Driving Around the World(s) (Circumnavigation(s) by land) [Mun Complete, Duna started]

[Znath]

My Circumnavigation Mission  

Kerbin - Complete

Minimus - Complete!

Mun - COMPLETE!!

Duna - just started :V

[BACK ON new prototype reaches sustained speeds over 80m/s!]

--------

This... is it.

The Enerstar E3 landjet

Propelled primarily by 2-3 jet engines with 8 electric drive wheels to assist in launch speed.

It has two miners ore bins and an onboard fuel converter.

Enough passenger space for two in addition to the driver. You can even get out of it.

--------

Early on I decided to test the capabilities which was probably a mistake as it required a lot of saving and yelling.

So we went up through the mountains northwest of KSC

And they did survive apparently.

Next stop! The north pole!

The north pole!

It was at this point I came to a realization. I can't always rely on ore deposits. Or that was the thought (turns out you can) I also realized the ship needed some extra capabilities, bracing, and safety features. But I can't ruin their glory by sending a 2nd team, and I don't wanna drive all that way a 2nd time. What to do?

Obviously the most logical solution is to spend millions upon millions of dollars in failed projects to ship a NEW land-train to the next continent. I tried LOTS of methods, one including an ICBM to launch the train, but usually this resulted in the aeroshield being full of train-soup and spinning out of control. A small child picked up a model of the train and flew it around the office, after yelling a lot, we decided "no! this is actually the best idea, I'm going to take the idea and give the child no credit"

Thus the Enerstar E4 Carrier was born

This was totally necessary because the E4 model is much better braced and capable of making the rigorous journey intact thanks to its increased bracing, batteries, and safety* features.

The 4th generation also has the ability to dock with supply drops in order to get it out of areas with little to no ores. So far we haven't really found any areas that you would get stranded in, but we did spend tons of money making sure we wouldn't get stuck in one.

More to come later as Crew-E3 makes their way south toward Sandoland to meed up with Bill delivering the E4

Ore-pod drop

Passing the river south toward Enerstar-E4

FINALLY Bill hands off the Enerstar-E4 to the world-trip crew

So that's the progress thus far.

The next plan is to visit the pyramids.

Edited June 11, 2017 by Znath

[Overland]

Shes beautiful goodluck comrade driver.. may the terrain not be lethal.. the kraken be kept at bay and one day experience the wonderfully yet concerning emotional experience of seeing KSC on the horizon.. the moment that transcends any game.. ever

[Znath]

I remember seeing your land train project a while back which was a partial inspiration for the mission. I occasionally have to quicksave the game for when parts smash through the ground / go too fast and flip out / things break for no reason.

The E3 is a bit beat up by the time the crew traded off to the E4. The funny thing I noticed was that the E3 performed rather well when the front emergency tanks broke off and lost a few landing gear. It bounced and charged over terrain, but stayed together. I later flew an engineer over to join Bill in the E3 so he could go on his own trip.

The E4 is significantly heavier. It takes 30% more throttle to maintain speed, but it is also more durable and able to recover from a roll due to the enhanced RCS flip prevention system.

It easily cruises at around 40-50m/s much beyond that and it likes to explode or flip. Even on the purely flat land of the poles it'll flip beyond 70m/s so there's probably some weird defect I can't see. It'll climb a 30 degree slope with all three jets at full throttle combined with the torque of the rover wheels when I lower the cruising-gear.

Edited November 4, 2015 by Znath

[Znath]

Moving on! Think I'll post continuations in posts instead of editing the first. Though i may compile them all later.

Entering the desert I took a stupid shortcut along mountain crests between lakes.

Speeding along the coast

Yea it can cross water, but.... barely. 5m/s after blasting around at over 100mph makes this feel like crawling. All three engines full blast to crawl over a lake.

Spotted something on the long range scans had to investigate

ICBM debris! Yay!

Another mystery solved.

Summary is basically... I crossed a lot of sandoland today. I'm half way between two landmarks, the pyramids and an abandoned base

Progress

Edited November 9, 2015 by Znath

[Znath]

Exciting news!

Thanks to new parts in the most recent update, the Enerstar Mk5 has finished prototyping and is ready to be shipped!

 

Though the distance to the middle of the desert is a lot longer to fly, the Enerstar Mk5 is much much lighter.

 

 

http://s9.postimg.org/48ew4eren/screenshot177.png

 

Though the passengers have to enter through the main cockpit It's more stable and compact.

The overall max speed is lower, but on the E4 I was never able to actually sustain those speed.  Usually anything past 60m/s was a crapshoot..The Mk5 can sustain 80m/s over rough terrain.  Some minor checks on action groups and I'll build a new carrier and have a pilot bring it on over.

