[1.0.2] Kerbal Parcel Service Challenge - fastest/cheapest to KSC2 on one turbojet engine!

[antbin]

It's been awhile since I started a flying challenge. Now in our world of fancy thrust/speed curves and "realistic" aerodynamics, the challenge is even richer! High altitude? Full throttle? Suborbital hops? You decide:

The Challenge:

Fly to KSC2 on just one turbojet engine, quickest and/or cheapest!

The Rules: (borrowed from Red Iron Crown)

• Propulsion by one turbojet engine only. No vernors, no RCS, no RAPIERs.
  
• Craft must take off and land horizontally on wheel(s).
  
• Stock parts only.
  
• KSP version 1.0.2 only, entries from 1.0 or before will not be considered.
  
• No cfg editing, save editing, debug menu, or any other shenanigans.
  
• No physics exploits (such as open-ended cargo bays or dry turbojet spinup).
  
• Please keep part clipping to a minimum. edit: clip away!
  
• At least two Images are required for entry, showing 1) MET zero on KSC runway with fuel load, 2) MET and fuel remaining stopped at (or west of) KSC2. Video or intervening screenshots to show how you flew encouraged.
  
• Craft files are encouraged so we can learn from each other's techniques.
  

Permitted mods: Visual/immersion mods, informational mods, autopilots fine ya slackers

Forbidden mods: Autopilots, anything that modifies stock parts, adds new parts, or changes the game's physics in any way.

The Scoring:

• For time: Mission Elapsed Time (MET), landed, with speed ~ 0, at KSC2.You must be at or over the "finish line" between KSC2's VAB and launch pad.
  
• For fuel: Difference between liquidFuel on runway with MET0 and liquidFuel landed at KSC2.
  

The Leaderboard:

Quickest

[table]

[tr]

[td]juzeris[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]0:11:15[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Entry #3 - Puny Tim, landing took 25s![/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[tr]

[td]juzeris[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]0:11:23[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Entry #1 - Huge wings, red-lined temperature all the way[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]The-MathMog[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]0:12:24[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Entry #1 - Probecore with tiny, tiny, tiny plane![/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]TheCrafterESP[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]0:12:30[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Tiny craft, 4.2t and 11 parts![/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]t3hJimmer[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]0:12:34[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Shock cone and tiny wings[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Antbin[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]0:13:03[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]You can beat this![/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]The-MathMog[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]0:13:16[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Entry #2 - Gentle 1/3 throttle ascent, tiny plane.[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]juzeris[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]0:14:58[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Entry #2 - Fuel-efficient Tim[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

Thriftiest

[table]

[tr]

[td]juzeris[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]45.9 units[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Entry #2 - One wheel, four canards, Porsche-sized trunk[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[tr]

[td]juzeris[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]59.4 units[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Entry #3 - Mass matters if you want speed and efficiency...[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[tr]

[td]The-MathMog[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]67.7 units[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Entry #2 - Two wheels and 1340m/s cruise![/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Antbin[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]89 units[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]You can beat this![/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]t3hJimmer[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]94 units[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]144 fuel left over[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]The-MathMog[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]98.7 units[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Entry #1 - 150 unit tank on probe core[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]TheCrafterESP[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]114.4 units[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]20-25km cruise, cherry orange[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]juzeris[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]183.5 units[/td]

[td] - [/td]

[td]Entry #1 - Started with 240, huge tanks[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

- - - Updated - - -

My entry to get us started: [[ .craft file ]]

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Edited June 11, 2015 by antbin

[n0xiety]

There are so many turbo jet challenges out there can't you make something different? I say limit it to 1 engine but give the people the ability to use whatever they like to as long as the engine only uses LF. If you ask me clipping is a part of game and i really don't understand why people are so against it? Besides now that we have new aero you can't really clip intakes one after another. Even intakes that are half clipped inside the craft gives appropriately less air and drag as some of their portion is blocked and the game simulates that. Clipping creates clever and innovative design choices that improves the performance. Did you know that keeping your landing gear open creates less drag? I would rather clip the landing gear than keep it open to gain performance due to a dumb bug. Get my point?

Hope your thread gets revived i see you created it at 17th May.

