Neil Armstrong Rover Race

[RuBisCO]

The armstrong race is designed to test your rover design against each other. The race consists of 7 crossing lines marked out with flags on the mun. The course has a minimum length of ~24 km, ~12 km per half lap.

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What you need:

The race track is provided here: http://www./download/s95p6ue2y9p5faw/KSP+Armstrong+Race.zip

Just install it in your KSP folder, it will put in the Armstrong Race savegame and the flags.

Rules

Run the Course, Present Your Times, Present Rover Mass: Start from the center start-finish line through 1 through 3 back through the start-finish line, through 4 through 6 and back to the start-finish. Record and present your time to finish each half lap and the total summed time of both. So that should be three times presented, one of which being the sum of the other two, all times in seconds. You can do just one half lap and present the time for just that, but to be considered competitive for total time you need to finish the whole track. You can also present your rover's mass to compete for lightest-fastest rover, your time will be multiplied by the mass of your landed rover (not include launch/landing vehicle mass) to determine who has got the fasted rover by mass. Rover mass should be in tons down to second decimal point.

No Flying, You Know What I Mean! : You can't use thrusters or anything that uses fuel. Your rover needs to push against the ground to move. The principle of this race is to test rover designs against each other in public so as to provide a public knowledge in how to make better rovers and how they perform in KSP.

Mod Away, But Why? : You can use mods but explain why you used those mods. How does it improve rover performance?

Fly it, Land it: All rovers must be land-able, sure you can hyper-edit your rover there for testing but your rover should be able to be launched from Kerbin and land on the Mun.

Present and Share: You need to post your rover design, either here or linked here to it on The Spacecraft Exchange (I don't know, I'll let a moderator chime in on how that is done), your rover design does not need to include the launch vehicle, unless someone raises the challenge that your rover could not have been landed on the Mun, then you need to provide the rover with launch vehicle to prove it can be landed. If it can't be landed no place on the score board for you!

No Lying: If others can't get your rover design to achieve anything near the time you claim, and you can't provide definitive evidence of your claimed times you will be stricken from the score board.

SCORE BOARD

Time Categories

Best Total Time: Kasuha's "Armstrong Rover Racer" 942 s , RuBisCO's "Spider" 950 s

Best Easy Half Lap Time: Kasuha's "Armstrong Rover Racer" 490 s , RuBisCO's "Spider" 488 s

Best Hard Half Lap Time: Kasuha's "Armstrong Rover Racer" 452 s, RuBisCO's "Spider" 462 s

Time X Mass of Rover Ratio Categories

Best Total Ratio: RuBisCO's "Spider" 3752.5 s*t, Kasuha's "Armstrong Rover Racer" 4597 s*t

Best Easy Half Lap Ratio: RuBisCO's "Spider" 1927.6 s*t, Kasuha's "Armstrong Rover Racer" 2391.2 s*t

Best Hard Half Lap Ratio: RuBisCO's "Spider" 1824.9 s*t, Kasuha's "Armstrong Rover Racer" 2205.8 s*t

There are some easter eggs hidden by me in those savegames, can you find them?

Edited August 25, 2014 by RuBisCO

[Sirine]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/49216-0-24-2-Persistent-Trails-record-share-and-replay-track-data!-%28Aug-1-V1-1%29

Recommend to use this mod.

[RuBisCO]

Sure, but I don't want anyone staying on a fixed track, they can go where ever as long as they make it through those 8 checkpoints (in order). I'll try it but I don't want anyone to think they have to follow my path. I see nothing wrong with challengers showing the exact path they took though.

Edited August 24, 2014 by RuBisCO

[goduranus]

Can ground rollers enter as well?

[RuBisCO]

Can ground rollers enter as well?

Yes as long as thrust is coming from something pushing against the ground.

[Darren9]

I used the RollKage Kerbichelin Extreme wheels because it's virtually impossible to crash with them, and also fitted Infernal Robotics hinges with spring of 0.5 as trailing axle suspension because it's also virtually impossible to crash with it, and Tweakscale/Procedural Parts just to make it look nice. The result was I finished the first half lap before then crashing at gate 4. Started at 5:00 and finished at 14:05 for 9 minutes 5 seconds and the buggy weighs 0.515T without the two Kerbals. Should be easy to beat with grippier tires.

