The Elkano challenge (all versions accepted!)

[mystifeid]

Ike - completed using a separate stock KSP 1.44 install - no added mods.

Start and finish at 0°N 50°E - Landing zone just to the east.

Ike is relatively quick, easy and fun with lots of big jumps but still with plenty of flats in the Lowlands for some speed. Watching Duna rise above the horizon is a treat.

Total mission time was 1 year 53 days with the circumnavigation itself taking about 5 days. IRL - about 10-11 hours.

More Screenshots:

[mystifeid]

Eeloo - completed using a separate stock KSP 1.44 install - no added mods.

Start and finish at 0°N 130°W - Landing zone just to the SW.

The main difficulty with Eeloo is just getting there and maintaining communication with KSC for a Kerbnet connection to mark the circumnavigation. As well as the rover I took a relay sat into orbit around Eeloo and since I had to wait five or six years for that to happen I also sent five relay sats into orbit around Kerbol - just past the orbit of Dres. Since I drove almost exclusively during the daytime I always had a connection to KSC.

The other problem with Eeloo is the almost total lack of features - there are no mountains or big drops, just lots of small round hills and ridges which seem to move toward you like waves and even traveling at 70 m/s it is almost impossible to get more than about ten metres above the terrain. For the most part landings are gentle and take care of themselves. For the whole trip speed can be kept above 50m/s. Unfortunately this means that Eeloo is very boring and and the main danger comes from falling asleep while moving.

After Minmus this is the second fastest circumnavigation I have completed and by far the easiest. Time to complete the drive - around 7 hours. Total mission time was 6years 314 days.

Imgur album  -  https://imgur.com/a/jvwSTuN

[DunnoAnyThing]

Gotta do this challenge
-"entirely electrically"
(except for transfers)

Edited July 13, 2018 by DunnoAnyThing

[mystifeid]

Laythe - completed using a separate stock KSP 1.44 install - no added mods.

Start and finish at 0°N 80°E - initial splash down to the north-west.

Laythe. I'd already taken a boat around Kerbin and Master Mariner had a nice ring to it so the next circumnavigation had to be around Laythe. If I'd known it would take three boats I might have gone somewhere else. The first boat was missing a Kerbnet capable part - discovered after splashing down on Laythe. Start from scratch. Which includes re-sending the two relay sats. The second boat didn't quite have the range to cross the Degrasse Sea - it was 280km short of the start point when it ran out of fuel. Send another one. The third boat picked up the kerbals and finally finished the circumnavigation nearly seven years into the mission.

I missed the boat I took around Kerbin. It was magic but too big to take to Laythe. This one was a similar smaller design with two Panthers. It was under-tested. Depending on the fuel load, speed was between 40m/s and 80m/s but required minute by minute adjustments to the pitch trim to keep it moving. I grew to hate it. The afterburners, which would have sped things up, were almost never used. Range was about 800km but to cross the Degrasse Sea and veer off at either end to the nearest land to refuel requires about a 1200km range. Pity.

This one took around 3 days of my life to complete.

Imgur album - https://imgur.com/a/mWAeNk5

Edited July 18, 2018 by mystifeid

[Death Engineering]

This is my first circumnavigation since I started playing KSP in '13 and more game-hours than I care to admit.

Dres was a great choice, I think, as there is some really interesting craters and canyons to check out. This mission didn't start as a circumnavigation, actually, it was an entry to another challenge on this forum. I had intended to land near the Dres Scar then drive to the lowest and the highest points on the planet before heading home.

Because of that, this isn't a straight equatorial circumnavigation but rather a complete traversal from pole to pole and back again, with a 90 degree turn at the poles. The rover has engines and fuel, as that was how it was landed from Dres orbit but no fuel was burned during the drive. There were 6 crew on board and there is TAC life support installed to make things more challenging.

These pics show how we went south from the LZ to the pole then turned 90 degrees and headed north while making stops at Dres' lowest and highest points above sea level. Technically, it was a little longer drive than a straight circumnavigation and took 45 game-days to complete. Every flag in the pic is close to 10km apart.

