When we last saw our intrepid kerbals, they were all safely at Laythe Base when the outburst of high-energy particles from Kerbol hit the Joolian magnetosphere and lit up the skies with aurora. After staring in awe at the light show for a while, Hellou and Emilynn went back inside the base to check on Thompbles (who hadn't come outside).
Emilynn: "Hey, Thompbles! Why aren't you outside looking at the sky show with us? You aren't the kind of guy who spends the
whole party in the kitchen, are you?"
Thompbles: "Oh, I'm getting a good view out my picture window here. I've been trying to get a message through to Kerbin to
let everybody know you made it here safely. But the comsats keep going into safe mode from computer glitches, so I have to wake
them back up and start the transmissions again."
Hellou: "Thanks, Thompbles. I guess everyone back on Kerbin is probably worried about us."
Emilynn: "Is our Vall ship OK?"
Thompbles: "It's responding to pings, but I can't give you any details on its condition because I don't have the console prefix
code for your ship. Most of the other ships in orbit are in safe mode...but I'm getting nothing at all from GasStation 5."
Emilynn: "The prefix code 16309."
*Thompbles punches in the code*
Thompbles: "OK... It says Huey and Dewy are in safe mode, but Louie is responding; it says all systems are good."
Emilyn: "Not surprising...Louie is the most heavily shielded of the three computers."
Thompbles: "Hellou, do you know how long this outburst should last?"
Hellou: "Well, we don't have a lot of data. Kerbol only does these huge outburts every two or three centuries, judging from
the historical records of the massive planet-wide auroras. The superflare activity lasts for less than a week...but these outburts
usually occur in pairs separated by 6 to 18 months."
Emilynn: "So...we aren't going back to Kerbin in the next transfer window as planned?"
Hellou: "I doubt it very much. Looks like we're stuck on Laythe for a while."
Thompbles: "Hmm. And the replacement crew for Laythe base was supposed to head out here during the next transfer window from
Kerbin to Jool...but I suppose that's not going to happen now, either."
Emilyn: "Well then, I hope you won't mind putting us up for a while."
Thompbles: "Sure. We'll have to look at the situation with supplies. For now I can offer you accommodations in the original Laythe
Base module."
Below, the view out Thompbles's window.
As dawn broke and washed the auroras from the sky (or at least made them harder to see), and the party began to wind down, Hellou asked Nelemy to take her over to to Laythe Base 1 module (located a couple kilometers west from the Laythe Base 2). They drove over and got out so that Hellou could check out her new living quarters.
Hellou: "Hm. What is this flag?"
Nelemy: "Oh, Dude...Um...that was a special flag sent as a joke by the boys at the KSC."
Hellou: "Well, you can take it back with you and plant it outside the boys' fort."
So Nelemy took down the special flag, then followed Hellou onboard the Laythe Base 1.
Nelemy: "I'll check that the life support systems are online."
Hellou: "Thanks, Nelemy. Um...what is this layer of padding on the deck?"
Nelemy: "Oh...That's, um... dirty laundry, Dude."
Hellou: "Ah. You can take all that back with you as well."
Below, Nelemy returned to Laythe Base 2 and turned the rover over to Emilynn so that she could head over to Base 1. Then Nelemy replanted the flag by the bunkhouse module. So, after a couple long and harrowing days, the boys settled down to sleep.
Thompbles: "Guys, I'm going to need some help tomorrow working out the consumables situation."
Kurt: *yawn* "No problem."
Aldner: "I told Hellou I'd take her up into the hills to study the rocks."
Thompbles: "That will have to wait a while. I want everybody down here near sea level until the radiation levels return to
normal. In the meantime she can study all the samples we've collected in the lab module."
Aldner: "Aye, aye, Cap'n."
Nelemy: "Dudes... just think about it... Female kerbals, sleeping just a few kilometers away."
Kurt: "Go to sleep, Nelemy."
When communications finally cleared up between Kerbin and the Jool system, the Mission Planners at KSC confirmed Hellou's suspicions: Because of the possibility of a follow-on outburst of flare activity, all kerballed interplanetary missions would be cancelled for a period of up to two years. So our plucky kerbals would be having an extended mission on Laythe.
But in the meantime, the KSC crew started making modifications to the ships that were being finished off for the next armada to Laythe. The flight of the interplanetary crew transport ship that would have brought the replacement crew out to Laythe was cancelled, but the new SCIENCE Base and other equipment would be sent out unkerballed to Laythe for use by the current crew.
