Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
I just love the way these circumnavigation trips get us thinking and learning about stuff we normally in everyday life never come across!
The Circumnavigation of Mercury
- Thread starter Andrew Linton
- Start date
Yes, I'll have to make a Jaffa orange and cherry tomato orrery to fully understand the orbit and rotation of Mercury.
The scenery became more dramatic close to (0,20). I'm looking back at the canyon I've just negotiated.
A good run today, covering another 10 degrees or 426 km. The Mauve Adder only stole 13 km, so in reality I drove 439 km.
I think the Mauve Adder lives in my home electrical system through which my ethernet connection is delivered. Slippery serpent or electric eel?
Some exciting canyons encountered, making a change from the huge impact craters which force me to drive across the slope; that's my least favourite terrain, especially if it's lumpy.
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Shadows lengthen as Sol 'sinks into the western deep' behind me and the nocturnal hunters appear on the horizon. The Fox is my new guiding constellation.
I notice from the previous post that after '24 part 1' I have only six seconds of recording for the rest of the degree. I think I must have forgotten to start recording and started it when I arrived at (0,24) thinking I was stopping.
This has happened to me before while out on a recumbent bike ride using a dictaphone; instead of capturing my thoughts, which were lost to the wind, I recorded my heavy breathing only to stop the recording when I had some idea of great importance to save for posterity. This continued for the whole journey. Ah, me.
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(0,27)
The Fox constellation has become a long-stemmed Martini glass. That's where I need to be. I can either stay safe and comfortable on the high ground or drop down into the valley which is more dangerous (a good place for an ambush). Decision Time.
The decision was obvious really.
At (0,33) with 8 degrees travelled today. Looking Westward, you can see how low Sol is in the sky and there, just above it, is the group of stars I imagined to be the Square of Pegasus. It's inverted now, of course.
Heading for (0,38), another navigational aid is to use the shadow compass. If my shadow is directly ahead then I'm heading East.
At (0,38). That was a costly degree, the Mauve Adder swallowing 18km of the journey with two disconnections. 
At (0,40). It turns out that I do have a sextant on board. This image shows Sol about 16 degrees above the horizontal (admittedly this is the tangent at my position), and the visible horizon would be lower.
(0,44)
Every expedition has its problems: R.F. Scott should have used dogs instead of ponies to reach the South Pole of Earth; Burke and Wills should have taken Kendal Mint Cake on their ill-fated crossing of Australia, also on Earth; and I should have secured more robust technology before attempting the circumnavigation of Mercury. The two problems bugging me are the Mauve Adder lost connections and the intermittent problem I have with the TWCS throttle - all buttons failing except for button 5 which fires all buttons at once.
But Scott persevered, and so will I.
The change of livery shows I took another trip in my ship to view the terminator, but the results confused me so I'm ignoring them.
Every expedition has its problems: R.F. Scott should have used dogs instead of ponies to reach the South Pole of Earth; Burke and Wills should have taken Kendal Mint Cake on their ill-fated crossing of Australia, also on Earth; and I should have secured more robust technology before attempting the circumnavigation of Mercury. The two problems bugging me are the Mauve Adder lost connections and the intermittent problem I have with the TWCS throttle - all buttons failing except for button 5 which fires all buttons at once.
But Scott persevered, and so will I.
The change of livery shows I took another trip in my ship to view the terminator, but the results confused me so I'm ignoring them.
Going well and nearly half way now.
My two cents, if you have racing wheel and pedals combo, its quite easy to map those for SRV controlls. And driving gets way more enjoyable.
Close to (0,45) and looking back up the western slope of an immense caldera, I saw Sol 12 degrees above the horizontal. This also gave me an early impression of what it's going to be like driving in darkness. I guess that for a day I will be driving through this kind of patchy light until I enter total darkness a day or so later.
Thanks, yes, I'm averaging 7.8 degrees per day but reckon this will slow down dramatically after I enter the shade.Infuriatingbut ... you seem to be making good progress
Hi, thanks for the suggestion; I have only T16000M joystick and TWCS throttle; not sure how pedals would feel.
Yes, thanks; I'm looking forward to (0,70) which will be half distance. Another big day will be reaching and passing (0,180) when I have to change the vertical axis of my progress chart to be the full [-180..180] range.