Military Procurement: Strategic Bomber Concept

[War_Lord_Kevin]

Hi gigaboom,

I believe there is an error in your point tally. Field refueling is only worth 10 points.

[gigaboom2]

Thanks

[s1l3nt_c0y0t3]

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7 Turbojets: -21

161.1m/s: +16.1

12km ceiling: +15

6 extra internal bombs: +72

Refuel: +10

MET: +10

102.1 points

I'm going to change how the bombs are loaded so I can get a field reload bonus, too. I'm also going to do a parasite launch. It's okay to carry the parasite craft in the bay, right? Or does it have to be under the wing?

[Aanker]

As much as I want people to have creative freedom, I did write under the wing in the rules and changing that now (although justifiable) would be unfair to present entrants who built their planes around that premise. Unfortunately.

[hoioh]

Mission completed with 32 bombs on a refuelable, reloadable plane. Albums tomorrow.

[Aanker]

Updated scoreboard, good entry on the Bomb Bay, I'll be making my own benchmark entry soon (but you guys are doing so well I doubt I can beat the list).

[Jakalth]

Yeah, was planning on using my big SSTO as a re purposed bomber, but it had a limited bomb bay. It was crazy fast doing 250.4m/s in level flight @ 3000m and topping 1600m/s at 24Km, but... only 14 bombs and a lot of parts. So....

Instead I bring you the B-095 Khermite bomber.

This is a massive Bomber with 48 bombs in it's cargo bay and a max lifting capacity of 120 Tons. It's cargo bays, if fully packed, can hold a whopping 56 FL-T400 Bombs. But only 48 were used for reasons I decline to mention (cough) (explosions) (cough). It's top speed at 3000m is 133.4m/s and it can exceed 12,000m altitude as well as be refueled on the runway. The bombers specs are as follows:

Height: 8.9m tall

Width: 45.2m wide

Length: 39.2m long

Weight: 268.3 Tons

Part Count: 735 parts

Engines: 20 Turbojet engines

Lift: Between 270 and 295 Tons...

Since Photobucket doesn't have a good way to link albums to this forum, the link below will work for now:

The project in all it's details. aka: picture tour of testing and flight of the bomber to prove it did what I said.

Is it a bomber: yes

Does it hold at least 6 bombs: yes

can the Kerbals boad and exit the craft: yes

without falling to their doom: yes

can it fly to the peninsula, without cheating, drop its bombs, then return and land: yes

More BOOM: 48 - 6 = 42x12 = +504 points

Swift payback: 133.4m/s = +13.3 points

Engine Maintenance: 20 Turbojets = -80 points

Part Maintenance: 735 parts = -14.7 points

Fastest Bomber: Mission Time of 31 Minutes 14 seconds(31 Minutes 41 seconds if you count the photo op)

Airshow Maneuverability: nope peak force = 7G's

Flashy Technology: nope

Dynamic demonstration of force: nope was not able to land enough bombs on VAB to destroy it, not the best bomb operator.

Career Switch: yep carried two ssto's to altitude where they were deployed safely. +20 points

Service Ceiling: yep cruises above 12Km with full load of bombs. +15 points

Field Refueling: yep front docking port for convenient refueler hookup. +10 points

Field rearm: nope

Such Stealth: nope

Inspired shape: nope

Point total = 467 points.

You can play with this bomber if you like. I have both the Bomber and Heavy Lifter craft files available for download. Note: Lifter and Bomber are the same craft. I simply removed all the bombs and the bomb hangers from the lifter making it easier to add what you like for it's payload.

B-095 Khermite Bomber

B-095 Khermite Lifter

Oh! an interesting side mission. How about carrying a fully loaded Tactical Bomber to target and releasing it. Then have the Tactical Bomber bomb the target and fly home? More for the silliness of it then anything.

Edited March 15, 2015 by Jakalth

[hoioh]

Promised to send this in yesterday, but didn't get around to making a proper album, so here it is a day late.

Not quite as big as Jakalth's, but big nevertheless and sorta weird looking. Looks more like a kite than a plane, which has somewhat of a deteriorating effect on the handling without a payload at high altitude, but with the payload she flies nicely up to almost 18K. Reasonable cruising altitude is between 14K and 15K at which height it goes about 650m/s so it takes a fairly long time to get to the peninsula as you can't warp this thing at all at risk of rapid unplanned disassembly and she needs continuous flightpath maintenance, so there's no doing something else, you gotta pay attention.

Regardless of the crappy flight caracteristics, she does perform a lot of jobs admirably, though destroying the VAB with this payload isn't going to happen. Even kamikaze style direct hit flight didn't destroy the vab, but maybe that's because it's not career mode? I don't know, I recoded a full on direct hit of the entire payload and that didn't do it.

Because of the design it's possible to field-rearm the complete payload minus 2 bombs. (I didn't build the cart right, it might be possible to replace the frontmost 2 bombs, but this cart didn't do it.) Which is a whopping 30 bombs. Due to KSP crashing I didn't get around to filling 6 and only got to 4, but you get the picture when you review the album. Just drive the cart with payload under one of the many docking ports and raise the landing gears to atach it, drop the gear again and detach the cart, drive it back to the replacement payload and repeat. Works a charm, but having over 1000 parts in physics is not helpfull for KSP-stability.

