Get a plane into space...

[SunJumper]

For this challenge, get a plane (No actual rocket engines, but you may use rocket tanks) above 69.1km altitude.

[Philpax]

I don\'t understand. How does this work? No jet engines will work above 20 km!

[TNTGODZZ]

it is almost impossible to do, if you do not use srb or liquid fuel.

[robsr3v3ng3]

use aerospike engines, they aren\'t usually considered 'rocket' engines as they came out with all of the plane parts

[Tim_Barrett]

it is almost impossible to do, if you do not use srb or liquid fuel.

Aerospike engines are actually more powerful that the LFE\'s I believe.

[Kryten]

use aerospike engines, they aren\'t usually considered 'rocket' engines as they came out with all of the plane parts

They are usually considered rocket parts, mostly because they are rocket parts. Seriously, look at the description, and things like the burn rate, it\'s obvious.

[robsr3v3ng3]

Fair enough. They do have a high burn rate and I know they don\'t need atmosphere but i figured they\'re more like aero parts because they aren\'t very handy for rockets

[SunJumper]

Basically, you need a lot of upward momentum. MOAR JETS!

[Philpax]

No matter how much upwards velocity you have, your turbojets will stop working at ~20km; I\'d like to see someone pack enough power into their plane to coast 40km with no power!

[SunJumper]

Exactly!

And, if Aerospikes work in the vacuum, don\'t use \'em

[Panic]

Don\'t even need engines.

[pushingrobot]

Unfortunately you\'d have to be going well over 900m/s straight up at 20km for your momentum to carry you to 'space'. In theory, you could accelerate past that at 16km-18km and do a zoom climb to 69km. In reality, even if your plane is nothing but engines and nacelles I doubt you could reach that without mods or exploits.

Why? Three reasons:

[list type=decimal]

[li]Improper drag modeling. Right now drag is calculated on each part individually, and fuel tanks, engines and nacelles add a lot. Because of this, no matter how many engines you use you hit a wall around 950 m/s.[/li]

[li]Improper aerodynamics. Wings don\'t work properly in KSP. Doing a zoom climb in KSP is like making a sharp turn in your car on an icy lake. You can accelerate horizontally at 16km, pull back into a steep ascent... and keep moving horizontally.[/li]

[li]Limited parts. KSP jet engines drop to zero thrust by 20km. A SR-71 can cruise in level flight at 26km. Until we have some more realistic engines, there\'s not much chance of performing stunts we\'ve never even accomplished in the real world (the current altitude record for a jet-powered plane is 37.65 km).[/li]

[Dusty]

Don\'t even need engines.

How Did you do that ?

[Corax]

• [li]KSP jet engines drop to zero thrust by 20km. A SR-71 can cruise in level flight at 26km. Until we have some more realistic engines, there\'s not much chance of performing stunts we\'ve never even accomplished in the real world (the current altitude record for a jet-powered plane is 37.65 km).[/li]

True, but keep in mind that 37km on Earth is not the same as 37km on Kerbin; on Earth, LEO is around 200-700km, on Kerbin that would be more like 50-70km.

[robsr3v3ng3]

the reason why that design can do that is because of an exploit in the game. Check out the infiniti craft in the spacecraft exchange section. You can just use canads and just keep turning it forward and backwards and it acts a bit like a birds wing.

[Stevenator1]

I would recommend this be closed... The mechanics of the game to not allow for enough delta-v to escape at minimum excape velocity with only air-breathing engines, WITHOUT exploits. And then you can just do the stupid drag glitches and stupidify it a fuckton...

[ggPeti]

the reason why that design can do that is because of an exploit in the game. Check out the infiniti craft in the spacecraft exchange section. You can just use canads and just keep turning it forward and backwards and it acts a bit like a birds wing.

I would like to 'check out the infiniti craft', but I found no such thing on the first 20 pages of the spacecraft exchange section. Mind linking?

[robsr3v3ng3]

sorry it was infini

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=13167.0

[ggPeti]

Thanks!

[ggPeti]

With this trick, I just broke 1800 m/s in atmosphere without engines, awesome! Got up to almost 100km too. Guess it doesn\'t qualify though...

[robsr3v3ng3]

No it\'s a complete exploit of the game because it means you can get ships (almost regardless of size) in to space almost, it\'s just a matter of fitting enough cannards in the right places.