Kerbin Circumnavigation 1.0.2 - Aviator Challenge

[Fengist]

Here's my entry for a single trip around Kerbin:

Time: 1h 17m 58s

Heading: 90 degrees (East)

Highest Altitude: 23,830m

Highest speed: 1,107m/s

Nice to see someone doing it the old skool way, with turbos. List updated.

[Aghanim]

Introducing KSS Glamdring, the simplest Kerbin circumnavigating vehicle... ish?

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Seriously. Pilot Assistant is so overpowered. Could I go faster? Could I go simpler than this? Currently I don't have time to test it out, but later I will.

[Fengist]

Introducing KSS Glamdring, the simplest Kerbin circumnavigating vehicle... ish?

http://imgur.com/a/TT7jD

Seriously. Pilot Assistant is so overpowered. Could I go faster? Could I go simpler than this? Currently I don't have time to test it out, but later I will.

Question Aghamin. I see you traveled 5,800+ KM. I thot mine broke a record going 4,400km for what amounts to a 3,900km trip. Why so far? You were lots faster than I was.

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How about draw the line at "Fuel cannot be more than 50% overlapped with other fuel"?

I think jezeris could do the same flight with only +1 or 2 minutes if it was 3 tandem cargobays

More drag. While he probably could, each part in line creates it's own drag via the joints. Or at least that's my understanding. But I'm also pretty certain that part clipping doesn't occlude the parts. I've had landing gear burn of that were definitely clipped inside a fuel tank. It's all still rather confusing.

[Starwhip]

Question Aghamin. I see you traveled 5,800+ KM. I thot mine broke a record going 4,400km for what amounts to a 3,900km trip. Why so far? You were lots faster than I was.

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More drag. While he probably could, each part in line creates it's own drag via the joints. Or at least that's my understanding. But I'm also pretty certain that part clipping doesn't occlude the parts. I've had landing gear burn of that were definitely clipped inside a fuel tank. It's all still rather confusing.

Part clipping inside cargo bays gives no extra drag due to stuff in bays being dragless.

Anyways, this seems way easier than the Elcano challenge. And I think it can be done with a slightly modified version of the craft I'm using for the Elcano, with turbojets instead of basic jets.

[John FX]

You obviously have no reentry heating enabled. At that speed it's impossible to have all your parts completely cool.

http://i.imgur.com/85rHacI.jpg

They said they did it in 1.0 which has less drag. If you look you can see they are experiencing heating, just not as much.

Thanks for pointing this out Serassa. I'm currently of two minds on this. First, I personally have hit speeds well in excess of what he's showing without losing parts. However, I haven't hit those speeds for any length of time without control surfaces burning off. My concern was less of the heating issue and more of, how the hell did he go that fast at that altitude. My rapiers are only producing a minuscule amount of thrust at those altitudes, not nearly enough to reach those speeds. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I haven't figured it out yet.

Until he gets a chance to reply and until I get some more of my own research done, I'll let it stand. Nice to hear I wasn't the only one scratching my head though.

Just to say I flew the posted craft and maintained 1450-1500m/s at 26km for long enough to see that the craft was in no danger at all of overheating, slowing down or losing altitude. It seemed to have enough fuel as well although I only did 1/4 of the globe.

Can I just say that from my experience serassa only seems to post to cause contention on challenges. They posted 6 out of their first 9 posts in my challenge thread only to submit cheaty entries and nitpick about the quality of the challenge. If you look at their post history you will see a pattern...

They are doing the same in the 'remake historical planes' thread, they did it in my 'sundive'thread, in the drag thread and also here.

Not bad for someone with only 17 posts...

Edited May 5, 2015 by John FX

[MunGazer]

They said they did it in 1.0 which has less drag. If you look you can see they are experiencing heating, just not as much.

Just to say I flew the posted craft and maintained 1450-1500m/s at 26km for long enough to see that the craft was in no danger at all of overheating, slowing down or losing altitude. It seemed to have enough fuel as well although I only did 1/4 of the globe.

Can I just say that from my experience serassa only seems to post to cause contention on challenges. They posted 6 out of their first 9 posts in my challenge thread only to submit cheaty entries and nitpick about the quality of the challenge. If you look at their post history you will see a pattern...

They are doing the same in the 'remake historical planes' thread, they did it in my 'sundive'thread, in the drag thread and also here.

Not bad for someone with only 17 posts...

Nice investigative work there John FX. I think the end game for someone who does in fact consistently maintain a pattern of causing contention is that they'll develop both an unsavory reputation and diminish their own credibility. Not that they'd "care", etc., but for the rest of us, having such tribal knowledge is beneficial to the community.

[Styles2304]

Re-did my SR-71 . . . she's still got it!

