I am clearly too stupid to be long range, high altidude plane engineer. Any tips?

[Duke Leto]

So I can put a Jeb on the moon but I can't ascend above 14,500 meters in a plane?

OK, so I'm well into my 1.0.2 career, and I am now stuck.

I started accepting contracts on Kerbin in atmosphere exploration, and I found that my old reliable exploration design (2 delta wings and two control canards strapped to Mk1 cockpit and fuselage tank and basic jet engine) now has an effective ceiling of ~14km no matter how I tweak it. In theory, it needs the turbojet engine, but that puppy is now WAY up the science tree.

Just assumed I'd be able to get preliminary funding for them and complete them once I had the turbojet, but they are now 6 out of 11 Active contracts and new ones are not spawning. Two more involve sending idiots, I mean tourists, on Minmus flybys, which I do not want to do before the Kerbonauts go there on the unspawned Explore Minums contract, one is Explore Duna, which is simply not feasible, two are getting orbiting stations for Kerbin and the Mun into position.

Most of the various remaining waypoints for visual surveys, temperature and atmospheric scans are not above 14km, but sufficiently far from KSC's Pseudo-Africa landmass as to be out of the operational range of any plane I can design.

I have everything in the tech tree up to the 90 RP level inclusive plus "Heavier Rocketry", "Command Modules", "Advanced Exploration", and "Advanced Electrics". I also have 157 science and some unexhausted on Kerbin, plus lots of stuff to do on the Mun and Minmus.

Short version: I've got a load of unfinished Kerbin Survey contracts that I can't complete that it would clearly behoove me to get out of the way. That they were available for me to accept suggests there is a way to do them at my current tech level.

Can anyone tell me how?

Edited May 24, 2015 by Duke Leto
Changing status to answered.

[Starwhip]

The game does not really take into account your current tech level. However, you should be able to make it to these aerial survey spots. How high are you flying? The basic jet is at its optimal range near sea level, and stops being useful at around 9000 meters.

Try adding drop tanks, or liquid/solid boosters, or some combination of the three to get extra range.

[vixr]

Can you build it to a rocket stage and blast through the ceiling to collect the science on the way back down?

Dangit! I think I just repeated exactly what starwhip said...

[Motokid600]

It's hard to say. What exactly is the problem? Contracts call for parameters that are too high and far for your planes?

Distance is just a matter of building a bigger plane. As for height... There isn't much you can do with the Wheesly basic jet engine. I had to create a rocket plane to reach the higher parameters in the atmosphereic contracts.

Then there's just the fact that Squad's order of contracts you receive is nearly completely broken. Three tourists want to fly by the moon, want subordital flights on the moon ( which makes no sense what so ever ) then at the same time want to fly by and sub orbit Minmus.

All before I've even sent one kerbal beyond LKO. Squad still has a long way to go with the contracts system.

It simply makes no sense what so ever.

[Slam_Jones]

If I'm in career mode and only have unlocked the "Wheesley," I usually cycle through the contracts that require "above X altitude" by declining the contract so a new one pops up. Usually have to cycle about a dozen or so, but I can usually get 3 or 4 contracts within 20km of KSC that I can do all in a row, with one flight, with a Wheesley-based plane.

[Endersmens]

Pfft.

The way to do those contracts is this:

1) Fly at sea level to the Zone

2) Once you've reached the zone, pull up with full thrust.

3) Soar past the 14k range

4) perform crew report while suborbital

5) Apoapsis in the 20-30km range

6) fall back down pointing nose down

7) level out

8) done!

Did that a few times. Just gotta time the pull up right.

[Duke Leto]

Well, one thing that had occurred to me was that I ought to add more structural pylons, but that's an obscure joke.

I'll give both the larger plane (for longer range) and the near vertical approach a try.

[Endersmens]

Well, one thing that had occurred to me was that I ought to add more structural pylons, but that's an obscure joke.

I'll give both the larger plane (for longer range) and the near vertical approach a try.

I guess I should also add that if your plane flies faster higher than Sea level, cruise towards destination at cruising altitude, then start a dive when you get close, then pull up when you get there. (also make sure your plane has TWR >1.1

[MarvinKitFox]

That they were available for me to accept suggests there is a way to do them at my current tech level.

Can anyone tell me how?

Your plane can do the lower-atmosphere and surface missions just fine.

For the "do XX at a height above YYY" type missions, there is really no limit to how high you can be.

I have one poor Kerbal scientist stuck in a pod in polar orbit, with one of each instrument.

Need a temp reading above 21500m at armstrong's armpit? No problem. The polar orbit will eventually cross it.

[Duke Leto]

I should add to the list of high altitude workarounds that visual surveys from low orbit totally count for anything "above altitude X", and I had cleared out a few contracts that way but forgotten that I had.

Not sure if you can get away with temp and pressure readings 80k up, but I may check.

- - - Updated - - -

As was just noted.

[Pax Kerbana]

Well if you're smart enough to realize you're too stupid to design airplanes, you're smart enough to design helicopters!

