The Great Circle - a planetary circumnavigation

Well...

What started out as a long but enjoyable journey, ended very abruptly.

First off, a 3900km radius planet is big. Really Big when it comes to driving around it in an SRV. Each degree of latitude is just under 68km. I was able to maintain some decent speed, averaging around 35 m/s. Maintaining that rate, and driving nearly perfectly along the meridian, best case was going to take around 200 hours driving time.

Since part of my RP has me boarding my ship every night, I tend to use Premium Hull repairs when I am going to have extended driving time, so as not to waste it having it converted to basic when I board my ship. If my time is going to be limited, or I am just about done for the day, I use basic hull.

I had started on the north pole, and had slowly but steadily made decent progress. Then that fateful day... I had just crossed the 67th parallel, getting ready to wrap up for the day. Had gotten myself up to around 80m/s, noticed my hull was at 23% so I boosted high again, went to my right side panel, hit space, space, saw the ground coming up at me just as I get the notice that my synthesis was complete...my SRV ammo was fully restocked.

I hit the ground with a big fireball. Didn't even bounce. This was the first time in over 10MM driven, I lost an SRV. In fact, this was the very same SRV I bought when Horizons was first released.
 
I haven't tested it in a while, but I thought premium repairs would persist through re-docking to the ship, even with the automated repair there. Did this change, or am I remembering wrong?

And... ouch! Hitting the wrong synth definitely hurts.
 
I haven't tested it in a while, but I thought premium repairs would persist through re-docking to the ship, even with the automated repair there. Did this change, or am I remembering wrong?

And... ouch! Hitting the wrong synth definitely hurts.

I guess there is some assumption going on on my part about the synthesis through docking. I have just figured that it would behave the way ammo synthesis and such behaves when reloading at a base. It would make sense to me that one would lose the premium through the auto repairing when boarding ship, otherwise what would stop someone from applying a single premium hull, then just boarding when it gets low, and essentially having an unlimited premium hull with a single synthesis.
 
I hit the ground with a big fireball

Commiserations! But to quote the philosopher Neil Young, It's better to burn out than to fade away!

Perhaps sir would like something a little less large? I admire the ambition, but somewhere you don't feel the pressure to cover a lot of ground in a hurry might work better?

Good luck anyway!
 
Commiserations! But to quote the philosopher Neil Young, It's better to burn out than to fade away!

Perhaps sir would like something a little less large? I admire the ambition, but somewhere you don't feel the pressure to cover a lot of ground in a hurry might work better?

Good luck anyway!

Well, I am thinking along the same lines as what you have suggested here. I am still going to attempt to break the 2000km barrier, but on a nice little planet that had a radius of 2020km. It also has a nicely visible moon that is pretty close for something nice to look at in the sky, and when I complete the circumnavigation of this planet, I am going straight over to its 645km moon, and circumnavigating that. From what i can tell, this would be the first planet moon combo circumnavigation.
 
Ah yes ... many's the time, as another terminal explosion has ripped the chassis of my SRV apart, that I've thought to myself in those brief final moments ... damn, my ammo was already full stocked, what a waste of synthesis materials.

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Landed.

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This mission is being carried out from my Anaconda Buckeye Spirit. Two SRV's this time around.

Not only am I attempting the largest single body circumnavigation to date, I plan on also circumnavigating the nearby moon for the first planet and moon circumnavigation. From this system, if everything goes right and there are no extenuating circumstances or emergencies, I plan on lifting off with this being my starting point for a galactic circumnavigaion.
 
This is epic stuff. I don't want to jinx it but I must add this to the Planetary Circumnavigation Club thread at some point.
 
I broke out the Haversine formula, measured angles, and once again, employed Eratosthenes' great experiment.

