high speed and resilient suborbital plane.

[Warzouz]

I'm trying to do a suborbital plane to travel Kerbin at high speed. I'm targeting 15 to 18km cruse altitude (so obviously turbojets)

Few questions :

- How to do a stable temperature plane which won't burn at 1300m/s.

- How to limit speed to 1000m/s (which seems temp stable)

- What would dV be for circumnav ? (one of my planes already has 62km/s)

Here are 2 planes (click to enlarge)

This one is over powered,

This one is more balanced, but is quite ugly...

For now, those plane are very maneuverable (enough and not too much). What improvement would you do ?

[n0xiety]

You can't travel under 20km if you are going faster than 1300m/s. It will be ok at first but as your plane gradually heats the parts at the tip will start overheating as time passes no matter what. Use rapier if you can since rapier gives more thrust at really high speeds which allows you to go 1400m/s to 1650m/s depending on your plane design. Rapier is actually quite efficient too at altitudes passing 25k.

I would use shock cone at nose for reducing drag as much as i can. And use the rapierspike design which reduces the taildrag and gives stability improving performance. Rapierspike is what you would call a shockcone placed over rapier and clipped inside just enough so you can't see the white paint of the shockcone.

I personally like Pilot Assistant mod. It is the best plane autopilot there is.

If you really want to go under 20km use wings that have fuel in them. Connect the wings to the biggest fuel tank you can use in your design. Even if you do this you still will have problem with the intakes. Connecting the intakes to the biggest fuel tank possible also helps. This will only gain you some time before they overheat tho.

If you are building a 1 man plane what you got there is a really big design. Think small. I managed to build a quite small plane that can do 6 Kerbin circumnavigations before running out of fuel.

Edit:

Fuel consumption 0.08 going at 1581m/s

Edited June 13, 2015 by n0xiety

[Warzouz]

I did a circumnav with an extended version on the second plane. I could have done 2, I think.

I did a 15km at 900m/s at 30% throttle, no real overheat.

[Warzouz]

I did it with a rapier/small plane.

22 to 29km at 1400m/s. I couldn't use MJ autopilot I had to fly it manually. It was less enjoyable to fly.

Landing was kind of rough... (I didn't park here intentionally ) Let's say I land on 2 wheels out of 3

I don't think this plane would be fun to use to go anywhere on Kerbin.

[n0xiety]

Kerbin Radius = 600km

Kerbin Circumference = 3770km

-Height- -Circumference- -C Difference- -T at 800m/s- -T at 1000m/s -T at 1200m/s- -T at 1400m/s- -T at 1600m/s-

0km_______3770km_______0km_______01:18:33____01:02:50_____00:52:22_____00:44:53_____00:39:16

15km______3864km_______94km______01:20:30____01:04:24_____00:53:40_____00:46:00_____00:40:15

20km______3896km_______126km_____01:21:10____01:04:56_____00:54:07_____00:46:23_____00:40:35

25km______3927km_______157km_____01:21:48____01:05:27_____00:54:33_____00:46:45_____00:40:54

30km______3958km_______188km_____01:22:28____01:05:58_____00:54:58_____00:47:07_____00:41:14

Now as you can see from the graph going 1000m/s at 15km altitude takes 01:04:24

Now lets look at going 1600m/s at 25km altitude which equals to________00:40:54

Time difference equals to________________________________________00:23:30

Now i don't know what your fuel consumption is but you are using 23 minutes worth of more fuel. Well decide yourself after calculating your fuel consumption.

And for the enjoyable part it is up to you to create a balanced and stable plane. But for long flights Pilot Assistant mod helps alot as you can see from my picture.

Sidenote; use the rapierspike technique i told you about. You can see it over engine in picture. It will give you stability and less drag = more speed.

Jet in my picture is so stable that i can warp 4x while using the Pilot assistant mod.

Edited June 13, 2015 by n0xiety