The Elcano Challenge: Ground-Based Circumnavigation (4th)

[Pouicpouic]

Circumnavigation of Ike done (no losses).

Finally I was able to test the rover at high speeds (weird things can happen above 80m/s with these wheels). But there, no problem, acceptable emergency maneuvers, even if I still haven't tested it beyond 100m/s. --> I think I can seriously consider to reach >120m/s on vall with this craft.

New overall top speed : 93,8m/s !

Spoiler

A little review at this point :

This rover has already covered about 9000km out of the 27000 minimum to finish the entire challenge. I used 5 of the 22 available wheel repairs. More than 70m/s on the ground on all the visited bodies (kerbin, minmus, mun, duna, ike) and 46m/s on the water.
If I had to rate it (compared to dozens of rovers already tested), I would say 5/5 in robustness, 5/5 in maneuverability, 5/5 in versatility, 5/5 in cruising speed, 5/5 in high-speed stability (>80m/s), 4.5/5 in jump landing and 4/5 on the water.

Next stop, either in the joolian system cause the hohmann transfer window is in a few months, or towards Dres... @Jack Joseph Kermani hope the total destruction will happen quickly ? ... so i won't have to go there... ok, i get it, you want to see me suffer too xD

[Pouicpouic]

Dres completed, it was... bouncy.

The gray-on-gray one is not very funny, fortunately she' s not very big. On the hills, I'm in contact with the ground less than 10% of the time... but I manage to maintain 40 to 45m/s by fighting without respite.

Bounces, more bounces.

In the plains (yes there are some) it is easy to maintain 55m/s. Two broken wheels, because of an emergency maneuver to avoid a rock. 4 reloads because of my bad driving and an incomprehensible explosion probably due to the invisible kraken...

I confirm that the canyon is not a good experience at all in rover ... forced to do a hellish climb to get out of it.

I didn't manage to exceed 60,8m/s during the whole route : I avoided as much as possible the "mountains" and craters.
Nevertheless, I have the impression that it was rather pleasant compared to some other challengers (and i know that Laythe will be far more boring for me)

Spoiler

Edited June 4, 2022 by Pouicpouic

[MythicalHeFF]

Eeloo circumnavigation complete! As I had hoped, Eeloo was much more friendly to driving rovers than the cursed Dres was. In fact, despite Eeloo being almost twice the circumference of Dres, I'd be willing to bet that I was able to circumnavigate it in less time than it took me to drive around Dres. As with the previous two Elcano runs, this one was done with the Keimos's rover, which was lowered by piston out of the cargo bay.

Although the drive around Eeloo was pleasant, landing the Keimos on Eeloo was substantially harder than landing it on Ike or Dres, as Eeloo has substantially higher gravity. With just the nuclear engines, I was still able to get the ship to a hover, at which point I turned it horizontal and landed with the Thud engines. However, this was a little more difficult, as the Keimos barely gets a TWR over 1 on Eeloo using the atomic engines alone.

Replacement Rover:

Spoiler

Upon landing on Eeloo and unloading the rover, however, I noticed that the wheels had stopped working for some reason. I made sure the brakes were turned off, I tried using time warp, I tried quickloading, everything. Nothing would make the wheels work again.

Eventually, I got the idea of using EVA construction to remove and replace the wheels, and, while this was successful in making them move again, the rover now wanted to turn right for no particular reason and thus would not be suitable for a circumnavigation. 

Annoyed, I decided to put together a probe to send up a replacement rover. The lander's design is the same as the one I used to land on Minmus, the only difference being that there is a probe core as opposed to a command pod at the top.

A little over three years later, the replacement rover arrived at Eeloo. Putting Elcano missions on hold for exactly three years seems to be a theme of mine; during my Tylo circumnavigation, I ran out of repair kits, and was forced to send a resupply probe containing more to finish the mission. That endeavor also took about three years to complete.

Once the rover had arrived, an elated Bob Kerman drove the rover over to Jebediah, who planted a flag blaming Dres for the whole debacle.

The Circumnavigation:

Spoiler

Once the replacement rover had been sent, it was finally time to start the circumnavigation of Eeloo. As I mentioned earlier, Eeloo was much more pleasant and forgiving to circumnavigate than Dres was, and consequently I've taken a liking to this dirty snowball of a planet.