NOTE: A recent thread on the KSP forums showed how much lag increases when you have lots of other ships, flags, and debris in your save file (even when it is outside the rendering range of the active ship)... and it was a surprising amount. I have a LOT of old ships and 'debris' (parts of ships that I've deliberately left as markers on planets or in orbit...I often delete actual debris) in my save file (with about 145 'flights' on the list). This would explain why I was getting so much lag with ships that I really didn't think were all that big. So, anyway, I decided that in order to reduce lag, I would do all the construction and interplanetary transfers of the next ships in an alternate save file that was time-synced to my main game file. Then after the ships were moved to Laythe, I would paste them into my main save file at the appropriate game time. And indeed, things went much smoother this way.
You'll notice in the pictures below that I also installed the "Visual Enhancements: Clouds & City Lights" mod. I generally like to play with vanilla parts, but I don't mind mods that make things look cool without changing the game play. The clouds & city lights mod hasn't given me any problems while playing the game (other than making it a little harder to target landings through the cloud layers).
So... on to the ships! Below are four launches of Reusable Rockets to assemble Ship #1 in Kerbin orbit: Nuclear tug; extra fuel tanks; Nuclear tug; and an SSTO spaceplane plus a marine operations rescue vehicle.
Below is a better view of the payload carrying the spaceplane and marine rescue unit into orbit. The spaceplane can carry two kerbals, and it's powered by a single turbojet (two ram intakes) and four of the small Rockomax 48-7S rocket engines. There is one Mk1 Fuselage for jet fuel, plus an FL-T400 and two FL-T200 tanks for liquid fuel/oxidizer. The craft is a biplane to give it extra lift -- unlike typical spaceplanes that take off from Kerbin full of fuel and land back on Kerbin mostly empty, this spaceplane has to be able to land with almost a full fuel load (since its fuel is kept in orbit).
Under the spaceplane is the NAMOR 20 (New Automated Marine Operations Rescue) vehicle. For a long time I've been concerned that I had no way to rescue kerbals from the oceans of Laythe (unless they happened to crash land between DogFish and Dansen Island). I was never able to get the hang of reliably landing and launching a VTOL aircraft from the surface of the ocean, so I designed the NAMOR instead. It is a 'hopper' powered by two jet engines, and can carry two kerbals a considerable distance (enough to get them to an island for rescue by BirdDog, if not all the way home to Dansen Island). It lands on the ocean using parachutes (once you've used the jet engines to hover over to the correct location). It has two Rockomax 24-77 engines (with two FL-T100 tanks) to deorbit the NAMOR to the rescue site. It has two FL-T200 tanks to fuel the jet engines -- and I decided to implement "tweakables" a little early by manually editing these tanks to hold only liquid fuel and no oxidizer. Even before this tweak (so still carrying around a lot of oxidizer as deadweight), versions tested on Kerbin were able to takeoff from the KSC, land in the ocean offshore to perform a "rescue," and then fly across the ocean to the big peninsula (which I call "BigKorea" because of its shape), and land safely. So I think the range will be sufficient for rescuing kerbals from any spot on Laythe... although one hopes that there will never be a need to use this vehicle.
Below, Ship #1 is fully assembled in Kerbin orbit, and the four extra fuel pods (brought along to top off the tanks) have been jettisoned. So this ship is a double-tug arranged in a 'train' configuration.
Below we see the start of assembly for Ship #2 with the launch of a Nuclear Tug and extra fuel tanks (the purpose is to bring lots of fuel out to Laythe, since the boys at KSC still haven't developed the hoped-for equipment for mining fuel on other planets). The extra fuel tanks were docked to the rear of the Tug, and then the Refueler Topper was used to refuel the Tug (which had to use some of its fuel load to get into orbit) before being jettisoned and returned to land west of KSC.
Another Reusable Rocket sent a second Nuclear Tug up to become part of Ship #2. The new Tug first docked to the rear of the stack, then separated its lower fuel tank. The stack was then rotated so the new Tug could be docked to the front of the stack (rolled 90 degrees so the nuclear engines of the Tugs don't interfere with each other). The main payload will go on the front of the train, and fuel tanks can be dropped from the end of the train when empty.
