king of nowhere

I moved a boat on top of a mountain. which is odd enough that it may be a world first no, many people who went for fast kerbin circumnavigation made boats with wheels. however, my boat is carrying a plane on top of it. so, building a boat, sending it to laythe, dragging a plane over it, and pulling the whole contraption over a mountain... that, I bet nobody ever did before. this is Garibarge. it would like to be an aircraft carrier, but I am a lousy pilot, I can't land a plane with any precision. hence I made a barge with a ramp that a plane can climb. i made it because the plane on top of the boat counts as landed instead of splashed down, and that allows collecting more science in the same biome. Here's Garibarge's retractable underwater observation post, which I'm using to showcase that Garibarge has retractable wheels. Just in case I'd have to cross some land, which is happening right now. Garibarge's propellers are also powerful enough to go straight uphill on Laythe. They can tackle 20° slopes easily On top, I planted a flag stating "Garibarge was here" No, it could not actually exhist. Degenerate matter exhists at such density because it's subject to enormous pressure inside neutron stars. remove that pressure - by separating it from the rest of the star - and it will revert back to normal matter. just like a compressed gas will expand as soon as freed from whatever was keeping it compressed. besides, it's not a diamond. a diamond is carbon with a specific crystal structure, giving it a density of 3.5 g/cm3. Widor has a density around 108 g/cm3, so it's not diamond. I doubt it qualifies as "carbon" in the first place.

i've been using kerbalism + near future electrics without issues, the reactor work as they should. other mods may cause the problems

tylo circumnavigation took longer than expected, but I finally did it. pure stock.

Part 7: Climbing and spelunking After taking a detour to visit Tylo's cave, Tamarromobile finishes the circumnavigation of Tylo in 33 hours - an average of 35 m/s. Two pictures to get a clear view of the eastern emisphere of Tylo. Flags are 90 km apart I slightly improved the speed record with 27 minutes between flags 31 and 32. I ended the circumnavigation not on flag 1, but on flag 2, because I wanted to exclude the waiting time I had just after flag 1. 7.1) Crater to crater 7.2) What are 400 km in front of eternity? 7.3) Things to do with a cave complex 7.4) End of the road for Tamarromobile 7.5) Return Science recap

I got 140 m/s with a half-assed design i scrambled together in a short time as part of a larger mission. Very basic plane, but it flew thousands of kilometers. Can't post links from mobile, but it's linked in my signature, the Bolt/Nail mission, Eve chapter. That kind of performance is easy to get if one does not overengineer the plane - you appear to have a small rotor on a relatively big plane, which limits performance. Getting faster is harder. I know @Lt_Duckweed as a great expert of planes, if 229 is his best attemp, it's probably close enough to the upper theoretical limit

I'm asking about unique personal achievements: things that you have done and that probably nobody else has done. i'm not talking of things to boast. great achievements, low mass, low parts, most landings. there are other places for those. i'm talking of doing something so bizarre that after doing it, you muse "you know, I must be the very first person to do this exact thing" let's try a couple examples. here i was driving a rover on Tal. plenty of people have the outer planets mod. thousands will have landed on tal, and many of them will have used a rover for the task. nothing worth noting here. i did bring a rover to tal to circumnavigate it. nobody else circumnavigated tal with a rover - at least, nobody else wrote in the challenge subforum about it - but that's the kind of big achievements and this thread is not for those kind of things. i was planting a flag, and since tal has low gravity stopping a rover is annoying, so i sent a kerbal out while the rover was still moving, to plant the flag and rejoin the rover by jetpack. but I mishandled the maneuver and ended up with the rover running over bill. and i wondered, hey, what are the odds that someone else went all the way to this remote moon to have one of his own astronauts run down by a car? it must be a world first! I sent a rover to circumnavigate tylo. many other people have done it. i made a detour to reach the cave complex, and while there I climbed it, pushed the rover to the top. not very original. a lot of people must have landed near the cave complex, and surely somebody else already tested their rover mountaineering capacity by climbing to the top. but it just turns out that my rover has a cupola installed on a rotating servo on top - because i figured activating it and looking all around could help break the monotony of the long trip. well, what are the chances that someone did this already? surely others brought a rover on top of the cave complex. most likely someone else thought of putting a rotating cupola on top of a rover, though that's a weird enough idea. but using a rover with a rotating cupola on top to get a panoramic view from the top of tylo's cave is probably something unique. i'm curious to see other bizzarre dealings

it's not screen brightness, it's game brightness turning it up is useful for seeing by night. and for taking screenshots by night that can be seen

i suggest you increase background light in the options, most of those screenshots are just a black screen

i suppose you mean your most memorable kerbal death? well, i built a memorial for val during a caveman career

I do take this chance to ask a question that has been bugging me since i started this challenge the first time, almost four years ago: why the science contest is named after jeb? shouldn't it be bob's level?

rules are explicit about them. only recovered science counts, not transmitted, and surface experiments are transmitted science. that, and the science lab. that makes sense, too. the amount of science that could be recovered that way is potentially infinite, i think.

have you tried sticking them not on the docking port itself, but on the fuel tanks above it?

