up to 50° with some difficulty. Large base and low baricenter help him cling to a cliff wall, but it's still got enough clearance to avoid scraping the bottom on ground obstacles. Strong reaction wheels (that can quickly be activated and deactivated on command) contribute to the stability. One of Leaping Mantis most striking features are its front plane wheels; they look like a mantis claws, giving the rover its name. Those wheels are for protection. in my circumnavigation of Slate, I discovered that taking a hard angle at significant speed would destroy the front wheels. The plane wheels are a lot more resistant, and they are placed just slightly above the plane of the other wheels. If the rover is about to hit a hard angle, like in the picture below, those wheels hit first and cushion the blow. They are super effective, and I'm now charging straight at rock walls just because I can. In those conditions of middling gravity and harsh terrain, it's still easy to flip the rover. In lower gravity, you float long enough for the reaction wheels to recover your attitude, and you can land on your wheels. In higher gravity, you are glued to the ground. Here, after the failure of the first model I realized I need something that can survive some accidents. The wheels on top are very sturdy and let the rover survive a fall. The reaction wheels are not powerful enough to turn it upright on their own, but I included a special robotic mechanism for the task the piston+hinge only weight slightly more than 100 kg. Leaping Mantis is well equipped for difficult trails

done an elcano in laythe already, in a rover/seaplane (going slow enough to avoid takeoff). i am starting one on OPM Wal, it's a cool place. However, I am happy to drive only for a while. I want another grand tour.

I like big, complex ships and long, convoluted missions. As soon as I mastered the stock game, I installed kerbalism, so that all the trappings of life support would give me a good reason to make ships bigger and more complex. Then I made a grand tour, with some facilitations. Then I asked myself, what next? Then I made another grand tour, at hard mode, without facilitations. Then I asked myself, what next? Then I installed OPM, and I made another grand tour. It lasted six months in real life. Just refueling the ship took decades every time. Then I took a hiatus, because I needed a pause from large ships at that time. But now I need another challenge, and I want another large system to take with a large ship. Except after last time I don't know what more I can do, so I'm here looking for advice. Thanks Possible things I considered: - RSS+RO grand tour. Problems; I don't know if it's actually doable with a reusable ship, given the deltaV requirements. and there's all the mess with cryogenic fuel boiloff. I also don't know about mod compatibility. finally, the last time the game lagged badly enough, i fear this could be a lot worse - planet pack grand tour. for this i'd like a nice planet pack, with variety. must be compatible with kerbalism and its resource allocation. - OPM grand tour hard mode. skipping the inner moons of Sarnus because of the radiation levels. Problem: I've done it already, this would be the same with more stuff breaking up. - others. Open to suggestion - quitting ksp because I can't find anything else to do. But I can't think of anything else I want to play

I generally watch the ship and name it after something it reminds me. Sometimes just on a metaphorical level. dancing porcupine: those struts on the back look like quills, and when it bounces on the ground it looks like it's cartwheeling the can. pretty self-explanatory an escape pod; it is named Dolphin, because dolphins sometimes help stranded sailors to the shore A'Tuin. It is only vaguely turtle shaped, but it does carry life around space, protected by its hard shell. The DREAM BIG. In this case, the name is a declaration of intent After a while, I started theme naming some things. for example, all my escape pods are now named some variation of Dolphin. For a caveman career I named them Cetotherium, which is a phreistoric ancestor of dolphins. And after the can, all small landers are named after common objects.

