The Great Mun Circumnavigation

[esinohio]

The Great Mun Circumnavigation!

 

 

  The Elcano Challenge beckons! I've decided to throw sanity and free time out the window and try my hand at a circumnavigation.  Greatly inspired by the thread here with Claw undertaking a truly epic journey through the system. 

 

After reading through some of the other mission logs I thought a nice and simple rover design would be the way to go.   Nothing fancy with its wide and low ride.  Rtg's that keep things powered nicely with only rear wheels enabled.  Extended hills requiring four wheel drive I can fire up the fuel cells in a pinch.  

http://imgur.com/qwzEmWl (Will embed pic, Imgur was acting weird when doing this)  

 

 

With my not so fancy rover built I threw it on top of enough deltaV to carry this insanity to the Mun.

 

 After an uneventful Mun transfer and landing I got Bill out to plant the first of many flags.  Using the surface scanning module to keep me on a nice equatorial course I set out filled with confidence from my easy launch and landing.  This is going to be easy I started to think.  Pfffft, all those warning in the challenge thread, bah!  Then I hit a nice jagged edge/drop off a little fast and barely avoided death.  Thought that would be a good place to plant the next flag and save for the evening.  A whole five minutes of roving time and I barely averted death.  Something tells me Jeb should be on standby to fly out a replacement rover....

 

Edited December 13, 2015 by esinohio
removed annoying gif

[ghostbuzzer7]

That blender GIF though...  Hope you have fun. The Mun takes lots of patience.

[esinohio]

Yeah, I'm killing the car from the gif and just replacing it with the endlessly moving Mun I'm watching.  

[Claw]

That's a neat looking Mun buggy. Good luck and enjoy the sights!

[damerell]

Mun is quite rough going in places.

[esinohio]

The mun circumnavigation continues!

 

Ok this is going to take a while!     Not really an eventful drive aside from a lone flip over incident.  Some torque and few bursts from a thruster and I was able to save the rover.   Thankfully no damage to the hyper important and stylish wing! Decision time now as the first big obstacle looms in the distance.  As I look at it I'm seeing a clearer path through the crater but after reading some warnings in the challenge thread I think a course skirting the north side of the crater would be safer.  I'll know soon!

Someone reminded me of an old song from a movie that is now stuck in my head as I drive endlessly east.

 

Eastbound and down...Loaded up and truckin....We gonna do what they say can't be done...

We gotta a long way to go and short time to get there...I'm eastbound just watch this mun buggy run! 

Bill's stylin trucker hat

 

 

Edited December 16, 2015 by esinohio

[esinohio]

The Mun is beginning to look like a pincushion now as the circumnavigation continues.

 

Noticed I was close to one of the Mun anomalies and thought I'd take a more dangerous route to nab some close ups. Driving on that edge (seen below) was not the smartest thing I've ever done.  Three popped tires and one near rollover I finally closed in on the anomaly.  

 

Smoother driving appears to be waiting for me on the far side of the large crater.  With luck I can get some serious distance without any more tire issues.

[Geschosskopf]

Respect for driving on Mun at all, let alone attempting to go all the way around it.  I've had a number of bad experiences driving there