Magnificent Aerial Steam Liners Of The Future - Today!! Development Thread: New WIP Fireflash SSTO.

[Gaalidas]

Gotta love the floating engines. And by "love" I mean sitting here looking at those pictures with the words "what the fraaack?!?" going through my head.

[Sharkman Briton]

YEAH!!!

[BlueCanary]

Whilst work continues on Operation Really-Big-Flying-Stuff, renowned aviator Jebediah Kerman wishes to showcase the latest heavier-than-air flying machine from his iFly range:

While some manufacturers may try and pass off some plane with just one or two wings, a crafty consumer like you wants more. That's why the new Model Y from Jeb and Co. comes with not 3, not 4 but 5 blades wings, for our smoothest shave aeroplaney-est plane yet.

As other manufacturers waste your money with needless luxuries like "pressurized cabins" and "structural integrity", the Model J has features where it counts:

Room for all the family! Impress all the neighbours with the giant rotating high intensity EM radiation source hood ornament!

Feeling cold? No problem! The twin heaters will warm you right up!

In a rush dropping the kids off at school? Just send them ahead with the handy rocket powered nose seats!

The high driving position helps you see over traffic, and with four rover wheels the Model J is classified as a light truck for tax purposes.

Oh, and by the way, the wheels break on takeoff so you can't land, you have to one by one get every kerbal to jump off and then crash the monstrosity into the sea.

[BlueCanary]

Some more experiments:

A swallow shaped rocket glider for pilot training/fun, has some nice qualities (can land at below 20m/s, very stable) but isn't as nimble as I hoped, and being rocket powered, can't fly for very long.

An open-cockpit, supersonic-by-the-end-of-the-runway racer made for my air racing championship challenge - seeing as it's only current competition is also from me, I'd imagine it'll do quite well. (If you feel like putting in an entry for that challenge, please do, it doesn't matter if it's not a very fast one because you can always improve it later. There are lots of different races and aircraft classes so there's probably something you like there).

It's quick, but turns like a brick. Luckily it won't have to.

Edited October 30, 2015 by BlueCanary

[Generalstarwars333]

The rocket glider sounds like the Me-163 german WWII rocket powered fighter. it got a few minutes of flight to do an attack run or two on bombers with 20 or 30mm cannons, and then glided down to the runway to land on its skid. (the wheels detached on takeoff.) very fast, very dangerous. for the pilot.

[BlueCanary]

The rocket glider sounds like the Me-163 german WWII rocket powered fighter. it got a few minutes of flight to do an attack run or two on bombers with 20 or 30mm cannons, and then glided down to the runway to land on its skid. (the wheels detached on takeoff.) very fast, very dangerous. for the pilot.

Now that you mention it, yeah, it is very similar, it's even got a vaguely similar wing planform. I might try beefing up the rockets to get it more speed and use it as an Me-163 type thing.

I don't know how this fits in with the rest of the stuff I've posted here, but I think it does kind of have a bit of a retro-futuristic feel to it:

It easily has the range to go anywhere on Kerbin at 1200m/s and 20,000m and return, but there's no real useful payload on board so it's not really that useful yet. Maybe if it was used with BD armory it could be an extremely long range strike fighter or recon plane.

The structural intakes aren't really letting the engine work as well as it can and it gets unstable at low fuel levels though.

[Kanukki]

Thanks, hopefully I'll have something similar to that thing in the top right soon. I think you're right about it being soviet, I just pulled it from a google images search so I can't remember exactly what it is but I think it's an abandoned hovercraft prototype. I'll have a look for it.

EDIT: It's an abandoned passenger hydrofoil, here's a reddit thread I found about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroFuturism/comments/3oqe5u/abandoned_soviet_passenger_hydrofoil_xpost_from/

and an article about them (although the link only half works on my computer so it might be broken: http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2012/07/streamlined-soviet-passenger-hydrofoils.html

Some of them are actually still in use.

