World Airspeed Records

[mrfrankieman]

I have been looking for a real world records for KSP.  There are land-speed, airspeed, altitude, and orbital velocity records but they all fall short in that they really aren't competitive and that is, in part, due to there not being a requirement for stock only and no debug menu.  At this point I think just about anyone can go as fast as they want by slapping a few Mammoths on a Stayputnik.  But I want to really get people into making a functional aircraft or rocket or whatever to win the top spot, a forum based leaderboard to make the most efficient designs and have fun along the way.  But we have to make this fair, someone who has nine Goliaths or a Mammoth on a mk. 1 lander can trying to go 10000 m/s shouldn't be in the same category as someone who is making the equivalent of a Sr-71 or Mig.  This form of categorization should be based either on weight of craft or by part count, and then to make sure that the claims are accurate everyone who is submitting something has to provide screenshots of take-off, flight, landing, and post a link to their craft file (so there aren't modders trying to fly under the radar).

Any thoughts?

[Mastikator]

You could just go into space and come back down at an arbitrarily high speed. (and by arbitrarily I mean excess of 100km/s)

You need rules for these records, like "no going into space","no using mods or cheats", "no staging" and "must be between 8km and 12km". Or put it in different ranges.

[qromodynmc]

Speed records with top tier rocket or jets are meaningless for me, going supersonic with jumo would be better competition.

[p1t1o]

I would recommend weight classes and specified cargo masses/dry weights.

[Tex]

May I direct your attention to the Challenges & Mission Ideas subforum? This place has plenty of speed record challenges that are generally adopted, and have their own rules to make it fair.

[mrfrankieman]

It's not so much that there aren't records out there, but there isn't a single "official" source.  I'm not trying to have a challenge per se, but to consolidate records to make it easier and more legitimate with a single rule-set.  I like the altitude requirement but I think going supersonic with a Juno is too close to a challenge (I still want to try it though).

[Vermil]

Strictly, a speed record should be the average speed over a specific distance, at a specific altitude. It should also be a closed coarse, which means you have to go in both directions.

The problem of making something of this in KSP is that everyone have the exact same technology. So it's really not interesting.

 

[mrfrankieman]

The tech can remain the same, but if the design changes you can get drastically different results.  The goal isn't to make the same thing until someone perfects it, but to look at those designs and try to improve upon them to make something even better.

I agree that there should be a distance requirement, but what do you mean by "go in both directions"?

1 hour ago, Vermil said:

Strictly, a speed record should be the average speed over a specific distance, at a specific altitude. It should also be a closed coarse, which means you have to go in both directions.

The problem of making something of this in KSP is that everyone have the exact same technology. So it's really not interesting.

 

 

[Vermil]

24 minutes ago, mrfrankieman said:

The tech can remain the same, but if the design changes you can get drastically different results.  The goal isn't to make the same thing until someone perfects it, but to look at those designs and try to improve upon them to make something even better.

I agree that there should be a distance requirement, but what do you mean by "go in both directions"?

 

 

In real world, speed records are set as an average of runs in both directions. This is to cancel out effects of wind direction, coriolis acceleration, uneven gravity, earth rotation, magnetic fields, downhill, push from sun radiation ...whatever...

 

A proper speed record to start with would be 500 km 'closed coarse' at sea level (say less than 150m). If we want to have a place to start. Different classes could be propeller driven, jet engine and rocket.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Vermil

[SSgt Baloo]

Making your run both ways doesn't need to happen in KSP unless you have the wind mod installed.

 

ETA: Do we really need an FAI for Kerbals, now?

Edited March 3, 2016 by SSgt Baloo

[g00bd0g]

7 hours ago, SSgt Baloo said:

ETA: Do we really need an FAI for Kerbals, now?

Yes, yes we do

[mrfrankieman]

9 hours ago, Vermil said:

 

In real world, speed records are set as an average of runs in both directions. This is to cancel out effects of wind direction, coriolis acceleration, uneven gravity, earth rotation, magnetic fields, downhill, push from sun radiation ...whatever...

 

A proper speed record to start with would be 500 km 'closed coarse' at sea level (say less than 150m). If we want to have a place to start. Different classes could be propeller driven, jet engine and rocket.

Is there wind in stock KSP?  I know that gravity remains constant (at least on Kerbin), I think that propeller driven craft would have to be limited to  something like this:

 

Using any kind of mods has to be considered cheating, otherwise there's no level ground.  The point isn't to "out science" someone else, but to design better planes; that doesn't have to mean that they use different engines.  The idea about classification based around method of propulsion should be implemented though.