Of Rovers and Roving (~10MB of Images)

[rodion]

Here we are. We'll quickly skip past the banalities of launches, orbits and insertions, and get down to the meat of our tale:

Somewhere over the Munar equator, an unidentified object glides silently over the cold and sterile surface, heading to destinations unknown...

Wait, never mind. It just drops down onto the ground without making much of a fuss. It reveals itself to be a crane and a rover.

One Bill Kerman is our pilot. He hops into (one of) the driver's seat(s) so he can roll the machine out into the open for its first Munar jaunt - it should be noted that the masterminds at the VAB omitted to provide any sort of remote control capability in either vessel, because at what point would that ever come in handy? As such, it's all in Bill's hands. Fortunately, this task is an easy one. All you have to do is drive straight forwa--

Oh no, no, that boom holding the solar panels is completely jammed between those legs, isn't it. It is. Oh my. Well...you tried wiggling the wheels around, right? And going back and forward a few dozen times? It made it worse? Right. Let's not do anything silly, let's stay cool and take stock of our situation here. No sudden moves...

Wait! No fear! Bill brings to bear the full might of the great practical intellect he decidedly isn't known for, hops back into the cabin, and lifts up the offending leg. Actually, he lifts up all four legs in the group, as the game refused to have it any other way. No matter, precious redundancy is our saviour on this auspicious day.

Perfect deployment.

Our precious cargo now free, Bill is at liberty to take it for a little spin and get to grips with how it performs on the Munar surface. And...

Oh no. Ohhh no...this is bad. It moves on the surface of the Mun like loafers move on puddles of cooking oil. It rate of acceleration makes my grandmother's Skoda look a Team Audi Le Mans car. Its turning circle and overall maneuverability is narrowly beaten by the Titanic. This isn't good...this is...the worst rover.

Impossible! Cry the engineers, safe at home on Kerbin, particularly safe knowing that they will never having to drive this death trap across kilometers of hazardous alien terrain. "It performed marvelously at the Space Center!"

Bill, after exchanging words and grudgingly admitting on radio that it would be pretty hard to construct a twenty-acre Munar gravity simulator on Kerbin in a giant vacuum chamber, has no choice but to either continue the mission or abandon it and go home in his crane-orbiter vehicle. Midway to his orbiter cabin, his radio informs him that he has no choice but to continue the mission.

First order of business...simple. Just get out of the immediate vicinity of the landing site. Piece of cake. Funny, it looks like a cliff face in the distance, there. Pretty steep, right? Our rover would never manage such a climb in a million years. Wait a second. There are a lot of cliff-like structures here...almost seeming to go...wait, where exactly did we land?

Oh no. That is the worst place to be...the absolute worst. There's just about no worse place 50km around that I could have touched down at. How...how am I supposed to get out of this? How? What am I going to DO?

Now take note here...getting out really was nearly impossible. By my reckoning I spent 45 minutes freeing this blasted rover from its prison without bars, eternally taunting me with its promise of level ground. Not even 45 minutes of game time...45 minutes of real time, of my life. Driving around the same 10km² of KSP terrain for that amount of time, always slipping, always falling back down...quickloading endlessly the whole time...never again.

Never again.

Eventually, after a suicidal 30 m/s run-up to the NNW face of the crater (hill assisted, of course, if the rover could make 30 m/s by itself I'd be having no problems in the first place), we finally reach the promised land. As you can see, Bill even caught some major air (okay, some major vacuum) when he crested the rim. Excellent.

Bill departs with relief from his foe, unaffectionately nicknamed Nemesis Crater during the ordeal. It's not the last we will see of it, as Bill still needs to drop the bastard rover back down the side of its rim to get to his return vehicle.

Meanwhile, just a couple hundred kilometers away, something else entirely is happening. This foreboding shadow courses over the dark side of-

Well, it's just a goofy looking lander and a transfer stage. Looks like it seats three. Where is it heading?

Surprise...after a passable 2km distant landing, hop-corrected to 1km, three extra butts arrive to fill seats. Here the rover is pictured sliding way past the lander from way back at the far side of the image...let's say the brakes were a little bit wet on the terrain, despite being pinned for a full 30 seconds or more.

After a swift and embarrassing turnaround, our crews are united at last. Bill is joined by Bob, along with veteran mission/space station crew and all-around experienced 'nauts Fergee and Nedcas Kerman. Jeb couldn't make it because he's in Laythe orbit right now, he radioed that he'd be back in time for Khristmas. For now, that's where we'll leave our guys.

Coming soon: dozens and dozens of kilometers of driving! A comprehensive and terribly dangerous survey of the Mun's most twisted and curious surface features, including "Buckshot Alley" and "Fields of Crumpled Pain".