[Duke Leto]

Well if you're smart enough to realize you're too stupid to design airplanes, you're smart enough to design helicopters!

That winking Kerbal smilee is one of the top five most disturbing things I have seen today.

- - - Updated - - -

Pfft.

The way to do those contracts is this:

1) Fly at sea level to the Zone

2) Once you've reached the zone, pull up with full thrust.

3) Soar past the 14k range

4) perform crew report while suborbital

5) Apoapsis in the 20-30km range

6) fall back down pointing nose down

7) level out

8) done!

Did that a few times. Just gotta time the pull up right.

Error... Could not reproduce.

Using this guy to try your instructions:

It's basically at an absolute minimum of weight without removing things that will interfere with its operation, and its ceiling using the instructions above is almost precisely 15,000 m.

I'm going to try subbing out the nose air intake for a possibly more aerodynamic combination of an Aerodynamic Nose Cone and a XM-G50 radial intake, but I'm not optimistic. (With good reason, it didn't work. All the other wing configurations look to drop the mass <5%...) Looking at the advice regarding drop tanks, the solution actually may entail adding more pylons...

Meanwhile my far more operationally questionable design for a longer range "scaled up" version of the same idea suffers from two aggravating in-flight problems:

1.) A tendency to spontaneously pitch straight up.

2.) A tendency to disintegrate completely.

Kerthrop Kerman's B-2 Bomber design for the KSAF from stock parts is going to have to be recycled as wastepaper basket lining...

Edited May 22, 2015 by Duke Leto

[Streetwind]

If your plane spontaneously pitches up, your center of lift is in front of your center of mass. For ideal operation, it should be slightly behind instead.

Also, a suggestion:

Take your little HA Explorer Plane. Pull off the wings and tailfins. replace the inline cockpit with a Mk1 airplane cockpit. Attach a pair of RT-10 "Hammer" solid rocket boosters to the sides of the fuselage where the wings used to be. Attach the wings to the solid boosters instead, and also fit each booster with one vertical tailfin and a circular intake. Adjust the boosters to 50% thrust. Make sure the boosters are attached in such a way that the center of mass does not change much between them being full and them being empty, so that your center of lift does not travel in front of it (or too far behind it). You may or may not need extra wing area, I can't say... but your basic plane is very small, so you might get away with what you have.

When making your hard climb upon approaching the objective, wait until your jet engine can no longer handle it, then ignite the solid boosters and ride a trail of fire while shouting yee-haw!

Now, two hammers are sort of overkill, but unfortunately stock KSP doesn't have any 0.625m solids that would be much more useful for this sort of thing. If you find that you are greatly overshooting your target altitude, you can reduce the amount of fuel in the Hammers. (This also makes them lighter to carry along on the way to the destination, requiring less lift.)

Edited May 22, 2015 by Streetwind

[tomf]

I did the same thing except with flea boosters. You can only get 1 high altitude eading per flight that way, but the cost is negligable and the look of terror on the kerbal's face when the Gs hit is fun.

[Starhawk]

It looks like you've got way more wing than you need. That's one thing that changed a lot with the new atmo. A rule of thumb I've seen and used is that you need about .25 lift for every tonne of mass. Two wing strakes would be more than enough for the small plane.

Wings are pretty draggy, so you only want as much as you need.

Happy landings!

edit: Also, not knowing is not the same as stupidity. The antidote for not knowing is simply learning. Stupidity is the choice not to learn. There is no antidote for that as far as I know.

Edited May 22, 2015 by Starhawk

[Wanderfound]

Can anyone tell me how?

Like this:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/9vptzzhq8knsoaj/Kerbodyne%20Hiflyer.craft?dl=0

[Duke Leto]

edit: Also, not knowing is not the same as stupidity. The antidote for not knowing is simply learning. Stupidity is the choice not to learn. There is no antidote for that as far as I know.

It was semi-sarcastic self deprecation.

- - - Updated - - -

Quick question on staging for that lovely little design I fully intend to plagiarize, Wanderfound, I don't have custom action groups available for spaceplanes, but I'm guessing that the idea is to shut down the Wheesley and switch over to the Thuds when beginning the vertical climb, and reverse that on returning to atmospheric flight?

[Duke Leto]

Well, that worked exactly as advertised, Wanderfound, excepting the part where it slammed into a mountain when I tried to land at a right angle to the coastline instead of parallel as your images showed.

Embarrassingly, it actually was more of a plateau...

Jeb and the cockpit survived though, so it's all good...

I'm refraining from awarding Wanderfound the "Answered" thingee until I work out if the Kerbodyne Hiflyer can handle the distance runs or I work out a design that can that meshs it and the advice I've gotten in the thread.

Thanks to Wanderfound and all others that have offered advice.

- - - Updated - - -

One more note to the above, I was able to circumvent the problem of no custom action groups by hotwiring the engine type switch to the Lights action group.

The actual lights were wired to the staging sequence and the flamethrower was linked to the cigarette lighter.

Edited May 22, 2015 by Duke Leto

[Wanderfound]

One more note to the above, I was able to circumvent the problem of no custom action groups by hotwiring the engine type switch to the Lights action group.