Scoring:

More BOOM: (32 - 6) * 12 = 312 points

Swift Payback: 103m/s * 0.1 = 10.3 points

Engine maintenance: 8 turbojets * 4 = -32 points

Part maintenance: 532 part * 0.02 = -10.64 points

Destroy VAB: Fail

Career switch: Succes = 20 points

Service ceiling: 15K = 15 points

Field refueling: Succes = 10 points

Field rearming: Succes = 20 points

Operational ability: 5 points

Total: 312 +10.3 -32 -10.64 +20 +15 +10 +20 +5 = 349.66 points (350 points rounded)

Fun Challenge!

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Edited March 15, 2015 by hoioh

[juzeris]

Jumborator 5U

After raiding museums all night hunting for those old school square wings, the in-house aircraft division saw the fancy molded wings of the contestants and decided to increase the appeal of their entry the same way as always - with more boosters. (Seriously though, my pretty wings fall apart all the time.)

So here she is - capable of proper liftoff at 80 m/s fully loaded, payload of 30 type FLT400 bombs, loaded weight of 286t, no operational ceiling, spare air intakes hidden in a rear compartment, spontaneous disassembly at x4 warp (x3 was fine for me, just not very stable) and as an add-on - fancy nose cone with flamethrower capabilities.

Craft download

Scoring:

Is it a bomber - yes, claims she's a repurposed SSTO are completely without proof.

More BOOM: (30-6)*12=288

Swift payback: 122*0.1=12 (cruise speed, so no booster)

Engine maintenance: -4*20=-80

Part maintenance: 402*-0.02=-8

Airshow maneuverability: 10 (without the bombs though and with boosters on, not sure if that counts?)

Service ceiling: 15

Total: 237

Mission time: 28:10, for the orbital bombardment variant - 1:25:00 or so.

Updated score - added:

SPACE bomber: 20

Gentle giant: 20

Dynamic demonstration of force: 10

Updated total: 287

Completely stock normal bombing, used MechJeb for the targeting of orbital bombardment, I just cannot do that by hand (no parts).

Destroy VAB - after multiple attempts, reading about the unsuccess of the other entrants and some !!SCIENCE!! I'm fairly convinced the FLT400 firecrackers are woefully inadequate for the job, I couldn't make a dent in it with anything less than an X200-16, and then one was enough, so multiple firecrackers don't help, as far as I understand.

Mission footage:

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After the long flight and a close encounter with enemy sand and ants, the engineers on board decided there simply MUST be a more Kerbal way to do this. Also a way to fruitfully use more of those rocket boosters. Combining the two, the Kerbals did an orbital bombing run:

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Edited March 20, 2015 by juzeris
Updated scoring with new objectives

[dippercandy]

This is my concept on how to reload the bombs. This is the most interesting part of the challenge, your huge bombers

and the sheer amount of mass you are transporting are impressive thought.

[Aanker]

Ok, excellent entries. I'll edit the OP soon to reflect the new entrants and their flashy planes.

A note on the VAB, maybe changing it so you can use any payload loadout (not necessarily FLT400 bombs) for that particular task could be adequate. So you could load your bomber with orange fuel tanks and have a go at it.

- being an SSTO does not count as career switch but it could be turned into an interesting extra score source

- the turn can be performed without payload, I realize this may be somewhat unfair to change/add but it would probably be an impossible extra challenge otherwise

- I'll rebalance the VTOL challenge to be more rewarding and scale a bit better with the amount of engines required

PS.Scoreboard and rules updated.

Edited March 17, 2015 by Aanker

[hoioh]

Loaded her with 2 and a half Orange tanks, still not enough to destroy the VAB with a direct hit.

- - - Updated - - -

Had to switch to career mode to make it happen and it still took several attempts before I scored the right hit, but once you do it's a spectacle!

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- - - Updated - - -

I wonder about the Gentle Giant achievement: I've never seen any plane with a 5 degree angle at about 12km altitude, maybe that's a little too harsh of a requirement.

The only way I could see how is by tilting the cockpit down about 5 degrees, that way it may seem the challenge is beat, but it's technically just a trick to fool the altimeter.

[Aanker]

It's at 3 km altitude, where you would still have a lot of lift.

[Jakalth]

I'll have to retry the airshow(without bombs) and Demonstration of Force achievements again and see if it can even be done with my bomber. I'm pretty sure I can make a bunker buster bomb for taking out the VAB... Gentle Giant might already be achieved, I'll have to double check that one as well.

But, I'm not going to change my results and point total. Would be a little overkill... Ok, the Bomber its self is a little overkill but you get the idea.

[Aanker]

Alright well, people continue surprising me with constantly higher scores, so maybe you would want those extra points.

I'm trying to design my own benchmark bomber right now and let's just say there are more explosions coming from the bomber itself than its payload, haha.

[Jakalth]

Airshow Maneuverability: nope... even using the lifter variant, which is quite a lot lighter and more maneuverable considering it's size, can't get the Gees to exceed 7G.