Part 12: Running back The crew returns to Kerbin with a fast pod just before they run out of food. Do compare the food available in supplies with the close approach to Kerbin I could do another Elcano. Where next? Wal is a moon of Urlum. Airless, Duna-sized, it has this huge mountain chain encompassing all the equator, with peaks rising over 20 km An equatorial circumnavigation of that moon seems like a owrthy challenge The Leaping Mantis rover will rise up to the task. Or I will get bored and frustrated first So this is going to be my next Elcano. I'm not sure when, or even if, I will complete it. But it certainly seems a good engineering challenge for a mountain rover.

it's very similar to tylo. slightly lower gravity, you need some 100 m/s less to orbit, but basically it's like tylo for everything that does not concern driving a rover on it.

whether there is or not such an option in game (probably there isn't), you should be able to easily edit the config files and tell it that a kerbal should consume 0 of everything. i don't know where to find that, though

I finished the circumnavigation of OPM Slate. And there isn't even a badge for that

Part 11: Crossing the Yahel mountains. Again! Tamarromobile crossed the Yahel mountains on Diamond pass (7100 m), a much easier route than Thoushaltnot pass. It returns to the ascent vehicle, completing the circumnavigation. The circumnavigation ends here, but the report will still include the return trip

I would not consider them reusable if they are ditched. the principle of reusable is simple: you should be able to do it again. If you have a reusable lander, you should be able to land, come back to orbit, then land again, then come back to orbit again, many times. If your lander ditches the fairing, and then it's no longer able to function without the fairing, then it's not reusable. It can be recoverable, though, which is a slightly easier condition.

Part 10: The hills of Robau bay I assumed this new lowland biome would also be flat. I was wrong.

well, my estimation of less than 800 m/s for this manuever was not perfect, but fairly accurate.

yes, there are many ways to get a good gravity turn, that looks like one. I'm not even sure what you need help about, since you have a solution

yes, this is the best way. but do keep in mind, your burn still will never be 100% accurate, and you will need to make little correction manuevers later. real space missions use correction manuevers too.

Part 9: passing the north pole The north pole has some irregular terrain artifacts, just like its southern counterpart.

you have to realize that in space, 3 km is not a huge number. In space, 3 km is a very close approach, and it requires a lot of precision to achieve even that. the difference between 0.2 km and 3 km is a tiny, insignificant fraction of a second in shutting down the engine sooner or later. So, what you should do to get rendez-vous is - make those manuevers very carefully, because the slightest imprecision on when you stop the engine will chance the encounter by kilometers. - after you get a 3 km approach, make a second manuever to refine that. wait until you are closer to the approach, and it will be less sensitive to tiny variations.

Part 8: The northern sea, same as the southern one, but with islands Tamarromobile heads north towards the pole, crossing the mostly flat northern sea.

Ok. the thing is, the radial burn is only a few m/s. Most of your burn is prograde to raise PE, so you end up with a burn of 1 m/s, 10 at most, against a 200 m/s prograde burn. the total burn is calculated by pitagora's theorem as sqrtr(200^2+10^2), which is almost equal to 200. I'd be surprised if it was more than 201 m/s. If you want a more detailed calculation for fun, then I won't deprive you of your fun and will let you do a calculation.