The Rover (with Bill fixing one of the numerous flats):

 

View of the North Pole:

View of the South Pole:

 

Highest point: 

Lowest point: 

 

[Ho Lam Kerman]

Today, I launched my first attempt of an Elcano outside of the Kerbin system.

I took my trusty Crater Crawler out to Gilly, thinking it's be an easy medal. Yup, I fell into the Gilly trap.

After taking my rover for a few unmanned test drives (it has a probe core), I'd say otherwise.

Judging by the low gravity, I think I'd need to be driving at a speed of less than 0.2 m/s to be safe.

Welp, Jebediah "Franky" Kerman (JFK) promised the country that we'd be driving around Gilly in an awe-inspiring speech, so I couldn't give up.

Let's see where this goes...

Edit: Oh wow. I'm already 100 meters from the flag. Took me something like 5 minutes. Timewarp is your friend.

Edit 2: 700 meters of Gilly. I vow to never return a manned rover to Gilly, ever.

Edit 3: I can't believe I've already driven 10 km on Gilly. Apparently driving at 1 m/s, coupled with some RCS, is a lot better than driving at 0.2 m/s, and it's also manageable.

Edit 4: Darn it- the same bug that nearly took down my Mun elcano hit again! I've sent a new, better, improved rover, now with ion engines pointing down. Now I can cruise at 3 m/s!

Edited July 28, 2018 by Ho Lam Kerman

[mystifeid]

Vall - completed using a separate stock KSP 1.45 install - no added mods.

Start and finish at 0°N 10°W - Landing zone to the WSW.

Vall is very pleasant to drive around. It has just the right mix of flat open spaces and big mountains.With Jool and Laythe close by and with the natural contrasts in the terrain, it is also very scenic and I found myself taking a ton of screenshots. Interesting too, that right on the equator there are four big peaks each 90° apart at 0E, 90E, 180E and 90W. Since I place waypoints 10° apart, to the very tips of all four mountains I had to go. (If you are thinking about Vall and have never been to Vallhenge, try a polar route.)

A pretty relaxing 20 hours to complete this one.

Imgur album - https://imgur.com/a/bnVHSZn

Edited August 1, 2018 by mystifeid

[mystifeid]

Gilly (times two) - completed using a separate stock KSP 1.45 install - no added mods.

Start and finish at 0°N 150°W - Landing zone to the NE.

Gilly is by far my quickest and easiest circumnavigation so far. There are no objective dangers - no fear of crashing or breaking the rover and any big jumps, well, the landings are pretty soft. The sixteen wheeler was easily able to maintain about 15m/s and hit the surface about a dozen times on the way around. Once I accelerated to 20m/s and ended up at 42km above the surface. Unfortunately, above about 28km you start going backward over the surface and I eventually landed not far from where I jumped. Very small bursts from the rcs thrusters were used to keep the rover straying from a 90° heading. In the end it took about an hour to circumnavigate.

This was vaguely unsatisfying but luckily the accompanying vessel, which was built for the Terminus challenge, incorporated four relay sats, a lander and a small rover. Val also just happened to be aboard. This time I kept the speed down to between 4 and 7m/s. However the rover still spent an apppreciable amount of time above the surface but it was usually more akin to very low flying. It was quite fun to be able to turn on physics warp while skimming just above the surface. Val also had a much more limited supply of monopropellant and no way to obtain more, so all course adjustments had to made on the surface - usually accomplished by making sure the rover was pointing in the right direction just before it bounced. And on the way to the start waypoint the rover sunk down to the top of it's wheels into the surface before being spat directly upward with some force. I'm not sure it was ever the same afterwards. Even at the lower speed, time warping meant that this second circumnavigation only took a couple of hours more than the first one.

Imgur album (for Val) - https://imgur.com/a/3po3MAz

A third of the way around her course, Val meets up with the boys (who have finished their run). Just a little bit of a size difference between the rovers.

[sturmhauke]

On 11/18/2016 at 8:51 AM, Foxster said:

Just a point of order, Mr Chairman...

