Jump to content

antbin

Members
  • Posts

    328
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation

49 Excellent

Profile Information

  • About me
    Sr. Spacecraft Engineer

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. Obsessive Technologies presents: our model 303 "Oak Smoke" This wonder of 20th century technology has just enough of everything, at a price that can't be beat. Our team of world class engineers is quite sure they can't unbolt anything else without it not flying anymore. Passengers: 72 + hitch-hiker in cockpit Engines: 3 x J-33 "Wheezly" (Extreme Edition) Fuel: 1460 kallons Parts: just 32! Separate ailerons can be removed at your own risk. Ladder included! (can be removed, but then you have to jump off) The same dead-simple aircraft can be painted two different colors and serve your fleet in as either (or both) a: Medium Regional Jet Cruising speed: 250m/s Cruising altitude: 8500m Fuel burn rate: .21kal/s Range: 1725km Supersonic Jet Cruising speed: 530m/s Cruising altitude: 5600m Fuel burn rate: .28kal/s Range: 2750km Comes with three handy action groups to help your underpaid staff fly it right: Action Group 1: Flaps. Deploy for takeoff and landing. Don't use while supersonic. Brakes: Brakes. Also deploys the air brake. "Abort": Thrust reversers. For use in case the brakes don't work. Also, it came free with the engines. The supersonic mode requires a microtransaction DLC, or else flying full throttle at around 2000m until you break 450m/s (or the plane). Supersonic climbs and cruise needs a smooth hand or fly-by-trim adjustment - too much swerving and you'll fall off the speedwagon. Super- or normal cruise is at a leisurely 90% throttle, with passengers protected from noise by the wings and the rear fuel tank. All for the surprisingly low price of 62,652,000 kerbucks! ( Download today! )
  2. Inspiring challenge, but I (sadly) find my solution looking more and more like AeroGav's. 30 parts <L4 is very constraining! How do people prevent the wheels from burning off on the way back in?
  3. Back in the pre-1.0 days, it was very handy to memorize the list of optimal Goddard speed / altitude combinations for launching rockets, so not to waste delta-V fighting drag / gravity. With the new 1.1 aero, is there any easy-to-follow launch speed/throttle advice?
  4. One SSTO I made was so twitchy I had to fly it with only trim changes (alt-W and alt-S).
  5. Hi Zaddy. If you want the engine to produce no thrust below 10km, and no thrust above 30km, then the second (thrust multiplier) column in your atmCurve would need to begin at 0 and end at 0 too. The first column (percent pressure) in your atmCurve would need breakpoints at 0,10,20(?), and 30km at least, maybe more. You can convert between altitude and atmospheric pressure with roughly Altitude = -5000 ln(percent Pressure) or percent Pressure = e^(-Altitude/5000). So 10000 is about 0.135, 20000m is 0.018, and 30000m is 0.0025. Maybe 0 0 ; 0.0025 0 ; 0.018 1 ; 0.135 0 ? The third and fourth columns are tangents - without a visual editor it's hard to see the implications of changing them. Doesn't Unity have an AnimationCurve editor?
  6. Success... but only by turning the legs 90 degrees and landing on the sides of the feet. Ugly hack, but something for now. I think the drag was because the legs clipped into the aft fuselage. It would make sense for drag to be calculated based on if the part's DragCube sticks out of the bay, perhaps? I've had some problems with Gigantor solar panels that appear (barely) stowed but still pick up heat and drag.
  7. I'm working on a SSTO Minmus miner, it's looking good except for how to land it. Dropping down right on top of the RAPIERS is one option, but better would be some temporary retractable landing legs at the back of the plane. Anyone seen a trick to stow big landing legs in a service bay? My attempt below doesn't work (the legs still pick up aero drag).
  8. Metaphor uploaded it to KerbalX, you can try flying it yourself. My guess is probably not, I found that it is a bit intakeAir-starved and TWR (not drag)-limited. edit: Nevermind, shock cone OP
  9. That thing lands like a feather leaf! Wow, that is the boundary-pushing that I hoped to see in this challenge. Wondering if the same design principles for a 3-wheeled manned craft could compete...
  10. Welcome to the forums t3hJimmer and thanks for the entry! A nice tradeoff of speed and fuel economy. Eyeballing it on the scatterplot, at roughly 12.5 minutes and 100 fuel your plane looks like it gets a better fuel /time tradeoff than the group average!
  11. Congrats juzeris, you have the honor of being first (and last) at both objectives... I wonder if going tiny is also relevant to speed, or whether highest wing-to-weight ratio is more important?
  12. http://kerbalx.com/ is what you want! I've updated your scoreboard with your second entry.
  13. Hi MathMog! Nice entry, capturing #2 in speed and fuel economy! I'm going to make a scatterplot one of these days, showing the tradeoff between the two. Nothing against probe cores in the rules, I didn't expect mass would matter very much in this challenge compared to aerodynamic drag. Still, smaller is better (until you have to land it!). Did you disable the front brake on your tripod plane? I find that's my biggest source of tipping over problems.
  14. Hey, juzeris, great entry, and congrats for pushing KSP's drag model to the limit. By popular demand, sure, autopilots allowed, it's all good. As for the two possible exploits, I'd say neither gear in fairings or dry jet spinup are kosher. But gear is debatable, since the drag model is somewhat broken (you should probably keep it extended the whole time?). Anyhow, you're on the leaderboard... and if someone threatens your lead you could shave off some time by nailing that landing.
  15. What a bullet, Crafter! I see 150 liquidfuel on takeoff, 35.61 on landing, so 114 units. I'm going to keep the challenge simple for now - but I'll put your craft's awesome features in the leaderboard! As for autopilot, if you really want to, post your entry and I'll make a MechJeb leaderboard. You can fly it yourself, I believe in you! The point of the challenge is to learn and share tips and tricks for making and flying great planes, having to deal with lift (takeoff), fuel (climb and glide profile), heat (cruising), and handling (landing). The turbojet is the 'middle ground' where you have to cope with all of these. I honestly don't know if doing sub-orbital hops is more fuel efficient than cruise... or if there's a low-thrust low-speed option... or if there's a way to deal with more heat to max out your speed at middle altitudes? Hoping we can try them all out and see how they compare!
×
×
  • Create New...