RexKramer

While having a dedicated miner and converter on the surface, and only lifting fuel, is definitely the most efficient way to get fuel to orbit- there are a couple of advantages to lifting ore (and the drill too) to an orbiting refiner. 1. You don't need to perform a precision landing to get your fuel tank near the miner/refiner. Eventually this isn't a big issue, but there is certainly a learning curve involved with performing precision landings. 2. Since you don't have to land your tanks in the same location every time, each mining trip to the surface can be to a different location or biome, allowing you to explore the planet while mining fuel. Killing two birds with one stone. I am now able to perform precision landings effortlessly, but I still like to send a miner down and lift ore to an orbiting refinery, to have an opportunity to explore the surface each trip.

Using Tylo is probably the best tool for getting anywhere in the Jool system. Use Tylo to close your orbit around Jool. With a little tweaking, you can use Tylo to put your orbit just about anywhere around Jool. By doing this, you can get your velocity relative to Laythe to a much more reasonable amount without spending much DV. Relying on aero captures is now very difficult in 1.0.5, capturing at 8,000m/s is really not a good approach to the problem, although in earlier versions of KSP it worked great.

Welcome to the forums Chemp! Yup, so far I've done 3 water circumnavigations, 2 on Kerbin and one on Laythe. There's even a distinct category for completing water-only circumnavigations, Master Mariner.

Does the problem become worse as your speed increases? If so, reducing the size of roll control surfaces may help. In other words, use smaller or less ailerons. If you are already down to the smallest aileron, move them inboard to get closer to the COM if possible.

Hope this doesn't invalidate my three (stock) water entries- from this week's devnotes: All that work. Looks like boats are going to be much less difficult in the near future.

This is indeed a known issue. I think the root problem is it is unclear what constitutes 'power generation.' In addition to fuel cells, rocket and jet engines also generate electricity, but do not satisfy the power generation requirement of contracts.

The Caps Lock button does not perform this function on OSX. The fix is easy, reassign the precision controls function to another key. More information can be found here- http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/125288#Precision

Ok Fengist, Here's my entry which should qualify me for Master Mariner. I had previously completed a Laythe water circumnavigation, this is my second Kerbin one- I cut across a continent on my first attempt. This attempt was water only, except for the land bridge. This is a completely stock game, as always. 'Amphib3c-K' is nearly identical to the vessel I used on Laythe, with a few small changes. Basically took some stuff off that I didn't need. I did lower the drill, but evidently not enough, because I still had to retract the landing gear to get to the ore. Yes, it still has wings and a rudder. No, it is in no way suitable for flight of any sort, or even tiny jumps off hills. I did briefly get THREE of the wheels off the ground at the same time without exploding, but that's as far as I pushed it. See the photos at the end of my Laythe entry for demonstration of how this thing handles air under the wheels.. Estimated a max range on this one at 750km. I did have one leg of 725km (between waypoints 4&5), and had a little fuel in the tanks at the end of it. It goes about 70m/s out of the chocks, sometimes reaching 76m/s. Most importantly, I was able to use 4X warp while sailing, once I burned off a little fuel. As much as I miss my rover wheels, this thing actually held up fairly well on the land bridge. Kept the speed under 30m/s on land, and went much much slower crossing hills, worked out pretty well. I'll add some notes to the Imgur album tonight.

Fengist, Here's my Laythe entry. Stock KSP (meaning no mods whatsoever), obviously another water circumnavigation. This is basically a modified version of the vessel I used for Kerbin. Yes, still using the MK3 layout, which cost a lot of money to fling out to Laythe. I made some changes to the Kerbin craft (which was Amphib2 I think). This one I called Amphib3c. I added some electric generation, now have 6 RTGs instead of 2, and I added a Fuel Cell Array. I put a lot of the little bits inside the cargo bay, and lowered the mount for the drill (not enough apparently). Biggest change was the configuration of the 'pontoons' and wheels. I lowered the pontoons significantly to get a performance increase. That also required widening the pontoons significantly to prevent tipping over. I also ditched the rover wheels for aircraft wheels. I miss the rover wheels, but the aircraft wheels have two advantages. First, they are a lot less draggy, so there is an efficiency bonus. Second, they don't break as easily as the rover wheels. Oh, the other big change is the addition rocket engines. Big ones. Fengist, I have a couple of qualification questions: 1. I'm using wings, so need a ruling regarding those I guess. This thing still won't fly at all, I'm using the wing sections instead of modular girders because they 'look cooler'. I still have the 'rudder' mounted on the back too, but you already said that wasn't a problem. 2. I had to deviate from the equator of Laythe quite a ways. I just wasn't able to get the range needed for the long section of water (about 1125km) on one side of Laythe. I didn't feel too bad about it because the Kerbin circumnavigation also requires some pretty big deviations from the equator, but this is up to you of course. 3. Finally, a redo of Kerbin is probably up next. If I'm going for Master Mariner, am I allowed to cross the land bridge? Or is it required to not cross that section? I'm asking this because I'd prefer to start and finish at KSC, if that is allowed. Anyway, here it is. The route map is located near the end. There's some notes on the Imgur album for those who are interested.

