Breath air in space

[Buzz light fear]

Hi I am a new user but I was wondering if it would be possible to make a station that has an air intake at one end and a jet on the side to scoop air out of the atmosphere as the station rotated but I think it would be way to long and hard to do. So I am asking if anyone has made a sky hook in the game like on the Wikipedia page sky hooks. If it is possible I would like a challenge to see it done all mods are allowed but no cheats in the game from the debug console minimum required orbit is

 for the low 70+ km and 100km for the high.

[xoknight]

Air resistance would kick in once you hit the atmosphere at 69km (atmosphere ends at 69km, there's no air above that so jets don't work) and it would also be impossible due to the air intakes not being able to intake enough air due to such thin atmosphere making keeping a stable orbit impossible.

[FungusForge]

Sadly, due to things, planets have a set atmosphere height. For Kerbin this number is 70km, anything higher feels zero air resistance and can't intake air. Even then intakes and jet engines in general entirely cease being feasible at ~25km. As for the Sky hooks, I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to since wikipedia has ten or so different pages about things called Sky Hook. Maybe you could provide a link to the page you're referring to.

 

Also, as both a rule of thumb and an actual rule for posting challenges: make sure they are actually possible before submitting them. No one likes impossible challenges.

[Cunjo Carl]

Sounds awesome but a little impractical in scale. A similar but scaled back concept of simply flinging kerbals to get places sounds fun and is absolutely in the realm of possibility.

Scale
As I understand, the biggest things you can build in KSP are on the order of 1km. Beyond that they tend to shake themselves apart from phantom forces. The recent 1.1 update has made things even more wiggly, so I suspect a 30km is too big. As I understand it, wiggles can be better managed using a mod called TWEAKSCALE to simply scale your structures bigger while using fewer parts. Less parts means less joints to wiggle. Also, I remember KSP's physics being limited to 2.25km, though I'm not sure if that's been increased.

Spinning up
Keeping things spinning can be a challenge due to KSP's 'feature' to stop rotations when on-rails time warping or changing focus to look at something else. It would need to be spun up each time you want to use it. KSP has also historically been very liberal about what direction you left your craft pointing, so manuevering might be an issue.

Smaller but still interesting?
We can make long (100-200m) spinning structures with pods on the ends for transferring payloads (kerbals) between planets through the propellant-less art of flinging. I'm imagining a momentum tether in low orbit around Ike. You could put a Kerbal inside, spin it up, tell the Kerbal to EVA and laugh as it transfers him/her to your intended destination. From a low (13km) Ike orbit (LIO), you could perform the following transfers: LIO to Duna reentry (130m/s), LIO to interplanetary 3:4 resonant orbit for gravity assist (250m/s I think?), LIO to vertical landing on Ike (340m/s), LIO to Kerbin reentry (500m/s). If this seems interesting, let me know and I can help you formalize it into a challenge.

In any case, thanks for imagining a challenge! It can be hard to find the right balance between awesomeness and practicality. I've had troubles with it, too! Keep enjoying kerbals, poking around the forums and asking questions- it gets easier pretty quick!

[Buzz light fear]

Thanks for your input I was just wondering if the idea was possible and I was thinking that the ship could be short as long as it scooped air from the upper reaches of the atmospher and to reduce the drag the thing would spin because one end would be moving slow like a wheel rolling over the ground and that end in the atmosphere would scoop air. And yes I would like help with my challenge please all your tips are helpful. Sorry if this is an impossible challenge it is my first time in this community you could check out my other challeng it might be possible assuming you haven't already done something similar.

Edited May 11, 2016 by Buzz light fear
Stupidity earlier

[Buzz light fear]

18 hours ago, FungusForge said:

Sadly, due to things, planets have a set atmosphere height. For Kerbin this number is 70km, anything higher feels zero air resistance and can't intake air. Even then intakes and jet engines in general entirely cease being feasible at ~25km. As for the Sky hooks, I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to since wikipedia has ten or so different pages about things called Sky Hook. Maybe you could provide a link to the page you're referring to.

 

Also, as both a rule of thumb and an actual rule for posting challenges: make sure they are actually possible before submitting them. No one likes impossible challenges.

Thanks for the tip sorry for any inconvenience 

[FungusForge]

4 hours ago, Buzz light fear said:

Thanks for the tip sorry for any inconvenience 

Edited May 11, 2016 by FungusForge

[Cunjo Carl]

On 5/10/2016 at 5:28 AM, Buzz light fear said:

Thanks for your input I was just wondering if the idea was possible and I was thinking that the ship could be short as long as it scooped air from the upper reaches of the atmospher and to reduce the drag the thing would spin because one end would be moving slow like a wheel rolling over the ground and that end in the atmosphere would scoop air.

Though airscoops sound like they'd be an awesome thing to play with in actual physics, they unfortunately won't translate into KSP large or small. The two closest concepts would the momentum tethers from above, or an airbreathing plane which 'spins' into and out of the atmosphere by orbitting Kerbin with Pe~30km, and picks up speed during its brief dips into the atmosphere. As before, let me know if you'd like to pursue one of these, and if not, I look forward to seeing you more around the challenge forums!

[Buzz light fear]

1 hour ago, Cunjo Carl said:

Though airscoops sound like they'd be an awesome thing to play with in actual physics, they unfortunately won't translate into KSP large or small. The two closest concepts would the momentum tethers from above, or an airbreathing plane which 'spins' into and out of the atmosphere by orbitting Kerbin with Pe~30km, and picks up speed during its brief dips into the atmosphere. As before, let me know if you'd like to pursue one of these, and if not, I look forward to seeing you more around the challenge forums!

Thanks it did seem pretty far fetched when I was writing it thanks for the input 

[fortraan]

I don't care if this is impossible.

 

I wanna try it!!

[Cunjo Carl]

6 hours ago, fortraan said:

I don't care if this is impossible.

 

I wanna try it!!

Sweet!

[Jack_Aubrey]

i really don't know, but you should try Ubbio welding as a way to go big, the only problem is that there are limits to what you can weld together ( for example the no engine welding recomendation)

 

[fortraan]

I may have to make a modded part or two, but I don't want to mess with the aero stuff; I feel like that would be cheating. However, changing the intake's intaking ability might be required.

 

Time to fire up Eclipse and mod some parts.