The Elcano Challenge: Ground-Based Circumnavigation (Continued)

[Thalamask]

40 minutes ago, Stratzenblitz75 said:

Its been one heck of a ride, but my journey has finally come to a close: over 4800 km driven, 2 replacement crafts, uncountable quick-loads, many refueling missions, and an emergency booster. I'll admit, it wasn't easy... General KSP bugginess left me frustrated on the verge of giving up many times... But, I persisted and now, I finally have something to show for it all:

I present, my Kerbin Circumnavigation Elcano Attempt!

I hope you all enjoy my journey.

That was epic, mate. Congratulations!

[Claw]

Here's my Bop Elcano portion. Full mission report here.

 

 

[SpaceplaneAddict]

Hey, @Claw, who's gonna make the rest of the badges, as well as a badge for circumnavigating everything?

[Thalamask]

5 hours ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

Hey, @Claw, who's gonna make the rest of the badges, as well as a badge for circumnavigating everything?

We could always ask (nicely) @esinohio. He's already added badges for Tylo and Dres.

 

17 hours ago, Claw said:

Very nice! I'll have a look today.

You're reminding me that I need to get my stuff posted too. I've finished Bop, Vall, and Laythe for my JoolCano-5. And the mothership is on it's way to Tylo!

Best of luck with that, Claw!

I've just started Tylo myself, and I'm finding it a MASSIVE PITA so far. I'm not even 200km in, and I've lost all my headlights, one RTG (despite being clipped inside a structural member for protection), and I've had to F9 more times than I can count. There's just something inherently wrong with Tylo. For example, I'll be driving across a perfectly flat, level plain at the reasonable speed of 25 m/s, and then for no reason at all, my rover shudders, then shakes, then flips out in a matter of seconds (despite running with SAS on and 3 sets of SAS modules!). And then asplodes on landing. It's just ridiculous!

Edited January 2, 2016 by Thalamask

[Aslad]

Hi there, I'm relatively new to space-travel in KSP, as I normally prefer building aircraft. The furthest I've ever flown before attempting this challenge is the North Pole on Kerbin.. I have only just landed on the Mun (where I am going to do the challenge) in the East Crater but I'd like some advice as my rover seems to prefer flying to driving... pressing W just makes the back end flip up. I'm preparing to launch a second unmanned rocket with a heavier rover with upwards facing thrusters to keep it on the ground.. will this work?

And here's my imgur album of the launch and landing.

http://imgur.com/a/N4pkl

 

Thanks!

~Aslad

[Thalamask]

1 hour ago, Aslad said:

Stuff

Hey Aslad. Welcome to the Elcano community.

From what I can tell from the images, the reason your rover is flipping is that you've got too much SAS going. If you disable the torque on your SAS module (r-click option), you should be able to hit W without flipping out. If that doesn't work, disable SAS on your cockpit as well. That should solve your flipping issue. As for a heavier rover with upwards thrusters, a )  weight makes almost no difference in my experience and b )  upwards thrust does work, but it's fuel intensive unless you run ions and not hugely effective if you do run ions. Overall, I prefer to try to build to avoid the need for upthrust, except on ultra-low-g places like Pol or Gilly.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

7 hours ago, Thalamask said:

Best of luck with that, Claw!

I've just started Tylo myself

This post is addressing you and @Claw. 

 

Tylo appears to be cursed. It has so far eaten 3 of my rovers, in not going back. The Krakens real home is on Tylo, it will corrupt your saves, no matter what. It will rattle you with nothing, and it will be hard.

 

 

Tylo is scary cursed

[Aslad]

26 minutes ago, Thalamask said:

Hey Aslad. Welcome to the Elcano community.

From what I can tell from the images, the reason your rover is flipping is that you've got too much SAS going. If you disable the torque on your SAS module (r-click option), you should be able to hit W without flipping out. If that doesn't work, disable SAS on your cockpit as well. That should solve your flipping issue. As for a heavier rover with upwards thrusters, a )  weight makes almost no difference in my experience and b )  upwards thrust does work, but it's fuel intensive unless you run ions and not hugely effective if you do run ions. Overall, I prefer to try to build to avoid the need for upthrust, except on ultra-low-g places like Pol or Gilly.