Looked to me like you have some mods installed.

Heh, yeah the stock tires certainly are challenging. Although my entry was primarily intended for water travel anyway, my brief experience over land certainly convinced me that the medium wheels on MK3 parts was a recipe for, uh, not being on land any longer than absolutely necessary. As for using the MK3 parts, feel free to laugh, but I brought basically the same vessel to Laythe. It was my most expensive single launch to date, and still required two refuelings before leaving Kerbin, plus another top off reaching Jool. I did at least replace the rover wheels with aircraft landing gear, but that was more of an effort to increase efficiency, I still miss having rover wheels that can go in reverse. I did manage to increase the range to about 750km. Still not enough to do a true Equatorial circumnavigation of Laythe (the big stretch of water is about 1125km..), but should be enough for a respectable entry. I hope. By the way, Fengist, I will probably be shooting for a Master Mariner badge at some point also. I think my first Kerbin entry doesn't qualify due to cutting across the continent south of KSC, so I'll probably be redoing the Kerbin circumnavigation at some point.

I'm currently working on a Laythe circumnavigation (stock). One of the many problems I've encountered is determining wether my vessel can make the next waypoint before running out of fuel. There are some large stretches of open water on Laythe, and I'm finding that just 'eyeballing' distances on the map may not be sufficient. I have a pretty good idea what the range of my ship is, now I just need accurate distance estimates between points on Laythe. I've been using a formula to calculate the distance in radians between two points, and multiplying by the radius to come up with a great circle distance. (I'm still 'eyeballing' the headings..) You just need to know the Lat/Long coordinates of your waypoints, and let a spreadsheet do the math (or do it by hand if you're a sadist). The Lat/Longs need to be converted to radians for the formula to function, but again that's something the spreadsheet will do painlessly. The formula to determine the radians between two points is ArcCos(SinLat1*SinLat2 + CosLat1*CosLat2*Cos(absolute difference Lon1-Lon2)) Again, the Lat and Long values need to be converted to radians. Once you know how many radians separate two points, just multiply by the radius of the body (Laythe's radius is 500km). You should end up with a pretty accurate distance value. I couldn't remember how to do this from navigation courses I took decades ago, so Wikipedia to the rescue! Here's the link to the relevant formulas to determine great circle distance- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance Lat/Longs for celestial bodies can be found at kerbalmaps.com. Hope this helps someone. Laythe is turning out to be a real challenge. - - - Updated - - - Here's a couple of challenges that came up on my Laythe attempt- First, the rockets I used to get my floating rover to Laythe didn't want to decouple properly. Spent a couple of hours figuring out how to get them off the ship. Next, I deployed my drill and discovered that it didn't reach the ground! Missed by about a half meter! After a few minutes of panic, I tried lowering the landing gear, which was just enough to allow the drill to reach the surface. Phew! Finally, one the drill reached the surface, I was informed there was no ore, because I was in Laythe's Sagen Sea biome. Uh oh, I landed with just enough fuel to sputter to this hunk of land and refuel. I headed inland, and after about 2km finally found a spot the game would allow me to drill (with landing gear retracted of course).

Updated leaderboard today, with K3achas entry setting new altitude and speed records. Congratulations! noname117 still holds the distance record.. littlebuddy0 posted a successful entry, which looks like it flew well. Finally, jrb596 posted his entry with a lifting body research plane. This was his first forum post. Welcome to the forums! And I'm honored that your first post was to this challenge, thank you jrb596! I keep track of the entries in a spreadsheet. Thanks to K3achas, I had to widen the craft name column significantly. 'Demonic Goat Cheese Consiar'? If there was a category for longest craft name, K3achas would be in the lead.

