The Elcano Challenge: Ground-Based Circumnavigation (Continued)

[Claw]

11 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

I will return to the ship afterwards, and continue my journey.

That sounds perfectly fine.

 

11 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

So now I need to ask about the quality of the map in general, whether it features any small pacific atolls or islands (such as Wake Island or Rose Atoll), and in how much detail the map follows the actual terrain.

Perhaps @NathanKell can answer that question.

[NathanKell]

@Matuchkin Heightmap resolution is about 5km x 5km per pixel at the equator, so islands smaller than that are unlikely to show up. Anything that size or larger should show up, however, and at higher latitudes the resolution improves.

[Matuchkin]

8 hours ago, NathanKell said:

@Matuchkin Heightmap resolution is about 5km x 5km per pixel at the equator, so islands smaller than that are unlikely to show up. Anything that size or larger should show up, however, and at higher latitudes the resolution improves.

So now I can't use both canals, nice. And I can't find any small, isolated atolls to dump Bob on. Is there a way to increase the resolution? Just how dangerous are the x8192 textures, and why?

[NathanKell]

@Matuchkin that is from the 8192s. 6317km radius * 2 * pi / 8192 = 4.88km/pixel.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

On 3/26/2016 at 8:46 PM, Claw said:

Yeah. Tylo has the same radius as Kerbin. And the terrain wasn't nearly as exciting (to me anyway). Plus all the explodium someone left laying around...

Sorry for quoting an old post, but your damn right! Tylo rejected me about 4 attempts in a row... draining me of my...

Determination.

Edited April 6, 2016 by SpaceplaneAddict

[RA3236]

8 minutes ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

Sorry for quoting an old post, but your damn right! Tylo rejected me about 4 attempts in a row... draining me of my...

Determination.

Dres it is then?

[SpaceplaneAddict]

1 hour ago, RA3236 said:

Dres it is then?

Yepperooo.

[Claw]

Dres was more enjoyable, though it still contains some amount of explodium. So beware. I actually had to change my route from equatorial to polar due to the lowlands I landed in.

[Matuchkin]

By the way, I got a 9-part rover- that can cover all of my camping and voyage needs while being light as hell. I love KIS.

[suicidejunkie]

I happened to be sending a truck around Minmus to deliver a new LV-909 engine to Bill, and realized that it would be the same distance to Elcano the trip, so here's the story!

All stock parts except for the TAC-LS tank, and for the second half of the trip, some KIS containers.  The truck was built on Minmus, but it did do the most important job of circumnavigating.

 

 

1) Bill had been stranded on the far side of Minmus with a broken hopper after landing a bit to hard and lithobreaking the engine into dust, so the truck was loaded up with a spare 909 to deliver.  The truck was initially intended to haul heavy loads short distances from the EP foundry to their final destinations, hence the mounting points and the extra seating for assembly workers.  For this trip, I had an extra 3x2 solar panel bolted on to the back to keep the engine running all day.

2) Lannand Kerman took the first shift, and headed north over the great flats, picking up speed for the hill climbing to follow.  There is a reasonably gentle slope at the north end, so he didn't have any trouble, and made a good distance before having to retire early to allow some other ships to maneuver.

3) After a late start the next day, some easy travel over the flat highlands brought Bill's damaged craft nearly in sight.  (image is from the next morning)

4) As the sun was rising, Lannand came to a tough hill, but by using the gyro to put all the weight on one wheel for maximum traction, and doing some switchbacks he was able to make it up.

5,6) Halfway around the moon from the start, Bill installed the 909 on the broken hopper (seen right), and replaced it with two containers full of the probe cores and relay equipment he was originally here to install (taken from the carrier in the background left).  Lannand then took the hopper back to base to be recycled, and Bill continued the tour.

7) On his way south Bill took the opportunity to deploy relay stations.  This one is the south pole relay with a DTS antenna for the long range link to a matching relay on Kerbin's north pole.

8) After dropping the last probe core to form a solid remotetech radio ring from north to south and guaranteeing uninterrupted comms to KSC, Bill found himself without any cruise control.

9) He shortly found himself without half the rover as well.

10) Crawling over the Great Flats again, at a measly 7m/s.  By pure coincidence, it was almost stable.

11) The great flats factory base is finally in sight.

12) A relieved Bill Kerman parks the rover as best he can. 

 

 

50%+1 parts left intact after making the tour!

[SpaceplaneAddict]

7 minutes ago, suicidejunkie said:

I happened to be sending a truck around Minmus to deliver a new LV-909 engine to Bill, and realized that it would be the same distance to Elcano the trip, so here's the story!

All stock parts except for the TAC-LS tank, and for the second half of the trip, some KIS containers.  The truck was built on Minmus, but it did do the most important job of circumnavigating.

 

 

1) Bill had been stranded on the far side of Minmus with a broken hopper after landing a bit to hard and lithobreaking the engine into dust, so the truck was loaded up with a spare 909 to deliver.  The truck was initially intended to haul heavy loads short distances from the EP foundry to their final destinations, hence the mounting points and the extra seating for assembly workers.  For this trip, I had an extra 3x2 solar panel bolted on to the back to keep the engine running all day.