Thanks!

I've redone my rover and flown it to the Mun (which was a pain), but I managed to land 1.7km away from my original rover so I'm pretty happy with that! (as soon as I dropped the rover my skycrane flew off into space, no idea where it went xD It doesn't show up in the tracking centre)

My new rover is still a little unstable but is far better than the previous one. I've used full ore canisters in the wheel struts to weigh it down and stabilise it a bit and I also added 4 RCS ports facing upwards. I've reduced the brake torque on the front four wheels to stop it flipping over when I brake, as well as adding some Xenon and the Dawn ion-engine. Here's some pics:

http://imgur.com/a/XyUYj

 

[Claw]

10 hours ago, Thalamask said:

MASSIVE PITA

Sounds wonderful! 

3 hours ago, Aslad said:

I'd like some advice as my rover seems to prefer flying to driving

Your rover looks wide and flat enough. As Thalamask said, it's probably flipping because of the combined torque and wheel steering. However, I run my rover controls differently than Thalamask.

Rather than disabling torque, I move the torque controls to different keys. I leave rover controls bound to WASD, but I put spacecraft rotation on my numeric keypad (up, down, left, right). I also make sure the roll controls are remapped to the keypad. Then I do most of my rover driving two handed. Left hand does the primary "go forward and steer" while might right hand keeps the rover under control. I find torque very useful to stay on the ground when turning, and on some planets (moons) its a necessity to get enough wheel traction to get moving for my rover.

[Claw]

23 hours ago, Stratzenblitz75 said:

I hope you all enjoy my journey.

Epic journey.  I don't know how long "brief jumps" are, but that trip was so neat that I don't really care. heh I especially like how you managed to "climb" on top of the ice cap, and great way to refuel the rover. Also, that's a pretty novel way to return to your starting spot.

Congrats, you're up on the board!

 

(Edit: FYI, the "brief jumps" comment is only a small poke in jest, not a serious commentary on your journey.)

[Aslad]

Day One of my journey around the Mun is complete

I only managed a measly 5.7km but the landscape was bumpy and was on a large incline, plus I was only driving for about 15 minutes as most of the day has been taken up with re-designing the rover and flying it out to the same spot as the original one.. The RCS was incredibly useful - I would have crashed at least twice without it - but it will need topping up at some point. I'm glad I added extra tanks!

 

Day One: http://imgur.com/a/dEfdf

[Claw]

15 minutes ago, Aslad said:

Day One of my journey around the Mun is complete

Congratulations.

I found the Mun to be one of the more difficult landscapes. Though at least most of it's difficulty was natural, vice overly glitched. Keep it up!

[Claw]

Another update for JoolCano-5. Here's the report for Vall, and the Elcano piece below.

 

[Aslad]

Update! After the short 15minute trek I had a break then began once more. My first attempt to continue climbing the hill ended in disaster (I fell down it, basically) but after almost an hour I managed to reach the summit, constantly battling the rover's attempts to veer left off the side of the hill and using up alot of monopropellant in the process to keep the rover on the ground. My Kerbal also slid the entire way down the hill when I tried to repair a broken wheel. I had to walk the entire way back up. It sucked. Then began the descent down the hill and over even more hills / around even more craters. After an hour and a half's driving and several near-disasters I stopped for a break, planting a flag in what I dubbed 'Crash Crater' as on the way down (It was too big to go around and the rim was incredibly steep so I chose to go through it) I broke all six wheels and lost my Dawn engine. Looking back I was delighted to see I'd covered 34km which considering the terrain I considered to be pretty good progress. I then continued on out of the crater and onto some slightly flatter ground. Another half an hour of driving and I stopped for the night and planted a flag. I'd covered another 17km, bringing it to a total of roughly 46km covered. I still have a looong way to go but I'm planning to do another 1-hour drive later tonight. After that I need to figure out a way to refuel the rover's monopropellant supplies as I'm down to about a third of a tank left. Luckily I added two docking ports before I launched the rover from Kerbin so I just need some sort of lander equipped with a docking port and alot of RCS. Then if it has fuel left I can fly it ahead for more refuelling later on. 

