The Aircraft Endurance Challenge

[Cunjo Carl]

1 minute ago, Aetharan said:

Your total distance traveled will be based not on your surface position, but on your sidereal angle.

Thanks, that confirms it then.

4 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

I don't know what centrifugal force in lieu of lift means on a plane but as long as it isn't cheating you should be fine. Just fly for as long as possible without cheats.

If you're going east at around 1700m/s, nearly 2/3s of your weight is actually countered by centrifugal force spinning around Kerbin. Only the last 1/3 needs to be held up by wings, which is nice. Perhaps not worth the cost of maintaining the high speed, but it's a fun effect.

[Gman_builder]

4 minutes ago, Aetharan said:

@Gman_builder if you're going to forbid drop-tanks, please make the change before my first set runs dry so I can just complete the flight without staging!

Drop tanks are allowed, if you look at my entry you will see that it is heavily based on the use of massive drop tanks.

4 minutes ago, Cunjo Carl said:

Thanks, that confirms it then.

If you're going east at around 1700m/s, nearly 2/3s of your weight is actually countered by centrifugal force spinning around Kerbin. Only the last 1/3 needs to be held up by wings, which is nice. Perhaps not worth the cost of maintaining the high speed, but it's a fun effect.

Hmm. cool. I don't know how you will be able to take off then while utilizing that effect. You would then theoretically design your plane around the notion that it will be flying with 1/3 the wing area for 1/3 the lift needed to lift the plane at Mach 0.35. On the contrary, if you could somehow get it to takeoff you would have more lift you would need and it would be pointless to try to utilize that effect.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Gman_builder

[gridghost]

40 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

Still, that makes no sense. I am very confused. Going straight east at any speed would yield 7,500 give or take kilometers from start to finish for one circumnavigation unless you take a ton of detours going north and south.

@AetharanThat reminds me, I have some adjustments to make to the rules. Nothing major though don't worry.

Well, i am doing this manually, but... i'm not that shaky and keep my detours within a degree from 90 :D.

Edited July 4, 2016 by gridghost

[Gman_builder]

2 minutes ago, gridghost said:

Well, i am doing this manually, but... i'm not that shaky and keep my detours within a degree from 90 :D.

<blockquote class="imgur-embed-pub" lang="en" data-id="a/87EVO"><a href="//imgur.com/a/87EVO">View post on imgur.com</a></blockquote><script async src="//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I'm not judging your piloting skills, but your total distance should still be in the range of 7,300 - 7,700 kilometers even with big deviations in your flight path.

[gridghost]

3 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

I'm not judging your piloting skills, but your total distance should still be in the range of 7,300 - 7,700 kilometers even with big deviations in your flight path.

Well, now that i got the album to play nice, you can see for yourself... it's still 10 kkm (give or take some)

[Gman_builder]

8 minutes ago, gridghost said:

Well, now that i got the album to play nice, you can see for yourself... it's still 10 kkm (give or take some)

the album didn't work bro. Copy the end of the URL for your album into the "i" that is up to the left when typing a comment

[gridghost]

Just now, Gman_builder said:

the album didn't work bro. Copy the end of the URL for your album into the "i" that is up to the left when typing a comment

I edited the post already... Ctrl + F5

[Aetharan]

Well, as I fly over the KSC at the end of circumnavigation #1, I'm getting a ground distance covered of about 5.3 Mm.

[Gman_builder]

Just now, Aetharan said:

Well, as I fly over the KSC at the end of circumnavigation #1, I'm getting a ground distance covered of about 5.3 Mm.

I'm assuming after heading west, right?

[Aetharan]

Prograde.  Flying east.

[Gman_builder]

2 minutes ago, gridghost said:

I edited the post already... Ctrl + F5

The screenshots show a ground distance of 5,000 kilometers.

[gridghost]

2 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

The screenshots show a ground distance of 5,000 kilometers.

As far as i can see my last screenshot shows a distance of 10,4 kkm after landing at KSC

[Gman_builder]

5 minutes ago, gridghost said:

As far as i can see my last screenshot shows a distance of 10,4 kkm after landing at KSC

My bad, that still makes no sense though. That's almost twice the normal distance.

[Van Disaster]

Well, this is a nice idea, but FAR is giving me a 90hr estimate on my first pass at a craft :S maybe if I had a second KSP-capable PC...