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[Aghanim]

Question Aghamin. I see you traveled 5,800+ KM. I thot mine broke a record going 4,400km for what amounts to a 3,900km trip. Why so far? You were lots faster than I was.

Seriously. I don't know. So I retry flying it again, with this as the starting condition:

and checking MJ distance to runway, MJ distance from mark and F3 ground distance travelled and things are disagreeing with each other:

and the discrepancy increases with distance:

Something weird is going on. But maybe MJ is wrong, so I tried to use the haversine formula to measure distance between starting point and screenshot 2 and it returns 3.5 km, accounting for Kerbin radius of 600 km. And that is much more weirder

[Fengist]

Re-did my SR-71 . . . she's still got it!

http://imgur.com/a/gJcd6

Nice job Styles, just one question. Since the radius of Kerbin is 600,000m, which makes the diameter 3,769,911m, how did you do a circumnavigation travelling only 2,527,423m? Did you head west->east?

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Something weird is going on. But maybe MJ is wrong, so I tried to use the haversine formula to measure distance between starting point and screenshot 2 and it returns 3.5 km, accounting for Kerbin radius of 600 km. And that is much more weirder

Well, it's obvious you went far enough. You just went a lot further than you needed. Most east->west circumnavigations take around 3,900km due to the fact that Kerbin is rotating. The slower you are, the more ground you cover, which is why mine was a bout 500km more. You were lots faster than I was and went a lot further.

I seriously doubt that jeb uses a great circle calculation to determine how far you are from the runway. I'd guess it just draws a straight line whether it's through Kerbin or not. But, you end up flying in a great circle path so it kinda makes sense that ground distance and jeb distance don't agree and that jeb would show the shorter distance. The thing is, the distance you flew was pretty big for a circumnavigation. Was just curious as to why.

Edited May 6, 2015 by Fengist

[GROOV3ST3R]

I see you took some heavy inspiration from the previous challenge

( http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25884-Kerbin-Circumnavigation-Challenge-Reloaded-New-Rules-Once-More?highlight=circumnavigation )

Well, I will attempt it after work today probably or tomorrow :3 See you out there!

[Styles2304]

Yeah I headed West, sorry. Took off, did a sort of S turn to head west at 270°

Edited May 6, 2015 by Styles2304

[Heimdall5008]

I also tried this challenge. My plan was to make a very easy plane that would fly itself.

The basic principal was successfull. Unfortunately this idea (or at least my concept) was not realy compatible with time warp. Therefore my first two tries ended with a crash when I did not watch. So today I started the same craft a third time. This time I quit time warp every few minutes and engaged it again. This was the charm and I could finish my first circumnavigation of Kerbin in the lower atmosphere

In the SPH:

On the runway:

Achieved cruising altitude:

Halfway around the globe:

The finish is in sight:

The landing descend was started a little bit late...

Landed on runway 27 and log:

So after 8:02:12 hours always going west Jebediah could cirumnavigate Kerbin. For the second round the fuel was a little bit too low... But first objective achieved!

Edit: To start west, I just turned the plane 180° in the SPH. The grass behind the runway is even enough to use it as a runway

[Aghanim]

Nice job Styles, just one question. Since the radius of Kerbin is 600,000m, which makes the diameter 3,769,911m, how did you do a circumnavigation travelling only 2,527,423m? Did you head west->east?

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Well, it's obvious you went far enough. You just went a lot further than you needed. Most east->west circumnavigations take around 3,900km due to the fact that Kerbin is rotating. The slower you are, the more ground you cover, which is why mine was a bout 500km more. You were lots faster than I was and went a lot further.

I seriously doubt that jeb uses a great circle calculation to determine how far you are from the runway. I'd guess it just draws a straight line whether it's through Kerbin or not. But, you end up flying in a great circle path so it kinda makes sense that ground distance and jeb distance don't agree and that jeb would show the shorter distance. The thing is, the distance you flew was pretty big for a circumnavigation. Was just curious as to why.

I already considered MJ to be possibly wrong, so I tried using haversine formula, which calculates the great circle. But it is so small! This deserves its own investigation and thread

[Fengist]

I see you took some heavy inspiration from the previous challenge

( http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25884-Kerbin-Circumnavigation-Challenge-Reloaded-New-Rules-Once-More?highlight=circumnavigation )

Well, I will attempt it after work today probably or tomorrow :3 See you out there!

Groovy, I kept waiting for you or Flixx to start a new one and it just didn't happen. If you dig into that post, you'll find my very noobish entry. It was one of the first challenges I ever (unintentionally) did. I packed around your badge for a long time, and lots still do. And yea, you did a great job with it. I just thot with a new challenge that it might be time for a new badge too. Be glad to have you wearing both.

