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

Socraticat · June 11, 2023

I thought it would be Minmus first for me, but here's the full condensed trip around Gilly. It's about 45 minutes as is. Most of it is an 8x edited speed, with much of the run being performed at 2x physwarp.

I hope more people attempt this one. It's totally manageable! Although, maybe a clarification should be made about how much "ground transportation" is actually required for a Gilly Run, because even with wheels alone this craft can make some pretty awesome suborbital jumps. For full acceleration I need to fire up the Dawn engine to full thrust to keep the vessel from performing a wheelie. Super satisfying.

Here's a gallery of detes and comparative screenshots:

Spoiler

Where I started:

Where I Called it Complete:

Actual complete was a bit further:

A Breakdown of some times:

and a cool screenshot:

Pretty neat

How did I do?

Edited June 11, 2023 by Socraticat

damerell · June 12, 2023

22 hours ago, Socraticat said:

Although, maybe a clarification should be made about how much "ground transportation" is actually required for a Gilly Run, because even with wheels alone this craft can make some pretty awesome suborbital jumps

I ended up using upward-facing engines not so much to stick me down as to cut down the suborbital jumps. However, at 6 hours I make your average speed below 4 m/s, and that fits the screenshots; I'm not the ruleskerbal, but on (KSP1) Gilly I found 15m/s was the point at which the journey still felt like big jumps rather than a series of suborbital trajectories spliced together, so to me 4 m/s would seem more than reasonable.

Socraticat · June 12, 2023

@damerell oh yeah, 4m/s is totally ground based here. But for future reference it's a good debate. At 15 m/s I could have touched the ground far less. At 15 m/s average theres a good question of whether or not you touch the ground enough to consider the mission "ground based".

At 7m/s the jumps become unavoidable. 15m/s is like, half the escape velocity (which is 35m/s). I think I hit between 10 and 15 a couple of times. Lot's of Gilly covered in that time- not much on the ground.

Thanks for watching! I think Gilly looks pretty cool.

damerell · June 12, 2023

54 minutes ago, Socraticat said:

At 15 m/s average theres a good question of whether or not you touch the ground enough to consider the mission "ground based".

Mmm. I would not have been willing to go that fast without kOS support to keep the wheels on the ground more of the time.

Socraticat · June 12, 2023

1 hour ago, damerell said:

Mmm. I would not have been willing to go that fast without kOS support to keep the wheels on the ground more of the time.

I see what you did there... Yeah, 15 was pretty much a cap for me. I liked 10, but it was only for flats or rolling hills. If I kept the dawn engine on it would flatten the trajectory as soon as wheels left the ground. But I didn't have that kind of battery available, so it was a balancing act. I ended up resorting to manually engaging the thruster for upcoming jumps, recovering from an unplanned launch, or accelerating.

damerell · June 13, 2023

I was using LFO, but the Mk VII had big tanks and (like you) thrusters were only being used as needed; I got through a fair chunk of it, but not enough to worry me.

18Watt · June 14, 2023

@Socraticat, congratulations on your Gilly circumnavigation! I (finally) added you to the leaderboards.

Just for reference, I used a pogo-stick on Gilly, using a hydraulic cylinder from the BG pack. I was able to reach speeds in excess of 7 m/s, which I was pretty happy with. Not really sure, but I suspect that speeds in the 10-15 m/s range would have been somewhat manageable. The 7 m/s speeds were just the limit of what the stock (BG) hydraulic cylinder was capable of propelling me to.

king of nowhere · June 15, 2023

that time I reached the green monolith on gilly I never could exceed 4 m/s. even then, I was just bouncing and not really driving.

then again, I had a rover that was optimized as multipurpose vehicle, and not purely to drive. but reaching 10 m/s on gilly seem weird. I did get those speeds on wheels on ovok, which is roughly the same size, but ovok is very flat. and when I got to 10 m/s, at the first jump I covered maybe a 10th of the planet before landing.

damerell · June 28, 2023

I am home on RSS Earth. Details to follow, but what a journey it was.

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/146923-elcano-iv-circumnavigate-all-the-things/?do=findComment&comment=4286574 - RSS Earth starts here.

Edited June 28, 2023 by damerell

Nazalassa · July 14, 2023

Now that I have refuel vessels in orbit, waiting for their transfer windows, I can (finally) start roving.

FormosaT_9 · July 17, 2023

Greetings all.
I was on the ride when summer 2022, at the time a Reddit guy called Sid Spooki start a challenge KSC-South pole;
I followed him and after that bring my Cybertruck back to runway.

(I was doing this with live on YouTube, so the number is full time of videos - not clock on Kerbin)

I already read this topic weeks ago, but see there are some rules:
｛Using thrust .... to control .... while above the surface is not allowed
｛No ferrying your vehicle on a boat.

as infos in the map, some parts of my travel IS NOT meet the require....
however - this 7080km tour is one of my proudest things I have done,
so I still decide to share it here.

