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Odyssey- Tylo Circumnavigation in a Grossly Oversized Rover (Elcano Challenge)


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    There are few KSP challenges that have intrigued me more than the Elcano challenge. I've known of it for years, but until recently assumed it would just be a boring slog that takes no skill whatsoever, just hold down W until you make it around the planet. However, upon inspecting it further, I then realized how much more there is to it. It takes fortitude to sit through the boring stretches of driving, engineering prowice to design the optimal rover, and keen driving skills to minimize your risk of crashing.  I then decided that I wanted to give it a go for myself. 

But that brought several more questions with it. Which planet/moon would I circumnavigate? What would my vehicle look like? How difficult do I want the challenge to be?  It would take me a while to come up with two of those three answers, but I knew right from the start that I wanted to circumnavigate a planet in a large rover with a high crew capacity, mostly because real circumnavigations of Earth included many sailors, and I also wanted to increase the realism aspect, seeing as drivers would need to take shifts in order to keep the rover going for as much of the time as possible. And that's when I came up with the preliminary design for the vehicle, which would later be called Odyssey. And sooner or later, I also decided that I wanted to make this mission as difficult as possible, and that's when I decided to take it to Tylo, the toughest place to drive a rover anywhere in the Kerbol System.

Welcome to...

ODYSSEY: TYLO CIRCUMNAVIGATION, DAY-BY DAY

ELCANO CHALLENGE

by Jack Joseph Kerman

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PRE-MISSION:

As I mentioned earlier, the road to me eventually trying my hand at the Elcano challenge was not perfectly smooth, and for a while the idea of circumnavigating a planet or moon seemed both patently absurd and also incredibly boring to me. This began to change when I sent a rover mission to Tylo, as part of my colonization of the Jool system in a save that I have since unfortunately lost. Originally, I didn't plan to go far with the rover I had brought there; maybe 50 kilometers or so from my small science outpost.  However, the mission quickly turned into a much longer endeavor, and I ended up driving 300+ kilometers across the surface of Tylo, and even had fun doing it. Whether it was finding the optimal way to climb a mountain without starving for electricity, watching my speed as I came back down, or just laughing at the floating boulders that Tylo seems to have an abundance of, the mission never got too boring, which greatly surprised me. Here's a recreation of the rover and mission I made in a newer save:

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After this successful mission, I slowly warmed up to the idea of a potential circumnavigation mission, and a few months later I tried my hand at building a massive rover that would be used to circumnavigate either the Mun or Duna.

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I simply dubbed this rover the "Circumnavigator" (creative, I know), and tested its features, such as the small interior, mining equipment, and cargo garage for a smaller rover in the back ramp. The smaller "mountaineer" rover would have been very similar to the one shown on Tylo above, except with more electric charge capacity to increase its range. This rover's design was pretty flawed, however, and in my opinion it looked rather ugly. The wheels were evenly spaced apart on an unnecessary number of girder segments, the thing was 40 meters long and awkward to drive, the battery power was limited, and the mining equipment was entirely pointless. I would later name it the Odyssey, but it would never be used anywhere other than testing at the KSC.

More screenshots of the original Odyssey:

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So that's when I got to work on my current vehicle, the Odyssey 2. This is the vehicle that I will use to circumnavigate Tylo, and it's a vast improvement over the original.

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Here is coverage of every day of the mission that I've done so far:

Current Latitude: 90 Degrees North

Current Longitude: 1 Degree West

DAY 0: NEW DESIGN, LAUNCH AND ASSEMBLY IN ORBIT

New Design for the Odyssey 2

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Launches of the Descent Stage and TAV

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The Launch of Odyssey

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DAY 1: TOUCHDOWN ON TYLO

The Landing

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DAY 2: THE JOURNEY BEGINS 

The First True Driving Session

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DAY 3: ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

Driving Session

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DAY 4: INTO THE NIGHT

Driving Session:

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DAY 5: THE DRIVE NORTH

Driving Session:

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DAY 6: SMOOTH SAILING

Driving Session:

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DAY 7: THE NORTH POLE OF TYLO

Driving Session:

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DAY 8: I AM SPEED

Driving Session:

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Arrival of the Tylo Ascent Vehicle:

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DAY 9: THE LONG HAUL

Driving Session:

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Arrival at the Tylo Cave!