The actual lights were wired to the staging sequence and the flamethrower was linked to the cigarette lighter.

...that's what I was going to suggest. I normally toggle the Thuds with the Abort group and just leave the jet running. Also good for suborbital tourist flights if you add a probe core.

It's probably not possible in stock, but you can get a very basic jet up to altitude without rockets in FAR. Lotsa streamlining and a zoom climb, as suggested earlier. In doesn't work well in stock because you lose too much speed pulling into the climb.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Wanderfound

[Duke Leto]

Well, after some more research and fiddling, I have come up with this design, which has been certified as being able to go from KSC to the North Pole on about 35-40% of its total fuel capacity. It also has excellent stability and handling. Hopefully the eventual availability of the Turbojet engine will improve its range still further and allow for the high altitude testing contract components without the need for an on board oxidizer refit, but until then, bored Kerbals in orbit will have to do for those.

I must confess though that binary wing configuration was not my idea, and the credit for it belongs to the maker of this video:

The craft file is here for anyone who wants to play with the design.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9jd9yihg5ptipc7/Explorer%20Plane%202.craft?dl=0

Thanks to everyone who's helped in this thread, most especially Wanderfound.

One more question for the peanut gallery. Since I've started draining Monopropellant from cockpits with no need for the stuff, I've noticed that other parts have adjustable settings. In this case, the brakes on the landing gear have a default torque setting of 12, which can be set as high as 30. At first I did this but then thought better because I had no problems stopping this same airframe with a slightly different gear configuration with the gear torque set to 12, and it seemed unwise to screw with something I didn't really understand when it was working.

So what's the deal with landing gear brake torque?

Pursuant to my policy of light comedy, here's a snapshot of Valentina Kerman getting surface instrument data on the mountain biome using a variation on the HA Explorer Plane design:

I'm guessing you can figure out how that landing was achieved...

[DeMatt]

One more question for the peanut gallery. Since I've started draining Monopropellant from cockpits with no need for the stuff, I've noticed that other parts have adjustable settings. In this case, the brakes on the landing gear have a default torque setting of 12, which can be set as high as 30. At first I did this but then thought better because I had no problems stopping this same airframe with a slightly different gear configuration with the gear torque set to 12, and it seemed unwise to screw with something I didn't really understand when it was working.

So what's the deal with landing gear brake torque?

That setting limits the amount of braking force that the wheel can apply.

Think of where the wheel is receiving its deceleration force from... right where it touches the ground, yes? Certainly not in line with the ship's center of mass. Too much brake torque, like too much acceleration torque, will either flip the ship upside down or cause the wheel to skid.

[Duke Leto]

Ok then, lemme see how well I remember this crap from AP Physics...

The Torque force is being measured in kNewton Meters if it's like the Inline Stabilizers, which is synonymous with kiloJoules, I think, presumably representing the kinetic energy the brakes dissipate per second...

and Explorer Plane 2 is 8.9 Metric Tons, so if I'm coming in at 50 m/s at the time of ground contact, that'd be 22,250 kiloJoules of kinetic energy to dissipate over 5 landing gear that taking 12 kiloJoules of energy each, assuming a simultaneous touchdown of all 5 gears. That would be a stopping time of 370 seconds. Which is obviously wrong. So either the displayed 12 is something other than kN m or I've lost my mathematical touch over 20 years.

[viktor19]

I started accepting contracts on Kerbin in atmosphere exploration, and I found that my old reliable exploration design (2 delta wings and two control canards strapped to Mk1 cockpit and fuselage tank and basic jet engine) now has an effective ceiling of ~14km no matter how I tweak it. In theory, it needs the turbojet engine, but that puppy is now WAY up the science tree.

I had the same problem. My solution was: go to Mun and Minmus, milk the biomes and collect science. The tech tree is set this way, and you can only install some mods to tweak it. My contract was open for a few in-game months.

Same goes for probe cores, which are too high in tech tree. Even the space layman knows that there was Sputnik then Apollo 11.

[Duke Leto]

Like this:

http://imgur.com/a/SwlF8

Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/9vptzzhq8knsoaj/Kerbodyne%20Hiflyer.craft?dl=0

I'm sure you've noticed this, Wanderfound, but the Kerbodyne Hiflyer design can no longer take off under its own power post 1.0.3. The waiting world of people to confused to build decent planes anxiously await your redesign!

Brighter side, my little Explorer Plane is now able to get to the farside of Kerbin with mild tweaks, adding a 2nd pair of wings.

[Wanderfound]

I'm sure you've noticed this, Wanderfound, but the Kerbodyne Hiflyer design can no longer take off under its own power post 1.0.3. The waiting world of people to confused to build decent planes anxiously await your redesign!

Not noticed, actually, since the only time I fly in stock is when FAR is out of action. I'll see if I can whip up something for the stock flyers, though.

OTOH, any takeoff problem is likely just due to the increased weight of the Mk1 LF tank shifting the CoM forwards. Moving the rear landing gear to just behind CoM (and maybe shifting the wings forward a smidgeon) should sort it out.