Due to the lack of any real hills and the smoothness of the terrain, I was able to easily maintain over 50 m/s for the entire trip around Eeloo. It also had a bit more scenery than I remembered it having, with the occasional brown area being a stark contrast to the otherwise white surface. In the Ice Canyons (the biome name of the brown areas), I was able to drive at over 60 m/s thanks to gravity accelerating the rover as it rolled downhill.

At one point, I hit a top speed of 72.2 meters per second, one of the fastest speeds achieved by this rover, but still not my fastest speed during an Elcano overall; during my Tylo circumnavigation, I hit 82 m/s with the Odyssey, and, during the jump down from Vall's south pole cliff, I hit a speed of over 100 m/s.

Eeloo is Your Friend

Canada

Almost back to the landing site. It was only at this point that I noticed the lack of many screenshots that I took during this mission.

Once I was back at the landing site, I tried to attach a docking port from the old rover to the new one, as the new rover had the same design as the one that I had used on Minmus, which meant that it didn't have a docking port. Unfortunately, because the docking port was the rover's root part, I wasn't able to remove it, which meant that I would have to leave both rovers behind on Eeloo.

Returning Home:

Spoiler

Once all of the flags had been planted and all of the ore mined and converted into fuel, it was time for the Keimos to leave Eeloo and head back to Kerbin. Originally, I planned to also take it to Moho, but it's become more than apparent that the Keimos's TWR is most likely insufficient to land on Moho, and almost certainly not enough to ascend from it and still make it back to Kerbin from low orbit. Instead, for Moho I'll probably just use a traditional Apollo-style setup.

Keimos using RCS to orient itself prograde for liftoff

Liftoff from Eeloo!

Very low orbit (around 5 km) achieved. This orbit was later raised to about 13 km before the escape burn.

Planning the maneuver(s) that will take us home

Before leaving Eeloo's sphere of influence, I put the Keimos into a highly eccentric orbit, as I did not want to do an 11-minute burn all at once. The burn is still about 10 minutes, but at least I'll already be pretty much at escape velocity when I start it.

Ejection burn

Kerbin orbit insertion

Back in LKO

Sending a really generic-looking spacecraft to go and retrieve the crew. Originally, I was going to make an SSTO, but I got lazy.

Rendezvous and crew transfer

Re-entry

Splashdown!

I'm most likely off to Moho next. That one will be real tough, that's for sure.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Jack Joseph Kerman

[Pouicpouic]

Eeloo not complete ! (only half way)

I don't use time warp during circumnavigations, so eeloo is bound to take more time than Dres for me. (almost twice in fact)

Spoiler

Weirds rocks here (Is this a sign of the kraken near me?) :

I think I understand everyone's problem! The problem is, since we installed these brakes, you can't stop using them. No brakes! xD

As a result, I'm at least as bored on the white one as I am on the grey one... fighting on the grey one vs not falling asleep on the white one. The 30h trip on laythe will kill me... lol

This is the last time I'll follow you closely @JJK, soon I'll go to the joolian system. But first I'm going to have a drink in the best (and most isolated) "bar-asteroid" in the galaxy! (screenshots soon)

[damerell]

I've never used timewarp during circumnavigation other than as necessary to get up to 100% of normal time. That said, on Kerbin I did program in an ocean course and go to sleep, but the rover sailed itself in real time...

[MythicalHeFF]

1 hour ago, Pouicpouic said:

Eeloo not complete ! (only half way)

I don't use time warp during circumnavigations, so eeloo is bound to take more time than Dres for me. (almost twice in fact)

  Reveal hidden contents

Weirds rocks here (Is this a sign of the kraken near me?) :

I think I understand everyone's problem! The problem is, since we installed these brakes, you can't stop using them. No brakes! xD

As a result, I'm at least as bored on the white one as I am on the grey one... fighting on the grey one vs not falling asleep on the white one. The 30h trip on laythe will kill me... lol

I know your pain. For my Tylo circumnavigation, I used a gigantic rover that had something like 28 wheels, and as a result I couldn’t time warp at all. Combined with the steep terrain in places, it took me easily over 50 hours in-game and almost a month of real time.

[Pouicpouic]

1 hour ago, damerell said:

That said, on Kerbin I did program in an ocean course and go to sleep, but the rover sailed itself in real time..

