ExaltedDuck

My vote would be for a new challenge/new leaderboard. 1.0.3 seems to have made some pretty significant changes to fuel economy and OP seems to have abandoned the leaderboard updates.

same here. My huge expedition circumnavigator that's playing titanic above would have made the three laps had I fueled it properly last night. Back in it now, I'm cruising 50 m/s faster and 1000 m higher but I don't think I'll have enough fuel to make two full loops. Peak ascent consumption last night was around 12 units/second. today, it got up to 21. Cruising was around 4 for last night's run but stayed close to like 5. Maybe if I use a shallower climb and less than full throttle to get past 10000m then push harder above 15000m... dunno. Might not be a valid concept of a plane now. That's a whole lot of work down possibly down the tubes now...

damndamndamndamndamndamndamndamndamndamndamndamn Was working on an expedition circumnavigation and after 2 hours of babysitting over 3 hours of flight (in which all my mathematical projections based on consumption rates suggested I'd have just enough fuel) I ran dry just before reaching the island with the runway. The KSC strip was 98 km out when the engines spooled down and I was about 20 km up, moving along at around 1100 m/s. Tried to glide it, but the nose started pitching wildly before finally rising 90 degree, killing all forward velocity, and leaving me fighting to try to point back to the prograde. Didn't happen. Best I could manage was getting a flat attitude as I plummeted seaward. Couldn't revert flight as I'd saved when the fuel was critically low and reloaded to retry the descent approach under manual controls. Out of some fluke, that flat attitude was almost as good as a parachute, getting my downward velocity down to about 20 m/s, letting most of the craft survive. More than 7000 km flown and I splashed down less than 50 km short of the runway. The real kicker, though, was that when I went back to the SPH verify that the lift was what I though it should be, I realized I'd left out about 1800 units of fuel prior to take off. Face meet palm. On the upside, I'm virtually guaranteed to make it next time.

Because that plane clearly doesn't have 1210000000 ElectricCharge.

Here's my entry. I should read the thread a little more. I'd have flown longer to beat some these later scores. Got as high as 18 even. All vanilla fwiw.

One thing that can help immensely (and I didn't see this tip quickly skimming through the thread. If it has been mentioned, apologies for the redundancy) is the fact that obital time acceleration changes how physics are applied. Most notably, it makes each ship a stable and solid body. Any bending, spinning, rotation, vibration, porpoising, etc. will be killed off if time acceleration is applied even for the briefest instant. Some might consider exploiting this aspect as cheesing. But it might help you manage alignment by stoppung unwanted rotation. Otherwise, all I can suggest is trying to manage all 6 degrees of freedom with hands on wasdqe and ijklhn. It's difficult but as long the undesired rotation isn't too severe, you should be able to counter rotate against (wasd) it as it is induced by your translational control (ijkl) input.

That was fun. Quirky, but not unmanageable. Take-off is really hairy. Cruising needs to be held slow enough to prevent the whiplashes from really waking up and throwning the nose up and over. I really can't compete with the landing in that other video. That was just epic. As far as the challenge, maybe I should have asked before attempting the challenge, but is "deploying" an aerodynamic surface against the rules? I assumed not, since in most cases, it's effectively an extreme trim setting. Looking at the craft in the SPH, I expected deployment of the tail surfaces might help keep the nose down, so that's how I flew it. Anyway, here's a video of my entire attempt: (from time index 3:30 to 7:00 is pretty uneventful. And after landing and taxiing, I was trying to get a group shot of the crew but the cameraman is apparently deeply claustrophobic. Apologies for Valentina's absence. In my sandbox save, she's...err...on...sabbatical... yeah, that's the ticket. Taking a little trip to study marine biology.

If the trajectory is coming back down for a polar orbit attempt for a vehicle that makes it fine into a standard eastward departure, it sounds like the ascent path isn't taking into account that the planet's rotation is added to that eastward launch but has to be cancelled out for a polar launch (and would have to be overcome for a westward launch). A northward gravity turn is the most efficient path but you might want to turn a little later and/or a little slower than you would for an eastward ascent, and if it doesn't work out, add a little more fuel.

Another helpful tool for learning is the maneuver nodes themselves. It cab easily overlooked just how much info they give you. To get a feel for how your position and timing affect your potential encounters, set up a node as a transfer to the altitude of mun or minmus then move the node and note how much the orbit changes and how the prograde/retrograde and radial/anti-radial inputs can change things both in terms of dv input and angles. It starts to make intuitive sense as to when and how to do most things. Then, plan transfers between mun and minmus. The same principles apply to interplanetary missions, just with Kerbol as the primary body instead of Kerbin.

