Munar Circumnavigation by BigTrak

[maltesh]

I get a lot of mileage from the Cart plugin. And I\'ve been making quite a bit of use of the BigTrak mod for the Cart Plugin. With a concealed Mk. 1 Pod inside, it\'s very stable. With the PuddleJumper fuel tank, SAS Modulle, it\'s ridiculously stable. You can easily floor the pedal for long periods of time and trust in the SAS to keep you upright.

So, in the trailing days of V0.14.4... I figured I might as well circumnavigate the Mun.

First issue was getting it there. Easy enough.

I landed it at 60 degrees East, which was my best estimate at the time of the location of the center of the near face of the Mun. I now judge that to be closer to 45 degrees east, based on finding the leading pole of the Mun at close to 42 degrees West.

But, well, Circumnavigation is boring. As a result, I wouldn\'t recommend doing it on a new moon. There\'d been a reasonable amount of stuff on my Mun, and what I wound up doing was planting stations every sixty degrees, and miscellaneous objects halfway between each of those.

This ultimately meant that there was usually an indicator dot visible ahead that I could point at to keep bearing, and the various satellites whizzing overhead kept me moderately entertained So let\'s take the tour.

GWraught (120 E) was just a spacecraft I had in orbit. It didn\'t quite stick the landing.

Hindsight Station was so named because it sits at the opposite of the Munar Prime Meridian. I\'m still puzzled as to why the Munar Prime Meridian isn\'t in the center of the near face.

Depot 210 was a simple supply depot.

Larsen Base (120° W) was a dream given form: A huge, nuclear-powered installation that was to land at the halfway mark of the circumnavigationary journey, near the exit of that huge canyon on the far side.

Unfortunately, it landed...poorly, destroying the nuclear reactor, and killing most of its personell. Do not worry, Larsen Base! Help is on the way!

The Circumnavigators reached the site of the disaster, and prepared them for evacuation.

Stabilized in-transit with supplies from Outpost 270

And at Bowsprit Station (The closest station to the leading pole), were evacuated to Kerbin.

Up,

Up,

And away.

They passed the 330 Anomaly, which, much to my surprise, did not spontaneously eject itself from the surface and rocket into the sky of its own accord, like it had on previous attempts to put one of these on the Mun.

And Marker 0N0E , which had seen better days.

And as the survivors of the Larsen Base Disaster were making a safe landing...

The Circumnavigators arrived at Monolith Base, which wasn\'t too far out of their way.

One more leg and they were back where they started.

A trip of over 1200 km, around the entire Mun, mostly at the equator. In the entire journey, I rolled the BigTrak only five times. I did quicksave every 10 km or so, and had to restore from it three times. Most of the trip was at 25-35 m/s.

So, what do you do with a BigTrak that\'s been around the Mun?

I may have scratched the paint there a little.

It\'s two thousand miles to KSC, we\'ve got no restrictions on power or supplies, it\'s dark, and I\'m sure we can find some sunglasses around here somewhere.

Links I should have included in the original post:

BigTrak Rover is by ChickenPlucker

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=9404.0;topicseen

And requires Tosh\'s Cart Plugin

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=8431.0

And, of course, the paid version of Kerbal Space Program.

[Jon Tash]

Epic journey, really impressive!

[LukeTim]

This is awesome! I can\'t believe how many missions you have ongoing. The most I\'ve had at once is about 5.

[RedDwarfIV]

...

That\'s awesome.

[xzbobzx]

Epic, Imagine an entire mun filled with abandoned space stations every 20km or so.

[Why485]

Amazing read. This is definitely something I want to try and replicate.

What part packs are you using to create those moon bases? I only recognize a few of those parts.

[Richy teh space man]

Nicely done!

[ForumHelper]

This is epic! Amazing story and great pictures!

[togfox]

Excellent story with great screenshots. Nicely done. Please write up your next epic adventure.

[RedDwarfIV]

He\'ll probably do a Minmus circumnavigation with an RCS-powered toupée.

Simply because no one else could manage it.

[Alephzorg]

Those Kerbonauts are heroes !

[zpox357]

That\'s awesome ;D

I really love the idea that your Mun is filled with Kerbal-made structures and sights which all have their own story too tell, This is one of the many things that makes KSP such great game.

[maltesh]

Thanks, everyone. it was...mostly boring to do. Luckily the BigTrak was sufficiently stable that I could watch other things while driving most of the time.

At typical BigTrak speeds the Mun could probably be circumnavigated in 12 hours, 6 player-hours if you were willing to do the whole drive at x2. A standard Cart could probably do it in 5 ( or 2.5 at x2), if the Mun was flat, but frequent recovery from flips would make the trip annoying.

This is awesome! I can\'t believe how many missions you have ongoing. The most I\'ve had at once is about 5.

There were only about 80 objects in the universe, including all the landed craft and debris. Admittedly, that made autosaves a bit of a pain.

Amazing read. This is definitely something I want to try and replicate.

What part packs are you using to create those moon bases? I only recognize a few of those parts.

Some Probodobodyne and BACE, http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=6397.0

Kosmos Spacecraft Design Bureay, http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=7178.msg101159#msg101159

Gaby\'s Quick and Dirty Miscellanea http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=5710.msg73692#msg73692

SherbetLemons\'s Truss Pack: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=9026.0

And a bit from Sam Hall\'s Parts Pack. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?action=showpost&postid=401685931

He\'ll probably do a Minmus circumnavigation with an RCS-powered toupée.

Simply because no one else could manage it.

Minmus is not yet safe to circumnavigate. Crossing the terrain seams tends to be fatal. On the other hand, Jumping a BigTrak back is significantly easier than doing so from the Mun. The velocity targets are lower.

That\'s awesome ;D

I really love the idea that your Mun is filled with Kerbal-made structures and sights which all have their own story too tell, This is one of the many things that makes KSP such great game.

Thanks. To be honest, the whole Larsen Base Disaster storyline was a complete accident. I spent hours trying to land that thing on the Mun, and only today did I realize that the reason Mechjeb kept having an extremely low-altitude freakout was because I\'d been forced to add the eight outrigger thrusters individually, and as a result, they were as symmetrical as I could make them, but not Symmetrical Enough. After a particularly picturesque smashdown, I decided to go with it.

A descendant of the Larsen Base design is now Ice Station Minmus, which came down smooth on a single liquid rocket. Though without the nuclear reactor, it probably needs solar cells more than radiator sails.

[Wyrm]

Now you just need to drive back to the KSC!