[Gman_builder]

9 minutes ago, Van Disaster said:

Well, this is a nice idea, but FAR is giving me a 90hr estimate on my first pass at a craft :S maybe if I had a second KSP-capable PC...

Well, theres only one way to find out if your plane will win. But you have to do the whole flight and post screenshots for it to count.

[Aetharan]

...and after spending my entire day on this, I can't land the plane.  Mechjeb can't land the plane.  The first time I reverted to my F5 over the mountains, the total distance traveled reset to 0 anyway.  Over 10 hours into the flight...  it's all rendered a wasted effort.  Have fun, guys.

[DoctorDavinci]

5 hours ago, The Optimist said:

Don't worry, he gets triggered occasionally. 

Dude ... no need to make snide remarks due to you and I not seeing eye to eye

Let alone, why bring our disagreement into another thread? ... Are you looking to bring attention to your dirty laundry?

Methinks that perhaps you should just let it go ... I don't bother you, you don't bother me

Why you gotta go poke the bear with a stick?

[Gman_builder]

1 hour ago, Aetharan said:

...and after spending my entire day on this, I can't land the plane.  Mechjeb can't land the plane.  The first time I reverted to my F5 over the mountains, the total distance traveled reset to 0 anyway.  Over 10 hours into the flight...  it's all rendered a wasted effort.  Have fun, guys.

Hey man, I went to sleep during my 43 hour flight and over shot the runway and didn't have enough fuel to make it back, so I reverted to a quicksave from 21 HOURS PRIOR. Distance reset to zero and everything. But I finished the flight happily. If you can just guestimate how many time you've flown around Kerbin and in what direction I can give you a estimated total distance traveled. The mission elapsed time clock stay the same through quicksaves too which is nice, and that's part of the challenge.

25 minutes ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Dude ... no need to make snide remarks due to you and I not seeing eye to eye

Let alone, why bring our disagreement into another thread? ... Are you looking to bring attention to your dirty laundry?

Methinks that perhaps you should just let it go ... I don't bother you, you don't bother me

Why you gotta go poke the bear with a stick?

Boys chill I don't want anymore fights in my threads.

[The Optimist]

1 hour ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Dude ... no need to make snide remarks due to you and I not seeing eye to eye

Let alone, why bring our disagreement into another thread? ... Are you looking to bring attention to your dirty laundry?

Methinks that perhaps you should just let it go ... I don't bother you, you don't bother me

Why you gotta go poke the bear with a stick?

I spilled a bit of my salt by accident, sorry.

[Jakalth]

Hmmm, I might just have to give this a try.  I even have the plane to try it with.  Didn't even know why I had built it until I saw this challange.  My entry: the Delta Kite.

I'll have to get mechjeb or pilot assist for this craft is slowish and has a crazy amount of predicted flight duration.

[Gman_builder]

2 hours ago, Jakalth said:

Hmmm, I might just have to give this a try.  I even have the plane to try it with.  Didn't even know why I had built it until I saw this challange.  My entry: the Delta Kite.

I'll have to get mechjeb or pilot assist for this craft is slowish and has a crazy amount of predicted flight duration.

Well try 'er out! I wanna see how far all your guys's plane can fly.

[Jakalth]

So far so good. 1hr 22m 21 seconds in and the aircraft has finally reached it's intended cruising altitude of 10,000m.  Still have 3904 out of 4620 units of fuel.  It's only really designed to fly with 3420 units of fuel @ 10,000m but I loaded all the extra fuel I could pack into the aircraft, without adding any extra tanks.  This is a clean aerodynamic design with no droptanks, so everything she took off with, she'll bring back home with her.  Using the Pilot Assist mod because MechJeb was incredibly unstable and was wasting so much fuel flopping about, while Pilot Assist is completely smooth and is using less fuel then I would if I flew her myself.  I only have keyboard and mouse to fly with, haven't had a joystick for 2 years now.

 

Anyways, so far so good.  Soon I'll be able to start throttling back a bit and increase its efficiency even more.  That is, once I've burned off a bit more fuel and made her a bit lighter.