I'm not convinced the first to circumnavigate the Earth was Elcano. I think it was Henry the Black. Prove me wrong

 

Henry the Black was a translator and a slave. It's possible he was the first person to do it, but if so it was only by accident and because he was bought and dragged around the world on Magellan's expedition. Elcano was the navigator, and ended up taking over after my ancestors killed Magellan in battle.

[mystifeid]

Bop - completed using a separate stock KSP 1.45 install - no added mods.

Start and finish at 0°N 40°E - Landing zone just to the north.

As part of the Terminus challenge I put 4 relay sats in orbit around Bop and a lander and rover on the surface. Bill climbed into the one Kerbal rover and proceeded to drive around Bop. This small rover normally has a top speed of around 24m/s and early on it took a number of fairly heroic jumps that I was certain would end in disaster. The last one resulted in the rover hitting the surface with a speed of over 50m/s but it handled it just fine. So I stopped worrying about it. Bop is most notable (besides having a dead Kraken near the north pole) for the elevation of it's peaks. The lowest point on my route was around 4 500m but the highest was over 20 000m. The long climbs up to the high points were soporific but the descents were exhilarating. On the last one, Bill went from 20km elevation down to 7km without once touching the brakes. All up, I think it took around 7-8 hours for the circumnavigation.

Imgur album - https://imgur.com/a/nQxybP7

 

[mystifeid]

Pol - completed using a separate stock KSP 1.45 install - no added mods.

Start and finish at 0°N 110°W - Landing zone just to the north-west.

Once again the small terminus rover was put into action. Being able to send four relay sats and a rover in one craft definitely speeds things up. The rover is slow and slow to accelerate but the small size of Pol meant that would not matter and may even be an advantage. I found Pol's most striking feature to be the unevenness of the terrain. There is no going to sleep driving around Pol - course and attitude corrections need to be made on a second by second basis and even 20m/s is hard to maintain given the resulting lack of contact with the surface. Even though they lack the elevation found on Bop, the mountains on Pol look bigger and much more spectacular. This is enhanced by the richness and vibrancy of the colors of the terrain. Sometimes the steep escarpments threw the rover so high into the sky that only rcs saved it from the vertical speed of the surface impact. Slowing to 10m/s meant that this happened less often but it still happened. A lot of these jumps are breathtaking and make Pol one of the better choices for a circumnavigation. It is also relatively quick and painless - seven or eight hours should suffice.

Imgur album - https://imgur.com/a/ggJ9K3N

A not unusual situation

It's a long way down. The last jump from the Highlands to the Lowlands.

Edited August 6, 2018 by mystifeid

[mystifeid]

Tylo - completed using a separate stock KSP 1.45 install - no added mods.

Start and finish at 0°N 120°W - Landing zone to the south-west.

With three big circumnavigations remaining - Eve, Kerbin by (mainly) land and Tylo - I chose Tylo. Eve and Kerbin will require special craft to be built but Tylo is the place the sixteen wheel rover was originally built to move around on.

The equator of Tylo is like a very big, very rough race track. Tylo is very much about speed. And at speed, Tylo is intense and quite wearing. It pays to have a rover that can handle high speed and at the same time to already be very familiar with it.

The steep and high ranges I have seen on other parts of Tylo just do not seem to exist on the equator - very little time is spent in the Highlands biome at all. The overwhelming majority of the trip is in the Midlands and Lowlands. This is good because on the high grav moon, steep inclines slow a rover to a crawl and if it operates at an ec deficit, as this one does, it can be easy to run out of power before the top is reached. This is why the sixteen wheeler has two vernier engines and on this trip, fuel was saved exclusively for uphill climbs. On the downhill side I tried to keep the speed between 90 and 100m/s although sometimes when my attention wandered I found myself going faster. The wheels can only take the rover to 55m/s - faster than that and it becomes pointless to hold down the forward key. Between 55 and 80m/s felt very safe and quite pedestrian and I felt comfortable with hands free driving on some quite long stretches where I neither had to brake nor accelerate.

Three times I drove into the night side and each time I stopped to mine ore and convert it to replenish my, by then, depleted fuel tanks. Afterwards I would timewarp to the morning. Tylo is no place to be doing 100m/s in the dark.