[Kasuha]

Thanks for the challenge. I decided to try it stock, mass of the rover is 4.88 t without a Kerbal. I could have made it lighter if I used cubic octagonal struts instead of girders but for some reason I decided against it.

Start time 11:35, first lap time 19:45, final time 27:17 so first lap took 8:10, second lap 7:32, total 15:42

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[ihtoit]

yeah cubic strut vehicles tend to implode without a Kerbal in the chair. (ref: Manley's Munar KAS Rover which did precisely that)

[RuBisCO]

WOW those times are awesome, I thought I would blow everyone away with my little spider and SQUIDED wheels but dam, I'm slow!

Darren9 if you could post all 3 times and the design, as well as the design from you Kasuha, then I think I could put you guys up on the score board.

[Kasuha]

Darren9 if you could post all 3 times and the design, as well as the design from you Kasuha, then I think I could put you guys up on the score board.

Oh I did not notice you need a craft file. My rover is nothing special, not really good for anything but the race.

Here it is. Note it is a subassembly so it belongs to Subassemblies folder.

[RuBisCO]

My Spider here is stripped down to just SQUIED Wheels and MechJeb as modded parts. With the inner wheels set to 50 and the outwheels set to 10 squid factor it managed to do the whole course in 15:50 (950 s), EHL was 8:08 (488 s) and HHL was 7:42 (462 s). It can withstand very hard falls with no permanent damage, but those wheels will pop! When that happens I hit the breaks, stop, get out, fix the wheels, thankfully all the wheels can be fixed from the door. The best run time I'm presenting is when I managed not to pop the wheels (and not had to jump out and fix them). It weighs 3.95 t so that is 3752.5 s*t total, EHL: 1927.6 s*t, HHL: 1824.9 s*t

http://www./download/59ggxnksfuzn3od/Spider+%28basic%29.zip

My scorpion was not intended for racing but rather as a fuel shuttle for the Mun and Minmus as well as a crane, but it turns out to be the fastest thing I got at least on a straight run, it turns like a shopping cart missing a wheel though so you got to be gentle on the turns, real gentle. I got 14:51 (891 s) total, 7:37 (457 s) for the EHL and 7:14 (434 s) for the HHL. It has NearFutureSpacecraft mod for the command pod, KW for the tanks, KSPX and RLA_Stockalike for the little tanks and engine mounts and little SAS, AIES for the engines, MagicSmokeIndustries for the retractable suspension (for reduced profile to fit in aeroshell) as well as optional crane, KAS for carrying cargo and doing what ever else, Mechjeb for stability control and setting it to run at max speed (set rover speed to 100 m/s even though it never gets much above 40 m/s) Bill-Jeb 9000 for beautified mechjeb parts, some HullCameraVDS cameras for the forward and back view, and of course SQUIDED wheels. I locked the center wheels and set them to 50 Squiding, the outwheels were set to 10. It can't stand hard falls so I needed to slow down at the edge of the crater to prevent it flying down or out and falling hundred of meters away at smashing speeds. The tanks were empty so I could not use RCS or the engines (that would be cheating) but those could cushion suicidal falls in theory. Weighing in at 12.14 tons empty it could not and never would compete for time*mass ratio.

http://www./download/nau3e99lsbvnzpv/Scorpion+%28Retractable+Suspension%29.zip

[RuBisCO]

The Flee is a tiny rover designed as a probe rover. Remove a camera and adjust the panels and it has space for an antenna and one science instrument, that is it! You need AIES mod, camera mod and SQUIDS. With only the inside wheels charged its a fast runner for its size, doing 10-15 m/s, do not recommend going much faster or the wheels will explode, literally. Weighing only 470 kg it is the smallest-fastest rover I got. Total Time: 2234 s, HHL: 1088, EHL: 1146, Time*Mass Total: 1050.0 s*t, EHL: 538.6 s*t, HHL: 511.4 s*t

http://www./download/joacps34ajg2ch3/Flee+%28basic%29.zip

Edited August 26, 2014 by RuBisCO