Yes, honestly I'll have to do the same... My spreadsheet predicts a minimum of 30h for laythe (if I have correctly estimated my average speed on the spot) and around 20 for tylo.

46 minutes ago, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

For my Tylo circumnavigation, I used a gigantic rover that had something like 28 wheels, and as a result I couldn’t time warp at all. Combined with the steep terrain in places, it took me easily over 50 hours in-game and almost a month of real time.

I hope to be able to maintain 55m/s there, no? I've done a rover trip to tylo a long time ago but I don't really remember it. --> 50h means about 20m/s on average, I guess there must have been some problems... I'll look back in the thread to see your story on tylo.

Oh yeah, I just (re)saw that. Indeed a very nice rover but not really adapted to a quick trip !

 

[MythicalHeFF]

The thing is that the Tylo elcano was never supposed to be a quick trip. I did that mission as a novelty to see if something like it could even be done, and the rover was very heavy, severely limiting its uphill climbing ability. What that meant is that I had to spend lots of time switchbacking up hills or taking detours to avoid hazardous terrain. In a more practical vehicle, you should have no problem maintaining speeds of 55-60 m/s, and can probably get to 90+ in downhill areas.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Jack Joseph Kerman

[Pouicpouic]

Well, i haven't yet taken the time to give you all the tips I use concerning the rovers (sorry in advance, English is not my native language so I don't necessarily use the best vocabulary)

- It's better to have a control point that looks towards the horizon (rather than the sky). The wheels and the SAS react according to this point, which makes a big difference.  So I add an okto2 (or a small dock) at the front of the rover to control from this point.

- Only the front wheels are steered.

- The CoM is as low as possible and must be centered. The wheelbase is as wide as possible.

- The reaction wheels are placed as far as possible from the CoM to increase their torque. And I use an action group to switch from "normal" SAS to "SAS only". At each jump I switch to "normal" and at each acceleration I switch to "only". The "pilot" mode is to be avoided absolutely, that's why I keep an eye on the setting all the time (it represents about 50% of my inadvertent accidents).

- The friction control is set to 0,6 at the front and 1 at the rear since Kerbin and I find this setting pleasant (there is maybe better). I don't think I have touched the other settings significantly.

I feel like I'm forgetting some important things again but it doesn't come back to me.

Hopefully this will help.

[Pouicpouic]

After more than 10,000 km in the driver's cab, "Benden" (my driver) was a bit thirsty. It was time to celebrate this symbolic milestone !

And finally it was there! the last refreshing stop of the Kerbol system!

I am happy to present you the "bar-asteroid : End of All".

It was no easy task to put this bar here with its magical asteroid in career, stock+ without mods, but I had no choice, the order came directly from the beer-ministry. (and we all know that the KSC is directly dependent on this powerful organization).
A fund of 2.5 millions kerbucks had been allocated to us for this ambitious operation. According to the ministry, most of the funds were used to find a way to produce beer from an asteroid.

Benden is the first customer from the inner-system in over 30 years --> hopefully there is still beer left!
What a wonderful break! Come on Benden, less than 20,000km to go now! Benden was thinking about filling the empty structurals shrimps with good stuff for the rest of the trip... but he knew that everything would be empty only 15km further, given his legendary thirst...

Spoiler

[LHACK4142]

Hmmm, I drove a rover about a quarter the way around Duna, maybe this would be a fun challenge for me

[18Watt]

On 5/26/2022 at 12:16 AM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

After a month-long hiatus, I'm back to Elcano-ing

Oh my goodness, are you ever!  I was away from internet for maybe a week or two, and you and @Pouicpouic have driven half the solar system!  My sincere apologies for not keeping up with you two!

On 5/26/2022 at 12:16 AM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

I didn't bother to give a proper name, so we'll just go by its provisional designation of "bug nugget".

Works for me.  Honestly it is much better than most of my rover names.  ('Rover1, Rover1a, etc..)

On 5/26/2022 at 12:16 AM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

So that's.. let's see here.. Eight Elcano runs completed now.

@Jack Joseph Kerman and @Pouicpouic:  You guys are knocking these out pretty fast!  I'm worried that I'll forget to add you to the 'special' leaderboards, like completing Kerbin AND Laythe by sea, or completing Kerbin AND Eve.  Please remind me if you complete one of those sub-challenges..