Edited June 4, 2015 by n0xiety

[antbin]

Thanks for the interest. By "minimum clipping" I was trying to avoid entries like this one that clip everything *inside* an open cargo bay to exploit drag reduction. Good point about work-arounds for gear bugs. Fair enough, I'm not opposed to clipped entries as long as they don't make the challenge boring or single-solution.

I'd love it for someone to start another challenge for RAPIERs. I would enter it. Probably everyone will find that sub-orbital-hops are the best RAPIER solution for fuel and speed.

I hoped Turbojets would lead to more variety in designs and different speed/fuel tradeoffs since it's trickier to manage cruise heat at lower altitudes. It doesn't take much more than 10 minutes to fly between KSCs, it's not that boring, is it?

Edited June 4, 2015 by antbin

[n0xiety]

Damn that thing is taking exploit to another level. Im guessing drag that hits the sides of the cargo bay isn't even calculated since it should create immense drag in reality... Yeah that is taking it too far... Im not even sure if that thing is still a plane. Well i noticed that this only happens with a cargo bay atleast. Even if you clip parts completely inside a hull they still create drag while inside the hull. So my gear example seems to be wrong actually. I don't see any problem doing that for the aesthetics sake as long as the parts aren't in a cargo bay i guess.

[Guest]

It's so hard dude! I must cross the game crash barrier. But I made it!

The plane flies at 20-25km. The most difficult part of the flight was the touchdown.

I've made a craft with 11 parts and only 4,2t.

Time: 12:30

Fuel: ​35,61u

Download the whole craft

Also you should add the "Lightest" and the "Simplest" leaderboards.

Edited June 5, 2015 by Guest

[BlueCanary]

Going to enter this soon, first a flight just to figure out where KSC2 is and place a marker probe:

If you are planning on allowing different engine types, what about a seperate leaderboard for each? I'm particularly interested in seeing how a slow but efficient basic jet craft would fair.

Also, are you sure about the no autopilot rule? Particularly for slow craft with flimsy wings that can't handle time warp it really just means ages spent making adjustments to the craft.

[n0xiety]

Also, are you sure about the no autopilot rule? Particularly for slow craft with flimsy wings that can't handle time warp it really just means ages spent making adjustments to the craft.

Well i second that. After all this challenge is about who can build the fastest or most efficient craft right? I don't see how an autopilot can effect what this challenge is all about. It would actually push the craft to its limits and remove the pilot error resulting in more acurate performance readings. After all, we can't all be Scott Manley:)

Trying different designs now will post once i pass the new speed record.

[antbin]

What a bullet, Crafter! I see 150 liquidfuel on takeoff, 35.61 on landing, so 114 units.

I'm going to keep the challenge simple for now - but I'll put your craft's awesome features in the leaderboard!

As for autopilot, if you really want to, post your entry and I'll make a MechJeb leaderboard. You can fly it yourself, I believe in you!

The point of the challenge is to learn and share tips and tricks for making and flying great planes, having to deal with lift (takeoff), fuel (climb and glide profile), heat (cruising), and handling (landing). The turbojet is the 'middle ground' where you have to cope with all of these. I honestly don't know if doing sub-orbital hops is more fuel efficient than cruise... or if there's a low-thrust low-speed option... or if there's a way to deal with more heat to max out your speed at middle altitudes? Hoping we can try them all out and see how they compare!

[Guest]

What a bullet, Crafter! I see 150 liquidfuel on takeoff, 35.61 on landing, so 114 units.

I'm going to keep the challenge simple for now - but I'll put your craft's awesome features in the leaderboard!

As for autopilot, if you really want to, post your entry and I'll make a MechJeb leaderboard. You can fly it yourself, I believe in you!

The point of the challenge is to learn and share tips and tricks for making and flying great planes, having to deal with lift (takeoff), fuel (climb and glide profile), heat (cruising), and handling (landing). The turbojet is the 'middle ground' where you have to cope with all of these. I honestly don't know if doing sub-orbital hops is more fuel efficient than cruise... or if there's a low-thrust low-speed option... or if there's a way to deal with more heat to max out your speed at middle altitudes? Hoping we can try them all out and see how they compare!