[Styles2304]

Fengist . . . think I can get my name on your nifty little list now so I can snag that .... badge?

[Fengist]

I also tried this challenge. My plan was to make a very easy plane that would fly itself.

Good thing it did mostly fly itself. Had it been me, I'd have fell asleep at the stick. Nice job. Always enjoy seeing pilots who don't get in a rush.

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Fengist . . . think I can get my name on your nifty little list now so I can snag that .... badge?

You caught me in the middle of updating everything. It's there. I was just checking the math on your distance and it all adds up. You made it one short run. Well done.

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Now that we have a few circumnavigators, I've starting moving some pilots into the specialized badges. Well done to the speed demons.

[Wooks]

Are East / West circumnavigations allowed?

[MunGazer]

Oh ok cool. I'll update my badge once I'm off work. Sometime soon I need to re-do my run in the same ship, I might be able to optimize my ascent and descent profile and shave off a few more minutes. Would that be ok? My original imgur album for submission here was created for the Kollier trophy, so I wasn't focused on mission completion time as much.

[Deutherius]

Nothing better than a nice, relaxing circumnavigation after a hard day Here's my submission:

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It's based off of the F-4 Phantom, which was the first jet aircraft I have ever seen and fell in love with It's not the fastest or the most interesting submission, but I just threw together the craft in 20 minutes and this was the perfect way to test it out. Only mod used is KER (and KAC, but that was unused). The final F3 screenshot is a little weird, but I can provide the craft file and about 150 screenshots to further prove I did the whole journey, if necessary

Edited May 9, 2015 by Deutherius

[Fengist]

Are East / West circumnavigations allowed?

That depends Wooks, you going by rover and taking 6 months?

.... yes, they are

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Nothing better than a nice, relaxing circumnavigation after a hard day Here's my submission:

http://imgur.com/a/ZkxZq

It's based off of the F-4 Phantom, which was the first jet aircraft I have ever seen and fell in love with It's not the fastest or the most interesting submission, but I just threw together the craft in 20 minutes and this was the perfect way to test it out. Only mod used is KER (and KAC, but that was unused). The final F3 screenshot is a little weird, but I can provide the craft file and about 150 screenshots to further prove I did the whole journey, if necessary

Careful Deuth... unless you saw that Phantom in a museum, you might just be showing your age. Being an old Jarhead, I saw a number of them back in the day. Now, if I could just figure out a way to make an M-60 in KSP, I'd be happy. I used to command one... many years ago. Nice flight and welcome to the club.

[GROOV3ST3R]

Haha I'm glad it inspired you mate I made it in a game actually - I used to play one game that allowed a lot of creative license with this stuff (as away of getting round lack of image editing software).

I really feel part of the community every time I see someone wearing that badge Had a few projects that never quite took off so I'm glad this one made it as far as it did.

I might just attempt to update it a little now Sadly, I don't know what happened to Flixx :S It was his challenge to begin with and I only contributed with the badge, but I suppose he's either taking a break or he may not have the time to play anymore. Leading such popular challenges takes a degree of dedication (as I found that out the hard way), he might have just gotten tired of it or his life got in the way. He might come back though, you never know

Anyway, I'm glad you took your time to preserve this challenge I think that - second to the K-Prize - it's one of the most popular and accessible challenges out there. There's something so rewarding about atmospheric flight around Kerbin - which is often overlooked in favor of more ''exciting'' places.

I've been testing out some craft, getting used to the new physics and I might be onto something. A bit of tweaking and I'll be back on that board soon

[Deutherius]

Careful Deuth... unless you saw that Phantom in a museum, you might just be showing your age. Being an old Jarhead, I saw a number of them back in the day. Now, if I could just figure out a way to make an M-60 in KSP, I'd be happy. I used to command one... many years ago. Nice flight and welcome to the club.

Oh no, I haven't seen one live, unfortunately It was a small toy I had as a child, and it's the first flying thing I can remember. The main wing shape, the anhedral stabilizers, every part of that aircraft is engraved in my memory. Thank you, I'll wear that sweet sweet badge proudly

Edited May 9, 2015 by Deutherius
typo

[imthebait]

I saw this and thought i would try my hand, I "borrowed" the tilted engine and intake design from MunGazer, but i was completing this on career mode, so i have limited tech, using turboram jets i managed speeds i thought you couldn't get with jets alone. topping out at over mach 3.6 i completed two circumnavigations in under two hours. I give you the

Falcon 1

Two Circumnavigations

Max Alt: 23000m

Max Speed: 1323 m/s unintentionally, though, cruising speed got up to 1238 or so

Total Time Taken: 1:54:43

http://imgur.com/a/12il0

Two circumnavigations one one tank with almost enough fuel for a third, I am doing some minor tweaking on the design to see if i can get a bit more efficiency out of the thing by tilting the engines to closer to 2.5 degrees.