 

Progress to this point (with tentative flight path for the Mk5)

 

The field testing of the mk5 has been less then spectacular as far as range goes..  They changed something with the ore mechanics I guess?  I may work on modifying the E4 to produce a 6th version using some of the lessons learned by the Mk5.  I like how ridiculously stable the Mk5 is, but I also like how the E4 can go insane distances without refueling.  Then on top of all that, the junior drills are lackluster at best, as is the miniaturized ore converter which may be part of the inefficiency issues.  

 

I will at least use the Mk5 to get some pictures of the abandoned airbase north of the desert.  From there i'll decide what to do about the Mk5. 

Edited December 20, 2015 by Znath

[Znath]

After a lot of frustration with the current ore conversion of the compact ore converter, I've gone back to using the original model vehicle.  This one's improved with some of the design aspects like the angled wheels for a wider wheel base.  I also included two mini-pod engines which help with the water movement speed to some degree... so I might be able to go back to the water-crossing routes.

 

Model Enerstar E6

 

Getting it over twice the distance was a real exciting turn for the worse.  All my winged fliers became wierdly unstable after half way into the flight.  I tried different ones over and over and over, it was a nightmare or lost ships and supplies.

 

So obviously the plan called for something insane. 

Like bolting a heatshield onto its face and putting it on a icbm.

Slow it down a bit with the rocket and it actually survives.  Sadly this is only doable with virtually no fuel or ore... so I had to launch 2 more rockets to supply it.

 

Believe it or not, I'm able to hit all 4 ore karts within 4km of a target 1/4 around the world with a ton of fuel to spare.  With little to no modification, this should be able to hit almost anywhere on the globe. Upon slowing down, the karts deploy chutes and then split apart usually landing about 300-400m apart in a tidy little drop zone.  The karts then can drive themselves to dock with the fueling port on the rear of Enerstar units E3,E4,E6.  Each supply drop contains 1200 ore with this setup. 

 

UNFORTUNATELY, ... redesigning my entire supply program consumed a ton of my time.  (That and Fallout4) So I made basically no progress... in fact.  E6 landed 20km from E4!  ... but E6 should close in on the Mk5 soon and give the crew a proper ship to travel in.  Marlyn was complaining about leg-room anyway.  The Mk5 will continue exploring the plains on its own.

Goal right now is to go north to the base still, then instead of go north, go southwest and cross the series of straits which hopefully works to cross.

Edited December 29, 2015 by Znath

[Znath]

Been a while since I got going again.

Covered some good ground

 

Investigating the launch pad.  Samples show signs of use.  We may be alone in the Kerbin system, but what if we're not alone in Kerbin...

 

We're headed to the Southwest point to attempt a water crossing.  Hopefully it's not too expensive to do so.

[Dfthu]

Is this a Elcano challenge? How many parts is the rover? What's the FPS?

[Znath]

I'm not entirely sure what the Elcano is myself.  This is just a project I started on my own.  The land ship is rather complex.  I don't know how many parts off-hand but the main components are the cupola, science module, 2 large fuel cells,  2 large ore cans, 2 large stabilization modules, 2 mining drills 6 radiators, an ore converter, fuel tank, 5 air intakes 4 airbrakes 3 jet engines  2 mini engines, 8 rover wheels for electric drive, a bunch of landind gear for the main suspension... 

The rest of the suspension is a system of girders I set up as cantilevered beams supported by a convoluted system of braces in order to take the abuse of stomping around at over 100mph.   It usually can withstand most impact I've thrown at it as long as I don't use the physics warp.  Then it can be nearly random what will cause a break.  I have survived some close calls thanks to the monoprop system.  But anyway

 

Progress so far.  My goal is to  reach the next continent soon after my next water crossing

 

During the crossing I had Marlyn inspect parts of the ship, everything seems to be ok.

 

 

Finally out of the water.  It took quite a while.  Speed goes from a nice cruising speed of around 40-50m/s to a pathetic 11.5m/s with two main engines and the minipods at 100% throttle.  The next crossing is 5x as long so I don't know how much fuel that's going to devour.  I may need to be prepared to launch another supply missile to their location if I can't find more ores.

 

[Znath]

Progress so far.

I'm now on the same continent as the badlands.

 

Crossing to the closest point on the final water crossing.

 

Finally reaching the shoreline

 

 

I also started a project to have a fleet of ore scanners in orbit to help look for higher ore concentrations.

 

I've got 4 right now, not exactly "complete coverage" but hopefully enough to be occasionally useful.

 

[Znath]

 

 

Progress so far.  Nearing the badlands area.

But in other news, I gave the Enerstar crew a pet!

 

His name is Magellan

 

 

Magellan's role is due to my addition of the clouds mod for a little more realism.  The clouds make it a lot harder to find your way around if you try using the map or satellites.  So Magellan is refueled by the Enerstar's rear port and flies around 5-10k to scout out paths through the badlands.  I estimate that the full fuel load of 90 the scout probe can go roughly 200km

[Znath]

Been a while since I've updated.  I keep traveling but the area I'm in is so boring.  It's been days since their last sea crossing.  Even only recently I've seen the ocean again.