Even at these speeds each 10° waypoint took on average about half an hour to reach meaning that in total the cost of this circumnavigation was about twenty hours.

Imgur album - https://imgur.com/a/14xmDVw

Jeb decides to punch it and hits a new speed record for the rover - a very reckless 131.1m/s. Even at high speed, the rover is very controllable.

Laythe and Val hang from Jool in a moment from another world

Firing up the Verniers to climb a hill.

Edited August 8, 2018 by mystifeid

[Hummingbird Aerospace]

On 6/18/2018 at 11:06 AM, rkarmark said:

Yes but it may only use them when the rover is touching the ground. (Or in other words no planes)

What If one uses engines while under influence by low gravitational force, causing small jumps? Does that make you a dirty cheating alpaca?

[mystifeid]

On 8/15/2018 at 10:52 PM, Hummingbird Aerospace said:

What If one uses engines while under influence by low gravitational force, causing small jumps? Does that make you a dirty cheating alpaca?

Why not make a rover, put some engines on it if you like then transport it somewhere and try the circumnavigation. You might find that it is the jumps that cause you the most grief.

All wheels have a maximum impact velocity. For the TR-2L Ruggedized Vehicular Wheel, that I tend to favor, it is 100m/s. On nearly any body you choose, you will find long downhill stretches that will want to accelerate you past this safe velocity and losing contact with the surface then accelerating more in freefall will be the last thing you want. Even when your route flattens out or turns into a climb, you will often find yourself maintaining an unsafe speed. You will want to be very sure before you take any jump and usually have little time to assess the situation. I would suggest that braking engines on the front of the rover would be of more use than any added to the rear.

Also, all but the smallest engines add significant weight to the rover which not only increases the difficulty of transporting to and landing on your target but also increases the stresses on the wheels every time the rover lands. If engines are heavy then fuel is even more so and the difficulty of your task is increased again.

Even the most parsimonious stock engine consumes fuel at such a rate that to be any help at all in speeding up your circumnavigation, you will have to refill your fuel tanks multiple times. This means carrying an ISRU, radiators, at least one mining excavator and at least one ore tank. Again, as the rover mass increases, so does the difficulty. At the same time the ability of the rover to cope with the stress of landing a jump decreases.

After circumnavigating many places carrying all of the above on a rover I would advise you to only use engines on long very flat spaces or on uphill stretches. Rest assured that you will not need engines to make many jumps capable of destroying your rover. Before fitting engines and all the supporting paraphernalia it would be better to think about a decent rcs system. This is the thing that will really save you time because instead of repeatedly destroying your rover and having to reload your game, you will be able to slow descents and soften impacts. Also, even the best rover will spin out of control on occasion and being able to flip on a good rcs system will save your rover.

On some of my circumnavigations, I didn't use engines at all and never filled up the fuel tanks. Frankly, I didn't want the extra speed and certainly not the extra weight.

If you really want to circumnavigate somewhere while using engines try going to Tylo - you would be mad not to take them. Moho also has some excellent flats. And on Kerbin, Laythe and Eve you will require them.

Of course if you are thinking of using engines on Gilly, then as far as I'm concerned, yes, that would make you a dirty cheating alpaca. But do what you want - you will feel proud or not proud of your achievement as the case may be.

Edited August 17, 2018 by mystifeid

[sturmhauke]

3 hours ago, mystifeid said:

Before fitting engines and all the supporting paraphernalia it would be better to think about a decent rcs system. This is the thing that will really save you time because instead of repeatedly destroying your rover and having to reload your game, you will be able to slow descents and soften impacts. Also, even the best rover will spin out of control on occasion and being able to flip on a good rcs system will save your rover.

I'm nowhere close to attempting this challenge, but I have made a rover with Vernor thrusters. They're powerful enough on the Mun to do suborbital hops and slow the rover enough to land safely (ish).

Quote

Of course if you are thinking of using engines on Gilly, then as far as I'm concerned, yes, that would make you a dirty cheating alpaca. But do what you want - you will feel proud or not proud of your achievement as the case may be.

You can almost jump a kerbal into orbit there. Just a little extra push from the jetpack does the trick. A rover with engines could easily hit escape velocity if you're not careful.

