Aegea - Crew resque/passenger hyrdofoil

[Zwolff]

I wanted to celebrate the new water mechanics by making a hydrofoil, to be used for crew rescue for my retuning craft that overshoot KSC. Even though I recover the vessels where they land, I think it is fun to send missions to get the crew back to the space centre grounds before recovering them, if they land nearby within reason.

The Aegea is inspired by the Flying dolphin passenger hyrdofoils that go between Athens and the Greek islands nearby. It comes with a carriage to get it from the runway to the water. At around 15 m/s it will rise out of the water on its own and is quite stable without SAS, but at higher speeds the ride gets less bumpy with SAS engaged. The top speed is somewhere just above 90 m/s. Warning: At speeds higher than 90 m/s there is a non-zero probability of the Aegea becoming an actual airplane.

Get the craftfile here.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Zwolff

[doxlulzem]

Looks really neat. Does the new mechanics actually raise it out of the water when you go faster?

Either that's some serious dedication from Squad or they're technically lifting it through the air and it's 'flying' so to speak

But then again I don't know much about the KSP physics engine

[Zwolff]

Looks really neat. Does the new mechanics actually raise it out of the water when you go faster?

Either that's some serious dedication from Squad or they're technically lifting it through the air and it's 'flying' so to speak

But then again I don't know much about the KSP physics engine

I haven't done much experimentation, but it appears to be working as one would expect. At speeds between 0 and around 10 m/s, it floats as a boat. From then on raises as the speed increase to around 15 m/s, where it is fully above water, and stays that way until you reach about 95 m/s where I accidentally got it airborne once. Not sure it is possible to do this any more however, as I removed a pair of engines without any apparent loss in performance. As it is impossible to get it airborne going slower than 90 m/s it is treated differently from air, but maybe Squad is using the same mechanics only having different valued for drag and density and so on.

[BlueCanary]

I haven't done much experimentation, but it appears to be working as one would expect. At speeds between 0 and around 10 m/s, it floats as a boat. From then on raises as the speed increase to around 15 m/s, where it is fully above water, and stays that way until you reach about 95 m/s where I accidentally got it airborne once. Not sure it is possible to do this any more however, as I removed a pair of engines without any apparent loss in performance. As it is impossible to get it airborne going slower than 90 m/s it is treated differently from air, but maybe Squad is using the same mechanics only having different valued for drag and density and so on.

From what I can tell it is like you say the same mechanics with drag and stuff changed, if you get the "aero data in action menus" thing turned on you can see that underwater things have crazy high drag (like 75 for a big reaction wheel at 20m/s when out of water it'd have next to nothing).