Wheel in KerbalX (100% stock)
e4uhiltinja91.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&

Timelapse and more screenshots

Quote

Best shots I pick

Spoiler

I call this range "Holy South Walls"

By thhe end I visited 4 Monoliths on the route

not adopted? Im good with.
Thanks for reading.

king of nowhere · July 24, 2023

question: I am trying a circumnavigation of a small world very close to its star. so close, in fact, that kerbals outside of a habitat will quickly die of overheating. maybe 30 seconds, maybe one minute. I have time to plant a flag if i'm quick.

can I activate the "ignore maximum temperature" cheat for practicality?

damerell · July 24, 2023

@18Watt seems to be away; I am not the ruleskerbal, but my answer would be to track progress by screenshots or something like the SCANsat BTDT, not by flags - but also that it's fine to use the cheat for the sole purpose of flag planting.

king of nowhere · July 25, 2023

Meanwhile, after stalling it for a long time, i finally ended the tal circumnavigation

Planet: Tal (moon of Wal, moon of Urlum)

planetary pack: Outer planets mod

MythicalHeFF · July 26, 2023

On 7/24/2023 at 6:47 AM, king of nowhere said:

question: I am trying a circumnavigation of a small world very close to its star. so close, in fact, that kerbals outside of a habitat will quickly die of overheating. maybe 30 seconds, maybe one minute. I have time to plant a flag if i'm quick.

can I activate the "ignore maximum temperature" cheat for practicality?

Can I take a guess and say it’s 2 Wolda from Whirligig World? I remember having issues with kerbals overheating there during my ill-fated grand tour mission.

king of nowhere · July 26, 2023

1 minute ago, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

Can I take a guess and say it’s 2 Wolda from Whirligig World? I remember having issues with kerbals overheating there during my ill-fated grand tour mission.

it is, yes. but I found out that I have enough time to plant a flag and move on.
my main issue is that I want to plant a flag every 5 km, and that requires stopping the rover. and stopping the rover in such low gravity is extremely complex, especially when i'm on an incline.
so to avoid having to stop the rover, I send out the kerbal in eva to plant a flag, then return on the rover with a jetpack. and for that, I sometimes have no time.

well, wolda has an elongated shape. which, from the purpose of navigating it, it's akin to having two extremely tall mountains on opposite sides of the asteroid. So I spend half the time going uphill, and half the time going downhill.

for the uphill part, the rover moves slow enough that I can plant a flag and return with no problems before getting cooked. for the downhill part, the rover picks up speed (as much as 10 m/s for a fall of several km). well, next time I go downhill maybe I'll just won't plant flags. Or maybe I'll learn to be faster.

on the plus side, I discovered that I can time warp even near the surface, and that when time warping I can save the game even if close to the surface. This means I can save the game before getting out and planting a flag. So I can try it again if it fails. problem solved.

damerell · July 27, 2023

I really think you'd be better off with a Scansat BTDT. Paints a neat trail on the map; no stopping, no overheating.

Nazalassa · July 31, 2023

On 7/27/2023 at 1:43 AM, king of nowhere said:

it is, yes. but I found out that I have enough time to plant a flag and move on.
my main issue is that I want to plant a flag every 5 km, and that requires stopping the rover. and stopping the rover in such low gravity is extremely complex, especially when i'm on an incline.
so to avoid having to stop the rover, I send out the kerbal in eva to plant a flag, then return on the rover with a jetpack. and for that, I sometimes have no time.

well, wolda has an elongated shape. which, from the purpose of navigating it, it's akin to having two extremely tall mountains on opposite sides of the asteroid. So I spend half the time going uphill, and half the time going downhill.

for the uphill part, the rover moves slow enough that I can plant a flag and return with no problems before getting cooked. for the downhill part, the rover picks up speed (as much as 10 m/s for a fall of several km). well, next time I go downhill maybe I'll just won't plant flags. Or maybe I'll learn to be faster.

on the plus side, I discovered that I can time warp even near the surface, and that when time warping I can save the game even if close to the surface. This means I can save the game before getting out and planting a flag. So I can try it again if it fails. problem solved.

If you have a probe core on your rover you can just use Kerbnet to place waypoints every now and then, so you don't need to stop.

king of nowhere · July 31, 2023

7 hours ago, Nazalassa said:

If you have a probe core on your rover you can just use Kerbnet to place waypoints every now and then, so you don't need to stop.

I can't, because kerbnet does not work in the whirligig world planetary pack

Regardless, i could just take a screenshot in map view with highlighted the rover, its "landed" status, and its coordinates. Still, i prefer planting flags

RoninFrog · August 1, 2023

Around Kerbin. I didn't take many screenshots but I started from KSC and went basically straight west.

Be careful about opening spoilers, they don't warn you how many screenies can be inside...

Spoiler

Nazalassa · August 1, 2023

30 minutes ago, RoninFrog said:

Around Kerbin. I didn't take many screenshots but I started from KSC and went basically straight west.

Be careful about opening spoilers, they don't warn you how many screenies can be inside...

Hide contents

That was fast! My underwater amphibious rover is only at 7° south after like two hours and a half of driving on the seabed...

RoninFrog · August 2, 2023

Around Minmus, same craft. Smooth trip, no quicksaves needed at all. Screenshots are again sparse, I estimate there are some 60km stretches between pics, sorry.

Spoiler

Apparently I didn't take any screenshots between 5:58 (above) and 6:35 PM (below). I could have sworn I did, but I can't find them. Given that my speed varies between 40 and 60 m/s, I could have covered around 100km (a third of the journey) here. *akward* Hope this run still counts.

I basically went straight across the dark part of the highlands on the left, and the picture below is the journey across Minmus' biggest flat.