I actually (quite bizarrely) found myself on one of these amazing Soviet-era hydrofoils a few years ago going from Petrozavodsk to Kizhi Island (a UNESCO site full of old wooden churches and houses). I can remember seeing these in books back in the eighties, and couldn't believe I would ever get to be on one.

[BlueCanary]

I actually (quite bizarrely) found myself on one of these amazing Soviet-era hydrofoils a few years ago going from Petrozavodsk to Kizhi Island (a UNESCO site full of old wooden churches and houses). I can remember seeing these in books back in the eighties, and couldn't believe I would ever get to be on one.

Awesome, what was the ride like? I read somewhere they are really uncomfortable, is that true? Hopefully I might start building a replica of one today.

[BlueCanary]

Some unsuccessful concepts:

A light, single kerbal jet inspired by Otto Lilienthal's gliders that ended up with nowhere to put the engines:

A very early draft of a hydrofoil that didn't float enough:

A more successful concept, inspired by the heavily area ruled, coke-bottle styled, wasp waisted jets of the 50's and 60's:

Incredibly fast (1200m/s at sea level before exploding, 1400m/s at cruise altitude), very maneuverable (although hard turns above 500m/s may or may not cause slight discomfort and/or complete disintegration), and has the range to circumnavigate Kerbin.

Although it can do very tight, high G turns, it loses a lot of speed doing so, and this along with very high low altitude fuel consumption mean I don't think it'd make a good dogfighter. Maybe more useful as a long range interceptor, recon plane, or strike fighter.

[Kanukki]

Awesome, what was the ride like? I read somewhere they are really uncomfortable, is that true? Hopefully I might start building a replica of one today.

From what I recall, a bit loud but seemed fairly smooth. Really too blown away by being in the thing in the first place, I didn't notice much else.

[BlueCanary]

While I struggle to stop anything big or waterborne exploding, I made a racing triplane:

It can turn incredibly fast, but for some reason it can get really unstable after hard turns. I'm still working on it.

Also another shameless plug for my racing challenge, if anyone wants to enter it and raise the number of competitors from zero to not-zero that would be great.

[BlueCanary]

It's a motorbike, but more rockety. Turning is difficult and scary, but forwards is good. Really great at taking jumps too. I just need to make it a little less lethal.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[BlueCanary]

So this thread just got stickied, so I thought it would make sense to put something sticky on this thread.

The modern family automobile suffers from many issues - dependence on highly polluting fossil fuels, the risk posed to occupants by crashes, high cost of insurance, the list goes on.

But I think you'll agree the most pressing issue is of course that most car's suffer from a severe defficiency of wheels, and a distinct lack of "magic kinda unrealistic ability to scale vertical walls".

That's where this new craft from famed inventor/daredevil/pilot/explosion enthusiast Jebediah Kerman comes in. By forgoing such frivolities as "space for more than one person" or "brakes", and by increasing the wheel count to 16, this new vehicle can go where a normal car can't: i.e; the VAB roof.

It does this by using a basic jet to simultaneously push it onto the vertical surface and push it up that surface, climbing the wall. To be honest it isn't much more than a glorified VTOL, but it does have some nice characteristics. It can go fast on the ground or in the air, can fly free if needs be, and it's hard to break thanks to being covered in wheel. Plus it's always fun to become the mechanized spider of doom, unstoppable in your quest for vengeance and donuts.

Here's a demo album:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Generalstarwars333]

Plus it's always fun to become the mechanized spider of doom, unstoppable in your quest for vengeance and donuts.

LOL XD. Man, I wish I could see that...

[selfish_meme]

I have been playing around with 50's scifi craft while maxing out my desktop, I had an i5 2500K with a stock fan, never bothered overclocking it. Was feeling the performance blues and decided to get a new fan and SSD. I have now bumped it up to 4.5Ghz from 3.3Ghz and o the glorious FPS! Then I set the GTX570 to ignore application settings and bumped the AA to 32 and AF to 16, bye bye FPS but hello ultrasharp detail. It is almost as stable, a few niggly things with scatterer and stuff, it seems to be much more sensistive to loading the RAM up. Anyway have some screenshots of my explore the Kerbol system like an Andre Norton character, the Stellar Patrol ship Starfire.

