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Hello everyone. Here I am again giving it another shot, after my failed attempt to complete the Elcano Challenge by circumnavigating Minmus in a rover last September. This will time I'm going fully stock, and doing the challenge in an early-ish career mode save. Background Long story short, last year I built a reusable Mun rover and lander system, for use from a research station in Mun orbit. Then I learned about the Elcano Challenge, and impulsively decided to circumnavigate the Mun with the rover I already had there, the Gnat. That went well, so I decided to fly the rover to Minmus and circumnavigate that as well. I was making good progress, then unfortunately my save was corrupted. It couldn't be retrieved. Not to be deterred, I started a new career save, and powered through the earliest part of career mode. As soon as I felt I had the kredits, I built a research lab in Mun orbit and a reusable rover lander system, a basic one with mid technology tree parts. The idea was both to improve upon the design of the Gnat and it's lander, and also to gather a bunch of science quickly to get the labs in orbit cooking away and unlock the technology tree fast. I didn't really expect to do an Elcano run with this rover, but I just came back from an extended break from KSP, and I like to drive it, so what the heck. For challenge completion purposes, here are some screenshot's of the first rover mission so you can see that I flew it from Kerbin: Now we'll join our heroes, Buzz and Wendo Kerman (no relation) as they set off on the story that may (hopefully) lead them to circumnavigate Minmus in Rover 1. Prologue - Mun Landing 2 Chapter 1 - Onward to Minmus Chapter 2 - The First Day Chapter 3 - Into the Highlands Chapter 4 - Another Chapter Chapter 5 - The Rover Repair Contract Chapter 6 - Challenge Complete!

There are few KSP challenges that have intrigued me more than the Elcano challenge. I've known of it for years, but until recently assumed it would just be a boring slog that takes no skill whatsoever, just hold down W until you make it around the planet. However, upon inspecting it further, I then realized how much more there is to it. It takes fortitude to sit through the boring stretches of driving, engineering prowice to design the optimal rover, and keen driving skills to minimize your risk of crashing. I then decided that I wanted to give it a go for myself. But that brought several more questions with it. Which planet/moon would I circumnavigate? What would my vehicle look like? How difficult do I want the challenge to be? It would take me a while to come up with two of those three answers, but I knew right from the start that I wanted to circumnavigate a planet in a large rover with a high crew capacity, mostly because real circumnavigations of Earth included many sailors, and I also wanted to increase the realism aspect, seeing as drivers would need to take shifts in order to keep the rover going for as much of the time as possible. And that's when I came up with the preliminary design for the vehicle, which would later be called Odyssey. And sooner or later, I also decided that I wanted to make this mission as difficult as possible, and that's when I decided to take it to Tylo, the toughest place to drive a rover anywhere in the Kerbol System. Welcome to... ODYSSEY: TYLO CIRCUMNAVIGATION, DAY-BY DAY ELCANO CHALLENGE by Jack Joseph Kerman PRE-MISSION: As I mentioned earlier, the road to me eventually trying my hand at the Elcano challenge was not perfectly smooth, and for a while the idea of circumnavigating a planet or moon seemed both patently absurd and also incredibly boring to me. This began to change when I sent a rover mission to Tylo, as part of my colonization of the Jool system in a save that I have since unfortunately lost. Originally, I didn't plan to go far with the rover I had brought there; maybe 50 kilometers or so from my small science outpost. However, the mission quickly turned into a much longer endeavor, and I ended up driving 300+ kilometers across the surface of Tylo, and even had fun doing it. Whether it was finding the optimal way to climb a mountain without starving for electricity, watching my speed as I came back down, or just laughing at the floating boulders that Tylo seems to have an abundance of, the mission never got too boring, which greatly surprised me. Here's a recreation of the rover and mission I made in a newer save: After this successful mission, I slowly warmed up to the idea of a potential circumnavigation mission, and a few months later I tried my hand at building a massive rover that would be used to circumnavigate either the Mun or Duna. I simply dubbed this rover the "Circumnavigator" (creative, I know), and tested its features, such as the small interior, mining equipment, and cargo garage for a smaller rover in the back ramp. The smaller "mountaineer" rover would have been very similar to the one shown on Tylo above, except with more electric charge capacity to increase its range. This rover's design was pretty flawed, however, and in my opinion it looked rather ugly. The wheels were evenly spaced apart on an unnecessary number of girder segments, the thing was 40 meters long and awkward to drive, the battery power was limited, and the mining equipment was entirely pointless. I would later name it the Odyssey, but it would never be used anywhere other than testing at the KSC. More screenshots of the original Odyssey: So that's when I got to work on my current vehicle, the Odyssey 2. This is the vehicle that I will use to circumnavigate Tylo, and it's a vast improvement over the original. Here is coverage of every day of the mission that I've done so far: Current Latitude: 90 Degrees North Current Longitude: 1 Degree West DAY 0: NEW DESIGN, LAUNCH AND ASSEMBLY IN ORBIT New Design for the Odyssey 2 Launches of the Descent Stage and TAV The Launch of Odyssey DAY 1: TOUCHDOWN ON TYLO The Landing DAY 2: THE JOURNEY BEGINS The First True Driving Session DAY 3: ONWARDS AND UPWARDS Driving Session DAY 4: INTO THE NIGHT Driving Session: DAY 5: THE DRIVE NORTH Driving Session: DAY 6: SMOOTH SAILING Driving Session: DAY 7: THE NORTH POLE OF TYLO Driving Session: DAY 8: I AM SPEED Driving Session: Arrival of the Tylo Ascent Vehicle: DAY 9: THE LONG HAUL Driving Session: Arrival at the Tylo Cave! DAY 10: PROVISIONS The Care Package and Return Vehicle: Driving Session: DAY 11: HALFWAY THERE Driving Session: DAY 12: CONTINUING ON Driving Session: DAY 13: A LOAD OFF Driving Session: DAY 14: THE PACKAGE ARRIVES The Resupply Mission: DAY 15: MOUNTAINEERING Driving Session: DAY 16: TOWARDS THE SOUTH POLE Driving Session: DAY 17: THE SOUTH POLE OF TYLO The South Pole Debacle: DAY 18: DETOUR Driving Session: DAY 19: NORTHBOUND Driving Session: DAY 20: PRESSING ON Driving Session: DAY 21: THE FINAL OBSTACLES Driving Session: DAY 22: HOME STRETCH/MISSION COMPLETE Finishing the Drive: The Return to Kerbin: ROUTE MAP:

Hi folks, I recently decided to do a circumnavigation of Duna by plane or helicopter. After many hours of testing, I finally came up with a compact helicopter that flew pretty darn well! Here are its specs: - Weight: 1.24 tonne - Top speed: ~75 m/s (65 m/s on average) - Kerbal capacity: 2 meat bags - Power consumption: ~2.5 Electrical untis/s - Max air time: infinite - KSP Version: 1.9.1 with breaking ground My goal was to circumnavigate Duna and get as much biome-science as possible. I didn't want to visit every biome, but only land on the ones that were along the path of the circumnavigation. Since Duna's circumference is ~2.000 km and my average speed was around 65 m/s, this mission would take me at least 8,5 hours. I believe I flew over 3.000 km in the end, but I wasn't able to record it properly, so I could be wrong. I made a time-lapse video of the mission. You can check it out in the link below (~7:00). Hope you liked it. Some highlights from the mission:

In the Kerbal Grand Tour, you are to land on as many planets and moons as possible, and circumnavigate them on land/ocean/water. For Jool, an atmospheric circumnavigation is sufficient. Rules. All Stock parts except Vens stock revamp. (FAR, mechjeb, KER, and other informational mods allowed) KSP 1.2+ Video is recommended, although photo albums with enough pictures to document essentials are allowed No Alt-F12 or other cheats/hacks. No exploiting Krakens/bugs/glitches. Use part clipping only for decorative parts(lights, ladders, science parts, etc.), not for fuel tanks, engines, command pods, etc. Must be manned with at least 3 Kerbals. No external command seats. Up to 10 Quickloads, and 5 reverts are welcome. No more than 3 launches. Any other suggested rules, ask here! Points +6 per every planet circumnavigated +3 per every moon circumnavigated +10 points if no nuclear/ion engines are used. +5 points if no ISRU drills are used +5 points if no ISRU converters are used +10 points if your vessel cant hold ore +10 points for not using 3.75m tanks and engines +15 points for using only 1.25m tanks and engines. +10 points if 5+ crew are carried -5 points per Kerbal killed -5 points if a detachable rover is used for circumnavigation

Hello There, today I have a simple task for our Kerbalnauts. Travel Kerbin all the way around in a one plane as fast as possible. RULES: 1) Must use some sort of aircraft. 2) Jet engines only. 3) Must not go Suborbital. 4) Stock parts only. 5) Have to visit both poles, (with evidence) 6) You are allowed to mine ore. (if you really want to for fuel) 7) Do so as fast as possible NO assistance mods, Kerbal engineer is allowed. Will make some sort of badge.