On 5/26/2022 at 7:19 AM, damerell said:

Alternatively I'd have switched to FWD so that the instant the front wheels left the ground there'd be no more drive torque.

I've tried that, and in my case I did not get good results.  However, that was many KSP versions ago, and as we all know- KSP wheels change dramatically with every update.  So this solution could merit another look.

On 5/27/2022 at 4:30 PM, Pouicpouic said:

Mun circumnavigation done ! really great ! top speed near 72m/s.

Your Kerbals are brave!  

On 5/28/2022 at 2:32 AM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

that could take it to multiple planets in a single mission.

You and @Pouicpouic have come up with a new twist, using a rover on multiple CBs (celestial bodies).  Pretty sure I left all of mine in place.  Your rover designs are indeed very sturdy if you can finish one CB, and decide the parts are still close enough to the correct locations to take it to another world!

On 5/31/2022 at 3:24 PM, Pouicpouic said:

I'm pretty sure that sandworms can't go faster than 50m/s in the dunes because none of them managed to catch me.

With that reference, I have to wonder how old you are?  That's a reference from a book from my childhood (I think?)- Dune.  I first read Dune in the late 1970's I think.  

On 5/31/2022 at 3:24 PM, Pouicpouic said:

Highest point >6400m ; lowest <240m

I do remember Duna has some very impressive elevation changes!

On 6/1/2022 at 1:30 PM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

Dres complete. I do not wish to return for a long, long time, maybe ever.

I actually didn't have much trouble with Dres, except for the inclination change required to reach it- I'm not that great at orbital maneuvers..  I will say that for some reason, I decided I needed to drive through the canyon.  I think this is common- why wouldn't you drive through the canyon?  Well, anyone who has driven through it can give you some hints.

 

On 6/1/2022 at 1:30 PM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

Dres will be eliminated.

Hah!  Not while I'm running Elcano!  The good news is, you've completed it, so now it's somebody else's problem!

On 6/1/2022 at 1:30 PM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

I had landed the Keimos just to the east of the big canyon so that I would be able to drive through it at the end, as I had incorrectly assumed that such a venture would be "fun".

As I was saying...   Seriously, if you haven't driven through the canyon on Dres, you just have to.   Because it's there.  Once you've done it though, probably once is enough.  More than enough.

On 6/1/2022 at 1:30 PM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

While I was en route to Eeloo, I noticed that I would be passing fairly close to Jool before reaching it, probably at a distance of about 1 AU or so. Knowing this, I pointed the Keimos in its direction and was actually able to spot it as a green speck in the cupola's IVA view.

Probably seems silly to most people, but things like this keep me interested in KSP.  "Hey, there's Jool!  It's slightly bigger than it would be from Kerbin!"  I love it.

I'll try to catch up more on this challenge this week, you all (y'all..) have been crushing it!  I have another whole page of posts to go through!  If I've forgotten to add valid entries to the leaderboard, or entered them incorrectly, please let me know.

And thank you all for your patience while I'm neglecting my duties.  

 

[damerell]

I notice the rules have changed a bit since the 3 previous editions. What worries me is the addition of:

Thrust devices (rockets, jets, props, RCS) are acceptable, as long as they are only used while in contact with the surface.  Using thrust of any sort to control or change the trajectory of your rover while above the surface is not allowed.

Now, I appreciate you don't want people boosting jump distance with rockets or RCS, but to use them to hit the ground wheels-down seems entirely normal to me. I certainly did it in my Mun circumnavigation (and mentioned it in the first post) which Fengist didn't even blink at, and since monoprop is finite it's arguably a more challenging approach than using KSP's magical reaction wheels. (Likewise, I don't have to look far to find Gilly trips where ion engines are used not just to stick the rover to the ground but to put it back on the ground when it leaves it.)

The intent is that you control the vehicle during the entire circumnavigation.  Using an autopilot goes against the spirit of this challenge.

Fengist's original challenge says "You may use Jeb if you wish for it's 'rover' heading controls. If you read the account of my circumnavigation, you'll find an alternative to Jeb" and indeed when I did Kerbin for some of the long sea legs I programmed a heading into MechJeb, turned on the engines, and went to bed.

