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Burnelli-style planes


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Vincent Burnelli advocated for a variation of the flying wing that transformed the center section of a plane from a tube into a wing foil section. I am trying to figure out the best approach to making something like this, but figured that it would be good to ask people who have been building these things longer than I have: how would you approximate this sort of design in KSP? My earliest attempts involved turning Mk-2 fuselage segments 90° to the direction of travel, and using them as wings, but it did not fly very well.

Examples: 

Burnelli_RB-1.jpg
Burnelli RB-1

Burnelli_CB-16.jpg

Burnelli CB-16

Image-of-C-1057-concept.jpg
A rejected shuttle design, apparently using the same design philosophy as Burnelli.

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Well, for one thing, I don't think you're going to be able to make this really work (in the sense of "the airfoil shape of the fuselage generates lift") in stock KSP, because it doesn't actually model aerodynamics with that degree of fidelity.  There's no Bernoulli effect.

The Mk2 parts already have a lift factor built into them, when they're mounted "correctly" (i.e. in the usual longitudinal way).  But that's not because the game is somehow simulating lift due to their shape-- it's because the part's config explicitly says "give this part lift".

If you run a mod like FAR that actually models airflow to some degree, maybe it would work if you have an appropriately-shaped craft?  I don't know enough about how FAR models things to know whether it would actually function this way.

 

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I tried a couple of different things. I think if I double up on the second design and fill the space between the two passenger "bars" with wings, it might do better.

Both fly reasonably well, but the bottom one is definitely a bit draggier than the top one. I think this will require more thought than Snoopy's doghouse did.

AS-148_zpshlveztmk.jpg

AS-160_zpsw2uzlyay.jpg

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