Fengist Here's my entry for a circumnavigation of Kerbin. This is a 100% stock game, by the way. "Amphib2" Crew: 6 max. I sent her out with a crew of 4. Max Sailing Speed (full fuel): 38m/s Max Sailing Speed (1/3 fuel): 52-55m/s Sailing Range: 400km+ Max Water Entry Speed: 6m/s. Anything faster risks damaging an engine. Max Beaching Speed: I usually tried for 6-8m/s or less for safety. I accidentally hit a beach at ~26m/s once, and came out OK. Scared me though. Circumnavigation: Westbound, mostly over water. There was one place where land travel was required, plus I cut across the continent south of KSC to see how well it would perform on land. (Not too well..) There's a few notes if you go to the Imgur album. I did lose some parts along the way, but thankfully had some redundancy. For electric generation I started with 2 RTGs, 12 OX-STATs, 4 Gigantors, plus of course the 4 jet engines also produce electricity while running. Along the way I managed to lose both RTGs (very early) and 6 of the OX-STATs. The RTGs were mounted in the cargo bay, which I suspect doesn't completely protect it's occupants like I expected. The loss of the 6 OX-STATS came at a particularly bad time- right before crossing the land bridge. The land bridge is a ways north of the equator, so solar efficiency isn't great. I still had the Gigantors, but they can't be used while in motion of course. To make up for the loss of the RTGs and OX-STATs, I ran the jet engines at low thrust while going across the land bridge. Worked out OK. A further help was the fact that I had finally figured out that the vessel was much more durable without full fuel tanks (duh). Hope this doesn't disqualify me, but I did mount one aerodynamic surface, a rudder, on the back of the ship. This was because there aren't any water rudders in stock KSP, and I needed something to help keep the ship pointed forwards at 'high' speeds. 'High' meaning a whopping 38m/s. I can assure you that this vessel is in no way even remotely capable of flight. Even catching a little air going over hills almost always resulted in broken wheels at best, often followed by explosions and a debris field. One lesson I learned is that redundancy is a good thing- I was lucky I had so many sources of electric generation since I lost so many. The first thing I would change on a rebuild is to add batteries. Amphib2 only had a single giant battery, if I had lost that I don't think I could have completed the trip. So next time (Laythe, here I come..) I'll put at least two batteries on board, maybe more. They don't weigh much, and it's hard to operate without them. My biggest concern by far during this journey was having a crew member accidentally fall into the cargo bay. I didn't include any ladders to get out, so that would have been a big problem. I decided to have a rule of nobody moving on the roof while the cargo doors were open. Anyway, almost all of the travel was over water. I did cut across the continent south of KSC to test out the rover capabilities before I got too far into the journey, but otherwise I stuck to the water. Oh, the whole journey took about 48 days, but a lot of that was spent refilling the fuel tanks.

Yes. The rules state you must launch horizontally from the runway. The craft must also be capable of a horizontal landing on the runway. However, a landing of any sort is not required at all. Intentionally jettisoning landing gear is not allowed. So you may absolutely mount parachutes, and use them as well, as long as it looks like the plane could have landed horizontally. There are several light aircraft manufacturers which use parachute recovery as an emergency system. The one that comes to mind is Cirrus aircraft, which uses a system called Ballistic Recovery System (BRS). An explosive charge deploys the parachute. On landing the entire aircraft acts as a giant 'crumple zone', further absorbing energy during the 'landing'. The aircraft is essentially totaled after a BRS recovery, although the occupants are generally able to walk away from the wreckage. It's not 100% foolproof, but has been proven to work in most conditions. Anyway, I do not consider mounting or using parachutes cheating, this challenge isn't about grading your landings. Please don't intentionally stage away your landing gear, but feel free to use alternate landing systems as you wish.

Nice photos from ghostbuzzer7. I couldn't tell what you named the plane, so I'm calling your entry "Mountain Goat Heart Attack". Thanks for the F3 screenshot DrMarlboro. That entry looked extremely stable (until it wasn't..), or maybe just good pilot technique.

I'm going to make an exception for this one. There are two reasons I specified 1,000m. First was to ensure you could reach a safe altitude, and theoretically return for a landing. Secondly, I didn't want crews pulling the power back right after takeoff, thus reducing the adverse yaw and making the aircraft easier to control. On the first issue, I think flying completely around the planet after an engine failure is a more than adequate margin of safety. On the second issue, I'm confident that at takeoff weight you were not in much of a hurry to reduce thrust- I'm guessing you needed all you could get with all that fuel on board. I appreciate your honesty, pointing out the discrepancy, but I'm still allowing the entry. Nicely done!