ETA: now, I ask myself, why do I think that was OK but some rover autopiloting wouldn't be? I think largely because of my own no-quickload approach; if I got the heading wrong, underestimated the speed of sailing, or just found out MJ wasn't a very good steersbal, it was up to me to deal with the consequences.

(I'm less personally concerned with this change since now Scatterer has real waves, there's no prospect of MJ handling sea legs.)

Edited June 7, 2022 by damerell

[18Watt]

On 6/4/2022 at 6:20 AM, Pouicpouic said:

I confirm that the canyon is not a good experience at all in rover ... forced to do a hellish climb to get out of it.

Looks like you traveled westbound, as I did.  Yep, the western exit from the canyon was challenging.

On 6/4/2022 at 11:01 PM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

...Eeloo. It also had a bit more scenery than I remembered it having,

I think Eeloo was one of the last planets to get updated scenery.  I intentionally waited to do Eeloo until that update was available.

On 6/4/2022 at 11:01 PM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

Canada

But with 100% fewer mosquitos.

On 6/6/2022 at 3:45 AM, Pouicpouic said:

I am happy to present you the "bar-asteroid : End of All".

Awesome!

1 hour ago, damerell said:

I notice the rules have changed a bit since the 3 previous editions. What worries me is the addition of:

I hear your concerns.  I have no plans to alter the rules at this point, but here's what the thinking was:

1 hour ago, damerell said:

Thrust devices

The intention was for this to be rovers.  On many CBs, the jumps can become ridiculous.  Not having any ability to alter your trajectory (even to soften the impact a little) discourages insanely long jumps.  To some extent.  So I'm sticking to that rule:  No thrusting while in the air is allowed.  Yes, I do realize that using reaction wheels accomplishes the same thing as RCS, it allows you to correct your attitude.  However, again I'm sticking with this rule.  You can use reaction wheels to land wheels-down, but you can not use RCS or any other thrust device while above the surface.  The only exception is downward facing thrust, for example an ion engine to add downforce on worlds such as Gilly.  I suppose if you wanted to use downward facing RCS thrusters on Gilly that would be acceptable as well, although not very practical.  

I think (?) you are more concerned about using RCS to control the attitude only, and are wondering why that isn't allowed, but reaction wheels are?  Well, the reason is that RCS can also be used to soften landings, making extremely long jumps safe.  So I'm hoping to eliminate that loophole.  Reaction wheels work well, probably better than RCS in most cases, so I don't think this is an unreasonable restriction.

1 hour ago, damerell said:

Using an autopilot goes against the spirit of this challenge.

Yeah, I'm keeping this rule in there also.  It's too easy to turn on rover autopilot, and come back 12 hours later to find your circumnavigation complete.  That's a different challenge- this challenges requires you to control the rover during the circumnavigation.  

While for the most part the rules are similar or the same as Fengist's original challenge, I would guess that about 10% of the rules have been altered in some way.  This is the 4th version of the challenge, there have been several tweaks along the way.  Also note that entries which occurred during previous versions of this challenge are valid if they met the rules at the time.  In other words, if you entered Fengist's version, and met the requirements at that time, I still count that as a valid entry.  I've gone back through the past 3 versions and (hopefully) have a somewhat complete list of all entries going back to day one.  (If I missed anyone, please let me know- it was a lot of entries to sort through..,)

[damerell]

41 minutes ago, 18Watt said:

Reaction wheels work well, probably better than RCS in most cases, so I don't think this is an unreasonable restriction.

In this particular case it is a little awkward since I have just set off on an extensive journey with two rovers which have RCS and no reaction wheels (partly because I don't like using KSP's magic reaction wheels) and because I've discovered an ideal way to use MechJeb Rover Stability Control for landing attitude is to build such a rover and toggle RCS on when I want it to do anything. (The latter part of this is, I think, a pretty useful approach for other people.)

46 minutes ago, 18Watt said:

Well, the reason is that RCS can also be used to soften landings, making extremely long jumps safe.

AFAIK we're already dependent on people telling the truth about their journeys. Yes, if you say "RCS for attitude only", I could lean on RCS Translate Backwards every time I'm about to crash and not mention it, but if I'm willing to do that I could just turn on Unbreakable Parts and crash as hard as I want.

