Build a coal-powered aircraft

[daniel911t]

Just now, Foxster said:

Dumb question - you are turning them on, right?

Yeah, but I was surprised to see that I had to - I initially thought they were passive.

[Foxster]

2 minutes ago, daniel911t said:

Yeah, but I was surprised to see that I had to - I initially thought they were passive.

Umm, odd. I have a plane with pretty much identical components apart from the wings and the ISRU peaks and sticks at 1000° with one small radiator.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Foxster

[daniel911t]

9 minutes ago, Foxster said:

Umm, odd. I have a plane with pretty much identical components apart from the wings and the ISRU peaks and sticks at 1000° with one small radiator.

Is it possible that engineers increase the efficiency of radiators too?

 

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey all.

This is my emtry in the "I ain't no enginer" category.

http://imgur.com/a/yiAGs

Pretty much the same craft. Tweaked the tail plane, drained the O-Two and Mono-Prop.

Couldn’t make it take-off with less power. So I left the engine at 33% and reduced the thrust once airborne.

I checked the drag component. It's inside the ship and I must say that maybe a change of pod could make a difference. Never looked at it before.

Spoiler

 

Ran out of Ore at 34:59

I reduced power all along as weight was being shed. That thing sips fuel.

All quiet in the engine room at 1H03

Total flight 1h10m35

 

ME

Edited February 9, 2017 by Martian Emigrant

[daniel911t]

Martian, 

Great run!  I see you were at about an hour on flight time too.

[Cunjo Carl]

Just starting to give a go at a large ISRU version. It's a bit of an abomination at the moment, but I finally hit resource neutral, and was excited so I figured to post. I think removing some wings will do it well, and swapping the fuel cells for solar panels. Pretilted wings allow it to fly at silly slow speeds.

 

[Wimtzw]

I'm working on a larger plane for this challenge. Think MKIII parts, Convert-O-Tron 250, that stuff. I'm making good progress on it, I just need to do some work on the cooling. Its overheating further then I want it to.
Its a bi-plane, with custom made larger wings.

On 2/9/2017 at 8:06 PM, daniel911t said:

Yeah, but I was surprised to see that I had to - I initially thought they were passive.

If you think about it, its not that strange. The ideal operating temperatures of the converters are quite high. (I believe for both 1000 K, although I could be wrong on the smaller one) So you want to be sure they get to that temperature fast. If you were to cool it whilst its heating up it would take longer to reach the ideal temperature, what might cause you running out of fuel you need to stay airborne.

[MedwedianPresident]

I am attempting this. I stacked 3 1.25m convertotrons and ran across the thermal problem - as the trons heat up, their efficiency decreases. Experimenting with radiators.

[MedwedianPresident]

Did that yesterday (will post pictures in two weeks). Added radiators on top of the convertotrons. Flew for 15 minutes before running out of ore and switching back into fuel-consuming mode.

[Ryu Gemini]

Well, here's my quick attempt at it.  A little noobish, but its been a while since I messed around with KSP much. 

 

Started the plane with zero fuel in it, and started the engine before turning on the converters.  Takes the whole runway, but flies well enough after lifting off. 

 

Since it was operating in "coal-only" from the get-go, I figured I could just count 10 minutes from when I started, with a little extra to cover whatever time I was standing on the runway before the engines started moving.  Its not like the plane is showing any signs of slowing down. 

Radiators are helpful for keeping the efficiency at a reasonable value. 

 

 

Edited March 3, 2017 by Ryu Gemini

[Foxster]

3 hours ago, Ryu Gemini said:

Well, here's my quick attempt at it.  A little noobish, but its been a while since I messed around with KSP much. 

Started the plane with zero fuel in it, and started the engine before turning on the converters.  Takes the whole runway, but flies well enough after lifting off. 

Since it was operating in "coal-only" from the get-go, I figured I could just count 10 minutes from when I started, with a little extra to cover whatever time I was standing on the runway before the engines started moving.  Its not like the plane is showing any signs of slowing down. 

Radiators are helpful for keeping the efficiency at a reasonable value. 

 

Nice job!

[rockets-don't-make-toast]

http://imgur.com/a/Vt6W4

theres my attempt, I was proccessing the ore so fast with 6 large proccessers and 4 five star engineers that I was getting 5 fuel for every 2 ore and was filling my fuel tanks mid flight, the ore ran out pretty fast though, did you like it?

[Foxster]

44 minutes ago, rockets-don't-make-toast said:

did you like it?

Yup and a noble watery demise. 

[Ryu Gemini]

Come to think of it, since I had MechJeb, I could have just put an engineer in mine to boost the engine power too. 

 

Making a spaceplane seems a bit beyond my ability though.  If anyone does it, I would suspect it will involve staging to get rid of used up ore tanks and unneeded wings after reaching a certain altitude and speed.  I mean, at the risk of stating the obvious, those larger tanks get really heavy when filled with ore. 