[mystifeid]

4 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

They're powerful enough on the Mun to do suborbital hops

Suborbital hops? Are you kidding? This challenge is about driving rovers around planets and moons - not flying rockets around them.

Nowhere near ready? How hard is it to drop a rover on the Mun and start driving it? Not very.

And after you've flown your rocket around the Mun, then what? Use bigger rockets to fly around Kerbin, Eve, Laythe, Vall, Tylo, Eeloo and Moho? Maybe we should get rid of the wheels in the badges and put rockets there instead.

I get that you don't want to spend the time actually driving a rover around these places. It takes a heck of a long time.

But that's the challenge.

Edited August 17, 2018 by mystifeid

[sturmhauke]

My point was that Vernors are good for both RCS and for braking. I wasn't advocating that you try to cheat and fly the rover instead of driving it.

And yeah, I suppose I could try the challenge right now, but I'm working on a Jool-5 monstrosity at the moment.

[FahmiRBLX]

Another question regarding the rules. I've made a Mk-2 Fuselage Hydrofoil Boat to circumnavigate Laythe. The question is, are Hydofoils & Wing-In-Ground-Effect Vehicles allowed?

Those things rocks, by the way! 

[sturmhauke]

The game doesn't model ground effect. Best you can do is create enough lift to raise the hull partially out of the water but not enough for flight.

[rkarmark]

On 8/15/2018 at 2:52 PM, Hummingbird Aerospace said:

What If one uses engines while under influence by low gravitational force, causing small jumps? Does that make you a dirty cheating alpaca?

You can't use engines to gain speed while in the air. but if you are on the ground you can use engines however you want.

7 hours ago, FahmiRBLX said:

Another question regarding the rules. I've made a Mk-2 Fuselage Hydrofoil Boat to circumnavigate Laythe. The question is, are Hydofoils & Wing-In-Ground-Effect Vehicles allowed?

Those things rocks, by the way! 

Allowed if you always touch the water

[mystifeid]

On 8/18/2018 at 4:15 AM, sturmhauke said:

My point was that Vernors are good for both RCS and for braking. I wasn't advocating that you try to cheat and fly the rover instead of driving it.

My apologies - I can have an irascible nature before coffee in the morning. Might have to do something about that.

 

On 8/18/2018 at 4:15 AM, sturmhauke said:

And yeah, I suppose I could try the challenge right now, but I'm working on a Jool-5 monstrosity at the moment.

I saw it! It really is a monster. Good luck with that.

On 8/19/2018 at 9:20 PM, FahmiRBLX said:

I've made a Mk-2 Fuselage Hydrofoil Boat to circumnavigate Laythe

If going via the equator make sure it either carries a lot of fuel or can be refueled. It's a long way across the deGrasse Sea.

 

[mystifeid]

Kerbin by (mainly) land - completed using a separate stock KSP 1.45 install - no added mods.

Start and finish at the Dessert Launch Site.

Wow. Second time around Kerbin - this time by land. I spent quite some time thinking about something I could take around Eve and Kerbin and finally came up with something that was hopeless for both. Nevertheless, over the course of the next few weeks I pushed it around Kerbin but I hated it so much that I would stop playing after driving for about a kilometer. Eventually I went back to the VAB and made something just for Kerbin, then started again. Four days later I finished the circumnavigation.

Part of the problem lies in making a rover that is reasonably fast and durable on land yet economical on water while maintaining range and speed. Motorized wheels in water preclude economy and speed so I decided to place a couple of pairs of canards on top of the rover and on entering water I would flip it upside down so that the canards could act as hydrofoils. It made for a particularly ugly boat but 400 units of liquid fuel behind a Panther gave it a range of more than 300km at 50m/s. On land, for the most part the rover maintained 40-50m/s.

I wanted to keep the route roughly circular with no spans of water greater than the range of the rover and the one that looked like it might suit was a polar route starting and finishing at the Dessert Launch Site. I crossed five major stretches of water. Four were unavoidable and the fifth was made mainly to keep the route circular. Likewise, if mountains were encountered on land, they were crossed and not skirted.

