Diving to the deepest part of the Kerbin ocean

[Algomeysa]

The Life Aquatic with Steve Kerbal

Kerbalmaps.com suggests that the lowest point on Kerbin (Kerbal homeworld) is longitude 83.1116 West/28.9050 South, 1391 meters deep in the ocean.

I decided to be Kerbal James Cameron (Or if you're Old School, Jacques Piccard and Lt. Don Walsh in the bathyscape Triest, 1960, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench).

Those coordinates translate to 28 54 18 S 276 53 19 E.

Step 1, I sent a few rocket flights and a boat out to those coordinates (I used a boat .craft file I found online, hydra speedboat), had some Kerbals jump out and tread water, and act as living buoys to mark the spot on the ocean surface.

Step 2:

Now, I didn't want to use any mods (But if you do want to try a submarine mod, I recommend the excellent Hooligan Labs submarine mod, now being maintained by JewelShisen here http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53961-0-22-Hooligan-Labs-%28now-under-new-managment%29-Featuring-Airships-Subs-and-more)

But instead, I chose this unmodded submarine designed by Squishumz in this reddit thread

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1cwao4/

Now, to be clear, I'm not using mods, but I am using the unlimited fuel cheat. Phase 2 will be to do this without using cheat codes.

That submarine is good for exploring the ocean floor, but it works best when you start just off the beach and hug the ocean floor all the way down. It's a wheeled vehicle with a big rear rocket engine and 12 smaller ones pointing downwards. If you ever find yourself off the seabed, it's difficult to control, tends to do underwater loop-the-loops.

So, yeah, I actually drove the thing into the ocean by the Kerbal Space Center at the equator and then drove it underwater nearly 29 degrees south, 1/12th of the way around the world (I did this at 4x warp). That sounds like a long way, and it is, but it's only about 314 kilometers, or the Kerbal Jules Verne novel 57 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA.

Once you get down the sloping continental shelf (I recommend going west off the runway and aiming for the beach which is just where the sloping mountain meets the ocean --- if you go east off the runway the continental shelf seems to be a lot steeper), just aim 185 degrees or so and get ready for a long ride underwater.

Before too long, you end up going between about 975 meters depth and 1200 meters depth. Up to 999 meters you can get a fairly normal view out your cockpit, at 1000 meters the view gets a little funky, the sun seems to be shining through the planet (or at night, you can see stars through the planet). So it's better to switch your view to about midrange from above where you can still see the sea floor.

The changes in depth are pretty mild when you're hugging the ocean floor --- there's no point where you have to worry about slamming into an underwater cliff or tumbling into a chasm or anything like that.

At about 85 kilometers from the dive point was the first time it really went under 1200 meters depth. But at about 77 kilometers from the dive point the depth unexpected rises above 1000 meters again. Putting the Kerbals on the surface treading water at the dive point paid off at this point, because when you switch to cockpit view you can see 'em (I mean, you can see their location on the Heads Up Display), and it's easier to navigate towards them.

At 4.4 kilometers from the dive point, the depth was finally below 1300 meters.

Now, the deepest spot I could really find was 1386 meters (and that was in the submarine, which adds 2 meters from a Kerbal on the ground, so it was really 1388 meters deep).

This was at 28 54 3 South 276 52 41 East. So close, but not exact, to the kerbalmaps.com (Or maybe that point is a similar depth; I couldn't get to that exact point...it's a bit hard to manuever down there).

This sounds about right, it's 3 meters higher than kerbalmaps.com suggests (1388 versus 1391), but that works out, kerbalmaps has the highest point on Kerbal being 6761 meters, the Mount Everest of Kerbin as it were, but if you actually go there on 0.23.5 it's 6764 meters when you're a Kerbal on foot.

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So, the next step, Phase 2, would be to manage this without using the unlimited fuel cheat, or at least to use it as little as possible.

A differently designed submarine, one made to just plop in the ocean and go straight down, and be stable on the descent (So more of a bathyscape) would seem to the solution. The secret seems to be using the big orange fuel tanks (least bouyant thing in Kerbal engineering) and then put a lot of downward-facing rocket engines.

