Elcano Challenge - Driving Around the Mun with kOS

[magico13]

The Elcano Challenge sounds like it'd be fun to me, the manually driving a rover around an entire planet/moon does not. But that's why we have computers, to take care of the boring tasks so we can do the fun ones ourselves. As such, I wrote/am writing a kOS script to perform the driving while I oversee and plan the entire trip.

I was originally planning on driving around Dres and was using the Mun as a testing ground due to their similar gravity. I instead decided just to drive around the Mun completely. I'm hoping to take less than 24 hours of in-world time from the start of the drive to the end, which will be anywhere between 24 hours and 6 hours real time, depending on timewarp. Additional time might be taken to improve the driving script, but hopefully I can do most planning of future waypoints while the drive is occurring.

The rover I'm using a very simple one that uses all stock parts except a radially mounted kOS controller. It's designed to have a fairly wide wheel base to prevent flipping, and uses structural girders for the frame to give it strength. So far it's worked out pretty well.

The rover was legitimately flown to the Mun using a combination of kOS scripts and manual flying (but mostly the kOS scripts) and the launch+transfer+landing is documented in the first day album. As of this writing I have driven a little under 40 km from the starting point.

The script I'm using is available here (will automatically be the latest version). I'm typically driving three waypoints at a time (sometimes less) and am just manually replacing the ones in the script as I go (aka, not every waypoint is in the script from the beginning). After roughly three waypoints I stop, quicksave, and plant a flag. Occasionally I'll stop early and quicksave at a waypoint without planting a flag.

The waypoint list is listed below:

Day 1

Start/End: 0.6975, 22.7416

LATLNG(1.14, 23.1812).

LATLNG(1.2085, 25.1807).

LATLNG(0.6372, 26.3452).

LATLNG(0.4395, 29.6411).

LATLNG(-0.3516, 31.9043).

LATLNG(-0.5493, 33.0908).

Day 2

LATLNG(-0.9668, 36.2769).

LATLNG(-0.9888, 38.2544).

LATLNG(-0.2417, 41.8359).

LATLNG(-0.9668, 43.0884).

LATLNG(-1.0107, 44.1870).

LATLNG(-0.1318, 45.5054).

STOP 4

LATLNG(1.3403, 50.7788).

LATLNG(0.5054, 53.0859).

LATLNG(0.7031, 54.3604).

LATLNG(0.8569, 61.2817).

LATLNG(1.4282, 62.7759).

LATLNG(0.0439, 65.3906).

STOP 5

LATLNG(0.5713, 72.2681).

LATLNG(2.7466, 72.5977).

LATLNG(3.9331, 74.5093).

LATLNG(4.6582, 78.0469).

LATLNG(4.0210, 79.9365).

LATLNG(4.0649, 80.7715).

LATLNG(3.7573, 81.0571).

Edge of a small crater

LATLNG(2.4695, 81.5133).

STOP 6

Day 3

Albums:

Day 1

On day 1 I launched and landed the rover, then drove ~36km out of the crater I started in (the North West Crater)

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Day 2

On day 2 I drove for a comparatively large distance (well over 100 km) to the very northern tip of the East Crater.

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Edited August 24, 2015 by magico13
Day 2

[MAFman]

The link to your code is broken... Can you post your raw code in a spoiler tag?