From my thread Meridian - A planetary circumnavigation:

In his experiment, Eratosthenes made the assumption that the Earth was a sphere, and that the suns rays are parallel as they strike the Earth. We now know today that these assumptions are not perfectly correct since the Earth bulges slightly at the equator, and there is a slight angular difference in the suns rays as they strike the Earth, most pronounced at the poles, but only measurable with modern equipment. For the purposes of this experiment, those assumptions have minimal impact on the final result.

As the chief librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria, he was well educated and well informed. One of the pieces of information he learned was that on a specific day in June in the city of Swenet there was a deep well that the sunlight reached the bottom, meaning that at noon at that location, the sun must be directly over head at 90°. He also knew that on the same day in Alexandria, there were shadows cast at noon. He measured the noontime angle of the shadow cast by an obelisk. He knew the distance between the two locations. With this information, he was able to use a simple proportion formula d/P = a/360 where d is the distance between two locations, P is the perimeter, or circumference, and a is the difference in shadow angle. Solving for P, we get 360d/a.

While Eratosthenes chose to take his measurements on the summer solstice because of ease of measurement in knowing that one of the locations had an angle of 0°, the same can be done by measuring the angles and subtracting to find the difference.

I took my measurements in one of the larger craters, on one of the only sunny days so far.

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In this attempt, it was a bit different with the shadows because I am in my Anaconda, Buckeye Spirit, and the shadows are very different. Using the haversine formula, I calculated the distance between North Site and South Site to be 113.8km.

Here are the results...

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Even more accurate than the last time. I was able to calculate the circumference to within less than 35 km on a body over 12,684 km around.
 
I broke out the Haversine formula, measured angles, and once again, employed Eratosthenes' great experiment.

From my thread Meridian - A planetary circumnavigation:



I took my measurements in one of the larger craters, on one of the only sunny days so far.

M5kIoy1.png

In this attempt, it was a bit different with the shadows because I am in my Anaconda, Buckeye Spirit, and the shadows are very different. Using the haversine formula, I calculated the distance between North Site and South Site to be 113.8km.

Here are the results...

1RYgJ4i.jpg

Even more accurate than the last time. I was able to calculate the circumference to within less than 35 km on a body over 12,684 km around.
Awesome! Again.
 
It's been a while...

Life has been busy, with the premiere event being my daughters wedding.

I have been making slow but steady progress...

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Finally made it to the equator, so one quarter of the way around. It has been largely uneventful, and almost entirely in the dark. The inconsistent travelling times that I have managed have made it very difficult to actually get a feel for the day and night cycles on this planet.

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There have been a few craters with central peaks good for base jumping practice...

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This one was almost two km high and I was able to survive the jump from top to the base. Though if I had a sextant, I could manage a much better measurement...
 
Finally completed this circumnavigation. Blau Euq WK-V d3-1 C 7 2019.77 km radius, so circumference of 12,690 km. Based on the entries in the Planetary Circumnavigation Club, this is the largest planet successfully circumnavigated, and the first over 2,000 km in radius.

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I did not get my exact stats when I started, but based on the most recent SRV drive distance prior to starting this, and my finish, I traveled around 16,000 km. When I started out, I took quite a few detours to see some of the very few surface features, but by the end, I just wanted to get done. It was a very different experience than on a smaller body. While the terrain allowed for excellent speed, many times in excess of 100 km/s, and a few times in excess of 200 km/s, it just took for ever. The lack of significant surface features, combined with the long distance... monotony really started to wear on me.

Here are a few pictures...

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Almost the entire first half was driven in the dark, and the second half was driven in the light. It is unfortunate that we don't have multiple light sources because the Red Giant primary star and the Red Dwarf which my planet orbited were visually close to the same size, even though it is over 12,000 ls from arrival.

Within the next day or so, I plan on lifting off and making the short journey to the orbiting moon, and drive around it.

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The moon is much smaller, radius of 674.93, circumference of 4,240, and a quick glance at the surface map shows a number of interesting and challenging surface features including a number of large mountain ranges, several deep gorges, and this crater complex...

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