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

[BlueCanary]

(Yes, I know only like one and a half of those pictures are actually anything like what I'm trying to recreate, but still, you've got to admit they're kinda cool)

Greetings, fellow scienticians. I present for your amazement, astounding concepts of horseless war-chariots of the sky, great ocean liners travelling at tremendous speed not on the water but upon the airy cushion of the atmosphere, and of thunderous beasts of iron and steel that power their way through the sky to a place beyond.

After seeing spaceBrezels awesome airships, I was thinking about some victorian concepts I'd seen of future airships which were pretty much ocean liners with balloons and wings duct taped on, and I thought they might be a fun thing to try and recreate in KSP.

My main goals are:

-Extreme slow speed flight, even VTOL maybe.

-Possibly alternative power sources - one of those pictures above, the one of the airship aircraft carrier thing, is actually designed to be solar powered, with that entire flight deck made of solar panels.

-Luxurious transport for your kerbals, with lots of stupidly impractical things strapped on for their comfort.

-Very, very big craft.

-Flying aircraft carrier maybe?

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INDEX THING:

(I'll improve this when I have time/can be bothered)

Page 1: El Wingo, bunch of bad concepts, Podracer, more bad concepts.

Page 2: Thunderbird 3 type long range high speed plane, ladder testing, in-flight docking part 1.

Page 3: In-flight docking part 2, completely useless multiplane, swallow rocket glider, drag racer plane.

Page 4: Long range high speed plane, bad concepts, another long range high speed plane, triplane, rocket motorbike, wall climbing rover thing.

Page 5: Flying car, Thunderbirds Fireflash prototype.

Page 6: Fireflash SSTO Version: 55 tonnes payload to LKO (sort of).

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Here is my first proof of concept craft:

The El Wingo

Handcrafted from only the finest Science^TM, KSC engineers assure us this is not just "a bunch of wings loosely attached to some jets in a vaguely airplane-like shape".

The idea is that the extremely low wing loading should make it really floaty, allowing very low speed flight and thus extreme loitering time and short take off and landing (hopefully.)

It actually works, much to Bill's relief. Stable flight below 20m/s and landings with touchdowns at 13m/s or so. It's also quite maneuverable, even at very low speed. There might actually be some use in this concept after all.

- - - Updated - - -

So now imgur/chrome have gone wierd and pictures have vanished. Works on Microsoft Edge though. Wierd.

Edited November 6, 2015 by BlueCanary

[BlueCanary]

Tried some new ideas with varying (read: almost universally abysmal) levels of success:

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Findings so far are:

-Low wing loading = great maneuverability and very good low speed flight.

-Short wings = better roll response.

-Not enough struts = explosions.

[Azimech]

You. I command you to tell me where you found the contraption/what it is in the above/right corner of the photo collage. Very Soviet looking.

;-)

Funny word, scienticians.

And you'll hear more from me. Later.

Spare pilot. Funniest thing I've seen in days.

[BlueCanary]

You. I command you to tell me where you found the contraption/what it is in the above/right corner of the photo collage. Very Soviet looking.

;-)

Funny word, scienticians.

And you'll hear more from me. Later.

Spare pilot. Funniest thing I've seen in days.

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.

Edited October 25, 2015 by BlueCanary

[pTrevTrevs]

Flying aircraft carrier, huh? I will look forward to seeing this.

[BlueCanary]

The citizens of the world of the future will need entertainment - perhaps a new form of horse racing, forgoing the horse for an equivelant shaped from iron and fire - maybe a dual turbine powered aerial craft like this one:

It needs a name, perhaps a "Racer Pod" or even a "Podracer", although I doubt such a name could ever catch on.

Acceleration and speed on straights are great from the twin whiplashes, although fuel consuption at high speeds is extreme (less than 5 minutes endurance in a low altitude drag race), although in lower speed racing the situation is much better. It can reach 800m/s at sea level. Maneuverability is also good, with very tight turns even at low speed. In fact it's main problem, other than being stupidly impractical, is that it's hard to keep control of such a fast maneuverable vehicle while buzzing KSC, although it is surprisingly survivable in a crash thanks to the tough frame.

Something you can see in some of the screenshots is that the control surfaces on that cowling pivot to provide roll and yaw control, giving the visual effect of thrust vectoring. I'm not really sure if I like the effect or not, but it does give great roll control.

Also, because it's pretty much symmetrical in terms of lifting and control surfaces in both pitch and yaw, you can turn it either through roll and pitch or just yawing with similar results, or combine the two for an extra tight turn.

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I'm posting a download link because it's actually quite a complete craft already, although some aesthetic tweaks would be nice, but it's not finished by any means.

http://kerbalx.com/Blue_Canary/Racing-Pod

EDIT: Seriously, the impacts you can survive in this thing. It's hit hard enough to break the VAB and Bill was fine. It's probably easily as safe as your average closed cockpit craft, which is lucky as it is almost completely unfliable. 2 minutes 15 is the longest I've lasted flying between KSC buildings without exploding. It is fun though.

Edited October 25, 2015 by BlueCanary

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Subbed & repped.

[BlueCanary]

New Bucket List Item: Kerbalize this:

Actually it is kind of like an infiniglider, if those still worked maybe it could be done. Right now I'm just strapping rockets to wings to Jeb:

The wierd thing is it actually flies:

Yes for one easy payment of 2323 funds you too can be slammed into the air by cans of explosives at up to 200m/s with absolutely no protection or yaw control whatsoever. Endless fun for all the family.