(Also, if you'll forgive me saying so, the most original and amusing thing I've seen in Elcano recently is a journey around Gilly on a nuclear pogo stick - a journey composed _entirely of jumps_.)

[damerell]

An addendum: in practice I find it's going to be necessary to ship replacement rovers out in any event, since I keep knocking bits off them. Please can I get the one that's driving around Moho now grandfathered in - used to the old rules, didn't know they'd changed - and I'll make the replacements compliant with the new rules?

ETA again - this request is moot, I decided I'd give up a few hours' driving on Moho and redesign the rover and transport vehicles anyway.

Edited June 13, 2022 by damerell

[Pouicpouic]

16 hours ago, damerell said:

partly because I don't like using KSP's magic reaction wheels

17 hours ago, 18Watt said:

I notice the rules have changed a bit since the 3 previous editions

16 hours ago, damerell said:

AFAIK we're already dependent on people telling the truth about their journeys. Yes, if you say "RCS for attitude only", I could lean on RCS Translate Backwards every time I'm about to crash and not mention it, but if I'm willing to do that I could just turn on Unbreakable Parts and crash as hard as I want

I'm a newbie here so my opinion isn't really relevant, but I'll speak as a player with 3000h of KSP. I understand perfectly what Damerell is trying to say, as I have a very particular vision of the challenge, with my own rules. And that's the main point: it's a game where everyone has his own rules and his own preferences. And we are indeed bound to believe or not the story of each trip, there is no practical way to verify anything.
On my side I probably don't respect the vision of the challenge concerning the precise point of the routing : I never followed a straight line and I voluntarily chose my route according to several parameters which are not too far from the spirit of the challenge --> but it is a totally subjective vision and some people are maybe really opposed to this point of view.
I have many preferences for many things and I'm sure no other player on the forum will be in total agreement with that (e.g. no mods, no warp, no thrust of any kind as soon as the wheels stop touching the ground, no nuclear, no ion, no kraken drive or abuse of atmospheric physics, etc., but I'm not opposed to the magic of reaction wheels in KSP, it doesn't really make sense I agree)
Anyway it will not be possible to create as many categories or restrictions as there are ways to play. This challenge is a very good example of this, each trip is unique. And on my side I still like each story, even if I would never play KSP this way.

[Pouicpouic]

Eeloo finished,
it was longer than expected, twice I lost more than an hour of progress because of my inattention at low speed. Four times I reached more than 80m/s, with a maximum of 85,1. 

Spoiler

Eeloo, land of levitating rocks :

For the 7th time I grabbed the rover with the transfer vehicle to take it to another world. Next destination in the Joolian system.
Despite the high cost in dV, I save years of waiting.

Spoiler

Tylo is your friend :

I think that the most logical organization is to do Laythe, Pol, Tylo, Bop and vall in this order, which would allow me to do the jool5 without any unnecessary supply

Perfect landing on first try

After a long reflection, I decided to circumnavigate Laythe by the poles. The benefit is a gain of several hours at more than 70m/s, versus less than 40m/s in "boat" configuration

Edited June 19, 2022 by Pouicpouic

[damerell]

Gosh. How does it transition from land to upside-down boat configuration? That's really clever for an amphibious approach.

[Pouicpouic]

33 minutes ago, damerell said:

How does it transition from land to upside-down boat configuration?

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1490890801

It was on Kerbin. It works just as well on laythe except that I can't get above 40m/s without flying off into the sky. On the other hand, this reversal will not be possible on Eve. But on Eve the rover floats so much that I don't need that to go fast enough.
Yes, the magic of reaction-wheels, I know xD

[Pouicpouic]

53 minutes ago, damerell said:

That's really clever for an amphibious approach.

Yes and no... It is almost certain that this is not the best configuration :
- I limited myself to about 5 hours of testing
- no lift generating part (it would probably be easier and more functional with fins, wings or elevons. But in my opinion, it would have been against the rules of the challenge in case of a jump)
- the rover is too large and heavy to do this manipulation on Eve

It is not easy to keep the propellers out of the water with such a low CoM, but I preferred to optimize the ground configuration. So the floats are very far from the CoM and really forward (because of the special physics of water)
All in all, this creates a big risk of tilting forward in case of landing on the rear wheels of the rover (>30m/s) --> about 15% of the unintentional destructions are caused by this particularity.