But here's the map anyway.

Next stop will be the South Pole!  It's not a typical "circumnavigation" I guess from that standpoint.  But since I went to the North before, I figure I just should. 

 

Boring pictures for the most part, but... here's some decent ones.

The badlands are bad.  I've had to drop a lot of ore to get across this dumb place.

Dumb lake west of the bads, no ore.

 

This one was near -16 , 14 I think.  Somewhere further west, no ore.

 

Dang well the night time pictures turned out... really bad.  I can't guarantee their quality!  Anyway I'm at the end of the red line, of course.  Nearing a little river on my way south toward some mountains.  Should be fun, I'm gonna do at least one mountain pass to liven things up.

 

 

[max_creative]

So many people are doing it, I'm doing a circumnavigation! Plus I get a badge thingy! I still need to figure out screenshots but that is the biggest circumnavigation vehicle I have every seen.  And I'm starting at the badlands by dropping it from orbit for more fun 

[Znath]

The net dry-weight is 44 tons

Fully loaded with fuel and ore it balloons to  82.3 tons

Average cruising speed is usually between 40-50m/s which is roughly 100mph.  I don't like to go faster or it gets risky and re-loadish.  It's designed to self-sustain on the road to where I 'could' mine my own ore the whole trip.  But I usually load some ore-probes on a ICBM and space drop the ore for refueling.

 

The Enerstar's still got a long way to go, but it's well over half over its journey.  But...

A teaser for things to come.

Edited March 21, 2016 by Znath

[Znath]

Well, after several hours of grueling work and redesigning the launcher I've done something I've thought was impossible.

I landed my 55+ ton  land train on Kerbin's Mun

full album

http://imgur.com/a/gtqsW

 

Some key images from the launch.  Destroying tbe pad with the size of the rocket at 1's of frames per second.

 

 

Stopped on Mun ready to drill some ore.

 

There is....

ONE small problem.

In my haste to get on with things.  I forgot the other two crew.

So.... Now I get to launch 2 crew maybe some ore probes to the Enerstar's location.

Edited March 24, 2016 by Znath

[max_creative]

Ok. Have fun! I hear the mun is actually the hardest place because of all the craters. So that will be interesting. Maybe a stop at a mun arch would be cool. There's a bunch of abnormalities sorta near the equator so yeah.

About your ore sats and kerbals... Happy landings accidental crashing

[Znath]

Progress update!!  Crossed the south pole!

 

This last run was kind of long and I do have pictures, but a lot are at night.  At least the sun was eternally up in the southern ice caps.

I'm on the last leg of the journey though.  Just a quick run north to the island chains east of KSC and into "Big Korea" 

 

Entering the ice caps

 

The precarious nature of the hills before the ice caps proved pretty scary time to time.  This steep slope came out of nowhere.

 

 

Reaching the south pole exactly.

Finally escaping the ice sheet. 

 

It was kind of fun being able to reach 95m/s with full power blasting and my RCS system on nonstop to maintain control.  I kind of wonder what the max speed is totally dry with just enough fuel.   Not sure if I can peak 100m/s or not...  but 95 is good.  80 was the usual cruising speed for the ice caps though as it was much safer.  The journey is juuust about over.  I think when I get back to KSC I want to take this thing back north and try to climb the highest mountain.... ... in the wooorld

 

[Znath]

I've actually made some progress albeit insanely slow due to the problems with landing gear.

Main gallery i'll start putting here

http://imgur.com/a/Qnx6M

Oh also I had to rebuild Magellan because a bug exploded him for no reason.  This new version uses the new small liquid fuel tanks and allows it to carry over twice the fuel and over twice the range due to some aero improvements apparently.  I didn't even have to space-drop or carry this one.  It made it all the way to Enerstar crossing the ocean itself!

 

 

Scouting the first of several sea crossings to reach an area I call Bigkorea (cause it looks like a bigger version of Korea)

That's it so far, so hopefully I can make it over the next couple crossings

 

 

Its Munar counterpart is also making progress.  For a while I was only doing the Munerstar mission because the low gravity is more tolerant of the wheel bug.

Edited August 22, 2016 by Znath

[Znath]

There's some progress.  Still very slow due to wheels not being wheels.

But more importantly, a new development.

 

http://imgur.com/a/aolZH

Fixed some things with the Mun mission and it's a lot more stable.

 

 

 

Only we're not going to that moon

That descent actually took a ton of work.  Had to disable 4 of the engines, and transfer fuel to the Enerstar..  I had to do a ton of transfers actually...