Gentle Giant: nope... at 3000m and at cruising speed, Pitch has to be at 6.2deg. which is more then the 5 deg max.

Dynamic Demonstration of Force: Oh yeah. I think this one was more then proven. Didn't even have to make new "Bombs", I just lobbed the two sstos I already had it carrying at the VAB and BOOM!

Khermite Bomber vs VAB

That would add another 10 points to the total if you feel like updating it. Making the total points: 477

[hoioh]

It's at 3 km altitude, where you would still have a lot of lift.

Ah, misread you there, I thought it was both cruising and 3Km altitudes. (The trick still aplies though, you can just tilt the cockpit down to get this achievement, you'll just have to keep it in mind in the design phase.)

In that case I just gained 20 points, right?

- - - Updated - - -

Scoring update:

More BOOM: (32 - 6) * 12 = 312 points

Swift Payback: 103m/s * 0.1 = 10.3 points

Engine maintenance: 8 turbojets * 4 = -32 points

Part maintenance: 532 part * 0.02 = -10.64 points

Destroy VAB: Fail

Career switch: Succes = 20 points

Service ceiling: 15K = 15 points

Field refueling: Succes = 10 points

Field rearming: Succes = 20 points

Operational ability: 5 points

Sub Total: 312 +10.3 -32 -10.64 +20 +15 +10 +20 +5 = 349.66 points (350 points rounded)

You feeling lucky VAB? = 10 points

Gentle giant = 20 points

Total: 350 + 10 + 20 = 380 points (379.66 unrounded)

Edited March 18, 2015 by hoioh

[TheTsar52]

If any external bombs are used, do they have to be FT400s?

[gigaboom2]

I have created the Flying Narwhal Mk2. This one has 56 bombs and a actual narwhal horn! Still testing and sutch.

[Jakalth]

I designed my bomber for 56 bombs gigaboom2. But I kept getting rear impact issues in the cargo bays during bomb drop making the whole drop null(rear bombs exploded inside the bomb bay after impacting the rear wall of the bomb bay, no actual damage too the bomber though). Hope you can get past this issue with your MK2.

[Aanker]

@hoioh the intention is that it must be stable, straight (horizontal) flight within those parameters for a longer time so just maneuvering to get a transiently good angle difference is maybe a bit cheaty... but still thanks for pointing out that this would be possible under the rules. I will change them slightly. So for your updated score, did you do the gentle giant achievement that way?

@TheTsar52 it has to be FLT400s, merely for the sake of practicality of scoring. You are allowed to put other stuff there but it wont count towards the point tally.

As a general note, Ill be working to clarify rules as questions come up.

Also got to say ladies and gentlemen, keep the entrants coming! It has been my great pleasure to check back on this thread for more interesting bomber designs.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Aanker

[gigaboom2]

That Happened to me in my first ship, if you cut the throttle and dive, it helps.

[hoioh]

@hoioh the intention is that it must be stable, straight (horizontal) flight within those parameters for a longer time so just maneuvering to get a transiently good angle difference is maybe a bit cheaty... but still thanks for pointing out that this would be possible under the rules. I will change them slightly. So for your updated score, did you do the gentle giant achievement that way?

When I flew it the first time I never intended to do any such thing, it just happened without my realizing it. In the screenshot I'm gearing up to reach maximum speed at 3000m altitude, so you bet it's been flying in exactly that direction for a while there when I made the screenshot. (I was actualy holding my finger over the F1 button to click as soon as 3000m was reached, the angle insures as high a speed as possible without taking ages to get there.) If you want I can post the craft file and you can try it yourself. Beware though, she becomes difficult at high altitude and speed without the payload.

[wossname]

I tried this challenge tonight and I found it hugely enjoyable. I have never built such a massive aircraft. The original prototype was 290 tons, I had to drain some fuel and add MOAR ENGINES!!! to get it off the runway.

My plane is called "Dave the plane". Simple but effective. Dave accommodates 4 crew, in almost no comfort at all. The snacks are severely limited.

But off the runway it goes, with a bit of persuasion.

The "Eastern Peninsular" attack was successful, followed by a tough flight home and a really tricky landing at KSC.

I can carry 12 bombs in the cargo bay and drop them carefully and safely over the target area. I hope that's worth a few points.

KSP tells me I did the mission in about 49 minutes and my plane has 350 parts when new (and 299 parts after mission end). I have no idea if that's any good or not but oh boy it was a great flight.

I'd like to share my plane with other players if they want to fly it. Not really sure how to do that though.

I have set up a couple of stages that help the big plane up into the air but it's a pig to get airbourne.

Thanks for this awesome thread, I had much fun playing along with it.

Here's a pic of my plane

Edited March 19, 2015 by wossname

[gigaboom2]

Why did you use RAPIERs? Because unless that monstrosity is going into space, I think the basic jet would be better off, because it gives about 40 more thrust at runway to help you get airborn and costs less points.

P.S. That is the most elegant ship I have ever seen:wink:

Edited March 19, 2015 by gigaboom2