Dealt with this problem, but in general for large ships the deltaV readout cannot be trusted. Even if you managed to get the game to give you the real deltaV value for the current engine configuration you are using, unless you keep burning until the end in this configuration, it's not going to reflect your actual mission. what I did was set up an excel datasheet to calculate the deltaV. My mothership had a mixture of nervs and wolfhounds, like yours I guess. So my datasheet had 3 key inputs: dry mass, LF, Ox. Dry mass changed depending on how many life support resources I would carry, if you're not dealing with that you can keep that constant. and I had some different outputs: "first chemical, then nuclear": that is, if I burn my chemical rockets completely, and then finished with nuclear. This gives the lowest deltaV on chemical engines, but the highest with nuclear. The calculation is =4379*LN((Dry+LF+Ox)/intermiediate mass), where I did calculate intermediate mass as "Dry+LF-(Ox*10,6/11,07). A bit of clarifications here: 4379 is the average Isp*g that I calculated for the specific mixture of wolfhounds and nervs I was using (1:1 ratio), that I got by multiplying each engine thrust by its Isp and then making an average. The ratio 10,6/11,07 is the ratio of consumed liquid fuel to oxydizer; again it's something I calculated for my specific case, taking into account the wolfhounds using it in 9/11 ratio and the nervs using only liquid fuel. Then deltaV nuclear is 8000*LN(intermediate mass/Dry) I also have, made similarly, the "first nuclear, then chemical", where I would of course burn the nuclear fuel first, keeping just enough LF to completely drain the oxydizer, and this would give higher values in chemical deltaV and lower values of nuclear. And finally, a third line with additional input "leave behind X tons of oxydizer", where I would burn all the oxidizer save for X, then burn nuclear, then finish with chemical. This is the more complicated figure, but it's the one relevant to take off from a planet, then perform a mission, then land somewhere else. For example, I am refueling on Ike, I take off, perform a mission, plan to land on Mun. So first I fiddle around with the "leave behind X oxydizer", until I find that 130 tons of oxydizer will give me 450 m/s high thrust at the end. This is enough to land on Mun, with a low thrust burn at the beginning. I finished refueling on LF, that's 2285 tons, and I have 1900 tons of dry mass. I try different amounts of starting Ox: with 200 tons, if I save 130 for the end, I have 110 m/s high thrust, followed by 5500 m/s low thrust, followed by 450 m/s high thrust. but the starting high thrust value is too small to leave Ike, so I try to raise the Ox to 300 tons, and now I get 270 m/s high thrust, followed by 5350 m/s low thrust, and finally again 450 m/s high thrust. This is the most accurate method I found of estimating my deltaV, and the game can't do it. If you are interested, I can give more help to build a datasheet

if your orbit has a time of one year, then a radial correction to make sure you match time with vall's passage is going to cost a few m/s at most. And you are performing it as part of another bigger manuever, so it's going to be completely negligible. incidentally, i must point out that using a gravity assist from tylo or laythe is a much more efficient way to get captured in jool's orbit

question: is there some way to only take some science samples and not all? I am trying to return some samples in a minimal ascent vehicle with four command seats for the crew. the seats are placed symmetrically, but one kerbal has 13 ground samples, 375 kg, and they imbalance the rocket and cause it to go tilted. If I could split those samples equally among the crew, it would work

You have to plan the gravity brake with a large advance, as much as one or two years earlier. This way, if none of the moons are in a goo position, you can just add a couple m/s prograde/retrograde burn, which will change your time for arrival at Jool by many hours. Once you are close to Jool, that would be far too expensive.

@JacobJHC here's my new submission. Sorry if the report is long and gets a bit messy. It started as a nanocristalline diamond caveman (parts 1-6, there's no strict need to read those), and when I needed an interplanetary mission to finish I decided to go big and do a Jool 5. So I started building a big mothership, which required well over 100 launched and capped at 530 tons and 900 parts. (parts 7-15). Then part 16 is the trip to Jool. My original plan was running the Jool 5 as part of the NCD challenge (which includes a no reload policy), but I immediately lost the Tylo lander. At that point, to avoid jeopardizing the NCD challenge, I decided to skip the difficult landings and just do a reduced mission (Parts 17-21) - luckily I included a backup lander pod for such an occurrence. Then, completed the NCD, I reloaded back to just arrived at Jool, and I did the Jool 5 with some reloads (parts 22-26). Technically you don't need to read parts 17-21, as those are not part of the Jool 5 continuity; except that I referenced stuff from them, as in "I brough Navis Sideralis Neanderthalensis back to Pol in the same way as described already", so I think they can be confusing if one has not read parts 17-21. This is a third level Jool 5, the second submission in caveman (if I didn't miss anything), the first with commnet enabled (basically means, no kerbal on a ladder, had to use the heaviest pods for everything). I also got 11395 science that could deserve a mention in the Jeb level; it's a pittance over what can be achieved there, but it was still quite complicated to achieve, as science jr and goo cannot be refreshed and I had to bring 20 expendable containers to run those experiments (almost) everywhere.