[Stock Craft] Tech demonstration - Small speedboat - 236 m/s in water

[skepticon]

Here's a small boat I managed to design which can defy the physics terror that is Kerbin's ocean, and achieve a sustained speed of 236 m/s in a straight line.

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craft file - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_i9mp_pYiR0dXdmUDA2d2FSdUU/view?usp=sharing

note: once in the water, throttle up to 50%. Once speed hits about 50 m/s attempt to level off and point directly pro-grade (this will probably take several attempts). Then throttle up to max. I have been unable to successfully decelerate, although it is possible to become airborn.

After finishing my testing with this boat, I then tested these air intakes (attached to structural pylons) for suitability as pontoon landing gear for aircraft. It does work, and while I wasn't able to take off again because my engines kept getting knocked off by the water when surfing at about 8m/s a well designed aircraft should be able to take off and land from the water easily with a structural pylon/air intake pontoon combination.

[jman508]

i think my recon boat could get up to somewhere aroud 175 m/s and the speed variant ( also known as removing the science/cargo bay and adding moar engines) could hit roughly 360 m/s but i tried to turn and it disintegrated.

[skepticon]

i think my recon boat could get up to somewhere aroud 175 m/s and the speed variant ( also known as removing the science/cargo bay and adding moar engines) could hit roughly 360 m/s but i tried to turn and it disintegrated.

Water in KSP is like an event horizon

[Deutherius]

i think my recon boat could get up to somewhere aroud 175 m/s and the speed variant ( also known as removing the science/cargo bay and adding moar engines) could hit roughly 360 m/s but i tried to turn and it disintegrated.

Do you play with FAR or NEAR installed? Because it takes some serious engineering to create a low altitude supersonic plane in stock - supersonic boat would be a completely different level of challenge.

[Jakalth]

Actually, once you get it moving, going supersonic on water is not as hard as it is to fly supersonic. At least in Stock KSP. I've found that at speeds above 60 m/s, on water, strange things happen and drag seems to drop to similar to at about 5,000m. Now, keeping the craft in one piece at high speeds, on the water, is a completely different story...

Nicely done.

[GiantTank]

My highest water speed was 30 meters per second, when some rocket of mine was unbalanced and toppled into the ocean at full throttle. Many kerb-fish lost their lives that day.

[Jon144]

I am hopelessly disappointed you could not get it to 237 M/S

Should have added moar boostars.

At least you gave it your best effort.