This was my first major foray ever onto the Southern and Northern Ice Shelves. They are very big areas and perfectly flat. Eventually I began to wonder how fast I could go so I opened up the Panther and hit 160m/s. Great. Kicked in the afterburner and accelerated to around 230m/s. And held that speed all the way to the edge of the ice sheet.

I have never approached the Ice Shelves by sea and didn't know about the 31m high ice cliff surrounding them. Fortunately, the Panther on full afterburner provided just enough power to inch up the 85° slope. Exiting from an ice shelf back to the sea required the same maneuver but this time in reverse.

Estimated time to complete : 30-35 hours.

Imgur album - https://imgur.com/a/52AuM7j

Edited August 23, 2018 by mystifeid

[mystifeid]

Eve - completed using a separate stock KSP 1.45 install - no added mods.

Start and finish at 0°N 12°40'W - Landing zone just to the south-west.

There is a surreal feeling that accompanies finishing the circumnavigation of Eve. So much time...

From a cursory inspection of the Elcano threads there appears to have only been six people before me who have completed this challenge and about half of these used a stock install. I'm not sure how true this is but given the difficulty and time involved, I'd believe it.

Eve really is in a class of it's own.

From the beginning I had three goals - to make my route as circular as possible, to do it stock and not look at how anyone else had done it. Up until nearly finishing my last Elcano, I thought that circumnavigating Eve involved getting my Kerbals feet wet - or island hopping around a lot of the planet, often circuitously. I'd been playing around with different designs but none seemed to offer the range across the seas that would be required. There is no oxygen on Eve so any engines would need to be LFO. The only way I could see that offered some hope would be to use a stock prop but I was worried about not only landing it on Eve but also it's ability to propel the rover up steep slopes. (Nevertheless, I see now that is exactly how someone else solved the problem). I was stuck.

Then I decided to actually look at Eve closely and to my joy discovered that a very circular polar route was possible by land. On both sides of the planet though - around the equator - there appeared to be some very high terrain.

No problem. I threw another four wheels on the 16-wheeler and set off after also launching my relay sats. Yeah, right.

The 16-wheeler can have the springs/dampers set to 2/2 on any other planet. Adding four wheels made this unstable on Kerbin so I had crossed my fingers and left them at the default 1/1 for Eve. For some extra speed I had also bolted an extra (decouplable) aerospike on the back. After landing and half a dozen blowouts, the aerospike was the first thing to go.

Undeterred, I pushed on for 25°. By this time I'd had about another fifty blowouts and had developed quite a long list of improvements I wanted to make. For one, I didn't have nearly enough EC generation for twenty wheels and I was having to stop regularly near the equator in the middle of the day to recharge my batteries. What was it going to be like near the poles? For another, all those lightweight doodads that make no difference on airless worlds - in Eve's thick atmosphere they provide a lot of drag. Trying to coast down even steep hills was like having the brakes on. And a lot of aerials self destruct at speeds greater than about 25m/s (there is only one choice - the 16S, which is strong with low drag).

Even though I had estimated that ten degrees on the flat was taking me 90 minutes - meaning I had driven for more than three hours - and it had taken a couple more hours to get there, set the relay sats up etc, I bit the bullet and deleted the game.

After starting anew, I made the changes I wanted in the VAB. I also decided to action key the motors in the extra four wheels to provide economy/power modes. And five or more hours later I was back where I left off. The springs/damper settings had been changed to 1/0.8 and this seemed to make a huge difference because in the flatter biomes I could now drive for hours between blowouts. But in the other biomes it was a different story and it would have been nice to have some way to either change these on the fly or experiment beforehand. All up I had somewhere between fifty and a hundred blowouts on the trip.

My top speed was a little faster now - I could get 28-29m/s on the flat with 16 wheels and a bit faster with 20 wheels. The rover would also now accelerate when coasting downhill. However, the thick air meant that it was rare to go above 40m/s and my fastest speed on the trip was 47m/s. Hitting that speed on Eve felt more dangerous than going twice as fast anywhere else.