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DAY 10: PROVISIONS

The Care Package and Return Vehicle:

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Driving Session:

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DAY 11: HALFWAY THERE

Driving Session:

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DAY 12: CONTINUING ON

Driving Session:

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DAY 13: A LOAD OFF

Driving Session:

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DAY 14: THE PACKAGE ARRIVES

The Resupply Mission:

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DAY 15: MOUNTAINEERING

Driving Session:

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DAY 16: TOWARDS THE SOUTH POLE

Driving Session:

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DAY 17: THE SOUTH POLE OF TYLO

The South Pole Debacle:

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DAY 18: DETOUR

Driving Session:

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DAY 19: NORTHBOUND

Driving Session:

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DAY 20: PRESSING ON

Driving Session:

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DAY 21: THE FINAL OBSTACLES

Driving Session:

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DAY 22: HOME STRETCH/MISSION COMPLETE

Finishing the Drive:

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The Return to Kerbin:

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ROUTE MAP:

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Edited by Jack Joseph Kerman
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Currently about 1/5 of the way through the circumnavigation, on track to finish it by mid-November at my current pace of a little over 10 degrees latitude per day.  Days 2-5 of the mission log are now out!

Edited by Jack Joseph Kerman
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  On 10/23/2021 at 6:41 AM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

A little while after this, I noticed a strange visual bug in which the arrows from the "Move" tool were still visible, just suspended there in the sky, following the Odyssey like how a kid thinks the moon follows them in the car.

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Quick tip: Engineer on EVA, press “I” to open EVA construction, and then press “1” to put the mode back to Place. That should fix it.

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  On 10/25/2021 at 2:07 AM, Admiral Fluffy said:

Quick tip: Engineer on EVA, press “I” to open EVA construction, and then press “1” to put the mode back to Place. That should fix it.

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Yeah, I figured that out yesterday actually. It’s pretty funny to just see the arrows magically floating in the sky though.

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I like that rover. It's the kind of overengineered stuff that I like to make.

It reminds me my own drive around Tylo, though I stopped at half and didn't make a full Elcano. My rover had similar (lack of) climbing capacity, and it also had a front cupola. Though my rovers had rear-pointing rockets that could help it upslope. You make me want to try another long trek myself again.

 

Regarding difficulty of driving, though, I found Moho to be worse, as it has a much more irregular terrain. Tylo has high gravity, but it's smooth.

The most hellish place to drive, though, is without doubt Slate, from OPM. It has as much gravity as Tylo, but it has a much more rugged surface. Everywhere it's hills, except when it's bigger mountains. Took me hours to run 20 km, and that's with a more capable rover. Slate also has some of the most spectacular views, it's got a past hystory of being shaped by water and it's all valleys and canyons. Not to mention, there's Sarnus with its rings in the sky. If you still want to make another Elcano after Tylo, I definitely recommend going there.

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  On 10/25/2021 at 8:29 PM, king of nowhere said:

 

Regarding difficulty of driving, though, I found Moho to be worse, as it has a much more irregular terrain. Tylo has high gravity, but it's smooth.

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That’s what I’ve actually found most surprising about this trip so far: while the driving is really difficult at places (ahem, mountains), it’s actually fairly pleasant otherwise thanks to tylo’s high gravity. Might have to change the description of my log as it’s become apparent that driving on Tylo isn’t actually as difficult as I thought it would be, just very large and thus it takes a long time to drive all the way around.

  On 10/25/2021 at 8:29 PM, king of nowhere said:

The most hellish place to drive, though, is without doubt Slate, from OPM. It has as much gravity as Tylo, but it has a much more rugged surface. Everywhere it's hills, except when it's bigger mountains. Took me hours to run 20 km, and that's with a more capable rover. Slate also has some of the most spectacular views, it's got a past hystory of being shaped by water and it's all valleys and canyons. Not to mention, there's Sarnus with its rings in the sky. If you still want to make another Elcano after Tylo, I definitely recommend going there.

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Yeah, that’s gonna be a hard no from me. I may be the “no pain no gain” type, but not THAT much. Regarding OPM however, I might try one on Polta or Wal at some point. In the stock game, however, I think that if I do another elcano it’s going to be either Duna or Eeloo.

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  On 10/26/2021 at 1:21 AM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

Yeah, that’s gonna be a hard no from me. I may be the “no pain no gain” type, but not THAT much. Regarding OPM however, I might try one on Polta or Wal at some point. In the stock game, however, I think that if I do another elcano it’s going to be either Duna or Eeloo.

