The rebooted Elcano Challenge: Laythe. Part 4 CHALLENGE COMPLETED

[smjjames]

I decided to take on the Elcano challenge on Laythe. Initially I was going to do Kerbin, but then I decided that since 1.1 is coming out soonish and I don't know how long the Kerbin attempt would take.

At first, I was going to do equatorial, but it didn't seem like much of a challenge, what with half of the route being wide open ocean. That and the previous Laythe challenges by Azeris (the thread for that is over here and Claw that were completed are equatorial. I have not planned my route and I'm going to let the RNG (Random Number Generator, or Random Number God(s) to us roleplayers) or random chance decide what direction I will take from my initial landing at one of the poles (most likely the south pole since more land).

Launch of the craft, this is actually the second launch because I screwed up with the fairing the first time. Also, those are 20m tweakscaled first stage boosters and stage section, THAT massive. Also excrutiating/ly slow to turn after I get into orbit, so I didn't record that.

I also didn't realize how wobbly the whole thing was until I watched it in movie maker.

The darker screenshots came out worse than I thought they might.

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*excrutiatingly long burns later*

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BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD!

*sounds of rebuilding the skycrane portion and testing* Yes, I actually tested the landing portion this time, which I didn't last time.

Laythe Circumpolar navigation, take2

Edited September 8, 2015 by smjjames

[smjjames]

The KSS Airwhale has now landed!

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Now underway and sailing

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Edited September 2, 2015 by smjjames

[smjjames]

Okay, long story short, glitches, sheneinighans, explosions, unfixable roll caused by I don't know what, ship exploded near the equator, I got two kerbals out, but then glitches hit and the cockpit that the kerbal was in exploded, so............

Back to square one or something. Maybe I'll go equatorial this time.

[smjjames]

Okay, I've got it started back up again and the journey has now begun.

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Also, top speed is in excess of 630 km/h, 390mph, and 330 knots.

[smjjames]

Part 2. This ship has this instability problem which if you're not looking, can suddenly reach out like a kraken tentacle and cause you to crash. Also, should have done a quicksave around where it was sunsetting.

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Edit: Apparently the titles don't show up in the imgur embed.

Edit2: How do I get the description comment text to show up? They aren't for some reason.

Edited September 6, 2015 by smjjames

[smjjames]

You will need to go to Imgur to see the description comments. I don't know why they aren't showing up.

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Edited September 8, 2015 by smjjames

[smjjames]

Challenge completed!

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[nigelvn]

I've noticed that unfortunately elcano challenges aren't that popular in this section of the forum, correct me if i'm wrong though.

Anyway great job even with your restart, I don't think I would have done a restart instead just give up XD