So I went ahead and downloaded some of those fancy schmancy robot piloting softwares and let it take the helm of my updated circumnav prototype. My changes were to get rid of the outboard nacelles and leading edge intakes. Now the engines are fuselage mounted behind inline breathers (I think I used pre-coolers. not sure if their behavior is any different from the other intake). I also traded the vertical stabilizers for some fixed wing bits because I was having problems with every articulating winglet exploding after about 1500 km at speed. I took off facing hdg 270. I don't think it was much faster than facing down the runway and just pulling up past vertical. I guess it could save a few seconds. Initial ascent was at about 35-40 degrees leveling down to about 10 degrees by 10000 meter to be able to reach >1100 by 20000. Cruising speed was generally pretty close to 1200 and held between about 18500 and 21000 m and full 4x time accel was in effect from about t+90 s to t+55 min. I tried to bleed off speed as late as possible with a about -40 - -45 degree initial descent straight at the SPC from full altitude. Cut throttle at 17000m, applied brake from about 15000-10000, throttle up to hold mach speed down to about 3000 then level out. Came in a little too fast and late and rolled past end of the runway, but avoided any damage. I might be able to shave a little more time off, but not without way more effort than I currently have the willpower to commit to. I'd rather get to work on a multilap circumnavigator. Anyway... final time 56 min 43 s. Pudding:

Interesting tips. I expect my entry could have gone several minutes faster, perhaps even under an hour with more consistent piloting. But I'd rather go buy a flight stick than tell the computer how to fly for me. I see designing/building the craft as only half the challenge. The more important part is the flying. Especially in something like this, it is a challenge against the human condition to remain alert throughout an occasionally tedious flight. (I forgot to mention before that my submission was 100% vanilla with no additional helpers beyond SAS. I even avoides warp time, although that was due to flight dynamics issue it causes with my entry craft) It would be interesting to see the leader boards split to mod and no-mod categories.

Thanks Fengist. It's funny you mention the single engine trend. My next one will be single engine and with a little luck, should be under an hour. A quick test flight turned into a full blown attempt earlier tonight but I ran out of gas about 300 km short and had veered 6 or 7 degrees south by the time I was over the last ocean. I also started looking at gigantic planes again, to see if I get one around twice. I had a 195.5 ton behemoth packing over 27000 fuel on a pretty solid run but I messed up the fuel distribution then hit some turbulence that pulled my nose too far off course to correct and it broke spectacularly over the big desert. And my fuel consumption rate would have only given me about 80-90 minutes. Turns out a dozen ramjets running wide open at mach 3 get a bit thirsty. =D

New to the forums, my first post. This challenge looked like fun. I happened to have built a craft a few days ago I call the Longhaul mk II. It bears a superficial resemblance to the SR-71 but it wasn't meant as a clone or tribute or anything. It just happens to be an efficient shape for high speed. The mk I looked a little more traditional and kinda like a B-1. But it had some serious technical issues I guess also like the B-1. So I scrapped the traditional wing/elevator format for the exotic Big S Deltas used here. Its intended purpose was to survey the mountains on the far side of Kerbin. It managed to do so quite effictively and on its maiden flight, no less. It took only 20 minutes to get to the ranges north of the desert and I was able to fly low over 5 or 6 major ranges before turning back home and landing safely. This challenge looked like fun but I wanted to build something new for it. I tried a variety of craft, opting for the large chassis parts and up to 15 or 20 thousand kilos of fuel. Needless to say, they didn't exactly take to the skies. With traditional wing formats, I was having trouble getting airborne at all. I even tried strapping a kickback to the bellies to try to brute force it skyward. The strongest contender was a flying canard design with the airplane wings on the back and the low level swept wings as canards. It could climb and it handled quite well for such a behemoth but it just didn't have the guts to get up to speed. Bottom line is, they were all just too heavy and too draggy unless I was willing to strap so many motors to them that the huge amounts of fuel would burn out sooner than the modest 3400 or so in my Longhaul. So, mildly defeated but unashamed, I wheeled it out to the strip last night, took to the skies and turned north. It was smooth sailing. Made it to the ice shelf in like 10 minutes. Then started getting dizzy at the awkward motion below me. I saw the navball spinning but chalked it up to being not quite centered over the pole. Kept flying, checked my map a few minutes later, and saw I was headed southbound maybe 15-20 degrees west of of the KSC. No dice. Called it a night. Finally, I got back home from work tonight and sat myself down after dinner and got ready to go. I decided on a 270 heading to avoid last night's problems. Everything went smooth until I reached the west coast. I had chosen a poor climb profile, started overheating, and melted my shock cones as I tried to brute force it over 20 km with not enough speed. I reverted to take off, spooled up my engines, let off the brakes, let myself get up to about 120 m/s then yanked back about a 140 degree rotation from the runway. I never strayed more than a degree north of the 270 heading and kept the nose below 40 degree on the horizon. Got myself up to speed and altitude (900-1100 m/s, 18-23 km) and rode parabolas as needed to keep airspeed and altitude where I found the best running. I flew into the most epic sunrise I've seen in KSP and just kept on going through the day and back into the black night. Almost an hour later, I almost missed the Space Center. I had to take a radically steep path down to get myself lined up for arrival and while it wasn't my most graceful decent or landing, I got to the ground with all people and parts intact. Final time, just under 68 minutes. I would bet that I could improve it by a few minutes and that a good pilot could get this thing back in under an hour. But if I run another, it will be in a new craft. (I would try to limit myself to just enough fuel and a tighter cross section to allow higher/faster flight.) Here's the mission gallery: The craft is a very basic setup with not very many parts. What you see is what you get. Well, with some fuel lines to connect the supplies. But otherwise, nothing extraneous and all as little clipping as possible (done really for asthetics and not for cheesing) Funny side note, When I disembarked the pilots for the final pictures, I completely forgot that I had installed a ladder. And Jeb's departure sent the female up in the air on a double somersault which she landed gracefully while his own clumsiness left him plummeting straight down from the hatch and onto his head. Anyway, enjoy. I did.