The Elcano Challenge: Ground-Based Circumnavigation (5th)

[Akagi]

@damerell would it be acceptable to make the following modifications to my Kerbin Elcano boat?

• Keel with ballast bulb and rudder
• Panthers in place of Wheeselys
• Air intakes replaced with low-speed intakes

 

Edited May 27 by Akagi
hey llok new page; linked report

[damerell]

20 hours ago, Akagi said:

@damerell would it be acceptable to make the following modifications to my Kerbin Elcano boat?

• Keel with ballast bulb and rudder
• Panthers in place of Wheeselys
• Air intakes replaced with low-speed intakes

If I read the thread correctly, you've only got about 200km from the start, and this doesn't sound like too drastic a modification, so I think I'm OK with it (although I look forward to seeing the new craft).

I am finally back home and can catch up on some of these timelapses.

[Ianwubby]

I've got one more for ya:

 

Also I think probably scratch what I mentioned about my Eve ideas; I was wondering if I could glitch a propeller boat underground using bendy-tech timewarp shenanigans, and do a completely aquatic eve circumnavigation instead of doing part of the trip on land.

I made a boat design that could hit like 70m/s, so we'd be talking about like <18 hours for the circumnavigation potentially. But for some reason, propellers stay in place and don't stay connected to the ship when it straightens itself out when activating time warp??? So I just can't find a way to get propellers underground, which makes the whole plan kinda not work at all. My only other thought is trying to construct the propellers on the boat in EVA after getting underground, which already sounds super janky and hard to keep balanced, but the kerbals also just explode when they get out of the crew cabin underground.

Idk, I'll probably look into it some more but I'm not feeling optimistic at this point. And it might be for the best anyway, 'cause it feels like it might run aground of the "breaking the spirit of the challenge" rule-

Edited May 29 by Ianwubby

[damerell]

OK, I've watched all three timelapses. It must have been exasperating to clobber the Minmus landing module with the command module like that. Given the lack of life support considerations, I'm surprised you did rove in the dark rather than waiting for the dawn.

Last question - these are all stock? I didn't see what looked like any modded parts.

3 hours ago, Ianwubby said:

I was wondering if I could glitch a propeller boat underground using bendy-tech timewarp shenanigans

I'm going to have to nip this one in the bud and say that this is definitely not permitted. Sorry.

[Ianwubby]

5 hours ago, damerell said:

It must have been exasperating to clobber the Minmus landing module with the command module like that. Given the lack of life support considerations, I'm surprised you did rove in the dark rather than waiting for the dawn.

The clobbering wouldn't have been that bad if I'd thought ahead to put an SAS module on the lander - I've never really used that landing cabin before and didn't realize it doesn't have any in-built SAS, which is why I ended up using so much RCS fuel and opted out of a normal rendezvous-and-docking at the end of the mission.

And yeah it probably would have been a better experience waiting until dawn, but I wanted to try for relatively fast times as well, and waiting hours for the sun to rise would have made that metric a lot worse lol.

5 hours ago, damerell said:

Last question - these are all stock?

Sorry yeah I forgot to mention it, all of them are stock.

5 hours ago, damerell said:

I'm going to have to nip this one in the bud and say that this is definitely not permitted.

No worries, perfectly understandable.

Edited May 29 by Ianwubby

[Kimera Industries]

On 5/27/2024 at 2:08 AM, Ianwubby said:

Minmus elcano complete as well

Final time is a lovely 3 hours 51 minutes. I'll be getting a timelapse of this up as well pretty soon, I know this isn't a lot of pictures to go off of.

Flag path (kinda hard to make out):

Approximate route (traveling from east to west; each flag is represented by a little circle, and signifies ~30 minutes of driving):

I'm not sure what I might wanna go for next; I've got potentially controversial ideas for Eve, and Gilly could be nice to tackle along with that, but maybe Duna/Ike would be a nicer pair for me to start with.

Where's that Minmus map from? I want to use it for my circumnavigation now.

[Pouicpouic]

On 5/29/2024 at 11:02 AM, Ianwubby said:

and do a completely aquatic eve circumnavigation instead of doing part of the trip on land.

Hi ! -->  @MythicalHeFF did a totally aquatic circumnavigation of Eve, if I remember correctly. (see just 1 or 2 pages before the link below)

Edit : My memory isn't good, he passed over strips of land, so it wasn't all water. (page 7)

On 5/29/2024 at 11:02 AM, Ianwubby said:

So I just can't find a way to get propellers underground, which makes the whole plan kinda not work at all

If you look at the details of my circumnavigation of Eve, you'll see that it's possible to pass under the South Pole while floating on the Explodium Sea without using a glitch. I'm not sure if this will help you, but there was no problem with the propellers, even underground.