In the tropical zones - plus/minus 30° from the equator - in the middle of the day I could drive without depleting the batteries. This represents about a third of the trip. Outside of these zones stops to replenish EC became more frequent the closer I was to the poles. It was always a good feeling once a pole had been reached and the course turned back toward the equator.

Before starting, I'd had grave fears about the terrain but the Shallows, Lowlands and Poles (for the most part) biomes were very mellow and more than two thirds of the route was in these biomes. The Midlands always looked like it should be safe but it wasn't and it was a popular place for blowouts. The Highlands, Foothills and Peaks biomes often regulated speed through inclination when going uphill and fear when going down. However these last three all provided lots of opportunities for more blowouts.

The worst places of all, and possibly the worst places in the Kerbol system, are found within 2°-3° of the poles. The terrain becomes very angular and often the driving proceeds from one rover trap to another (see pic below). These need to be dealt with a lot of care while the rover uses considerable power to overcome them. Six degrees in the Lowlands takes about an hour but near the poles...who knows.

Driving toward my first pole - the North Pole - I was thinking that it would be nice if there was actually something there. Besides the awful terrain, I got my wish. The poles are...different and worth visiting.

In the Peaks I found that despite the savage appearance of the mountain sides, the rover could often drive straight up and so I made no detours. Around the halfway mark I reached 4500 meters. Much later, as I was nearly finishing the circumnavigation and again passing through the Peaks, I started trying to climb the highest mountains I could see. The highest altitude reached was just over 5700m.

In total, with planning and the aborted first attempt, I would estimate this challenge took in excess of 70 hours. Good luck if you are thinking of doing it and my sincere congratulations if you succeed.

Imgur album - https://imgur.com/a/WDRfbyI

@rkarmark - this marks the last circumnavigation of all the planets and moons in the Kerbol system and I believe it should entitle me to the Eve, Master Navigator and Grand Master Circumnavigator badges. However, please let me know if you have a problem with this.

What's a rover trap? This. Try to imagine a few hours of driving through these. In the dark. This ain't no low-g moon either.

Close to the North Pole

For all their horror, the poles are beautiful places.

Nearly finished - moving through the peaks. This was the highest point reached.

Edited September 4, 2018 by mystifeid

[Ho Lam Kerman]

 

Hello. I'm done with my Gilly Elcano.

(Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of Val planting the flag.)

First 20km was with a sluggish rover that didn't have ion engines pointing down. Took a loooong time at 3 m/s.

Then the game mechanics, which don't like ground rovers, crashed it beyond repair. Val stood waiting for a replacement, this time with ion engines, for a few years. Poor Val.

(Ta da! Brand new replacement.)

The ion engines didn't do much, unfortunately. By the time I was halfway across Gilly, I felt like I wanted to put this down for a few weeks. 

So I did. Until I had this idea that the rover wouldn't take too much damage if I tried speeding and making a few hops, with monopropellant thrusters for attitude stability and for sticking to the ground when landing.

This was brilliant. I got the rover back to base camp within a few hours, IRL.

Anyways, that thing took quite a beating. Lost all three ions and a solar panel. Thank god I don't need much electricity once the ions are gone.

But I'm done. Gilly's quick if you jump, not if you don't.

Back to the flag.

(Screenshots of visited landmarks)

Spoiler

The green monolith, which was actually surprisingly close to the other landmark.

First spotted.

Got there. Found with the help of SCANsat.

 

And the next landmark, the unmanned lander mission to Gilly. It's identical to the landers that exist on every body in the inner system including Dres, but this is the only one that uses an Ant engine than a Terrier engine.

The lander, as seen from Val's window.

Some other images.

Spoiler

Rover: "I am worth your salt!" (Every one of my elcanos gives at least one opportunity to say that.)

Eve as seen from Gilly.

I'll just go get my badge.

[rocketengineer1982]

This challenge has been quiet for a while.

After a bit of a hiatus, I'm resuming my circumnavigation of Kerbin.  There was a... minor accident... involving my first vehicle, but it's been recovered, refit, and is ready to be flown back out to the last checkpoint.  I'm hoping to have time to make the flight and resume my circumnavigation this weekend.

 

Edited November 10, 2018 by rocketengineer1982