[damerell]

Hm. My (currently in transit) Laytheboat uses Sink Em All (a mod) to let me pump ballast into the ship, then pump it all over to one side, which in testing seems sufficient to roll it back if it turns turtle.

[MythicalHeFF]

Moho circumnavigation complete! As I predicted, Moho was definitely not an easy drive, at least not most of it, with there being chaotic terrain in many different locations across the planet. Despite this, however, I still managed to have more fun on Moho than I did on Dres, as it was more of a "fun difficult" than an "annoying/painful difficult".

The run began, as they often do, with a launch from Kerbin. I didn't bother taking the Keimos to Moho, as, while I may  have been able to pull it off, it would probably have been more trouble than it's worth. Instead, I decided to take a more traditional, Apollo-style approach to my Moho mission. The only notable caveat here is that I decided to use chemical rocket engines only, as I tend to think that nuclear engines make things too easy if you're not using a large ship (like the Keimos, for example).

Getting to Moho:

Spoiler

The journey to Moho was nothing very special, with the only notable thing being that I decided not to do a standard Hohmann transfer. Instead, I waited for Kerbin to be aligned with Moho's periapsis, so that I would be able to just burn retrograde and get an encounter once I reached it. 

After orbiting Kerbol a few times waiting for Moho to be in the right position, I finally got my encounter, and performed an orbital insertion for a little over 2,000 m/s of delta-V. I've been able to get delta-V's as low as 1800 or so m/s, but this isn't too bad, I suppose.

After a long, long burn, a stable low Moho orbit had been achieved.

The lander undocking and landing were also nothing too remarkable. For this mission, I pretty much used the same setup as I did on Minmus, the only difference being that it used a much beefier launch vehicle to get it all the way to Moho, as well as the fact that it's Apollo-style and not a direct-ascent mission. I landed in one of the large, dark craters near the terminator line.

Once the landing had been completed, it was time to plant the flag and extract the rover. This was done by simply having the lander do a small hop in order for the rover to be able to get loose.

The Circumnavigation:

Spoiler

Circumnavigating Moho took longer than I would have liked, but, unlike Dres, I didn't find it annoying so much as I found it challenging. We started out in the large crater, which I decided to call Char Basin, and began driving northwest out of it.

It wouldn't be too long, however, until we exited the crater and began the journey through the endless hills of Moho. Moho doesn't have Dres levels of hills being everywhere (at least in most places), but they can still get kind of annoying from time to time.

Such as this area, which I called the "Bumps of Wrath".

"Fun Difficult"

Navigating the Bumps of Wrath proved to be a challenge, and I ended up breaking several wheels while doing it. That's one thing that I hadn't really accounted for in this mission: Moho is extremely bumpy, and thus I'd often be hitting the ground at high speeds. Later on, this would become a major issue, as I ended up running out completely, which, in addition to giving me flashbacks to my Tylo mission, also made it so that I had to reload my last save whenever a wheel failed.

Once the Bumps of Wrath had been surmounted, the terrain dropped into a basin, during the descent into which I reached some pretty ludicrous speeds.

By this point, I was also pretty far north, at about 60 degrees or so. In addition, I was also rapidly approaching Moho's other terminator line, which meant that Kerbol was already low on the horizon.

Minor Craters biome

Speeding through the basin was quite fun and easy, but after that, it was back to mountains. 

Then, in the middle of the night, I stumbled upon this. It was a rift in the terrain, which was something I'd seen plenty of times before. However, I'd never seen terrain features actually on top of a rift like this, and, in addition, I could see Kerbol through the planet. 

Given that it was, well, a midnight sun, I named the feature the "Rift of the Midnight Sun".

A little while later, I reached my minimum latitude: 60 degrees south of the equator. From here, it was pretty much a beeline back to the start point in Char Basin, with a minor detour to hit the dark basin on the left to save some time.

And save time I did, as I sped through the basin at quite some speeds, all the while barely being able to see anything.

Sunrise

Raymon Heights

100 km to go

Jebemy Crater (final crater before Char Basin)

Almost there

Finished!