/--/--/--/--/--/

Haven't posted anything here for a while, but I haven't given up on my ‘one launch, all biomes, all circumnavigations’ saga: the craft is up and running and I'm taking my time, with breaks that can last for months.
I'm currently at the end of Laythe's circumnavigation, having completed Kerbin, Minmus, Mun, Duna and Ike, and got 71 biomes so far, or about 48% of the total.

Spoiler

/--/--/--/--/--/

In the meantime I've also circumnavigated Kerbin in 5h34 IGT (new world record ^^ sorry MythicalHeff) and lots of other things: KSP is the best game.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited June 4 by Pouicpouic

[RoninFrog]

I haven't really had the time to do a full Elcano but boy do I love designing long-range rovers.  Here's the latest design I made:

It's got elastic suspension on each tire, with a hinge-mounted docking port for long-range navigation.  It's probably the sturdiest rover I've ever built that actually looks like a normal rover and also works well in a vacuum.

craft file

[damerell]

On 6/4/2024 at 9:25 AM, Pouicpouic said:

Haven't posted anything here for a while, but I haven't given up on my ‘one launch, all biomes, all circumnavigations’ saga

Good timing, I finally got around to updating the scoreboard for @Ianwubby's impressive achievement.

On 6/4/2024 at 1:21 PM, RoninFrog said:

It's got elastic suspension on each tire, with a hinge-mounted docking port for long-range navigation.  It's probably the sturdiest rover I've ever built that actually looks like a normal rover and also works well in a vacuum.

Bouncy, albeit rather alarmingly disconnected. How's the docking port work? I infer it's used in conjunction with holding prograde, but that only seems to give you some kind of pitch control.

[RoninFrog]

6 hours ago, damerell said:

How's the docking port work?

Let's me hold a yaw heading with SAS while still being able to adjust pitch for slopes.  If I hold surface prograde it sort of auto-steers along the equator while still aiming up and down hills, kind of like an autopilot.

[Ianwubby]

On 6/3/2024 at 8:00 PM, Kimera Industries said:

Where's that Minmus map from? I want to use it for my circumnavigation now.

It's from https://ksp.deringenieur.net/! You can view maps of all the celestial bodies; I just zoomed out on the Minmus map and took a screenshot and cropped out the UI stuff, and then manually drew in the path in Paint-

On 6/4/2024 at 3:25 AM, Pouicpouic said:

If you look at the details of my circumnavigation of Eve, you'll see that it's possible to pass under the South Pole while floating on the Explodium Sea without using a glitch. I'm not sure if this will help you, but there was no problem with the propellers, even underground.

Ooh, that certainly does look like it could get around the issues I was having. I imagine it would still fall afoul of the rules, but I might do an unofficial underground run using that anyway just for the fun of it. Thanks for bringing it up!

On 6/9/2024 at 10:37 AM, damerell said:

Good timing, I finally got around to updating the scoreboard for @Ianwubby's impressive achievement.

Thank you!

Edited June 12 by Ianwubby

[Kimera Industries]

1 hour ago, Ianwubby said:

It's from https://ksp.deringenieur.net/! You can view maps of all the celestial bodies; I just zoomed out on the Minmus map and took a screenshot and cropped out the UI stuff, and then manually drew in the path in Paint

Thank you! That website looks quite handy.

[Alex Verb]

Alex Verb

Laythe Circumnavigation

Whole flight started at KSC and finished at KSC

 

Accelerated videos including vehicles building and delivery:

 

Way to Laythe:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Laythe Circumnavigation:

Spoiler

 

 

Way Home:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

[king of nowhere]

On 5/29/2024 at 11:02 AM, Ianwubby said:

Also I think probably scratch what I mentioned about my Eve ideas; I was wondering if I could glitch a propeller boat underground using bendy-tech timewarp shenanigans, and do a completely aquatic eve circumnavigation instead of doing part of the trip on land.

 

On 5/29/2024 at 2:57 PM, damerell said:

 

I'm going to have to nip this one in the bud and say that this is definitely not permitted. Sorry.

