Exploring Moho's Polar Sinkhole

[Burgled]

After reading about these odd terrain features on the wiki and gaining the ability to build the needed size of ships I sent a manned mission to investigate Moho's northern pole and the pit on it.

The pit is centered around the pole making for a somewhat disorienting landing as the nav ball rotates confusingly while shifting around the pole, I landed within 1km of the edge and walked from there. The pit is very wide, at it's widest well over a kilometer I should think though I have no precise measurements as of yet. These pictures should hopefully give you some sense of scale. Sorry its quite dark but there is rarely much light there.

EDIT: Added some lit photos! Praise the sun!

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I made several attempts at jetpack assisted decent until succeeding. The sides are extremely steep and dangerous. As the pit narrows it becomes very hazardous as any bump into the sides can send your kerbal spinning uncontrollably, they will accelerate downwards and the next time they hit the sides they will be squished. The jetpacks are only barely able to overcome the gravity. I let the kerbal free fall from 5000 meters to 4500 meters and then never stopped thrusting upwards trying to slow down for the rest of the trip. Eventually it was narrow enough that although collisions were unavoidable they were frequent enough that the speed was kept low and I descended to the bottom which had an altitude reading of 199 meters.

Then things got weird... the bottom is too narrow (like a cone) for the kerbal to stand so he was constantly glitching and twitching. After a few moments the view went completely black and the altitude started spewing out non sensical numbers of the form 111111 or 555555 or 777777, it finally stopped at 666666. I thought the game had crashed but the clock was still ticking, I just couldn't see anything. I switched to the tracking station and it briefly reported that my kerbal was on an escape trajectory from kerbol... then he was gone forever.

EDIT: Got some pictures from the bottom this time.. very strange!

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Succeeded eventually in setting up a permanent base down there! Hardest mission I've ever done by far, the landing is ridiculously nerve wracking. Spent hours trying to do it yesterday but eventually had to accept to redesign the base and the new one worked on only 3 tries! Here's the album. Let me know if you want to see/know anything else about it.

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Edited July 20, 2013 by Burgled

[DarthJazno]

Thanks for the report! I've wanted to check that out myself but Moho is tough enough just to get to let alone the poles. That really is dark. Care to share a picture of the vehicle that got you there?

[DMagic]

I crashed into the north pole once with an unmanned lander, but I never spent much time near these things. It's interesting to see what happens when you get to the bottom. I'm guessing that you fell through the ground, and that's why your altimeter started freaking out.

There's not much you can do about getting good pictures at the poles, since they never have good light. You could try cranking up all of the brightness settings, and brightening up the picture itself, but it probably won't help much.

[bgraves]

I think we're trying to avoid the obvious answer that Moho was built over an ancient Indian burial ground.

[Burgled]

Got lucky and got on when there was some actual sunlight! I've edited the first post to add the lit photos, much more impressive this way, lion king anyone? I plan on actually building a base in this death trap at some point.

Here's the vehicle I used, about 150 tonnes in orbit, something like that. The equivalent of 3 and 3/4 orange tanks of fuel, 6 nuclear engines. The landing part undocks from the main fuel reserve and uses the same engines for landing. It may be overkill as I rarely bother with efficient transfers and it is intended as a land and return mission (left fuel in orbit, redock after taking off). The fuel tanks are also asparagus staged for a little extra delta v.

Edited July 16, 2013 by Burgled

[Starwaster]

I think we're trying to avoid the obvious answer that Moho was built over an ancient Indian burial ground.

but first the bodies were dug up, buried upside down and the graves desecrated...

[Mach56]

snip....

Then things got weird... the bottom is too narrow (like a cone) for the kerbal to stand so he was constantly glitching and twitching. After a few moments the view went completely black and the altitude started spewing out non sensical numbers of the form 111111 or 555555 or 777777, it finally stopped at 666666. I thought the game had crashed but the clock was still ticking, I just couldn't see anything. I switched to the tracking station and it briefly reported that my kerbal was on an escape trajectory from kerbol... then he was gone forever.

snip...

Ah, you encountered nullspace(If you don't know what that is search it.).

[Burgled]

Yes I expected its some well known error, it happened once again but at some other random piece of terrain.

I'm planning on wedging a base into this sinkhole, tried two different designs already... A word of advice, do not make them round, the hole is actually more squarish so they end up pinned at two points and turn over on their side. The experimentation did help with my piloting skills though and I discovered its possible for a kerbal on EVA to get out of the hole with merely his jetpack, though he'll need to refuel before going back down... should come in handy.

Here's a preview of the next design I'm trying, still need to fill out the platform and add lights/docking ports etc. May launch this later tonight though I'm pretty burned out from hours of failed attempts yesterday. The real problem is it takes so long to get something there only to realize the design fundamentally doesn't work.

Any comments on this? I'm thinking it should wedge itself pretty well and the fuel tanks are to discourage tipping over. Not sure how the angled sides will work out...

[NGTOne]

Now that's a fascinating concept... A base in the Mohole...

[Kimberly]

Now that's a fascinating concept... A base in the Mohole...

It's been done, I'm afraid. Someone ejected a bunch of KAS grappling hooks to attach the base to the sides of the Mohole. It looked pretty cool.

[Burgled]

Well I'm not doing it just for the novelty, it's more about the challenge, this is all stock too.

[Burgled]

Mission success! (mostly) I'll add the album to the first post but here it is, pictures should tell the story pretty well. If anyone wants you can see the thing at launch, final base is approximately 100 parts, likely quite a few less since we lost some. I've loaded it a few times and the kraken has not struck, it wobbles a little but quickly settles I haven't felt this good since first successful mun landing.

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Edited July 20, 2013 by Burgled

[theonegalen]

The Mohole reminds me greatly of the Star Gate from Clarke's original 2001 novel: the second monolith is actually on the surface of Saturn's moon Japetus instead in Jupiter orbit. He appears to fall into it and is transported across the galaxy... much like your original explorer.

[RocketBlam]

That's pretty incredible. I'm conducting my own Mohole Probe right now... I'll post something later.