Below, the main payload, a new SCIENCE Base, was sent up on a Reusable Rocket and docked to the front of the train. This SCIENCE Base has two Hitchhiker modules stacked in the center to represent the new Large Science Lab module that is expected in version 0.23, as well as a Science Junior and Mystery Goo container. There are also modules for retrofitting BirdDogs for SCIENCE. Yes, yes, I know that the game will refuse to play SCIENCE with me in sandbox mode, but that won't stop me from having fun with SCIENCE parts. The two side Hitchhiker modules were, of course, filled with more equipment and consumables for our intrepid explorers on Laythe. There is also a small service rover attached to the side of the Base that will be used on Laythe. In the rightmost part of the image, the Refueler Topper was jettisoned and the completed Ship #2 was ready to send to Jool...once the transfer window arrives.
Back on Laythe a couple weeks later, Aldner and Hellou prepare for a short expedition into the hills so Hellou can break some rocks. The radiation levels have fallen faster than expected -- Hellou surmises that this may be due to the thin gas torus that Laythe creates around its orbit from molecules that escape its atmosphere. Because of the low escape velocity of planets and moons in the diminutive Kerbol system, this gas torus would be thicker than expected in a similar situation in our own solar system. And collisions with the molecules in the gas torus would help clear out the high energy particles from Jool's radiation belts at the radius of Laythe's orbit. Below, Aldner and Hellou head uphill in the Fido.
Hellou: "Ooo, there's a beauty! Drive back over to that big boulder."
Aldner: "Right-o. What do you expect to learn from these rocks, anyway?"
Hellou: "I want to test some theories about how the islands on Laythe formed."
Aldner: "Aren't they all just volcanic? We certainly get enough of the almost constant tremors indicating lots of internal activity
from the tidal heating."
Hellou: "Well, well.. you DID actually listen during those geology classes I taught. But, in fact, the main arrangement of islands
on Laythe may not be due to volcanic formation. The huge circle of islands on the opposite side of Laythe is clearly an impact
feature. The big grouping of islands on this side of Laythe could have formed here as a result of the shock waves from that giant
impact being focussed to the far side of the moon. The volcanic deposits may have come along later. Here...hold this sample bag."
Next, Aldner drove further up the ridge to the landing site of Hellou's emergency escape capsule.
Hellou: "Hey, look! It's my capsule."
Aldner: "Yeah. Thompbles told me to stop at the capsules and bring back all of the food supplies from them."
Hellou: "Are we low on food?"
Aldner: "We think we'll have enough. But we are low on certain kinds. Nelemy only likes to eat yellow mush, so we are a bit
short of that."
Hellou: "Umm... Nelemy only eats the yellow mush?"
Aldner: "Yeah, he's picky. You seemed concerned about that...why?"
Hellou: "Well... You know I was on the science advisory committees at KSC..."
Aldner: "Yeah. So?"
Hellou: "Well... So I was there for the medical sessions as well. And, well...the doctors all approved the recommendation that
sex drive inhibitors be added to the mush for deep space missions."
Aldner: "What??"
Hellou: "Umm...yeah. They figured it would keep you guys happier. But there was a problem adding it to the yellow mush because it
changed the color. So it's only in the other mush. If Nelemy has been eating only yellow mush he hasn't been getting his dosage."
Aldner: "That's kind of unethical, isn't it? Adding that without telling us?"
Hellou: "Well, in your case, the dosage probably just dials you back to a 'normal' level anyway."
Aldner: "Huh. Speaking of which, you wouldn't be interested in a little.."
Hellou: "No, sorry. I've been eating my mush like a good astronaut."
Aldner: "Damn."
Aldner drove around for a while trying to find Feather, the floating rock he discovered on his first BirdDog roving trip into the Lake Joysina valley area...but he wasn't able to locate it. But he did find a different floating rock for Hellou to examine.
Aldner: "Here's a present for you: a mysterious floating rock!"
Hellou: "Awww, how sweet. And I didn't get you anything. Hmm. Yes. I'll take a sample."
Aldner: "You don't seem very excited about it."
Hellou: "Well, we've studied similar rocks back on Kerbin. We've never found out anything unusual about the rocks themselves...
they are composed of normal minerals."
Aldner: "So why do they float?"
Hellou: "We're not sure. It's apparently something special about the spots where they're located. Some scientists have theories
about there being mysterious force fields inside the planets and moons, and these rocks are located at spots where tiny side
lobes of the fields poke out."