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Actually, driving in the mountains is not so bad with the right rover. you just need a higher wheels/mass ratio.

I wouldn't mind doing a slate circumnavigation with this rover:

it can climb uphill very well,  it's almost indestructible all the way to 40 m/s, and it does have an even better cockpit perspective than a cupola.

Granted, it's not as beautiful, it doesn't pretend to have living space. If I were to try a slate circumnavigation, I'd try a more elaborate model with that kind of frame, and more beautification.

Maybe I'll start giving it a try right now

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Quick Update: There probably won’t be another log entry for about a week or so, as I am currently crossing a bunch of rugged terrain, greatly slowing my progress and making for boring writing. The next log will probably be a compilation of the days it took to cross the mountains all the way to the South Pole. I’ve also been spending less time driving the Odyssey in general, since the current leg of the mission is so dull. 

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Update: Logs 12-14 are now out, as I have decided to release them individually as opposed to one big compilation of them all. Turns out you take more screenshots while playing than you think. In addition, Odyssey has now reached the south pole of Tylo, logs of which will hopefully be out within 2 days or so. Here's a little teaser screenshot, I guess.

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Finally, I made a little "cover art" for the mission, as I sometimes like to do for highly complex and long-running missions. It's nothing special, really, just made it in photoshop in about an hour and a half. The last time I made one of these was for my Peregrine grand tour mission from last year, in which I visited all planets in the stock system and OPM over the course of 168 in-game years. I never made any forum posts about it, though, as the screenshots I took probably wouldn't explain enough and the mission was done on a potato Mac from 2010 with 720p resolution. Yeah. Glad I finally got a new computer, sure makes things go a lot smoother.

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Art for the Peregrine mission, if you were curious:

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@AtomicTechIf I do another Elcano challenge in the future, it will most likely be done on Duna, as that is actually where I originally planned to send the Odyssey before eventually deciding on Tylo instead. I'll probably do it with a much more sensible rover, though.

EDIT: I have uploaded the craft file for a new and improved version of the Odyssey 2, the Odyssey 3, on KerbalX. Notable improvements include more struts for better structural integrity, as this has been an issue with the Odyssey 2 which has gotten worse over time, as well as increased electric charge capacity and more wheels for better uphill climbing abilities. There is also a new, smaller Mountaineer rover that is lighter and (hopefully) easier to park back in the garage again.

KerbalX - Odyssey 3

Edited by Jack Joseph Kerman
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I am proud to announce that the Odyssey's circumnavigation mission has now been completed! After countless hours and almost 4,000 kilometers of driving, I have finally driven a rover all the way around Tylo, which is also the first time I've driven all the way around any celestial body, for that matter. However, I still have to get the crew off of Tylo and home to Kerbin before I can truly call this mission complete or consider submitting my entry to the Elcano Challenge thread. I will update the forum post with images and writing of the completion tomorrow, but for now here's a couple pictures to show that I've in fact made it:

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
  On 11/15/2021 at 6:38 AM, Zacspace said:

I really appreciate how squished the Odyssey looks at the end of its mission. You can just see the distance it's driven. Makes me wonder how much farther it could have gone.

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Probably not that much farther, maybe a few hundred more kilometers at best before I would have run out of repair kits again, or the structural damage to the interior became too great to continue. 
 

In other news, I’m currently working on a new Duna Elcano mission that I hope to complete by Christmas. 

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  • 2 months later...
  On 2/20/2022 at 3:51 AM, Sp1f said:

This was a fun read. I've Elcanoed the Mun and am working on Minmus. Tylo is so intimidating though - it's huge. Well done.;)

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Thanks! I remember reading about your Mun Elcano a while back, and truth be told it is what inspired me to try the challenge for myself.
Tylo actually wasn’t so bad to drive in terms of difficulty; the high gravity makes it possible to drive really fast without any risk of flipping over, and the terrain is fairly smooth in most places. Honestly, if I hadn’t used such an impractically oversized rover for the mission, I probably would have considered it to be easier than my subsequent Duna circumnavigation, in which the constant rolling hills and lower gravity led to much slower driving and many more explosions along the way.

I’m also just about finished with a Mun circumnavigation myself. I found it more fun than the previous Duna one, as there weren’t annoying hills everywhere, but I still had to weave my way around deep craters.

If you really want a difficult place to drive, though, I suggest you check out Slate from OPM. @king of nowhereis currently working on his own mission report about an Elcano there, I suggest you give it a read!

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