A Goat Races to the Sky

purpleivan · October 24, 2020

My entry to @Pds314 Race to the Sky challenge, in which "The Goat" made it to 3000 metres in 18:46.

Everry journey has to start somewhere and this one begins on a certain launchpad at 73m. Next stop 3k.

Jeb's having a blast at the wheel of the Goat. Val's been the first to jump on board for it's last couple of outings.

Actually to be completely honest, this is a slightly modified goat, as an extra 2400units of battery capacity thrown on, just in case.

Jeb leaving his worries and the KSC behind.

So how we doing Jeb?

"Great."

What altitude did you start at

"73metres."

How high are you now.

"Errr... 64."

But it didn't take long before the climing began.

200 metres

300...

In no time Jeb will be at 3k at this rate.

Ok... back to 231.

Concentrate Jeb... be the goat... be the goat.

BE THE GOAT.

Some driving later.

In other words, lots of grass, not much elevation gain, so no point in more pics for a while. But it was at this point Jeb thought to check the status of the juice that was powering his tear towards that mountain, and he's shocked to fined that it's down to less than 50% remaining and he's only at 566m.

Suddenly, coming over a small ridge The Goat goes into a slide and spins round.

Fortunately it doesn't roll as it's pretty stable on the flat.

But now it not flat and dangers await.

Dangers like this.

After almost rolling his ride and then spinning it, Jeb wrestles it back under control.

Hmmm... strangely when the roll and slide was over, Jeb found that powering forward had The Goat zoom backwards at great velocity.

So hitting reverse gear it is then. But at least he's almost at half distance in his race to the sky.

Less than a minute and a quarter later Jeb suffers another mishap, a bigger one this time.

The Goat goes airbourne and tumbles end over end. I guess flying is within the rules if it's mid accident and the thing's flying backwards.

By some miracle it and Jeb survives this, not only that but the strange reversal of the thrust controls is fixed, so it's full speed ahead once more.

Ok, things are starting to get steeper and the mountain climb itself is just ahead.

But there's less than 12% power left and almost 1200m to climb.

But at least the ascent is rapid now, as the angle increases from moderate to, "oh my, that's steep".

This is going to be so close. The Goat is scrambling up a slope of about 40 degrees at 27m/s, with a little over 200m of ascent to go, but there's just 3% of the juice left and the gauge is dropping fast.