Aldner: "So...just a boring rock?"
Hellou: "No, no... it's a pretty sample. Any rock looks great to me after all that ice on Vall."
Below, an even bigger floating boulder.
After spending the day driving around in the hills (keeping below 1,700 meters to keep Thompbles happy) and Joysina Valley, Aldner drove the rover back to Laythe Base 2 and dropped off the supplies from the emergency capsules...and did a little rearranging of the food stores. Then he took took Hellou and some selected food supplies down to the Laythe Base 1 area.
Aldner: "Had enough rocks? Want me to take you back to your base?"
Hellou: "No, there's still some daylight. Drop me off at the shore by the old Fido Pup probe. I'll walk back to the base from
there and survey the ground along the way."
That evening at Laythe Base 2, the boys sat down for supper..."
Kurt: "How was your expedition, Aldner? I trust you got Hellou safely back to her own base?"
Aldner: "The trip was great. But when I last saw Hellou she was lying on the beach."
Nelemy: "Whoa, Dude! I'd like to have seen that!"
Aldner: "Cool your jets, Little Buddy. She wasn't lying out in a swimsuit...she was face down examining the sand particles
with a magnifying glass."
Nelemy: "Well... still. Hey, where is the yellow mush?"
Aldner: "I think we may be out of the yellow. Try some red or green mush."
Nelemy: "Aw, Dude. I hate the green mush. I think it's made from Kerbals."
Aldner: "Then have some red. It's good for you. Full of tasty vitamins."
*Thompbles eyes Aldner suspiciously, but says nothing.*
Nelemy: "Aw...OK, I'll have the red, Dude. Maybe the girls took all the yellow mush. I'll ask them later. Just think... Female kerbals
having supper just a few kilometers away."
Kurt: "You need to quit thinking about female kerbals so much."
Nelemy: "But, Dude... A dude's not a real dude if he never exercises his paternal prerogative."
Kurt: "You can exercise it all you want, but you won't find any use for it on Laythe."
Aldner: "Here, Nelemy...have an extra helping of red mush. And for dessert, I found some of your favorite Sticky Cakes on the emergency
landing capsules."
Nelemy: "Whoa, thanks, Dude!"
Time to send ships between planets! The outbound trajectory from Kerbin to Jool is shown below (with Kerbal Alarm Clock and Improved Maneuver Node windows showing, in case you're wonder what those are).
First I sent off Ship #2 with the SCIENCE Base. The train has twice as many nuclear engines that a single Tug payload, but it also has twice the mass with all that extra fuel, so the Jool-transfer burns were like normal (about 1,940 m/s delta-V, and I broke the 20-minute long burn into two burns of about 10 minutes each. The first half of the burn used up the fuel in the bottommost tank (fuel was not simply draining from that tank, so I waited until after the burn and transferred fuel around, then dropped the empty tank). You can see the pretty clouds and city lights on Kerbin in the picture showing the dropping of the tank.
Similarly, once Ship #2 was out near apoapsis, I sent off Ship #1 for its first burn. This ship was wobblier, so it would not tolerate physics warp as well as the other ship.
When the ships each returned to periapsis, the second 10 minutes of burning sent them off to Jool:
The descending node of the transfer orbit was quite close to Kerbin, so it wasn't long before it was time for the plane change maneuver (about 260 m/s delta-V). The next fuel tanks ran dry during the plane shift burn and were dropped in inteplanetary space. Then I did a little tweaking of the trajectories (using good old conic draw mode 0). At the end of maneuvering, the remaining drop tanks were about 81% full on each ship (and the rest of the Tug tanks completely full), so a lot of fuel would be delivered to the Jool system.
Soon after the Kerbin-to-Jool window closed, the Jool-to-Kerbin transfer window opened. Instead of sending Hellou and Emilynn back as originally planned, I just sent back Tugs for re-use. Below, a double set of the most recent Tugs (docked so I could transfer them as a single ship) were first sent off into an orbit with an apoapsis between Vall and Tylo (then circularized). From there, the Double-Tug boosted for Kerbin, which required about 1,400 m/s of delta-V. The fuel for these maneuvers came from the small side tanks (the main tanks were mostly empty before the return maneuvers started).
You can also see in the map view image above that there were still two other older-model Tugs waiting in orbits between Laythe and Vall. These two Tugs were also sent off back to Kerbin. For simplicity, I built the plane change maneuver into these burns, since Jool was fairly close to a Jool-Kerbin node.