She has a launcher and about 3K of dV on the 3 nukes, she can land on anything, taking off might need a refuel on Kerbin and Tylo. She can only just limp into extremely low orbit on Kerbin (hence the launcher). But in space and full of fuel she can visit lots of places in 50's style.

[McFarnsworth]

She's not quite steam powered, but she'll take you to orbit on the main booster, after which Sir can enjoy a leisurely cruise among the stars with the remaining 2kdV.

... don't come back though, those wings probably won't survive re-entry, ... or landing.

[BlueCanary]

It's a VTOL flying car, but not a good one. It looks wierd, but I'm not sure whether that's in a bad or a good way yet. It also is a brick in forward flight and uses up fuel very fast in VTOL. Still, it is a flying car, and until the fuel cuts out it does handle well in takeoffs and landings.

Hopefully I'll be able to make a better version when 1.0.5 comes with 0.625m jets.

And here's a prototype of something less useless I'm working on, imaginary prize for anyone who guesses what it's (loosely) based on.

So far it looks promising, at 127 parts and with an enormous fuel load it can cruise at 1070m/s and 20,800m burning 2.4 units of fuel a second, not bad for 150 tonnes (178 fully loaded) of plane I guess. Hopefully I can swap out some of that weight for useful payload, and maybe even make it an SSTO eventually. I have some moderately cool ideas of features to put on it if I do.

[selfish_meme]

It's a VTOL flying car, but not a good one. It looks wierd, but I'm not sure whether that's in a bad or a good way yet. It also is a brick in forward flight and uses up fuel very fast in VTOL. Still, it is a flying car, and until the fuel cuts out it does handle well in takeoffs and landings.

Hopefully I'll be able to make a better version when 1.0.5 comes with 0.625m jets.

http://i.imgur.com/ZAiijST.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/y19ewwa.jpg

And here's a prototype of something less useless I'm working on, imaginary prize for anyone who guesses what it's (loosely) based on.

So far it looks promising, at 127 parts and with an enormous fuel load it can cruise at 1070m/s and 20,800m burning 2.4 units of fuel a second, not bad for 150 tonnes (178 fully loaded) of plane I guess. Hopefully I can swap out some of that weight for useful payload, and maybe even make it an SSTO eventually. I have some moderately cool ideas of features to put on it if I do.

http://i.imgur.com/jjR9NEt.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/WppeyBN.jpg

Thunderbirds are go, in one episode there was a new supersonic liner.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Thunderbirds are go, in one episode there was a new supersonic liner.

You got it first, but it was called the fireflash.

Please make a remote controlled cart to land it on.

[BlueCanary]

Thunderbirds are go, in one episode there was a new supersonic liner.

You got it first, but it was called the fireflash.

Please make a remote controlled cart to land it on.

Yep, glad to see I managed to make it at least vaguely recogniseable.

I'll try to make a remote controlled cart, but it's going to have to go super fast. This already needs almost all the runway to take off fully loaded, so landings are going to be scary.

I really think it might be a possible future SSTO, it's already saving weight by not using a cockpit, maybe by just swapping the turbojets for rapiers it could be used to lift reasonably big loads into LKO. Probably not much Delta-V on orbit though, seeing as I can't see anywhere to put nukes. Problem is, it's hard to work on something that runs in jerky slow motion and causes a game crash every 10 minutes.

Since I first posted about it I've left it flying at 20800m and its now reached 1200+m/s and accelerating (even at 127 parts the FPS is so low on my PC it's only been about 5 ingame minutes since then), now burning less than 2 units a second, so performance is a little better than I first thought. TWR at the moment is 0.08.

[Generalstarwars333]

Hopefully I'll be able to make a better version when 1.0.5 comes with 0.625m jets.