I have to say if you are doing sub-orbital hops you will can go faster and the craft won't overheat. But the craft I made has an issue with the landing gears and the landing was kinda worse than I thought (I could made it with 12:05).

[n0xiety]

Managed to land in 11:28 but i think i can improve. Trying different altitude flights and see if it will change anything. I noticed that speed doesn't change much while flying at 18k to 22k.

[juzeris]

I was trying to avoid entries like this one that clip everything *inside* an open cargo bay to exploit drag reduction.

Yay, thanks for the dishonorable mention.

Regarding autopilot for a plane, the only thing it does better than a real pilot is maintain heading while cruising - if you fly stock without SAS and use trim to maintain pitch, you generally get roll drift, if you fly with SAS, you're constantly pitching up due to SAS not adjusting for the curvature of Kerbin. So you end up using the controls to constantly pitch down a bit (for my entry I couldn't leave it alone for more than 15 seconds or it'd start gaining altitude like crazy), which, at least for me, is the most fun thing to keep doing for 10 minutes. I don't think using smart a.s.s. from Mechjeb gives any other benefits, esp. when landing or climbing, I honestly haven't tried other autopilots though.

Just my 2 cents.

Oh, and, yes, I actually do have an entry! Flew the distance in 11:23 using 183.53 units of fuel (F3 image link). And here's the craft file as well (link).

A couple of additional questions regarding what's an exploit in your book (didn't use any of that on this entry, so I'm perfectly fine with a 'no' ):

-Would placing landing gear in the fairing be OK?

-Is closing the air intake to spin up the jet dry on the runway an acceptable shenanigan?

Thanks for the nice challenge!

[antbin]

Hey, juzeris, great entry, and congrats for pushing KSP's drag model to the limit.

By popular demand, sure, autopilots allowed, it's all good.

As for the two possible exploits, I'd say neither gear in fairings or dry jet spinup are kosher. But gear is debatable, since the drag model is somewhat broken (you should probably keep it extended the whole time?).

Anyhow, you're on the leaderboard... and if someone threatens your lead you could shave off some time by nailing that landing.

[The-MathMog]

So, I decided to try this challenge! First off I tried with a normal capsule, but then got the idea to use a probecore (Which I am not sure is against the rules? It is a challenge, so it is about being innovative right? Nonetheless, just disqualify it, if it is a felony )

But with small control surfaces I got the weight down to 3.1 T (Could have gotten it even further down, if I optimized the amount of fuel in it, but didn't bother).

The final picture I took, with the correct information's was 12:24, and the amount of fuel used was 98,72 units, so I guess that is what counts, even though it was "landed" a few seconds before that.

I flew at a pretty constant speed of 1.230 Meters per second at an altitude of around 22.000.

And the only last thing that might make this not count, is that my plane tipped over after the final landing. The small design meant that the landing gear ended up not being placed optimally. And I literally tried landing it like 20 times, as I didn't wanna have to fly all the way out there again... Soo, that's the best I could do! Cheers!

The kid needed a rest after being heated to over 1000 degrees for 10 minutes ^^

Edited June 8, 2015 by The-MathMog

[antbin]

Hi MathMog! Nice entry, capturing #2 in speed and fuel economy! I'm going to make a scatterplot one of these days, showing the tradeoff between the two.

Nothing against probe cores in the rules, I didn't expect mass would matter very much in this challenge compared to aerodynamic drag. Still, smaller is better (until you have to land it!).

Did you disable the front brake on your tripod plane? I find that's my biggest source of tipping over problems.

[Captain Sierra]

Preliminarily dropping a marker probe. Bob and Bill deliver the payload out of a Javelin science aircraft (circumnavigation-capable).

Gonna make a run later today I hope.

[The-MathMog]

Hi MathMog! Nice entry, capturing #2 in speed and fuel economy! I'm going to make a scatterplot one of these days, showing the tradeoff between the two.

Nothing against probe cores in the rules, I didn't expect mass would matter very much in this challenge compared to aerodynamic drag. Still, smaller is better (until you have to land it!).

Did you disable the front brake on your tripod plane? I find that's my biggest source of tipping over problems.