Once free from Jool's sphere of influence, I did some fine targeting (using conic draw mode 0) of the trajectories to approximately aerocapture altitude at far-away Kerbin (as seen below). All of these transfer maneuvers were done by cutting these ships' data from the main save file and pasting them into the alternate save file that I was using to do the transfers without living in Lag City.
After all the transfer burns and targeting, I had the orbits shown below. The two outbound ships are at about Duna's orbit, and the three inbound ships (two of those trajectories are nearly identical in the plot) have just left Jool's SOI. A fine day's work doing transfer burns.
Back on Laythe, Thompbles decided to transfer Emilynn and Hellou over to Laythe Base 3 on Fredoly island, both to take some strain off of the resources at the main base, and to give Hellou a change to survey another island. Below, Emilynn heads off in BirdDog 3.
Thompbles decided that when the new spaceplane arrives, Emilynn and Aldner will be the ones to test it. In preparation for that, Emilynn wanted to get some additional upper atmosphere data. So, below, we see Emi reaching 9,000 meters where one typically levels off the BirdDog...but she's still climbing under full throttle. Oh...and see the pretty clouds for Laythe as well..
Emilynn: "Yee Ha! Flameout at 16.7k. Moving at 600 m/s. These BirdDogs aren't too bad."
Kurt: "I copy, Hawk. Let us know when you hit peak altitude."
Emilynn: "Roger, Jaymak. It's great to fly again!"
Nelemy: "What the heck is a jaymak, anyway, Dude?"
Kurt: "It's a kind of bird. You hear them singing all the time around KSC, but you don't normally see them."
Hellou: "What's your call sign, Nelemy?"
Nelemy: "Umm...I don't have one. I wasn't in the KAF like Kurt and Aldner and Emi-dude. I was a civilian test pilot."
Kurt: "Nelemy worked for his Uncle Martin and Uncle Lockheed."
Hellou: "Aww...we can give him a call sign, right? Does Thombples have one?"
Thompbles: "No. I was in Army Air Support. We just learned to fly in low and blow stuff up. We didn't mess will silly names like the KAF."
Emilynn: "I've reached peak altitude, Jaymak. Nineteen four, speed 530. The VanAllen meter is reading 300...but I won't be here too long."
Kurt: "Roger, Hawk."
Emilynn arced back down to an altitude where she could restart the jet engine, then worked her way back up to an approximate cruise at 16,000 meters going 544 m/s before having to cut off the exercise because she was over the Fredoly Base area. I guess I've been being a bit more conservative than necessary in keeping the BirdDogs down below 13,000...but you do need to fly at a very high pitch angle to maintain lift at these altitudes, and the BirdDog is not the most pitch-stable plane under those conditions.
Emilynn brought the BirdDog down in a big spiral and landed in the basin of the Laythe Base 3 area on Fredoly Island.
Emilynn: "I've landed and stopped, Jaymak. You can send over my Chickadee."
Hellou was a bit leery of flying over in BirdDog 4, but these planes can be controlled remotely, and Aldner was monitoring the flight, ready to take over remote control if needed.
Hellou: "Wow, those mountainsides on the east shore of Fredoly really ARE steep. They look to be steeper than 60 degrees in
places. Was Kurt really driving around on that?"
Kurt: "Only near the top. Not so steep there. But I don't recommend it as a vacation spot."
Aldner: "You're veering a little left, Chickadee. More flying, less geology right now."
Hellou: "Silly boy. Important geology can be done from planes. Besides, this thing is easy to fly."
Aldner: "OK, Hawk, I'm handing over remote control to you."
Emilynn: "Roger, Buzz. I have you now, Chickadee. You're coming in fine. Want me to land it for you?"
Hellou: "No, Emi. Just monitor, please. I want to use those skills you taught me."
Emilynn: "Roger, Chickadee. Bring her in smooth and easy. You have a big area to land in."
Hellou put the BirdDog down about 260 meters from the Fredoly Base, with only a bit of excitement as be bumped over the ridge line the base sits on before stopping. Her more conservative flight path took 36 units of fuel compared to the 43 that Emi used in her more adventurous leap through the upper atmosphere.
