The Paper Airplane Challenge

[greydragon70]

First I have to give credit to Nexter's Lab. I got the idea for this challenge while watching one of his videos.

This is a challenge to make a paper airplane and see how far you can glide.

Post your attempts here or on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JollyRogerAe...

Distance will be measured from the Launch clamps. 
No Mods. Planes must be stock. 

Parts allowed for the plane: flat wing sections, Elevons/control surfaces(no winglets or shuttle parts), cubic struts or I-beams, struts(spacetape), 1- RTG or 2- small solar panels, 1- small battery(100 electric), 1- small SAS unit, 2- radial decouplers, up to 16 seperatrons(no other boosters or engines), minimum 1 command seat.

Rules:
1- No more than 70 parts for the plane itself.
2- Seperatrons can only be attached to the 2 decouplers.
3- I'm looking at the distance from the launch clamps.
4- No infin-glide(if still possible)
5- Launch from runway using launch clamps.
6- Land in the water intact.
7- F3 to show craft status and have the launch clamp marker visible.
8- Must have at least 1 Kerbal on board.

9- Thrust on the seperatrons must be above 75%.
You may use anything you need to get the Kerbal onto the plane but no capsules or cockpits on the plane itself.

Current Leader Board: 

Foamyesque - 46.1 Km                           Honorable mention: Herbal Space Program 44.5 Km(Thrust below 75%)

Moarmau5 - 38.2 Km

sebi9960 - 38.2 Km

The Optimist - 38.2 Km

Xenro66 - 24.6 Km
Jolly Roger Aerospace - 20.8 Km
Billy Winn - 12.9 Km

 

 

 

 

• Category

  • Entertainment

Edited July 13, 2016 by greydragon70

[Moarmau5]

Very interesting. Might give this a go when I get home. Would it be possible to post our submissions here if we don't have a facebook?

Disregard the last bit. Just reread the rules 

Edited July 5, 2016 by Moarmau5

[greydragon70]

Yes please post here. Can't wait to see what you can do.

Edited July 6, 2016 by greydragon70

[sebi9960]

I got 30.1 km

 

[greydragon70]

1 hour ago, sebi9960 said:

I got 30.1 km

 

Great job!! 

[Moarmau5]

I managed 38.2 km. I ran into an issue where my kerbal was not being shown in the command seat, and the IVA showing some pod I've never seen before. I'm using TakeControl to get her there, so I'm assuming there's a mod conflict somewhere. But the game says there is a kerbal in the seat, so I think I'm still following rule #8.

 

[greydragon70]

30 minutes ago, Moarmau5 said:

I managed 38.2 km. I ran into an issue where my kerbal was not being shown in the command seat, and the IVA showing some pod I've never seen before. I'm using TakeControl to get her there, so I'm assuming there's a mod conflict somewhere. But the game says there is a kerbal in the seat, so I think I'm still following rule #8.

 

Nice work!! I have the same problem with Take Command. Just pop the Kerbal out of the seat and then board again. I had a platform set up in case the Kerbal rolled or slid down the plane. 

[Just Jim]

I made this a couple weeks ago for my Emiko story, and while it doesn't really qualify (because it has wheels) I thought it was pretty close to your challenge... maybe the model airplane version... lol.

Total distance so far from takeoff, about 5 km.

 

 

[Moarmau5]

@greydragon70, thanks! I tried to EVA and then board again and she disappeared back into the mysterious pod. But doing so allowed me to choose the cockpit view, which turned into quite the view lol.

Looks like an attempt two MK1-2 pod frames smashed together 

Edited July 6, 2016 by Moarmau5

[sebi9960]

I just got 38.2 as well :c

 

Edited July 6, 2016 by sebi9960

[Moarmau5]

@sebi9960 Have we just confirmed the max paper airplane distance? 

[herbal space program]

This looks interesting and a lot less tedious than the plane endurance ones. One question though -- are control surfaces disallowed? They're not on the part list, but it looks like the plane in the example has elevators.

[sebi9960]

They count as flat wing sections so they're allowed

[herbal space program]

8 hours ago, sebi9960 said:

They count as flat wing sections so they're allowed

Thanks! After fooling around for a while yesterday, I determined they weren't really necessary, but of course dropping the SAS unit and battery pack can only make it lighter. I'm amazed at how far your gliders went. So far, I can't seem to do much better than 20km, although I haven't gone to the extremes of wing area your craft have. My intuition was that less relative wing area should perform better, because you can reach a higher altitude on the Sepratrons, but so far my experiments haven't borne that out. I still have a few things to try before I submit though. I'm also considering myself posting a slightly different version of this, in which you fly your glider to a 70-72km circular prograde orbit any way you want, then just before you fly over the KSC (sort of like the toe line in long jumping), you drop your Pe to no more than 45km and release the glider. Scoring would be for both distance and time aloft.  There would be no restrictions on size or parts other than you need at least 1 Kerbal and you can't employ any form of forward propulsion. I suspect that challenge could yield quite a variety of different competitive solutions based on optimizing different critical parameters.

[The Optimist]

23 hours ago, Moarmau5 said:

I managed 38.2 km. I ran into an issue where my kerbal was not being shown in the command seat, and the IVA showing some pod I've never seen before. I'm using TakeControl to get her there, so I'm assuming there's a mod conflict somewhere. But the game says there is a kerbal in the seat, so I think I'm still following rule #8.

 

That is a TakeCommand glitch.

