Driving around Kerbin - literally

[VenDei]

No one quite knows where this idea came from. Maybe it was the unveiling of the D4 "Glowdart"-Drone that can go reasonably fast anywhere on Kerbin without anyone being on board, but someone snapped "Enough with this computer nonsense, we'll show you what KERBALS can do!" And what kerbals can do, supposedly, is drive a rover around their planet. All the way.

The vehicle is your basic, overgrown Mk2-body on Hextruss-chassis with 10 wheels, a nuclear reactor and all the scientific instruments available for mopup in any biome the crew comes across. Because Jeb has the flu it's Valentina driving, with Bill and Bob in the back. As someone raised the objection of "there's water to cross, y'know", six inflatable floats were put on, als well as four tiny electric fans. This will prove to be no quite the brilliant design-decision, as while on land the Kerbin Explorer has a topspeed of just shy of 55 m/s, on water it's more like 1.2 m/s. But everyone keeps dry feet.

Anyway, the kerbals head out west...

To be continued.

Addendum: The eagle-eyed may spot the Bon Voyage-icon. It's an autopilot. It will not be used in this mission, as the goal is a manual circumnavigation. Actually it can't be used, as I did not put the autpilot-part on the craft.

[xendelaar]

manual circumnavigation of kerbin... that's going to take a heck of a lot of time. what's the top speed on this baby?  20 m/s?

i like the design and the fact it's able to function as a ship. looks really robust! 

i wish you good luck with your endeavour! 

[VenDei]

Sorry for not posting in 2 weeks, but I was forced offline because of ISP-troubles. But since Squad did NOT put crippling DRM into KSP that makes an offline game unable to function without an online connection, I had quite some time on my hand to proceed with the mission.
 

On 5.6.2017 at 4:36 AM, xendelaar said:

what's the top speed on this baby?  20 m/s?

Just shy of 55 m/s on dead flats, I think I maxed it at 60-ish on a slight downhill slope in the desert. In your average grasslands I could do speeds around 25 m/s to 30 m/s.
We left off here:

The inevitable happens about at about a third of the way:

We even lose the wheel alltogether, and we fly in a spare.

But my inexperience with KIS/KAS keeps me from making a repair. In retrospect, driving closer to the plane might have done the trick...
The loss of a wheel was deemed acceptable in the end, and so the mission goes on on nine wheels.

Anyway, to make a long story short, they did it, even with Valentinas reckless speeding. Mission clock read 14 days, 4 hours, 45 minutes and 38 seconds, a lot of which was spend on water, even if water was only a small portion of the way. The reactor was at a power setting of 3 percent, delivering 15 EC/s, using 0.02 Units of Enriched Uranium. The path is what I imagine pretty much the standard for a manual equatorial-ish circumnavigation with minimum water on the way:

I put some more pics in the album, they don't need to go all here bloating the post.

 

 

[xendelaar]

impressive! how many real life hours did it take?  did you use time warp?  was it fun to do? i did a circumnavigation around Minmus ones on a rocked sled which was pretty fun.

thanks for the interesting report!

[VenDei]

It took me pretty much a week (not playing whole days, mind you), and I used time warp for crossing water, as I could just throttle up and let the rover go straight ahead. Unfortunately under that condition time warp was just 4x... so I could set things up, cook some food, eat it, do the dishes and come back in time to see it not yet there.

It was definitely fun, in an odd way. With all the micromanagement of manually driving around a planet it's quite something different from the "plan, thrust, warp, repeat" of spaceflight. And the patience/stubborness needed to complete a circumnavigation certainly gives a sense of achievement. I'll surely try some other circumnavigations in the future, as I really like rovers - even if they have not received as much love from the developers as rockets and planes.

[kerbinorbiter]

This just sounds like something ripped out of old top gear 

also what I would do would have a rocket hover for 6 hours and then land

Edited June 13, 2017 by kerbinorbiter

[damerell]

19 hours ago, VenDei said:

Anyway, to make a long story short, they did it, even with Valentinas reckless speeding. Mission clock read 14 days, 4 hours, 45 minutes and 38 seconds, a lot of which was spend on water, even if water was only a small portion of the way. The reactor was at a power setting of 3 percent, delivering 15 EC/s, using 0.02 Units of Enriched Uranium. The path is what I imagine pretty much the standard for a manual equatorial-ish circumnavigation with minimum water on the way:

Well done! Of course, your very low water speed would rule this out, but otherwise I think it's best to maximise the sea part of a Kerbin circumnavigation, even if it is slower - because you can just lay in the course, do a bit of calculation as to when you expect to arrive, and leave it to sail itself.

5 hours ago, kerbinorbiter said:

also what I would do would have a rocket hover for 6 hours and then land

That wouldn't qualify as an Elcano circumnavigation.