 

One foible though, forgot to lock heading in Pilot assist so she started to drift off course and list to the left a few degrees.  Easily corrected though but I'm sure that cost me a minute or two of flight time as well as bled off a bit of airspeed.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Jakalth

[StahnAileron]

@Gman_builder I think you're confusing total ground distance versus linear distance. I have a feeling the F3 report records linear distance (the length of the flight path a vessel takes relative to a fixed point) rather than ground distance (the path traced out on the surface of the planet.) If I'm flying eastward at a slow speed, it will take me longer (in time and distance) because my origin point is always moving away from me. The faster I'm going, the sooner I can catch up to it. The sooner I catch up, the less time I'm flying. The less time I'm flying, the less distance I'm covering. In the end, how fast you're flying does in fact affect much distance is within a circumnavigation, at least with how KSP is probably recording it. (Though not that it matters since you're not counting circumnavs anyway.)

I imagine doing loops, spirals, etc. also add to the distance record, since you can't travel negative distance in the absolute sense, much like there is no such thing as negative dV. (A vector can be negative relative to a starting point if you want, but the magnitudes of those vectors are always positive.)

In theory, of someone could account for the rotation of Kerbin (or maybe just do this at one of the poles), you count just set a plane to fly in a circle around a fixed point (why I mentioned the poles as they are the closest local fixed point) unless it runs out of fuel. (Boring, but it does the job...)

Actually, has anyone ever check the F3 report with a deployed vessel, but never moving it? Kinda curious if the distance report increments or not. (If it does, then we know the game records absolute linear distance. Reference point is probably Kerbin's center of mass.)

Edited July 5, 2016 by StahnAileron

[Cunjo Carl]

52 minutes ago, StahnAileron said:

I have a feeling the F3 report records linear distance (the length of the flight path a vessel takes relative to a fixed point) rather than ground distance (the path traced out on the surface of the planet.) er moving it? Kinda curious if the distance report increments or not. (If it does, then we know the game records absolute linear distance. Reference point is probably Kerbin's center of mass.)

I just did some experimentation, and it seems complicated! I used KER to monitor my horizontal speed, and periodically checked ground distance traveled using F3. Simply hovering without any lateral velocity doesn't cause any excess ground distance traveled regardless of altitude (tests at 0, 2, 10km). So, I believe that rules out @Aetharan suggestion that it's sidereal angle unless I'm misunderstanding. Another finding, when traveling in a straight line (and ignoring climbing/decent), ground distance covered seemed to accrue about 2-3 times faster than horizontal speed for low (<10m/s) speeds, regardless of direction. Weird. More experimentation is needed.

[Gman_builder]

2 hours ago, StahnAileron said:

@Gman_builder I think you're confusing total ground distance versus linear distance. I have a feeling the F3 report records linear distance (the length of the flight path a vessel takes relative to a fixed point) rather than ground distance (the path traced out on the surface of the planet.) If I'm flying eastward at a slow speed, it will take me longer (in time and distance) because my origin point is always moving away from me. The faster I'm going, the sooner I can catch up to it. The sooner I catch up, the less time I'm flying. The less time I'm flying, the less distance I'm covering. In the end, how fast you're flying does in fact affect much distance is within a circumnavigation, at least with how KSP is probably recording it. (Though not that it matters since you're not counting circumnavs anyway.)

I imagine doing loops, spirals, etc. also add to the distance record, since you can't travel negative distance in the absolute sense, much like there is no such thing as negative dV. (A vector can be negative relative to a starting point if you want, but the magnitudes of those vectors are always positive.)

In theory, of someone could account for the rotation of Kerbin (or maybe just do this at one of the poles), you count just set a plane to fly in a circle around a fixed point (why I mentioned the poles as they are the closest local fixed point) unless it runs out of fuel. (Boring, but it does the job...)

Actually, has anyone ever check the F3 report with a deployed vessel, but never moving it? Kinda curious if the distance report increments or not. (If it does, then we know the game records absolute linear distance. Reference point is probably Kerbin's center of mass.)

Definitely food for thought, but I know for a fact that I circumnavigated around the equator in 1 hour and 6 mins traveling at around 1200m/s and the ground distance covered is still always between 5,700 and 5,900 kilometers. I haven't tried circumnavigating west, but i'm assuming the distance covered will be what we expect. There is definitely something bugged in his game if it lways comes out above 10 thousand kilometers.