Look at me, I'm Reinold Messner! (2) Circumnavigating Kerbin over mountains

[king of nowhere]

My last mission, a caveman run, required dropping pods all over Kerbin to collect science from biomes. Often, I would land near mountains; Kerbin is one of the few planets with real mountains. And I love mountains. So I devised a mission to climb as many of them as possible with a rover.

Most people, when circumnavigating Kerbin, go around mountain chains. They miss all the fun.

Part 1: Starting the mission

First part of the mission is to pick a rover. Then I have to decide an itinerary.

The first part of the chosen path

Spoiler

I never considered making a new rover; I have two very good ones for mountaineering, Leaping Mantis and Tamarromobile. I was tempted to use Tamarromobile, as it's very fun, but I picked Leaping Mantis, it's more efficient.

I could have used something even more efficient. Once I made a rover to climb the tower west of the KSC, and it was able to climb 80° slopes.

The unnamed rover I used 2 years ago to climb Devil's Tower

However, I don't want the rover to be too efficient. If I can just press forward and go, it becomes boring. I need a rover that's capable enough to climb mountains, but not so capable that it can just go forward everywhere. Besides, I want something that's generally fun to drive, and Leaping Mantis does that very well.

However, circumnavigating Kerbin has an additional challenge: water. Regardless of the chosen trajectory, I'd have to cross significant bodies of water. For that, I spent some time trying to modify Leaping Mantis for the task

Here I tried to put propellers on it

But the experiments were unsuccessful. Its shape is not hydrodynamic at all, and the small propellers can only push it to 1 m/s. No, I'm not crossing the ocean at 1 m/s. I could put stronger propellers, but they would make climbing too easy; may as well make an helicopter.

Another set of experiments involved putting ore tanks to sink Leaping Mantis and move on the ocean floor. However, those crew cabins have a lot of buoyancy. Even doubling the mass with clipping ore tanks did not sink the rover - and the extra mass, even with the tanks empty, would have significantly impacted climbing performance. Besides, even when I could sink Leaping Mantis, it wasn't going any faster than the propeller experiment.

So, I just decided to tackle the water problem differently. The rules of a circumnavigation allow to send new vehicles, as long as the crew completes the trip. I'll do just that. And that's the end of the problem for the rover; I don't need a launch vehicle for once.

Now I need a trajectory. Unlike most circumnavigations that go purely polar or equatorial, I want to hit as many mountain ranges as possible, which entails zig-zagging. After studying the map, I settle for the path shown below.

I start from the southernmost tip of the mountain range west of the KSC. I move north-east, then north-west, intercepting two more ranges. Then I go straight north, crossing another mountain, until reaching the pole.

I cross the pole, mostly on a mountain range that turns around the ice cap. Down there I zig-zag a bit to intercept more mountain ranges and massif.

I'm sorry to miss the Woomerang launch site, but it's too far off the path.

Finally, the last leg of the trip should be one big mountain massif covering a whole continent.

After that I'll hit the sea, I will send there a boat to get the crew

To start, I must move to the mountains to the west of the KSC.

I take a chance to drill a baobab along the way, just because it looks good

Crossing the foothills

Mountains are very hard on the wheels. Here Bill is repairing one. I risk running out of repair kits at this rate

Crossing an incline

Visiting a giant quartz

Leaping Mantis is in the center of the picture, too small to be seen, but the illuminated area from the floodlights is visible

I reached the southernmost tip of the first mountain chain. For clarity I should give them names, but I really can't think of anything good. Anyway, now I can start the trail.

Edited 4 hours ago by king of nowhere

[JeDoesStuff]

I should really make a video on the caveman challenge, or at least my version, which is setting all the difficulty settings to max. I feel like with what I know now I could get to R&D tier 2 more efficiently, but it's probably just hundreds upon hundreds of contracts.