Now, how the heck to get it 28 degrees south, I'm not sure. Maybe some sort of large barge-boat, you'd get the bathyscape on it with the brakes on, then drive the barge-boat to 28 degrees south (whether this can be done without unlimited fuel would be the trick), and then, roll the bathyscape over the side, fire the engines, have Voyage to the Bottom of the Kerbin Sea.

So the goal would be:

1) Get the barge-boat with bathyscape to 28 S latitude, maybe with the fuel cheat, maybe not.

2) now with fuel cheat turned off, roll the bathyscape over the side and blast to the bottom.

Any better ideas?

Edited June 9, 2014 by Algomeysa

[Kasuha]

Nice effort!

I'd probably get it in place using a rocket. Ballistic flight ending approximately at the right place, then splash landing with sufficient number of parachutes. Then decouple all chutes and other attached buoyant parts and go down.

I'd also recommend using rover wheels to move when on the ocean floor. And take enough torque to keep the ship straight during the descent.

[Algomeysa]

Of course, except for the "Because it's there!" factor, there's not a lot to see, down there on the ocean floor.

Which brings to mind another potential expedition: That spot on the ocean floor with the big smiley face, the one that shows up on that mapsat thing.

(I've seen some claim that it can also be seen from orbit, but I haven't managed that, and I haven't seen any screenshots that support that).

That's a bit west of this Lowest Point, I think. Might be interesting to take a sub down there and see what that looks like from the ocean floor.

[Algomeysa]

Huh, so it appears, being in that lowest point on Kerbin (1388 meters below sea level, 28 54 3 S 276 52 41 E), I'm already atop that big smiley face.

Specifically in one of the eyes:

http://s22.photobucket.com/user/planettom/media/ksp/kerbinlowpoint_zps2a447828.jpg.html

Seafloor map taken from the image made by BradburyMan using the Mapsat mod in June 2013, as detailed in this reddit thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1h852m/i_took_62_million_isa_mapsat_points_and_converted/

So I think the next step is go east to the 280 E longitude line,

then head south, passing latitude 30 S to 40 S, at which point I'll have passed over the two parts of the smiley, and see what can be seen.

I mean, it's kind of like standing on a Nasca line in Peru, it's probably too big to tell a difference when you're atop it, but maybe I can tell by elevation change where the upper and lower lip of the smile starts and stops, at it were.

[Wooks]

You should share this mission in another part of the forums dude, here in gameplay questions and tutorials is completely wasted!

[nli2work]

Great idea! definitely share this in mission reports

experimented with a bathysphere setup with KAS anchors for ballasts. just a few KM east of KSC

Going down... slow ~2m/s

Nearing the bottom.

Coming back up... too fast. did not end well.

Edited June 11, 2014 by nli2work

[Algomeysa]

Bathysphere: Pretty cool.

Before I ever started using the sub, I first sent some Kerbals out to that deepest part by rocket, and by boat, and then had them jump in the water and act as living buoys.

(This has a practical reason; when I was later driving the sub along the ocean floor, looking out the cockpit, when I got to within 85 kilometers or so I could "see" the Kerbals on the Heads Up Display, and so use them to navigate closer).

But when I was setting that up I somehow did something I haven't been able to recreate: when I F5 quicksaved, and then later f9 loaded it, my boat sank like a stone, but the Kerbal was thrown clear, and he bobbed on the surface, with his boat 1.4 kilometers beneath his feet. If I could figure out how to do this on demand, you could sink your own boat as a means of depth measurement.

When I tried to switch the viewpoint to the sunken vessel, it immediately began slowly rising. It hit the surface of the ocean so hard it actually shot completely out of the water, and then more or less disintegrated when it came back down and hit the ocean surface again.

Meanwhile, I made an interesting discovery: As suggested, I posted this over in Mission Reports.

[nli2work]

it took alot of anchors to weight it down enough to sink. Coming back up is more problematic as you experienced. Shot out of the water, then destroyed on impacting the water again. I looked at the KAS source, looks like you can make any part non-bouyant by adding the anchor module to it, provided you have KAS. The biggest drawback is lack of camera control underwater, as the camera tries hard to float back up to the surface. Can use the anchor parts to get to the bottom before using engines to navigate along the bottom.

I'm definitely developing this into an expedition to go down to the bottom at the eye.

Edited June 12, 2014 by nli2work

[Javster]

One of the submarine mods limits the maximum depth to 600m