Below, Emilynn greeted Hellou after she parked the BirdDog by their new home for the next several months. The base is located at 910 meters elevation, which still provides plenty of protection from the high energy particles in Jool's magnetosphere after it settled back down to its normal values. In case of another superflare outburst on Kerbol, they would easily have time to return to the main base before it hits the Jool system (it actually only takes about 15 minutes to fly between Dansen and Fredoly islands).
As we wait for several months for the next ships to arrive at Laythe, Hellou and Emilynn have plenty of time to explore the more interesting features of Fredoly Island with the base's Compact Fido rover (which is only slightly more compact than the regular Fido rover). One of their expeditions is shown below. They started off heading south (with Vall on the horizon).
Their first stop can be seen the image below: the 135m-elevation depression off in the distance (Fredoly has a dearth of inland low areas). You can tell that Emi is driving since they caught some air passing over the top of the ridge.
Aldner visited this same depression during his first BirdDog survey of Fredoly, but whereas Aldner headed south and turned right down the main bulk of the island, Hellou and Emilynn went south and turned left (see overview below) to skirt the big mountain there (which happens to be the highest peak on Laythe) and head down the southeast arm of the island.
Below is a map view of Fredoly Island (in case you are not as familiar with the lay of the land on Laythe as I am... the main Laythe Base area is in the upper right on Dansen Island). On Fredoly Island, the Base is near the top (showing up with rover icons because of the BirdDogs parked there), and our heroines are in the center driving around the mountain.
As our heroines round the mountain, they see the large south bay and they catch a sight of Jool's upper limb above the haze of the atmosphere.
In the next image of our travelogue, the Compact Fido is now on the southeast arm of the island and heading toward the deep valley. On various maps and aerial views, I was never able to tell for sure whether or not there was a lake in the valley, so I was keen to find out (it would be the only interior lake on Fredoly if it was there).
As our explorers topped the rise, they found that there was indeed a small lake in the bottom of the picturesque valley. The descent was somewhat steep on this end of the valley, but the Fido handled it easily.
Hellou: "What a beautiful little lake! I'm going to name this place Rivendell."
Emilynn: "Rivendell?"
Hellou: "Yes! You remember the books I told you about with the elves..."
Emilynn: "Wait... is this that story with non-bug-eyed monsters with pointy ears?"
Hellou: "They aren't monsters."
Emilynn: "I don't know...I saw the pictures. They look pretty weird to me."
Hellou got out for a little swim in Rivendell Lake. They spent the night camped here (Thompbles asked them to camp close to sea level whenever possible).
The next day our fellowship left Rivendell and headed to the southeast tip of the island, which Hellou named Southwest Reach. The shore was moderately steep, with nothing that looked like good base sites along the way. They did get to see some more of Jool. After collecting samples, they worked their way back north and spent another night in Rivendell.
The following morning, our heroines drove the Fido up the tallest mountain on Laythe. This involved a long drive north from Rivendell heading upward at a shallow angle along the contour of the landscape. By adjusting the upslope angle, they could make a fairly steady vertical speed of 2 to 3 meters per second as they traveled at about 10 m/s horizontally. On the steeper slopes, it was necessary to stop a few times to allow the Fido's batteries to recharge from the photovoltaic panels and RTGs.
Below: The view from 4500 meters up the mountainside, back towards Rivendell.
Emilynn: "Hawk to Laythe Base. How are you pudknockers doing?"
Kurt: "I read you, Hawk. What's up?"
Emilynn: "We are! Greetings from the summit of Mt. Laythe. 6,058 meters! That's higher than the maps said we should get."
Kurt: "Mt. Laythe? Hellou didn't want to give it some girly-goddess name?
Hellou: "I could still change it."
Kurt: "Oops, too late...I wrote it down."
Hellou: "I thought it was an appropriate name for the tallest peak on Laythe."
Kurt: "What is the VanAllen meter reading?"
Emilynn: "About 200. It's like we're back on Vall. Hellou is happily collecting samples. Maybe she'll let me drive back downhill this time."
Hellou: "No."
Emilynn: "Pretty please? I'll be good."
Hellou: "Well...OK. But if you blow any tires, I'm taking over."
After driving less than 400 vertical meters down the north face of Mt. Laythe, Emilynn managed to fly the rover over a bump at 46m/s and blew two tires upon landing. Hellou drove the rest of the way down the mountain...although she also managed to catch some air a few times and blew another tire.
Below, our heroines safely return to Fredoly Base.
Next time: New toys arrive at Laythe (I hope).