Edited October 25, 2015 by BlueCanary

[Rath]

Such 50s (idea of the future) very wow.

[BlueCanary]

I quite like aspects of this design based on a vague mix of early-1900s (in that it's got multiple wings) and 1950s (in that those multiple wings are meant to kind of look like reactor vents) ideas, but the performance was quite disappointing, especially in terms of maneuverability.

[Azimech]

Probably doesn't help the fact the nerfed structural intakes don't give the engines enough air so they underperform.

[Sharkman Briton]

I like this, I REALLY like this. I too should mess around with stock.

[BlueCanary]

Still needs a lot of work, but early testing shows a lot of promise.

The first prototype of this very inaccurate Thunderbirds 3 rip-off original design is currently speeding around Kerbin at 1400m/s and 19,000m, so it'll be interesting to see how far it gets.

- - - Updated - - -

It circumnavigated Kerbin! But I couldn't land it. Maneuverability, or lack of it, is the main issue at the moment.

[Monsterlunch]

Dafuq did i just read... Awesome Crafts!

[Generalstarwars333]

Yay! Steampunk! Downloads plox! Yay!

[BlueCanary]

Yay! Steampunk! Downloads plox! Yay!

Other than the podracer there's not much here at all worth downloading yet, but when I do get stuff download worthy, I will add links though.

Edited October 26, 2015 by BlueCanary

[BlueCanary]

When the people of the future step out of their biodomes and take a stroll across their floating nuclear powered city thing, they'll need to make sure they are not brushed off by the slipstream to fall into the hands of the Soviet regime's Bionic Hyper-Nuclear Space-Soldiers.

Here's Val testing out the capabilities of the ladders that will let them do this:

So she could hang on up till 75m/s on ladders facing the direction of travel before sliding off and can stay on a bit longer on the ones perpendicular to the airflow. Hopefully I can design an airship-type design that can cruise happily at low speeds, preferably 40m/s or so, so kerbals can move around a bit easier.

[Generalstarwars333]

Other than the podracer there's not much here at all worth downloading yet, but when I do get stuff download worthy, I will add links though.

It all sounds download worthy to me, and I certainly want to pllay around with it. especially the big things. something huge and flying sounds awesomme. maybe get hte maritime pack and add wings for more oceanliner/flying aircraft carrier style things, since they have carrier decks in that mod.

[BlueCanary]

It all sounds download worthy to me, and I certainly want to pllay around with it. especially the big things. something huge and flying sounds awesomme. maybe get hte maritime pack and add wings for more oceanliner/flying aircraft carrier style things, since they have carrier decks in that mod.

Unfortunately any sizeable mods (really anything bigger than KER) make my computer cry, so I'm probably going to try to keep this all stock. I'm thinking wing panels are the only real option I have for flight decks due to weight and part count concerns, which means landings will have to be done by almost matching speeds with the carrier and floating it down seeing as they only have 15m/s impact tolerance.

I'm starting on a flying aircraft carrier type thing today, so hopefully that will be ready-ish soon.

Edited October 27, 2015 by BlueCanary

[BlueCanary]

Hey everyone, I made a paving slab:

It's a paving slab that flies real good, too, it can do 6g turns easily, which does mean it's a little twitchy.

I also made this, which is one of those designs I think will get 100x better when we get 0.625m jets:

The plan is that the little plane will fly a courtship dance around the flying brick and then they will stick together midair and make a little plane baby. Not much success so far though.

[BlueCanary]

SUCCESS! Sort of.

The klaw grabbed, but at a really bad angle and the result was practically unfliable. I'd got it perfectly lined up, lowered the klaw down on the centre of the deck at about 5m/s, but for some reason it didn't grab. It bounced off and ended up in the useless position you see here.

This album shows some of the failures leading up to the eventual landing:

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I'm going to keep trying with klaws, but I'm thinking KAS harpoons might be a better solution, or building a proper flight deck out of structural panels and doing normal landings on top of that.

[Sharkman Briton]

Awesome...

When are those really slow flying, massive huge bigS ships coming?

[BlueCanary]

Awesome...

When are those really slow flying, massive huge bigS ships coming?

Right now I'm just working on the techniques to make those possible, there are a lot of issues with making the kind of craft I want to make but I am slowly getting there. The design of that square thing shows a lot of promise as a way to make wing area double as useful space, so I'm thinking maybe four big square box-wings like that, filled with crew capsules, cargo space and engines, attached together with a frame along with a bunch of command stations and parasite fighters and stuff. Hopefully some added lift engines will help it get extra slow for takeoff and landing.

[Sharkman Briton]

Wow, that sounds really cool. If we could find a way to make them fly at a angle where they always stay on the same altitude, use persistent rotation to keep them that way, and we can have a flying base that you don't need to control!

One idea I have is to have a flying city. Basically a big flying thing like you're trying to do, but with a huge fairing/container thing made of wings (kinda like a zeppelin balloon) full of Kerbals and Hitchhikers, with airlock things around the sides of the hab thing.

Can't wait to see this stuff come true.

[Redshift OTF]

You can make stock flying carriers if you want:

334 parts. 266.7 tons. Flies pretty well and has power to spare. I doubt you could land a VTOL on it as the engine wash would capsize it. Looks a bit ugly too.

Edited October 27, 2015 by Redshift OTF