Leaderboard updated today. noname117 managed a complete Kerbin circumnavigation with one dead engine, nice! I hate to even think how long that took. I'm curious if you can be awarded the Circumnavigator's challenge as well. That would be interesting to complete two challenges with the same vessel. FlipNascar set some speed and altitude records with Twister II. DrMarlboro had an interesting entry. I couldn't read the F3 screen from the YouTube video, but if you can post a F3 on imgur your entry looks eligible. The latest entry is from rudi1291, which posted impressive stats. rudi1291 made a very bold move, spacing the engines quite a distance from the centerline. I'm guessing it was a workout keeping it going straight, but rudi1291 didn't back off the throttle and rode it out for an impressive flight. Almost forgot about UpsilonAerospace's entry! It's a VTOL, so technically not eligible for the records. Regardless, a very impressive entry! Honestly, that looked like a good landing to me. Saves wear and tear on the landing gear..

That's correct. This challenge isn't grading you on your landings, you can grab your F3 shot at any point during the flight. Even after a catastrophic crash-landing if needed. The rules specify a horizontal takeoff from the KSC runway is required. The rules do specify that the aircraft must be capable of landing on the runway, but that an actual landing is not required. That means that you can't decouple or stage away your landing gear during the flight.

Found it, thanks noname117. Aaaaannnddd...noname117 is the current leader in all the atmospheric categories, with altitude 8,242, speed 248m/s, and distance 128.749km!

Ok, just updated the leaderboard. Please bear with me, this is the first challenge I've hosted. Lego8_bit was the first to post a completed challenge with Lizzard. Nice! Lego8_bit is the current distance record holder, limping 19.469km on one engine. Actually limping is a poor choice of words, you guys are making this look easy. FlipNascar had a several entries, including a couple that were actually valid! I believe FlipNascar currently holds a couple of records, 199m/s with Twister II and 2,127m altitude with Mik-29. FlipNascar, the F3 shot from Twister II was a little hard to read, so let me know if I got the numbers wrong. Azimech had a beautiful entry with V1 Challenge, and was notably the first to use the 'have the engine fall clean off the airplane' technique. Azimech, I couldn't find a F3 screenshot, but your entry certainly looks valid for records if you have one. Nice! noname117 also had a sporty looking entry with NAFA-4-J2. From the screenshots, it looks like the pilot was having a blast, even on one engine. Again, I couldn't find a F3 screenshot, but near as I can tell your entry would be eligible for records if you have one. Finally, today's thinking outside the box award has to go to FlipNascar with Twister I. Sorry Flip, I had to pull the rulebook out and nix your very creative solution to the problem. Even better was FlipNascar's solution to my rulebook pickiness, with Twister II. Nice! My sincere thanks to everyone who has expressed an interest in this challenge.

No need to redo, parts falling off is the Kerbal way. Azimech, can you confirm the 'propellers' are not modded parts, but actually flight control surfaces mounted to nose cones? If so, your entry looks completely stock, and meets all the specified rules.

LOL. Sorry, I'm going to be a stickler on the 'Laterally Mounted' part, a bi-coupler rotated so the thrust of one engine is slightly higher than the other one isn't going to pass muster.

I wanted to say no, but honestly the rules don't prohibit this. In real life, it's not uncommon to jettison fuel in an emergency, why not jettison the junked engine too? So yeah, feel free to jettison the engine. This could easily happen with pylon mounted engines. However, I think it would not be reasonable to jettison engines mounted on bi-couplers on the back of the plane (although the rules don't prohibit this either. Come to think of it, parts falling off vessels is kind of expected when it comes to Kerbal vessels, at least with mine..

FlipNascar, your Mik29 looks great. Regarding your 'cheaty design', yes that goes against the rules in a couple of ways. First, the two engines really should be the same. If not, you would really need to kill the weaker engine, and leave the stronger engine running at full throttle 100% to 1,000m. Also, technically the rules state engines mounted laterally. Mounting one of the engines on the centerline goes against the basic idea of the challenge. These are all excellent ideas, creative ways to sidestep the basic controllability problem this challenge presents. I was actually hoping to see some creative solutions to the problem, even ones which violate a rule or two. I'll add Mik29 to the board later.