*IRL* WAAAAAAAAAAAAA????? *starts backing away on bed from computer* WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!?!? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! *Starts randomly throwing things to a randomly selected other location while continuing to go," WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!?!?!?!*

- - - Updated - - -

*starts flailing about while still continuing to go waaaaaaaa!?!?!??!*

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

*IRL* WAAAAAAAAAAAAA????? *starts backing away on bed from computer* WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!?!? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! *Starts randomly throwing things to a randomly selected other location while continuing to go," WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!?!?!?!*

- - - Updated - - -

*starts flailing about while still continuing to go waaaaaaaa!?!?!??!*

Make sure you're sitting down before you look at this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/137818-Hype-Train-1-0-5-The-Local-Train-Route

[selfish_meme]

Make sure you're sitting down before you look at this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/137818-Hype-Train-1-0-5-The-Local-Train-Route

Is it bad I am more excited by NathanKells fixes than the new parts

[BlueCanary]

So I left the Fireflash flying east at cruise speed and altitude under autopilot whilst I did other stuff (pretty much my standard test flying plan), and the results were pretty impressive.

It circumnavigated Kerbin on with 11516 units of liquid fuel remaining, out of a total load of 18690 on takeoff. The maximum load is 25690 units, but I took some out to balance it better until I can think of another way. This means that not only did it have range to go around Kerbin again at least one more time (possibly two, since a lot of fuel was used on takeoff and climb), but it effectively completed a circumnavigation with a 58.45 tonne payload (the weight of the fuel left on landing). I think that, especially if I can work out a more efficient ascent profile, this means it could be an extremely good long range cargo plane, although it does need a long flat runway to land and take off so maybe it's application could be limited by that.

It takes ages to slow down, making timing the exit from cruise to land a bit harder, I actually had to resort to using the landing gear as airbrakes to slow it down. Also, the canards get dangerously close to overheating in cruise, less than 120 degrees from their maximum.

I also found that although it disintegrates unless handled with extreme care in maneuvers while supersonic, at low speeds and without very high fuel levels it's also quite maneuverable and much less of a difficult and scary plane to fly than it is while it's really heavy.

I'm going to start trying to make it SSTO soon too, but before I do that it would be nice to get some design feedback. What do you think of the design? Are there aesthetic improvements you would want made? Any particular functions I should include?

[selfish_meme]

So I left the Fireflash flying east at cruise speed and altitude under autopilot whilst I did other stuff (pretty much my standard test flying plan), and the results were pretty impressive.

It circumnavigated Kerbin on with 11516 units of liquid fuel remaining, out of a total load of 18690 on takeoff. The maximum load is 25690 units, but I took some out to balance it better until I can think of another way. This means that not only did it have range to go around Kerbin again at least one more time (possibly two, since a lot of fuel was used on takeoff and climb), but it effectively completed a circumnavigation with a 58.45 tonne payload (the weight of the fuel left on landing). I think that, especially if I can work out a more efficient ascent profile, this means it could be an extremely good long range cargo plane, although it does need a long flat runway to land and take off so maybe it's application could be limited by that.

It takes ages to slow down, making timing the exit from cruise to land a bit harder, I actually had to resort to using the landing gear as airbrakes to slow it down. Also, the canards get dangerously close to overheating in cruise, less than 120 degrees from their maximum.

I also found that although it disintegrates unless handled with extreme care in maneuvers while supersonic, at low speeds and without very high fuel levels it's also quite maneuverable and much less of a difficult and scary plane to fly than it is while it's really heavy.

I'm going to start trying to make it SSTO soon too, but before I do that it would be nice to get some design feedback. What do you think of the design? Are there aesthetic improvements you would want made? Any particular functions I should include?

http://i.imgur.com/M5v774H.jpg

It looks like a nice plane to me, I wouldn't replace all the engines with rapiers, if it can fly with just two turbojets they are good for making in atmosphere cruise backs as the rapiers are thirsty and don't work well below mach 1.