[greydragon70]

17 hours ago, herbal space program said:

This looks interesting and a lot less tedious than the plane endurance ones. One question though -- are control surfaces disallowed? They're not on the part list, but it looks like the plane in the example has elevators.

Yes, control surfaces are allowed. I will edit the post to reflect that.

Only the control surfaces pictured here are allowed

http://imgur.com/E3LS9ok

Edited July 7, 2016 by greydragon70

[herbal space program]

After spending another evening on it, I think 40km is totally crackable in this challenge, but I've got another question: is there some way to build this thing without at least an OKTO-2 command pod in it? Command pods are also not on the list, but I can't see how to make this ship without one, since the ECS can't be selected as the root part, and I only seem to be able to get the launch clamps to attach properly to something that has one. So the craft I have currently contains a completely useless OKTO2 command pod just so that I can put it together in the SPH. I suppose I could also put the pod on a decoupler and eject it before launch. How is everybody else handling this?

 

Edited July 8, 2016 by herbal space program

[Moarmau5]

@herbal space program I just used a cubic strut as the first part, put a command seat on it, then slapped on some wings and control surfaces. No need for a command pod or to reroot anything (if I understand your question correctly).

[herbal space program]

17 minutes ago, Moarmau5 said:

@herbal space program I just used a cubic strut as the first part, put a command seat on it, then slapped on some wings and control surfaces. No need for a command pod or to reroot anything (if I understand your question correctly).

That's all there is to it? D'oh!  If I can ditch that pod, I'm almost sure I can make 40km....

[greydragon70]

1 hour ago, herbal space program said:

After spending another evening on it, I think 40km is totally crackable in this challenge, but I've got another question: is there some way to build this thing without at least an OKTO-2 command pod in it? Command pods are also not on the list, but I can't see how to make this ship without one, since the ECS can't be selected as the root part, and I only seem to be able to get the launch clamps to attach properly to something that has one. So the craft I have currently contains a completely useless OKTO2 command pod just so that I can put it together in the SPH. I suppose I could also put the pod on a decoupler and eject it before launch. How is everybody else handling this?

 

"You may use anything you need to get the Kerbal onto the plane but no capsules or cockpits on the plane itself." -From the rules.

Pictured below is my first attempt at this. I used a decoupler and cubic struts to build off of a launch clamp up to the plane and put a capsule on top. Once the Kerbal is in the seat, eject the capsule.

 

Edited July 8, 2016 by greydragon70

[herbal space program]

1 hour ago, greydragon70 said:

"You may use anything you need to get the Kerbal onto the plane but no capsules or cockpits on the plane itself." -From the rules.

Pictured below is my first attempt at this. I used a decoupler and cubic struts to build off of a launch clamp up to the plane and put a capsule on top. Once the Kerbal is in the seat, eject the capsule

Yes I've got it now, thanks, per the exchange just above. That's actually how I got my Kerbal on board as well, I just wasn't aware that you could use a cubic strut as the root part, so it wasn't clear to me how to build it without any kind of a command pod on board. I'm better off without one anyway.

Edited July 8, 2016 by herbal space program

[greydragon70]

2 hours ago, herbal space program said:

Yes I've got it now, thanks, per the exchange just above. That's actually how I got my Kerbal on board as well, I just wasn't aware that you could use a cubic strut as the root part, so it wasn't clear to me how to build it without any kind of a command pod on board. I'm better off without one anyway.

Yeah, I use a small I-beam myself, then connect the chair and wings to it. I'm up to 32km and I think I can get a bit more. The Take Command mod helps with this and someone just posted an updated version for 1.1.3 at the end of the original post.

 

Edited July 8, 2016 by greydragon70

[herbal space program]

After getting rid of the probe core, I was able to get to 44.5km with this ship :

 

 

I  think ultimately this can  probably be beaten pretty easily, but I'll stand pat for now . I feel this was a fun challenge because you have to balance optimal lift/mass with the drag and weight of adding more wings. At first I was trying to design it to ship SAS, panels, batteries, a probe core, etc, but once I realized all it needed was the boosters, the wings, one Kerbal, a couple of cubic struts, and the seat, it occurred to me you don't really need that much wing area to make your glide profile essentially like that of a pure wing. In fact, I'll bet I could drop some wing area from what I have now and do significantly better. Once you have your optimal  relative wing area worked out., the central question becomes how high can you boost your ship on those Sepratrons. I tried to maximize that by splitting them into two stages (10 in the first, 6 in the second) by mounting one decoupler on top of the other crosswise, and also by limiting their thrust to a TWR of about 1.5 (~20% thrust), to minimize losses to drag and to maximize burn time. I boosted at close to 45 degrees with that setup, for a total of ~100 seconds. I think all of these parameters could still be optimized a fair bit more, so I'm guessing that around 60km will be the ultimate maximum. but (I hope) we'll see ....

Edited July 9, 2016 by herbal space program

[greydragon70]

I meant this whole challenge not necessarily as a pilot challenge, but as a thinking/building challenge. While some of you stretched the limits of looking like a paper airplane, you've very much impressed me with what you've been able to do within the limits I set out. Also, you've been very civil towards each other. I thank you and I applaud all of you!! 

This challenge is by no means over.

I'm going back and building the AP Mark6 in a few minutes. Hopefully, I can catch up with you. Yeah, I'm talking to you Herbal Space Program, you're making me work too hard on this buddy. Now I gotta fire something up and build the best paper airplane ever. lol  

[sebi9960]

I just tried out my new Design (top secret :P)  when this happened:

Good old Kraken...

 Jeb survived though