DualDesertEagle

Ok, guys, since there are no further submissions until now and I'm barely gonna have any internet connection from tomorrow I'll have to leave this thread open to competing entries and find a new host! And since we've been getting along pretty well so far I suggest that YOU, @Cunjo Carl, take over from here. Would u want to be the new host and judge of this challenge?

Last chance now, peepz, 10 hours left!

I never said the plane HAS to be supersonic-capable. That was just my personal goal.

^ This. /Thread

Even if the long an the short ones were the same mass it would take much longer for the long ones to start spinning coz some of their mass is much further out than on te short ones. As we all know, pulling a long lever requires much less force if we pull on the end that is farthest from the joint. But the closer to the joint u get, the harder it is to pull the lever. On ur long ships that means the further out u place ur RCS relative to the CoM the faster the ship is gonna react. But reaction wheels are just spinning mass so with those only their torque in relation to the ship's mass and shape is relevant. Their position still doesn't matter. Let's look at the well known ice dancers doing their pirouettes again: When they spread their arms during spinning they slow down coz the same mass moving at the same speed is moved further away from the center of rotation and has to travel further to achieve the same angle of rotation. Likewise, if they pull their arms in they'll spin faster again.

U are missing something there, which is the fact that the stick still rotates around its center of mass when it's flying trough the air. U can even see that by throwing a stick urself. As u throw it the center of rotation is in ur wrist, so actually not even in the stick itself. But as soon as u let go u'll notice that as the stick is moving through the air it's spinning evenly like the propeller of a plane, just around another axis. Now add a weight to one end of the stick so that the center of mass lies roughly at the position where the weight is. Then grab the opposite end with no weight on it an throw the stick like that. Now is the stick still spinning evenly or is it spinning around the point where u added the weight? Both is true actually, even tho 1 end of the stick spins much further out than the other. The reason for that is that the stick with the weight on it is now spinning around their shared center of mass. And now I've got something for u to try out in KSP: make a ship that consists of a long I-beam in the center and equally heavy "pods" on its ends, one of them containing a reaction wheel. Make absolutely sure the pods are the exact same mass, clip lighter parts into them if u have to. Now send it to LKO either using a rocket or hyperedit, whatever u prefer, and make sure it's decoupled from the rocket with nothing left of it. Wait until the rocket has drifted away a few meters and then start yawing or pitching using the reaction wheel. Of course it's gonna rotate around the center of the I-beam. Now do the same thing again but this time make 1 pod significantly heavier and the other just the reaction wheel itself. I promise u it's gonna spin roughly around the heavier pod, not around the center of the I-beam, not around the reaction wheel.

Gotta catch up with what happened during my off-time: First I want to announce that I'm most likey still gonna have internet until saturday morning so I'll add another day to the time in which competing submissions can be put in here. Now for the submissions: The plane u have submitted looks quite ok but I don't see it doing any tight maneuvers in any of the included pictures. This disqualifies ur submission until u put up some pics that show how agile ur plane is. U can enter with a different plane aswell, u've got another whole day to do so. For now u are the only contestant an thus first in the "other aircraft" category. Also thanks for tryin' to cheer me up but it's not necessary since finally leaving sh!thole germany makes me really lovein' happy Yes, u can use that aswell, just remember to stick with aerodynamic controls and thrust vectoring. (And for the pennypickers in this thread: Yes, thrust vectoring can also mean tilting the whole engine!) I suppose that Harrier is gonna be part of the fighter jet category?

Yes I did, but a 90 degree turn with a 2 km radius isn't impressive at that kinda speed either. U could easily reduce the radius by adding canards or (like I did) wing strakes. While canards are probably the more effective variant of the 2 the pic in which my fighter jet is flying backwards should prove that even wing strakes already help alot by providing something that the air can catch on to as soon as the angle of attack is increased. So now u've been given a tip how u can improve ur craft, go ahead and try it, the turn radius even at high speeds should drop by A LOT!

Well when it took ur plane 2 km to pull out of a dive I'd say it's not exactly agile, is it?

Any other ppl who want to enter this? Can't take THAT long to build an appropriate plane when I can build something like my submission within 15 minutes...

Actually, while there are some similarities to our actual solar system I'd say the whole game takes place in another [fictional (?)*] solar system. *Maybe the Kerbol System DOES actually exist as introduced in the game somewhere in the universe, who knows?

More like send a nuke and blow it to bits as long as no one's up there!

That sounds reasonable, but high Gs don't necessarily mean that the plane changes its direction, it could aswell mean the plane just decellerates really hard. So I need to ask u to still include a screenshot with a visible exhaust trail. Or make a video instead, that proves more than 1000 pics. KER AND FAR ALLOWED FROM NOW, rules updated

Oh, forgot to answer the FAR thing: I honestly don't know if I should allow or not allow it, I honestly don't have the slightest clue what EXACTLY it does.

I just sold my computer and now I'm restricted to my tablet so I must ask u to at least take some screenshots of the plane u want to enter with and post them here. As for the judgment, U can tell how tight a given maneuver was by looking at the exhaust trail. That's why I made that rule. Look at the pic where my plane is going backwards according to the retrograde node. The exhaust trail shows not only that but also how I got there.

