Kerbin's Time Trial Rover Challenge

[TinnedEpic]

Mission brief: The KSP wants to begin landing Rover modules on the Mun and Minimus for exploration purposes. They want a Rover which can cover vast distances in as shorter amount of time as possible without sustaining any damage. So to achieve this they have called on you and others to design and test your own Rover which does exactly this.

KSP has chosen a testing site which they feel best represents the surface likely to be encountered on Mun or Minimus. The test is to reach the mountain ranges located inland from the Kerbin Space Centre. Distance is roughly 40 000m.

The winning Rover will be the one that makes this distance in the least amount of time Undamaged.

Rules:

-You can only use stock parts.

-Rover cannot leave the ground and become airborn at any time (Minor bouncing acceptable).

-Rover must be constructed in the hanger (Aka launch from the Runway).

-Rover must traverse the ground between the runway and the mountain ranges.

-Rover must arrive at the mountain ranges in undamaged.

-Must travel at least 38 000m (38k) to qualify. Over 40k is deemed excellent.

-Pictures/Videos or it didn\'t happen.

Scores

*Scores are based of the mission times when you submit your score remember to screen capture your flight results menu*

'Distance: 9k - >40k' Scores

1st: 3:27 chanic (overshot by 4.1k)

2nd: 3:51 chanic (overshot by 5.3k)

3rd: 3:52 Kosmo-not (overshot by 600m)

4th: 4:04 Optical9090 (overshot 700m)

5th: 4:13 SasquatchM

6th: 4:22 Kosmo-not

'Distance: 38k-39k' Scores:

1st: 3:38 Kosmo-not

2nd: 4:54 Shades

3rd: 5:20 Optical9090

4th: 5:33 Shades

5th: 5:54 Shades

Good Luck , it\'s challenging.

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Challenge Inspired by this video: http://youtu.be/Rhei9mwR3P0

[0muffins0]

This is deceptively hard.

'Hey 60 m/s seems safe, lets do 70'

'It\'s nice and stable at 70 m/s. Going up to 80'

'80 is a piece of cake, lets do OH MY GAWD I\'M FLYING!'

*BOOM!*

[RC1062]

You know brake is \'B\' right?

Like the video, like the challenge. I shall try it!

[TinnedEpic]

I know right? I thought it would be a good one to do. I managed to hold steady at 100m/s for a 1/3 of the way and I was like \'omg i\'m gonna do it!\'. then I hit a bump and i was airborn.

If b doesn\'t work you can always use parachutes which are surprisingly effective.

Edit: I noticed there is a hill if you go too fast over it you actually can loose control at high speeds. So looks like you got to slow down at some point to make it over. I think the max would be 40 m/s though if you have enough front end weight you can go a good 60 m/s over the hills.

[RC1062]

There is a really annoying bump right near the end...

I tried to get my boat there... I lost half of it getting off the runway but my time was looking near 7 mins, about 90 ms^-1 terminal velocity.

[TinnedEpic]

I\'m getting close myself. I lost half my Rover though getting to the mountains looking around the 9 minute mark. I\'m gonna see if I can get away with a faster engine to top your 7 min estimate after I work out how to slow my rover down without tearing it in half

[Shades]

Allow me to introduce, the amazing Non-flying* El Spikey! capable of traveling at a steady 110-113 m/s!

Final Time : 6:38 (crashed into mountain, didnt deploy my paras) so a easy 6:50 to a full stop in front of them

a simple point and let her rip! (can still steer at speed too 8) )

Please note, using 2x time warp WILL make Spikey Crash

for those that wish to test :

*New Record! : 5:54! screenshots 1-4 (screenshot 3 is Spikey rolling back down the hill after releasing

[Optical9090]

I\'ve got 5:20 to the top of one of the hills just now, gonna replace my engine and go again, lets see if i can best my score.

[Spearka]

time trail? FOLLOW THAT TRAIL!!!

[RedDwarfIV]

time trail? FOLLOW THAT TRAIL!!!

I\'m gonna do an archaeology!

[Shades]

I\'ve got 5:20 to the top of one of the hills just now, gonna replace my engine and go again, lets see if i can best my score.

Rules:

-You can only use stock parts.

-Rover cannot leave the ground and become airborn at any time (Minor bouncing acceptable).

-Rover must be constructed in the hanger (Aka launch from the Runway).

-Rover must traverse the ground between the runway and the mountain ranges.

-Rover must arrive at the mountain ranges in undamaged.

-Pictures/Videos or it didn\'t happen.

psst... I got there first

[Optical9090]

I know.

Here you og, sadly i decided it was a grandious idea to go in the middle of the night.