2) Lannand Kerman took the first shift, and headed north over the great flats, picking up speed for the hill climbing to follow.  There is a reasonably gentle slope at the north end, so he didn't have any trouble, and made a good distance before having to retire early to allow some other ships to maneuver.

3) After a late start the next day, some easy travel over the flat highlands brought Bill's damaged craft nearly in sight.  (image is from the next morning)

4) As the sun was rising, Lannand came to a tough hill, but by using the gyro to put all the weight on one wheel for maximum traction, and doing some switchbacks he was able to make it up.

5,6) Halfway around the moon from the start, Bill installed the 909 on the broken hopper (seen right), and replaced it with two containers full of the probe cores and relay equipment he was originally here to install (taken from the carrier in the background left).  Lannand then took the hopper back to base to be recycled, and Bill continued the tour.

7) On his way south Bill took the opportunity to deploy relay stations.  This one is the south pole relay with a DTS antenna for the long range link to a matching relay on Kerbin's north pole.

8) After dropping the last probe core to form a solid remotetech radio ring from north to south and guaranteeing uninterrupted comms to KSC, Bill found himself without any cruise control.

9) He shortly found himself without half the rover as well.

10) Crawling over the Great Flats again, at a measly 7m/s.  By pure coincidence, it was almost stable.

11) The great flats factory base is finally in sight.

12) A relieved Bill Kerman parks the rover as best he can. 

 

 

50%+1 parts left intact after making the tour!

Beautiful rover!

[Claw]

6 hours ago, suicidejunkie said:

so here's the story!

If you could check the link on your map, that might help me follow the pictures better. I do like the looks of the rover, but I'm not quite sure I'm following the pics at the moment. Though I'll admit I'm quite tired, and I plan on reading it again tomorrow.

[suicidejunkie]

3 hours ago, Claw said:

If you could check the link on your map, that might help me follow the pictures better. I do like the looks of the rover, but I'm not quite sure I'm following the pics at the moment. Though I'll admit I'm quite tired, and I plan on reading it again tomorrow.

Internet went down last night just after posting, it should be working now.

It may help to know that I didn't realize it would be a full circumnavigation at the start, so it is a bit thin on the pictures.  The numbered captions go with the pictures, and it looks like they're in proper sequence this morning.  Should start with the intact rover with a 909 on top.

[max_creative]

If I can manage to safely land the start/finish line on Dres, and mess with the controls so I can screenshot, I'm doing the first annual Dres race. It's a Dres circumnavigation race. I wonder how many Kerbals will decide to take the short cut and do the canyon jump?

[suicidejunkie]

This might help show the tour.  All the southern relay nodes were built in situ by Bill while driving by (They're composed of just a Hex, a battery, a 3x2 solar and an omni antenna.  Plus a DTS dish for the south pole one)  They're omni-linking through the ore scansat at the moment, and the surface mesh network lines are all underground.

The overlapped rover and debris icon on the right side is where Bill left half the rover behind.

 

 

PS Edit:

Here is the rover operating as originally intended (hauling huge things across the flats).  Jeb's bootlegger turns and miscellaneous antics not included.

Spoiler

 

Edited April 23, 2016 by suicidejunkie
Added image of rover

[Mechtech]

Hmm, I think I'll take this on once I get Minmus Base up and running in my new save (starting, obviously, with Minmus itself) since I have a few fairly robust space minivanspersonel shuttles made with PBS and Buffalo parts. I think I'll start on monday or Tuesday- I'm in the progress of launching a Science/mapping mission to Minmus at current (it's still sitting on the pad, since I ran out of time at the library before I could launch it) but that should net me enough science to throw up my usual basic facilities and follow up with a nice Rover.

 

can't be harder than making aun unpowered gliderplane that can fly forever under timewarp. I had to build the thing in orbit because the wings were so big it'd clip the tower if I launched it from the KSC.

[Mjp1050]

2 hours ago, Mechtech said:

I had to build the thing in orbit because the wings were so big it'd clip the tower if I launched it from the KSC.

What version of KSP are you using? The launch tower was removed in .19

[Mechtech]

no, I mean the runway control tower. on the runway. it's a glider that stays up on pure lift, no engine at all- it's basically nothing but wings and a teeny-tiny fuselage with a probe core, one solar panel, a couple of batteries, and a couple of Science things. I dropped it from orbit because my early attempts to get it flying using rocket-assist inevitably sheered off big chunks of the wings- either they'd droop enough to hit the ground (bad enough) or they'd smack into the side of the control tower or the tanks nearby. after about ten attempts I just gave up and used my orbital shipyard and a tug to drop it into atmo.

 

anyway, I have maybe *does some quick math* ~1700ish Science to acquire before I've got everything I need to start. I should be able to get that either tomorrow or monday with some missions to the Mun (which I haven't really explored that much) and then I'll get started.