Album here:

http://imgur.com/a/aTRWO

 

~Aslad

[Claw]

1 hour ago, Aslad said:

but after almost an hour I managed to reach the summit

Nice job, and some good progress. Those big craters can be somewhat unforgiving, too. Don't worry about the speed too much. It's a marathon and not a sprint, especially with the rovers.

[Dfthu]

I'm over halfway done now! Everything is doing fine so far. Mission report here   http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/128315-kerbin-water-elcano-challenge/#comment-2345081

[Claw]

@Dfthu That's quite a beast of a ship. I like the crow's nest. Keep it up, and you'll be there in no time.

[Aslad]

I've run into a problem.. not much monopropellant left in the rover, but I'm sitting right next to my refuelling lander and the docking ports are colliding and sticking but the rover refuses to dock.. screenshots attached - I could use some help :/

http://imgur.com/a/vD64R

 

EDIT - Problem fixed, all I did was turn the RCS off lol

Edited January 3, 2016 by Aslad

[Chemp]

11 minutes ago, Aslad said:

the rover refuses to dock

Your problem seems to be that your ports are at an angle. Try rising your landing struts (maybe just on the opposite side) and use SAS to wiggle it in.

Edited January 3, 2016 by Chemp

[Aslad]

16 minutes ago, Chemp said:

Your problem seems to be that your ports are at an angle. Try rising your landing struts (maybe just on the opposite side) and use SAS to wiggle it in.

I managed to fix it simply by turning RCS off lol, I don't know why it prevents you from docking but it does

[Aslad]

So three and a half hour's driving leaves me well over 180km at least from the start point , if not further. I found a very flat area of land and after checking my monopropellant tanks I began procedures to bring my orbitting refuelling lander down close to the rover. The space-tug I brought the lander to the Mun with was used for the deceleration burn before it was let loose into space. 

The lander touched the ground 2.3km away from the rover which was a 20minute drive away - I would have done it except it would have brought me massively off course. So instead I flew the lander (almost crashing twice by overusing RCS) to the rover and touched down a mere 704m away. I then drove the rover to the lander and after some hassle managed to get it to dock. Promptly I refuelled the monopropellant tanks which ensure my rover doesn't go flying out of control. After I had refuelled the rover I undocked the two vehicles and sent the lander into a rough polar orbit (seemed smart at the time as polar orbits mean you can access anywhere) but I've now realised that I'm not driving pole to pole so it would have been better in an equatorial orbit. Oh well. 

I then drove the rover for a while longer before stopping for the night. I'd driven another 3 and a half hours worth since my last report. I may or may not have stayed up till 2am to do this.. 

:3

I'll make an album tomorrow as I'm on my phone at the moment as my laptop ran out of battery and my charger was inaccessible

~Aslad

[Azimech]

@Claw if you can be bothered, I would like both my results changed from "mods" to "stock", since the only mods I used were the rover autopilot of Mechjeb and Kerbpaint.

[Thalamask]

3 hours ago, Azimech said:

@Claw if you can be bothered, I would like both my results changed from "mods" to "stock", since the only mods I used were the rover autopilot of Mechjeb and Kerbpaint.

Probably hold off on that one, Azimech - Claw's still trying to decide what counts as mods or not

 

[Aslad]

So here's the album with yesterday & today's progress so far:

http://imgur.com/a/sRZaA

Almost had to scrub the mission after I went too fast and the rover flipped for ages before the RCS managed to slam it into the ground on its wheels. Still, any more incidents like that and a new rover will soon be on its way..

Just noticed I forgot to include any screenshots of the monopropellant refuelling so here's another album:

http://imgur.com/a/44hIr

Edited January 3, 2016 by Aslad

[damerell]

Good luck, although I fear you're losing too many bits to be sanguine about it. Flat terrain is the rover's boon - although (while I haven't uploaded the screenies yet) after crossing a desert on Kerbin after an ocean I could almost use some lumps to liven things up. :-)