BTW MunGazer, if you could let me know how you tilted the engines on your craft while they were attached to connecting points that would be great!

Edited May 11, 2015 by imthebait

[MunGazer]

I saw this and thought i would try my hand, I "borrowed" the tilted engine and intake design from MunGazer, but i was completing this on career mode, so i have limited tech, using turboram jets i managed speeds i thought you couldn't get with jets alone. topping out at over mach 3.6 i completed two circumnavigations in under two hours. I give you the

Falcon 1

Two Circumnavigations

Max Alt: 23000m

Max Speed: 1323 m/s unintentionally, though, cruising speed got up to 1238 or so

Total Time Taken: 1:54:43

http://imgur.com/a/12il0

Two circumnavigations one one tank with almost enough fuel for a third, I am doing some minor tweaking on the design to see if i can get a bit more efficiency out of the thing by tilting the engines to closer to 2.5 degrees.

BTW MunGazer, if you could let me know how you tilted the engines on your craft while they were attached to connecting points that would be great!

Beautiful ship, and nicely done.

Sure, I'll answer your question of how I tilted the engines on my craft while they were attached to connecting points:

First, ensure that both your engines have been placed in symmetry mode and/or you have symmetry mode turned on. Symmetry mode can be turned on via the panel in the bottom left corner of your screen in the spaceplane hangar. The reason for this is that you want every little change you make to one side to be identical on the other. You may have already known this, but I mentioned it just in case. Also ensure that your angle snap mode, which is indicated right next to the symmetry mode, is set to either angle snap or smooth mode for your purposes. For fine tuned 5° or less angle changes, you'll want angle snap off and smooth mode on instead (indicated by a circle with a dot inside).

Second, you should know that the "1" key by default will put you into part Place mode, "2" into Offset mode, "3" into Rotate mode, and "4" into Root mode. Press "3" to go into rotate mode, or of course simply click that option which is displayed at the top left of your SPH view. Then, select either the engine itself, or whatever assembly it is attached to if you want to, for instance, like on my Sojourn 2, rotate both the engine and the precooler it is on. Now, you should see a brightly colored set of circles pop up which represents your axes of rotation. Carefully put your pointer directly on the axis indicator circle you want to rotate on, click and hold, and move your mouse to rotate it. Press "1" once you're done to go back into normal place mode. Now, sometimes shifting angles can cause gaps on one side of the connection. To remedy this, go into Offset mode ("2"). Select the corresponding axis to translate the part on, and drag it until everything looks right. If ever during this process, you change an angle or offset, and you don't like the results, you can press LCtrl + z to undo the action.

I'm guessing the trouble you were having with part rotation is that you were doing all your rotation in place mode using the Shift + letter keys, and as a result, those place mode-angled parts determined the angle of all the rest of the parts that got attached.

Here's a good link to quickly reference the VAB/SPH commands:

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Key_bindings

Edited May 11, 2015 by MunGazer

[Fengist]

I saw this and thought i would try my hand, I "borrowed" the tilted engine and intake design from MunGazer, but i was completing this on career mode, so i have limited tech, using turboram jets i managed speeds i thought you couldn't get with jets alone. topping out at over mach 3.6 i completed two circumnavigations in under two hours. I give you the

Falcon 1

Two Circumnavigations

Max Alt: 23000m

Max Speed: 1323 m/s unintentionally, though, cruising speed got up to 1238 or so

Total Time Taken: 1:54:43

http://imgur.com/a/12il0

Two circumnavigations one one tank with almost enough fuel for a third, I am doing some minor tweaking on the design to see if i can get a bit more efficiency out of the thing by tilting the engines to closer to 2.5 degrees.

BTW MunGazer, if you could let me know how you tilted the engines on your craft while they were attached to connecting points that would be great!

I'm confused. The circumference of Kerbin is 3,769,911m. Your distance is showing 3,939,677. That distance is very consistent with one circumnavigation. Kerbin rotates in the direction you were travelling meaning, the distance would be even further than 3,700km. In 2 hours, it rotates 628km. So, somewhere around 4,300km would be a reasonable distance. I could buy the 3,900 if it were one, but how did you get two circumnavigations? I'm not saying you didn't mind you. I've already seen some strange numbers coming from these flights. It just doesn't make sense though. Now if you managed an average of say 1,100m/s over 2 hours that would be 7,900km which does make sense for 2 circumnavigations. I'm just curious why the F3 is showing something very different.

The time for the speed you were travelling, that sounds about right. That F3 screen has me breaking out the calculator tho. Did you perhaps F5/F9?

Edited May 11, 2015 by Fengist