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Round-Kerbin Planes


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Circumnavigation is completely doable in the game. In fact it's not too hard to make a plane that can circumnavigate Kerbin multiple times without refueling.

Here's an album showing a craft I made that went around Kerbin 9 times. Might have been able to do 10 but I wanted to have go-around reserves for landing.

https://imgur.com/a/jZXkp

I believe the maximum number of circles of the planet I've seen anyone do is 14x.

Interestingly enough, it seems you can get better fuel efficiency with turbojets or rapiers screaming along at mach 5+ at high altitude than at low speed and altitude with turbofans. I guess there's just so little drag at 28km that even hypersonic flight is efficient.

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Well, there needs to be an altitude limit, otherwise you can cruise along at 69.5 km, with a little terrier farting occasionally to maintain speed.

High altitude travel saves a lot of drag, but especially in KSP. High altitude = fast (because it has to be to generate enough lift), and especially in KSP that means travelling a significant portion of orbital velocity, which means you need much less aerodynamic lift, which means much less induced drag.

If you halve drag losses, then you can halve Isp and end up with the same efficiency.

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gKheUgC.jpg

This one of mine can maintain supersonic flight in panther dry mode,  the wings are angled up where they attach to the fuselage so it still makes lift when set to prograde hold.    In fact this eliminates fuselage drag and serves as a type of autopilot, making it much more efficient.   Also note, the very high cruising altitude.

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Screechcraft-Starship-SST

Fuel burn is very low at cruising altitude , so it can circumnavigate.

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On a smaller scale I've got a couple of designs that can fly around Kebin despite only holding160 units of fuel. One's powered by a panther engine while the other uses two Junos.

l5Ml9Np.jpg

W3DP5UR.jpg

They rely on the fact that they can fly fast and high.

 

Cupcake...

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This is my most recent planet-spanner - the Loon 3. It's designed to recover capsules which are splashed down anywhere on Kerbin. It's currently splashed down southwest of the crater lake, with the big four onboard after Bill, Bob, and Jeb's recent lunar mission.

Zr4lEcl.png

A far cry from my normal aesthetically pleasing replicas, this ugly dock has four wheeslys and two panthers, plus a pair of Fleas to aid in water takeoffs.

Top speed is 260m/s at altitude, but it's stable as a rock. I flew it a third of the way around Kerbin in IVA mode at 4x time warp, if that's any indicator.

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I designed this as a Long Distance Recovery Vehicle (LDRV) which is capable of circumnavigating Kerbin to pick up returning Kerbonauts.  I don't use it so much these days as I have gotten a lot better at bringing orbiting craft back a lot closer to KSC.

Twingo.jpg

Edited by Scarecrow
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I accidentally ended up making a silly little circumnavigator a while back while building tiny planes with my cousin. We named it "Airy Larry the Extraordinary," because it accidentally circumnavigated Kerbin in under 43 Kerbin minutes, using less than 540 units of liquid fuel. I say accidentally because I just was doing a simple test flight to see what its top speed and ceiling would be... and then I realized it'd probably go 'round the planet. It did, with plenty of fuel to spare.

6chSWWD.png

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AJKjgRZ.png

With a more deliberate ascent path, a little less extra fuel on board, and after trimming some of the "luxury" parts, you could probably get the trip down to well under 40 minutes and <450 units of fuel.

... And my cousin called Airy Larry the Extraordinary cute. So it's officially cute, and highly capable!

Happy to PM you a craft file if you'd like.

-SkunkTwerks

Edited by SkunkTwerks
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