Unexpected craft abilities

[Scarecrow]

Just recently I designed a small aircraft with no specific purpose in mind other than to have a slightly different look to other aircraft I had designed and built up to that point.  I came up with this:

 

It doesn't have a massive range, isn't particularly quick with a speed around 400 m/s depending on altitude, but it flies quite well and is easy to fly.

 

 

What I subsequently discovered is that it makes an excellent submarine.  Having landed on water to see if it would float, any attempt at turning would see the nose dipping below the surface and going underwater.  So whilst it doesn't make a particularly good boat, it does make a very good submarine, making about 34 m/s whilst submerged.  It does need to maintain forward momentum to stay submerged or it just floats to the surface, but it's an unexpected bonus from a craft that was originally designed as an aircraft.

 

 

Has anyone else designed a craft for a specific purpose only to find that it fulfills another role really well too?  If so, let's see them.

[Scotius]

Air-breathing jet powered submarine. Only in KSP...

[Fluburtur]

One of my best fighter jet was also my first submarine, the jet is also very good at aerobatics.

I then designed an actual submarine and a plane to carry orange tanks to refuel it, the plane is good at transporting all kinds of heavy stuff at high altitude and speed.

[KerikBalm]

2 hours ago, Scotius said:

Air-breathing jet powered submarine. Only in KSP...

Yea... the secret to making submarines in KSP, is to make an airplane.

Spoiler

 

This was a modded duna with some seas, and only a 66.7% or so thicker atmosphere... so a large wing area was still required to have a reasonable landing speed... looks like a normal plane with a big-ish wing... but...

Ok, its not the best picture... but there it is about 780 meters under the surface of the ocean I had given to Duna

 

This was meant as a crew transfer SSTO for laythe. It makes for a great sub as well... although I don't ave any pictures uploaded of it acting as a sub)

 

Its much harder to try and make actual neutrally bouyant submarines, rahter than dynamic diving submarines... best done with modded parts, but it can be done stock... although the lack of an electric propulsion means that as fuel runs low, it turns into just a boat..

And getting "realistic"submarines tp another planet... much harder... its much easier to just use a plane.

Spoiler

This has just 1 modded part (the electric motors based on the goliath), the rest is 100% stock

 

Edited August 4, 2016 by KerikBalm

[storm_soldier2377]

I was messing around once in Sandbox and discovered that you can land the Aeris 3a on its tail. 

[Hydrothermalventclam]

My friend once built a tiny jet plane, with the old turbojet engine, which I managed to get onto a suborbital trajectory with the old aerodynamics.  I then put some monoprop on it and obtained orbit.

[X-SR71]

Slap a circular intake, a small fuel tank, a juno engine and a couple of the small control surfaces as wings and it makes a great plane/submarine as well!

 

[p1t1o]

Wahahaha! I was expecting something like "Turned out to have exceptional high-angle-of-attack performance" or "Can pull 40gs".

"Makes a great submarine" Classic KSP 

[Curveball Anders]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Yea... the secret to making submarines in KSP, is to make an airplane.

Which begs the question.

Is the secret of building a good airplane in KSP, trying to build a submarine?

[Corona688]

I was doing a silly part-testing mission, "test the swivel engine splashed down at Kerbin".  Flea engine, decoupler, engine, probodyne, parachute.  Done.

When it splashed down I got distracted a moment, and when I came back I noticed two curious things:

1. A world record for "5 meters underwater".
2. The parachute survived splashdown.

Sure enough, parachutes work underwater, and sure enough, it was still going!  I let it continue -- though, growing bored of its glacial pace, I cut the parachute.  Several world records later it hit the seabed hard enough to destroy the engine, making the pod bouyant again!

I came back and did the same thing on purpose, this time with a load of instruments.

The rocket engine is nothing but ballast...  Not much else is as dense as an engine.

Edited August 4, 2016 by Corona688

[Guest]

 

On 04/08/2016 at 4:18 PM, Curveball Anders said:

Which begs the question.

Is the secret of building a good airplane in KSP, trying to build a submarine?

Body lift aircraft are potentially very streamlined, so... actually yes.

[foamyesque]

I was (one of) the first to discover you could make a plane fly by flapping control surfaces.

 

 

That was an interesting day.

Edited August 7, 2016 by foamyesque

[Brownhair2]

The plane in my profile pic was originally designed for getting to easter eggs on Kerbin very fast. It turned out it was much, much faster than expected. Like, Mach 4.5 fast. Then I realized if I replaced one of the engines with a LANTERN, it could go to space. Thus began my massive streak of Whiplash-LANTERN SSTOs.

I also built a stupid-looking plane with tiny wings and downwards-facing engines to compensate. Turn out that it can land at very, very low speeds.

I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting.

Edited August 7, 2016 by Brownhair2