 

on that note, what's the thread's opinion of shipping the rover in question as a box of parts and assembling it in the field using EPL? I have a large cargo rocket design that can carry the rover design I favor, but I vastly prefer simply shipping components and doing construction in-situ simply because it somewhat simplfies one's landing arrangements.Kontainers, after all, don't care one whit about orientation, whereas I've occasionally had headdesk moments due to the rover landing upside down somehow (damnit mechjeb I looked away for one second to check the USI wiki...)

 

and it also lets me have and excuse for a nice base-station for local Control.

TLDR, will anyone care if I assemble the rover in-situ using supplies shipped from Kerbin?

 

[Claw]

1 hour ago, Mechtech said:

on that note, what's the thread's opinion of shipping the rover in question as a box of parts and assembling it in the field using EPL?

This is fine, so long as (as you've indicated) all the requisite parts and pieces are shipped from KSC (and it meets all the other rules, of course).

On 4/22/2016 at 1:08 PM, suicidejunkie said:

This might help show the tour.

Man, I hate being a stickler. It looks like you hit the south pole, but went round a bit short of the north pole?

[suicidejunkie]

7 hours ago, Claw said:

This is fine, so long as (as you've indicated) all the requisite parts and pieces are shipped from KSC (and it meets all the other rules, of course).

Man, I hate being a stickler. It looks like you hit the south pole, but went round a bit short of the north pole?

I drove within 10 degrees of the north pole, but the pole wasn't my goal; I just wanted to go over the top to get the spare parts to Bill at the antipode.  I didn't even think about a circumnavigation by returning along the south until I was partway there.

The equatorial routes seem to be fairly lenient on this thing, probably because there is no clear East Pole or West Pole making an obvious marker 90 degrees from the start

 

As for sourcing, I suppose that depends how you count it; I didn't edit anything into place or anything, and the rover is a grandchild of KSC using Minmus ore for fuel and parts with EL.

The rover was built on Minmus as I mentioned in the original post.  It was built by the WildWest Seed Factory (it has expanded quite a bit since it landed, as you can see in the background of the ending screenshots of the trip):

And *that* was built in orbit of Minmus from an orbital factory (which was entirely sourced from KSC including the rocketparts at the time, but is shown here getting a top-up of metal from the surface)

(The parts container had a graphical glitch making it appear 10% smaller than it really is)

[Claw]

3 hours ago, suicidejunkie said:

I just wanted to go over the top to get the spare parts to Bill at the antipode.

That's cool. The antipode is actually what I'm looking for. It's just that I'm having a hard time telling where the start point is from all the pictures, so I defaulted to looking at the poles (I should have been more clear). It looks like the landing site is the cluster on the left? ...And as you indicated, the cluster on the right is where the rover took some damage. Then the south route was an intentional excursion to the south pole and back to the landing site to finish the circumnavigation?

 

 

If those are your antipodes, I'm happy to accept that. There is flexibility in the path, but I wanted to make sure I was understanding things right. (Again, sorry if I'm sounding like a stickler. I think it's just not knowing for sure where the landing site is that's tripping me up.)

[Mechtech]

12 hours ago, Claw said:

This is fine, so long as (as you've indicated) all the requisite parts and pieces are shipped from KSC (and it meets all the other rules, of course).

neat. I've put up a start to things here (no pictures as yet, just a bit of story and the mission proposal, as well as a map of the planned route)

[suicidejunkie]

2 hours ago, Claw said:

That's cool. The antipode is actually what I'm looking for. It's just that I'm having a hard time telling where the start point is from all the pictures, so I defaulted to looking at the poles (I should have been more clear). It looks like the landing site is the cluster on the left? ...And as you indicated, the cluster on the right is where the rover took some damage. Then the south route was an intentional excursion to the south pole and back to the landing site to finish the circumnavigation?

 

 

If those are your antipodes, I'm happy to accept that. There is flexibility in the path, but I wanted to make sure I was understanding things right. (Again, sorry if I'm sounding like a stickler. I think it's just not knowing for sure where the landing site is that's tripping me up.)

 

Those are the antipodes, but they're swapped.

Your Debris arrow is the start and end point of the trip, and the pile of icons includes the factory base, a pile of crew shuttles, spare parts, and a little junk.

 

The place you've got as the "landing site?" is the crash site where Bill broke his hopper's Poodle engine to prompt the run.  Lannand drove the spare engine across the north to reach Bill, and they then swapped vehicles so Lannand could fly the broken rocket home with his piloting skills and Bill could deploy the satellites with his engineering skills on his trip across the south.  The south pole was an actual destination on that leg because it is the optimal spot for a constant beam to Kerbin without the landscape getting in the way ever.

The rover crash site is the debris about 10 degrees south of your arrow on the right side; Bill was about 30km from the finish line when he wrecked the rover and had to wheelie it north from there to the factory.

 

[Claw]

@suicidejunkie Okay, sounds good. I've added you to the completion board. Congratulations!  

[CheckYoStaging]

Do I get any extra bragging rights if I use the hype train?