Thanks, glad it counted haha!

I fiddled a bit around with "disabling" steering on the wheels to find out what worked best, but couldn't figure out how to make only the back-wheels brake.

Also, just did a run with a different plane today. Used around 84 fuel units, but will try a few more times to improve it

[The-MathMog]

So, here is another entry actually! The first one was kinda a combination of a small aircraft while doing it as fast as possible. This time I focused more on efficiency. It is still a mere 3.1 ton, but have a few changes. Larger wings that are also angled a bit up, and another intake that I drained of fuel (to minimize the weight, but could be even less after seeing the amount I used.

So I landed in about 13:16 (The 1 m/s speed is because I landed up a hill, and forgot to put on the brakes and it rolled backwards. I was confused and did it 10 seconds later.

But more importantly the final fuel consumption ended up with 67,66.

By strategy was: Slower accent to 22.000 +- meters, at around 1/3 thrust to minimize the huge amount of fuel needed for ascent. Flying at a pretty stable height of 21.500 - 23.000 meters, with a speed of around 1340 m/s +-. That combined kept the fuel efficiency at around 0.06 to 0.09 units per second!

And at last I cut the thrust quite a bit before landing to save fuel descending through the atmosphere again!

PS. What do you guys use to share the craft files? Anything easy?

Edited June 8, 2015 by The-MathMog

[antbin]

http://kerbalx.com/ is what you want! I've updated your scoreboard with your second entry.

[The-MathMog]

http://kerbalx.com/ is what you want! I've updated your scoreboard with your second entry.

Ahh cool thx. Will take a look at that!

And it actually is 3 wheels. One of them is just shy and hidden!

Edited June 8, 2015 by The-MathMog

[juzeris]

I had a go at the fuel economy thing too. The craft came out pretty well, the piloting could probably use some improvement. Getting there took a whole quarter of an hour (15:00), minus maybe a couple of seconds while I was trying to remain upright but already stationary, but managed it in 45.9 fuel (F3 image).

The craft itself - Puny Tim (download link) - features just one wheel, on which it balances with the use of gyroscopes (SAS), and variable tilt wings (toggle with 3) for safe take-off and landing. It doesn't have any control surfaces, but with enough torque to unicycle across the KSC, who needs them.

Also please enjoy our flight footage:

[antbin]

Congrats juzeris, you have the honor of being first (and last) at both objectives... I wonder if going tiny is also relevant to speed, or whether highest wing-to-weight ratio is more important?

Edited June 8, 2015 by antbin

[The-MathMog]

Congrats juzeris, you have the honor of being first (and last) at both objectives... I wonder if going tiny is also relevant to speed, or whether highest wing-to-weight ratio is more important?

http://i.imgur.com/uS3sq81.png

Very nice visualization of it! It just needs a bit more "fast" runs, but that'll hopefully come! Or else I have to hop on the train again!

[t3hJimmer]

This is my first forum post. I made an account for this challenge. :^)

I tried several different designs, but my best time was 12:37 with a fuel use of 96. I used mechjeb to cruise the whole way at an altitude of 22,000 m.

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The vessel is an unmanned probe named "Speed 10" (original I know). Its composed of 14 parts and weighs 3.8 tons at launch.

The craft file is available here: http://pastebin.com/YipRWqBA

[antbin]

Welcome to the forums t3hJimmer and thanks for the entry! A nice tradeoff of speed and fuel economy. Eyeballing it on the scatterplot, at roughly 12.5 minutes and 100 fuel your plane looks like it gets a better fuel /time tradeoff than the group average!

[juzeris]

After running some tests and melting off some 20 canards, the pilots at Abstract Aerodynamics figured they can get a pretty fast "possibly maybe survivable" trajectory with the Puny Tim. It runs very red the whole way, and is risky, but with practice can be done.

So here's the footage of our run to KSC2 in 11:15, for 59.36 fuel (F3 image). Not THE most economic, but still pretty good. Running the exact same Puny Tim as in the previous attempt without any modifications. The landing is a fluke, I just messed up, fell down, and survived, but came out pretty good.

Also, yes, I did this just to mess with the scatterplot.