As I said, my fighter jet looks a little like a crossing of an F-18 and F-22: Has plenty of power to go vertical: Looks agile enough to even compete with the X-31: Like every good fighter jet it can bust through the sound barrier: And it can more or less stand on its thrust jet, at which the SAS in combination with the thrust vectoring really helps: Looking straight up from the front seat of the cockpit I noticed that I had spiraled my exhaust trail around the sun: But what I think that even the X-31 can't do is flip itself backwards to take aim and shoot at planes that make the mistake to chase it And to me, only a landing that leaves the plane reusable is a good landing:

Before I'm giving my sold PC to its buyer I decided to start and participate in one last challenge, which is making the most agile fighter jet or other aircraft, which are also the 2 categories that I'll divide the entries into. Rules: - The challenge will be open for competing submissions until the 2nd of September since I'm not sure if I'll have an internet connection after that. - Since there's no way to ensure no one's using them I'll allow u to use the reaction wheel in ur cockpit, but other than that there are only aerodynamic control surfaces and thrust vectoring allowed. - The use of Alt - F12 is of course strictly prohibited - Part mods are allowed (e.g. Mk2 essentials, BahaSP, B9 Aerospace, Firespitter, etc) - KER and FAR are also allowed - Having any kind of weapons is NOT part of the challenge, but they are allowed to further demonstrate the capabilities of ur aircraft - Everything submitted in the fighter jet category must look somewhat like a present day fighter jet or a mix of them (for example, mine is a little bit of a mix of an F-18 and F-22) - Demonstrate the agility of ur aircraft either by making a video or, if u can't make a video (like me), make screenshots in which the exhaust trail shows what a tight maneuver u've just flown - No one's being forced to take part in this so if u don't like the rules u can make a suggestion, but if I decide not to change the rules accordingly u can either accept that or not take part in this! Leaderboard Fighter jets other aircraft 1. DualDesertEagle 1. Cunjo Carl 2. 2. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 5.

I don't think the weight of the kerbals counts for the OP. Anyway, after having my game crash multiple times coz it only supports a certain number of kerbals in a cargo bay I decided to try and take off with those I had loaded so far. But after one of them glitched through the bottom at one spot I was like "f**k this, I'm gonna bomb-drop 'em!" So I opened the rear of the 2 cargo bays which was facing down and let 'em all fall out. I think I dropped like 15 or so, 8 or 9 of which survived their impact! And I wasn't exactly flyin' slow!

I just tried stuffing as many kerbals as I could into a long Mk3 cargo bay on a plane that only weighs about 26 tons. There would PROBABLY have been enough room to get all kerbals in there that I already flew to the island with my big, heavy Kerbus K276 but the ratio would've been about 26 / 276 = 0.094, which would probably be hard to beat. The problem is that u have to drop them from a second vehicle with a passenger module right above the open cargo bay, pooping them out one by one. Not only is that pretty much as tedious as it would've been to EVA all the kerbals from my big plane but the kerbals also tend to fall through the bottom of the cargo bay, which also tends to happen when the plane starts taxiing. So mission "ridiculous load" failed badly and I'm afraid I don't have any idea how I could make it work. EDIT: I might have an idea that could work tho, using an MK2 cargo bay that opens both at the top and the bottom!

Unfortunately I already made my PC half-way ready for selling and OBS was among the programs that I removed in the process so this time I can only provide screenshots. Meet my Kerbus K276 (The number is the actual number of seats on the plane altogether (including the 4 in the cockpit): At 186 tons with 276 kerbals onboard I may not have the best ratio (0.674), but so far I've definitely flown the most kerbals to the island with a single plane. The pic below shows where all the MK3 Passenger modules (16 seats a piece, 17 modules total) are. Hard to believe that such a heavy piece of junk can actually leave the ground but it really does! And it handles like it was controlled with reaction wheels, taking like half a decade to respond to the controls, but it's also pretty stable. Also, the slot between the 2 lower portions of the fuselage helps with lining the plane up for the final approach. Almost there... Touching down after almost a quarter of the runway, the first in 5 attempts where I managed to touch down gently enough to NOT break the main landing gears And if u really like maltreating ur brakes u can still bring this heap of junk to a halt in front of the old hangars (all brakes at max. torque, still wondering how the landing gears didn't break O_O) And after I didn't wanna sit through the tedious process of manually disembarking all 276 kerbals I hope this is enough proof that I did actually fill the whole thing up with them And last but not least, I justify my bad landing skills with big, heavy planes by telling u that I usually build and fly stuff that is just a LIIIIIIIITTLE more agile and responsive And yes, I DID manage to save that thing, as u can tell by looking at the exhaust trail it's really f**kin' agile!

Another good example where excessive clipping makes sense is when u wanna make good-looking split-elevons type airbrakes. I mostly make them by placing both straight up and straight down elevons that I set up to deploy in opposite directions and then clip them into each other by pointing them straight backwards. Then I deploy them all, set up the action groups and then test the plane, mostly with the result that split-elevon airbrakes are very effective. If the game would allow us to do that I could even get rid of the vertical stabilizers and make the outer airbrakes open according to the yaw input, but that's a little too far offtopic to further explain.

And the same goes for batteries placed inside a fuel tank I'd say coz irl u could easily have some separate area at the top or the bottom of the hull around the fuel tank and place them there.

I mostly use it for stuff like getting radially attached batteries out of the air stream when I don't have any axial batteries yet or I use it to improve the looks of my craft.

Well then I've just learned alot, I always thought they'd be taking off mainly to the east.

Yeah, I'm doing the same thing but on rockets with radial symmetry only it fortunately doesn't matter how they're oriented. But even there I do indeed make sure that the command module or probe core is oriented belly east. Don't understand why they didn't just turn the whole thing so that the vertical stabilizer was facing east from the beginning. 2 of the Kennedy Space Center's launchpads (including the Space-Shuttle one I think) are oriented north - south, looking from the side that the crawler comes from. So what would prevent them from simply launching the shuttle tail-east?