 

 

Landing successful though.  Had to do a lot of mining to fuel up, but I managed to get 30km the first test run.  I did a speed test for fun but ... F9

Pretty much anything over 20 is sketchy because you start to fly off the surface.  So it's slow going.  Which is fine because the brakes don't work anyway due to gravity/bugs.

The tugs I used to get there also had about 6000 fuel in them each and only used half their fuel to get there.  Kind of makes me wonder how far I could get.

 

Considering a Duna mission...   It will take a LOT of modification though. Some kind of... exo structure to slow descent...  nuclear .. ki  yes sllsl  

 

 

 

 

[Znath]

Well, exciting news.  For me at least.

I have internet now, and the past 2 weeks of mind numbing boredom has resulted in me actually

FINISHING THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD

http://imgur.com/gallery/Qnx6M main gallery

Coming into view of Bigkorea

 

Within range of KSC

 

Magellan III makes it back.

 

Enerstar E6 and the same crew that left in the E3 finally make it around the whole world.  From KSC to the northpole through the badlands... to the south pole... and then back to KSC mostly by land with a few water crossings.  The Enerstar E6 did probably 90% of the lifting. 

 

Summary

E3 was the original.  Lacked the (largely unnecessary) air brakes and the ability to refuel......  The E4 solved this and was delivered by air and was then refueled by ore drops.  The E5 was a mistake (and didn't really adhere to the elcano guidelines... but i didn't know that at the time) it was an attempt at a faster one, but its Achilles heal was the small ore converter sucks.  The E6 used some lessons learned in this like angling wheels out and lowering the center of gravity.  It worked great until 1.1..

 

I had gotten about 90% around the world when that happened and crippled my progress.  Between reloading the game and the lower speed, it took forever.  Then the low speed ruined my desire to continue...

I did also start 2 more missions.  Mun and Minimus.  The lower gravity is more forgiving of the wheel bug due to less pressure.

When I finish mun and minimus, I'll begin the process of failures to reach an Enerstar to Duna.

 

 

[Znath]

WOW! 

Uh I take back everything I said about this update!

 

I was forced to redesign my jet vehicle and nwo it's like... 100x more reliable.

 

Occasionally at 80-100m/s I'm encountering part failure but it's not that bad!

At first I made a rocket version for the trip to mars, then I figured "Well that worked good.  Lets put ramjets on it"

THEN HOLY HELL ITS AMAZING!  I totally THRASHED This thing!  I had it blasting cross country over hills and bouncing and ramming the ground and it TOOK IT.  Well except for... that one last time.  But  That was a long drop.  And well the ejection seat isn't that quick.  But aside from that,  The initial prototype is a resounding success.  I may do another trip around the world and go for a speed record this time! 

 

[Znath]

After fixing and upgrading the Enerstar to the new E7 model, it wasn't that much more work... well it was a lot of work.   To get it to the next level. 

The main gallery.

http://imgur.com/gallery/O283G

Getting into orbit wasn't as bad as I thought.  Of course, I was also lacking a lot of fuel to actually GET to Duna.

 

I had to refuel the thing,  That refueler was pretty rough but necessary. 

 

 

 

Edited November 14, 2016 by Znath

[MitchS]

Awesome! I love the route you took. Yours was really about the journey, and I am amazed at your patience and persistence. Well done!

[Znath]

A slight progress update.

Other things have kind of superceded my progress but part of the problem is...
the moon is SUPER boring.
Sure there's craters... but there's not as much to do as far as "AHA PASSED A RIVER" or "OCEAN CROSSING" etc
it's a lot of "progress progress... yep... progress" Either way
here's my progress.



Canyon on the back side



Out of one crater



into another...



Hopefully I can finish this thing and get to my Duna mission!


Full gallery of part 2
http://imgur.com/gallery/N5ftb

Edited May 29, 2017 by Znath

[Znath]

Well the Mun is FINALLY finished!

The biggest motivator was getting to the Duna mission!

 

Lots of hazards.  Lots of crashing and loading.  I'm glad to be done with it.

I've given sooome thought to "is it possible to bring back the Enerstars from Mun and Minimus but I don't think I'm quite willing to tackle that right now.  At the moment it would take a lot.  They have coupling points, which means theoretically I can attach heat shields and fly them back...  but  this would be really really really hard to do.  And testing would also be fairly insane since I'd have to put an enerstar in orbit just to attach shields to.  Possible but... how possible?

 

Anyway, some of the final images from the gallery.

 

 

Reaching the first arch was kind of exciting since it's one of the reasons I left west was to have these to look forward to early

Did some close inspections

Everyone had to look around, can't blame em too much after all that travel

And of course the armstrong memorial.

Lanica tried climbing this one too but it didn't work.

 

 

And finally done!  I have the full gallery here but.... it's buggy I don't know what happened but some sort of... anyway some of the images repeat.  Super annoying and I tried deleting em and got sick of it and just left it alone.  The next step will be the Duna mission.