 

 

Fun fact, you can perform at least part of a circumnavigation on eve underground without using any time warp sheanigans. the terrain glitch at the south pole has an entrance

i went in and drive around a few minutes. i don't know if the north pole has a similar entrance to go out, though

[damerell]

@Alex Verb Thanks for the Laythe. I'll watch it when I've got some free time.

@king of nowhere Ingenious - I'm surprised you could get to the South Pole at all, I found it prohibitively difficult.

[damerell]

Scoreboard updated (including that @Alex Verb is a Master Mariner). I very much enjoyed those Laythe videos.

[Kimera Industries]

I'm currently working on an electrically powered boat with the intent to send it to Laythe for a circumnavigation, any tips?

[damerell]

Well, the thing that caught me out, besides that it's a long trip with nothing to look at, was just the basics of getting the crew on and off the boat. Once you're down it's pretty simple... but design a fast boat.

[Kimera Industries]

6 hours ago, damerell said:

Well, the thing that caught me out, besides that it's a long trip with nothing to look at, was just the basics of getting the crew on and off the boat. Once you're down it's pretty simple... but design a fast boat.

I knew I was going to have to fix the ladders, but thanks for reminding me.

How fast? I've clocked ~32 m/s on Kerbin. (It's using BG propellers but I have spares in a cargo crate just in case.) I think it performs about the same on Laythe.

[DennisB]

4 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:

How fast? I've clocked ~32 m/s on Kerbin. (It's using BG propellers but I have spares in a cargo crate just in case.) I think it performs about the same on Laythe.

It depends on, how much time you want to spend looking at the open sea during your tour. Last year, I started a Kerbin Naval Elcano with a minimalistic vessel, which  could reach over 70m/s on water, but then I decided to do a Jool 5 instead. For that, I designed my Falcon airseaspaceplane, which can reach 80m/s on the water on Laythe, before it gets unstable, and I'm sure, there is still room for improvement.

[damerell]

On 8/18/2024 at 2:33 AM, Kimera Industries said:

I knew I was going to have to fix the ladders, but thanks for reminding me.

How fast? I've clocked ~32 m/s on Kerbin. (It's using BG propellers but I have spares in a cargo crate just in case.) I think it performs about the same on Laythe.

On Laythe I got just under 30 m/s. On Kerbin, between 100 and 200 m/s. On RSS Earth, going on 300 m/s. But these are silly figures; I encourage you to take advantage of the current rules, which let you lay in a heading at sea with a tool like MechJeb and let the boat sail itself.

[Kimera Industries]

2 hours ago, damerell said:

On Laythe I got just under 30 m/s. On Kerbin, between 100 and 200 m/s. On RSS Earth, going on 300 m/s. But these are silly figures; I encourage you to take advantage of the current rules, which let you lay in a heading at sea with a tool like MechJeb and let the boat sail itself.

I won't install MechJeb permanently for personal reasons (I'm one of those people) but I will consider giving it a whirl for the sake of the mission.

You know, I just remembered I can use jet engines on Laythe...  The boat's fuselage does hold liquid fuel for the nuclear engine that will carry it, so ISRU equipment to top off the tanks isn't too far fetched. And I could carry propellers as a backup, in case I run out of fuel.

[damerell]

14 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:

You know, I just remembered I can use jet engines on Laythe...

Oh, yes, probably should have mentioned that - I used a nuclear thermal jet but in a more stock world a conventional jet is very practical. You might not even need to refuel in a trip around Laythe - the Kerbian Sea Monster only refuelled once going around Kerbin, and it went at silly speeds.

[Kimera Industries]

6 hours ago, damerell said:

Oh, yes, probably should have mentioned that - I used a nuclear thermal jet but in a more stock world a conventional jet is very practical. You might not even need to refuel in a trip around Laythe - the Kerbian Sea Monster only refuelled once going around Kerbin, and it went at silly speeds.

That's good to hear. I think my next test will be to retrofit the ship with jet engines, fill up the tanks, and use cheats to see how much distance it covers with a certain amount of fuel. From there I can hopefully extrapolate the amount of fuel needed to complete the journey.

[RoninFrog]

I've started another Vall run.

Journey:

Spoiler

Roving progress:

Spoiler

^oopsie

I'm about 1/6 of the way around.  Vall has some of the best air time of all the planets I've been on.  It's small enough that you can jump high, big enough that you can gain speed, and smooth enough that you don't die when you land.  The main problem I'm having is that the ground looks really boring.  The devs kinda skimped on Vall's texturing imo.

Craft