Working on shaving a minute of that, but i seem to crash horrbily every time XD

[Shades]

nice, are you using the RCS to prevent yours from flying or for steering?

im about to experiment with a dual rocket version of spikey, should be fun

[Optical9090]

Steering, i\'ve got 16 rcs units total, 8 on each side, 4 front, 4 rear.

I hammered it all the way at about 120 m/s.

My current design does 170m/s but i need to learn when to brake on the way so i dont go airborn and crash. It\'s a very, very unbalanced design.

[Kosmo-not]

I think this challenge would benefit from a well-defined finish line.

My current design is projected to get there in about 4 minutes. One of the wings with one of the landing gear decided to fly off mid-transit. I was able to drive for a little longer until it finally went kerboom.

*edit*

I made a time of 4:22.

First screenshot is of me on the side of the hill.

Second is the flight results.

[Shades]

New time with Spikey : 5:33

Steering, i\'ve got 16 rcs units total, 8 on each side, 4 front, 4 rear.

I hammered it all the way at about 120 m/s.

My current design does 170m/s but i need to learn when to brake on the way so i dont go airborn and crash. It\'s a very, very unbalanced design.

I must confess, I\'m trying to find the balance needed to stay on the ground, while getting the most speed out of it, all the while maintaining control (that wont cause spikey to go boom) and all that without RCS lol

at the moment im playing around with spikey and seeing what i can do to keep spikeys ability to just line up, push space and sit back (its a very user-friendly spikey mobile )

[Shades]

holy, first sub 5 min time! 4:54! 8)

if i make Spikey any lighter it will go airborne...

already have Plans for a Spikey Mk. 2, if it goes like i think, should hit 150 m/s and stay on the ground (just)

[Kosmo-not]

You do have some competition, Shades.

[Shades]

wouldn\'t be fun without it, however, i notice you haven\'t stopped in that pic

i take it you rotated the fuel parts so they are mostly inside? i tried that, buut, i know im using a heavier rover, and mine goes air borne if i go over 137 m/s, so im curious as to how you are keeping yours on the ground

[Kosmo-not]

wouldn\'t be fun without it, however, i notice you haven\'t stopped in that pic

i take it you rotated the fuel parts so they are mostly inside? i tried that, buut, i know im using a heavier rover, and mine goes air borne if i go over 137 m/s, so im curious as to how you are keeping yours on the ground

Stopping is a trivial matter.

Here\'s my secret:

I have a large fuel tank hidden inside the front half of the vehicle. Also, I have tail fins on the side that are angled down a little. These keep it along the ground.

[Optical9090]

Fast design

Stable design

Ground-going design

Pick 2

Got one right now that does the run in less than 4 minutes, problem is i end up dead in the side of the mountain when i get close.

[Kosmo-not]

My newest time using an improved version of my previous vehicle.

3:38

Don\'t mind the parachutes being destroyed messages. This was originally a test to see if the parachute would rip off at high speed or not. I decided I might as well head for the hills.

[SasquatchM]

4:13

[chanic]

First of all, great challenge! I had a lot of fun with it, and it is indeed challenging. I\'ve spent about two days now coming up with my current design.

My Time: 3:25

Almost there! Keeping my fingers crossed!

Stopped! Without exploding first! Hooray!

Flight Results. I have no idea why it says I hit a speed of 1,848 m/s. My craft tops out at around 170. The 5.1 Gs is kinda suspect too. Maybe weird readings do to landing gear compressing during bumps? (It was definitely a bumpy trip.)

I crashed a lot during this challenge. Sometimes slamming into the ground, sometimes rolling over, sometimes a spectacular disintegrating cartwheel resulting in multiple components flying past 2.5 km away without showing any signs of coming down (and me laughing hysterically).

But this only happened once:

My craft hit a rather large bump and bounced into the air nose-up. I applied RCS to bring the nose down, and it kind of worked. It landed on its wheels, and didn\'t break up, but it hit hard enough that the nose rebounded into the air again. I applied RCS again desperately trying to keep it under control, but when it came down this time, it broke the fuselage in half. This wasn\'t all that strange, but what happened after was...

The front half survived and kept rolling.

I was so certain that the result was catastrophic failure that I moved the mouse to go click on the 'restart flight' button, only to be surprised it wasn\'t there. It took me a moment to realize my intrepid kerbonauts were still happily coasting along.

[Kosmo-not]

I\'ve been testing out my vehicle. It starts cruising at about 184m/s and increases to 195m/s at the end. I\'ve never had it fall apart on me unless hitting the hill at full speed. Once the heading is locked in, it\'s hands-off operation until the end.