Part 6: Need for Speed: Tylo Flying Christmas Tree 2 drops Tamarromobile on Tylo. It's a completely different experience than it was with Dancing Porcupine, with sustained speeds between 150 to 200 km/h. As Tylo is big, this piece of report only covers the first half. The second half of the circumnavigation is still underway. Two pictures to get a clear view of the western emisphere of Tylo. Flags are 90 km apart Meaning that between flags 10 and 11, as well as 15 to 16, I crossed 90 km in 28 minutes. It gives an average speed of 193 km/s (53.5 m/s, close to the maximum of the wheels at 58 m/s), but the time includes planting a flag. 6.1) I thought docking issues would be a thing of the past 6.2) Beautiful desolation 6.3) Mountains ahoy! 7.4) Bonus: Back to El camino de muerte

there are times when the game does not make struts across docking ports. not sure when it happens; i know it's a bug of some editions. so, no matter how much you autostrut, it won't strut the payload to the rest of the rocket. which also explains why, before you add the rocket, the payload is fine. you can check it out, somewhere in the alt-f12 menu there is a "show autostrut" function. easy fix: add a normal strut. it's just 50 kg. you'll remove it later with eva construction.

Part 5: The new last flight of the Phoenix Phoenix flies low in Jool's atmosphere. Phoenix flying amid green clouds 5.1) Lowering orbit 5.2) Inside Jool 5.3) Getting out of Jool 5.4) Return to Pol Science recap

slate, wal: modded (kerbalism, near futute electric) ovok hale polta priax tal: stock whirligig world: i had a few mods, but the only one that actually affected the rover is simple fuel switch

why modded? pol is a stock moon, and i didn't use any mod in that game

As part of my latest Jool 5, I run a circumnavigation of Pol for once, it's a stock moon. P.S. I see Didd hasn't been added to the scoreboard yet

Part 4: Pretty little world Leaping Mantis circumnavigates Pol, gathering all available science in the process. I wanted to call this chapter "Pol is dead", but I thought it would be very confusing for those who would not get the reference. It took 73 days for the circumnavigation, but only because I stopped to do other tasks. From Pol 13 it was straightforward. Every flag is spaced 10-12 km Science recap In space high you can run 10 science experiments: EVA report, EVA experiment, crew report, goo observation, materials study, temperature scan, atmospheric pressure, gravity scan, infrared telescope, magnetometer boom. Except for the gravity scan, all are global. So you can run high space experiments equal to 9+1*biome. In space low the situation is sligtly different; you can't use the infrared telescope, but EVA report also can be done in multiple biomes. So the numer of experiments is 7+2*biomes. I am collecting all space science in Flying Christmas Tree 2. It's easier to keep track of which experiments I may be missing if I divide the reports. On the ground you also have 10 experiments (seismic scan and surface sample are available, but you lose magnetometer boom and infrared telescope), and all except EVA experiments are biome-specific. So you get 1+9*biome. Plus surface features. On Pol there are 4 biomes and 1 surface feature, so there are 38 reports available and collected so far.

Part 3: The road to Jool Flying Christmas Tree 2 goes first to refuel on Minmus, then on Jool. It ditches Garibarge along the way, before landing and refueling on Pol. Arrival at Jool 3.1) Refueling on Minmus 3.2) To Jool 3.3) Garibarge lands on Laythe

i'm having some visual bugs on tylo those darker shadows keep flickering on an off, the effect is very annoying when trying to drive a rover - though ultimately non critical. it has nothing to do with my rover or lights; i changed vehicle, went on a flag that has nothing else in physical radius, and still there is the same visual bug. any suggestion on how to fix?

but its effectiveness gets reduced with speed. a more likely culprit, though, may be electricity. i haven't paid much attention since it wasn't my focus, but some science experiments require a lot of electricity, and they run slower withiout. i am pretty sure, in any case, the sentinel telescope still requires many years to collect its science in the first place.

@JacobJHC after starting my newest jool5, I realized I made a small violation of rule 4: after sending my ship to minmus for refueling, I realized I forgot to include thermal radiators. rather than reloading and losing all progress, I sent a small ship to minmus with the required parts and stuck them with eva construction. I also swapped out a lander, but in this case it was purely nonfunctional beautification, since the new lander was a perfect copy of the old one save for the addition of 50odd lightstrips. that also on minmus orbit Please tell me I'm fine and don't need to reload all the way to LKO

It's light, but it takes up a lot of space. You try docking Phoenix to a ship with a bunch of other vehicles. Same goes for the rovers. They are not incredibly huge, but they all have wheels stuck on long trusses for stability, and that take up lots of space. Basically, every vehicle I'm carrying around has a very large base for wheels, or large wings. Most are also long. And let's not even talk about Garibarge. Part 2: Launching Flying Christmas Tree 2 With all the landers in place, Flying Christmas Tree 2 may be the most majestic ship I ever launched. Or the most silly. Probably both. 2.1) Launching Flying Christmas Tree 2 with Tamarromobile 2.2) Launching Not Albatross 2.3 Launching Garibarge 2.4) Launching Phoenix 2.5) Launching Leaping Mantis, and refueling

I am curious to see the actual spaceship, though