Secondary flag planting in the heat

The Trip Home + The Idiot Fixer 9000:

Spoiler

The journey home from Moho was... fraught with blunders of my own making. But we'll get to that. Before they could leave Moho, however, Jebeny and Raymon Kerman had to sit on the surface waiting for an adequate transfer window, which would not present itself for another two Moho years. When you put it in Moho terms, however, that's only three days away!

Liftoff!

Setting up rendezvous

Docked!

Deorbiting the lander with its rather ridiculous amount of excess delta-V into the surface. I'm almost sure that this thing could have landed again if I so desired.

Setting up the Moho-Kerbin transfer. It was only at this point that I realized that I'd made a rookie mistake I must not have made in five years: I forgot a parachute/heat shield. I don't know how, seeing as this craft was adapted from a craft which already had both of those things, but human stupidity finds a way, I suppose. Luckily, I still had enough fuel to just do a Kerbin orbital insertion, so I wouldn't have to do some crazy solar orbit rescue mission (a thing that I also haven't had to do in years).

Final trajectory

Launch of the "idiot Fixer", a simple spacecraft with the sole purpose of retrieving the crew, with a parachute this time. 

Which went pretty smoothly; I'm pretty sure I threw together and executed this entire retrieval mission in less than 10 minutes.

So, that's Moho done, and, by extension, all of the "normal" Elcano missions (those being missions in which I can just use a regular rover design, i.e. no amphibious/aquatic vehicle required like on Eve or Laythe, and no other challenges, such as Gilly's almost nonexistent gravity). At this point, I only have three more bodies left to circumnavigate: the aforementioned Eve, Gilly, and Laythe. I'm a bit torn on whether I want to do Eve/Gilly or Laythe next, as, while I feel that Eve would be a fitting final boss, I kind of want to get it out of the way earlier and just have a nice chill boating trip around Laythe afterwards. 

[king of nowhere]

@Jack Joseph Kerman nice to see that you basically agree with my own assessments on which planets are fun to drive and which are not. 

We can now say that the experts agree that dres sucks, with moho a close second.

[18Watt]

On 6/13/2022 at 5:23 AM, Pouicpouic said:

Eeloo finished,

Leaderboard updated!  By the way, I think I finally updated your previous entries to reflect your Stock status accurately.  If I forgot to update any, let me know..

On 6/13/2022 at 5:23 AM, Pouicpouic said:

Tylo is your friend :

Yes!  Nice landing on Laythe!  Hitting land is not an easy thing to do, there isn't much of it.

On 6/13/2022 at 5:23 AM, Pouicpouic said:

After a long reflection, I decided to circumnavigate Laythe by the poles.

I'll admit, I did polar routes on a few planets.  Minmus and Duna I think.  You are a brave, brave Kerbal sir!  Polar routes can be quite challenging!

22 hours ago, damerell said:

My (currently in transit) Laytheboat uses Sink Em All (a mod) to let me pump ballast into the ship, then pump it all over to one side, which in testing seems sufficient to roll it back if it turns turtle.

That's a fantastic idea!  Ballast options in stock are severely limited.  Fuel works of course, but pumping it overboard is counter-productive.  I've used Ore also, but that isn't ideal either.  My opinion is the ability to use water (or whatever the fluid is on Eve) for ballast would have been a nice addition to stock KSP.

11 hours ago, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

I still managed to have more fun on Moho than I did on Dres, as it was more of a "fun difficult" than an "annoying/painful difficult".

Not sure why I enjoyed Moho more than Dres.  Perhaps one part is it is more 'colorful'.  Yes, it's somewhat monotone, mostly shades of brown.  But way better than constant grey.  I actually found the terrain more difficult than Dres, but still enjoyed the drive more on Moho.  Updating leaderboard now..  Hey, not very many entries at Moho- You account for 20% of the entries there!

11 hours ago, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

The journey to Moho was nothing very special,

You made it to Moho in one shot, with chemical engines.  That is special in my book.  For my Elcano run at Moho I littered the solar system with recovery ships trying to get my rover there.  For me, Moho is by far the hardest CB to reach.

11 hours ago, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

"Bumps of Wrath".

Yep.

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

We can now say that the experts agree that dres sucks, with moho a close second.

Personally, my list has Gilly at the top.  I took a different approach, wheels on Gilly were just too frustrating for me.