TheTripleAce3

Wonder if it would be faster or slower to use a hydrofoil on Laythe

I'm not sure if Final Frontiers changes any aerodynamics in the game or if you run 120% heating, but running 100% heating I'll tell you that mach 6.5 (ballpark guess for 2,000m/s) below 30km is definitely doable with a decently aerodynamic design, good part choice for heating, 2 Whiplashes, and an Aerospike. Have fun, Ace.

With cheats he can reach escape velocity at sea level iirc.

You still need some way of yaw control. Even spoilers can work. The problem with 0 yaw control is that you will eventually get into a maneuver and want to turn out, rolling out is fine but then you will have a slip and not be able to correct for it easily, and that causes asymmetric lift and drag performance which can cause a nasty spin.

Using solar power on a plane with the electric motors as propulsion should let me get to a point where I can match the Sun's movement in the sky. It'd be slow, and someone above mentioned that it is possible, so I figured I may as well add it to one of my janky experiments in ksp.

The ducted fans take so little power to spin that it should be possible.

The point is to get infinite flight endurance while being able to go around Kerbin and do some science stuff.

The problem with hovering it in place is that the atmosphere moves with the planet, meaning that just hovering wouldn't actually move you horizontally since you still carry the momentum from being on the ground. Tesla had ideas for an internet-like thing with data transmitted through balloons or something like that that didn't take such a thing into account, hence why it was never tried.

Just asking this here to get extra feedback. If there was a way for an autopilot to work with the ducted fans in 1.8 and set you on a westward course with 167.0m/s surface velocity, you should theoretically have infinite endurance since you are going against Kerbin's rotation and keeping the sun in the same spot (not accounting for Kerbin revolving around the Sun mind you but there should be a way around that). Any thoughts? Has someone done this before?

CG = CL isn't bad, in fact it offers the highest degree of controllability (in a GA sense at least). If your design starts off draining aft tanks first you can actually afford to keep a default aft CG to assist in takeoff. Once you start needing more stability then you can shift fuel forwards, etc, etc.

CG shift aft in flight, set fuel priorities. A canard design without a horizontal stab with fuel draining evenly and large parts at the back is destined to spin out, and your canards being standard size may not have the moment to recover. Basically what I'm saying is that your plane may not need more air, unless you mean at 16+km in which case clip another shock come in there, but it could be that your plane lacking passive stability in the rear is causing the nose to rise slowly, increasing your alpha, and decreasing the air you get to a point you lose controllability and stability.

Not giving range data because I was learning hyperedit at the time and fiddled with some things in the flight that likely invalidated the entry, but I'll retry it as soon as I get the time.

Posting to remind myself to show rocket biplane w/ forward sweep on wings.

The reason I tried it is because they can bounce things through relays without a direct connection to kerbin, but if the station is the one with the primary connection (say you have a 27 antenna boosted outpost on Eeloo, and an RA-2 equipped satellite) the station CAN transmit to kerbin, and if the probe could be told to, the commsnet lines did suggest that it COULD bounce signal through the relay to other places on the planet, however this is not the case in practice.

Well it seems you were right @Geschosskopf, the deployed antennae do not actually send signals to relays, but they do send science through them. Kinda odd but understandable.