 

My best attempt yet is slightly cheaty due to me not taking out the oxidizer so I can use fuel to power fuel cells to power the converters to make fuel for the fuel cells and engines.  Also, I have to toggle the converters on and off since they produce fuel faster than it is used, but also use energy faster than I can make it, so I technically cannot maintain a set level of fuel with it.  it also has about a gazillion wings and tends to get screwed up once you get above certain altitudes and speeds, and even with the enhanced fuel generation (and at that, also when using both fuel making and Fuel+Ox making at the same time, which is possible for some reason), it cannot produce fuel fast enough for the Rapier's closed-cycle mode. 

 

 

Also, for some reason, the larger converters don't seem to be any better than the smaller ones, with the exception of how fast they make monopropellant. 

 

 

But yeah.  I am not good at space planes.  In fact, I am decidedly lacking at them.  Everyone seems to be able to make smaller spaceplanes than mine that also do more impressive stuff. 

 

 

I suppose it might be more viable if you were to use some mods that add more power generation and storage options.  Having a nice power generation will open up the ability to process ore faster. 

 

 

 

[Edit:  Thought of something potentially fun for those who are particularly fond of pushing limits]

 

 

 

Another fun thing actually:  Since monopropellant looks steamy, I figured "a true steam-powered aircraft will use monopropellant "steam" literally as its propulsive force!"  Suffice to say, ore turns to monopropellant at an abysmal efficiency, and does so very slowly to boot. 

 

The idea with this extra-hard version of the challenge would be simple:  You can only use monopropellant for propulsion, and any monopropellant tanks must be empty when you start it up (you could think of it as being like pressure in the steam boiler).  You would be allowed to build up monopropellant before turning on the engines though.  I imagine you would actually spend time on the runway simply waiting for the "boiler" to get enough "steam pressure" stored up to be able to take off with it. 

 

In fact, if someone is actually able to make a monopropellant powered coal-aircraft that is merely able to take off and stay in the air for ONE minute, let alone 10, I'll be impressed. 

 

In fact, the scoreboard for such a challenge is simple:  How long you are able to stay in the air. 

 

 

Edited March 3, 2017 by Ryu Gemini

[Foxster]

5 minutes ago, Ryu Gemini said:

I suppose it might be more viable if you were to use some mods that add more power generation and storage options.  Having a nice power generation will open up the ability to process ore faster. 

 

Ah, my young Padawan Learner, mods lead to laziness. Laziness leads to fear. Fear leads to the dark side. 

[Ryu Gemini]

The dark side leads to MechJeb. 

 

And one could argue that as long as you are only using it for power generation, you are just making it more like a steam engine by, well, making it heavier, and also making it not require solar panels to function. 

 

[Foxster]

Cloudy is the future. Unclear it is where MechJeb leads us.

 

Though Dagobah seems a good bet.  

 

(Sorry, I'm four bottles into a case of Theakston's Old Peculier and things are getting more than a tad murky at this point). 

Edited March 3, 2017 by Foxster

[rockets-don't-make-toast]

4 hours ago, Ryu Gemini said:

I suppose it might be more viable if you were to use some mods that add more power generation and storage options.  Having a nice power generation will open up the ability to process ore faster. 

 

 

 

I, in order to power SIX large converters simply put (literally) 100-200 (I didn't count) thermonuclear generators to produce power, and even then at max effeciency I was losing power, luckily the ore ran out first.

[DoctorDavinci]

I liked the idea of this challenge so I stuck Jeb in the CANUKWorks FourCOT J1, an ore powered aircraft with 4 small ISRU's and a couple drills onboard with one Wheesley Turbofan ... I started with no fuel, activated the COT's and engine at the same time then managed to get airborne with only the fuel created by the COT's ... I flew east and landed at the next large land mass to fill my ore tanks

I'm going to try flying around Kerbin's equatorial region and land back at the KSC on only ore

Anyways, I had fun with this

Here's the craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/61de2upv358m2rf/FourCOT J1.craft?dl=0

Here's the video:

 

[Foxster]

Nice job. Not easy to make enough fuel and thrust to lift off. 

[Numerlor]

Created this in few mins, couldn't get anything working without engineer so i reused my old plane that could fly at low speeds, here is craft file if you want and don't pay attention to that name

http://imgur.com/a/Ln7Kg

After posting I noticed that I forgot to take takeoff image and didn't open resource tab, hope you don't mind

Edited March 6, 2017 by Numerlor

[Foxster]

Good one. A lander-can wouldn't have been my own first choice but looks like you pulled it off OK. 

Doesn't matter about the takeoff image and such. This challenge is just a bit of fun. 

[Numerlor]

3 minutes ago, Foxster said:

Good one. A lander-can wouldn't have been my own first choice but looks like you pulled it off OK. 

Doesn't matter about the takeoff image and such. This challenge is just a bit of fun. 

At speeds like that I thought that mass is bigger issue than drag

[Foxster]

Not sure. Certainly at high speed a can would be very draggy but at 52m/s?

 

[Numerlor]

10 minutes ago, Foxster said:

Not sure. Certainly at high speed a can would be very draggy but at 52m/s?

 

I think we misunderstood ourselves I was trying to say that mass is more important than drag at low speeds as 52m/s. That can doesn't create much drag while being bigger than nose cone as it would at high speeds

This was written in weird english and I can't come up with anything better but we are reffering to same thing

Edited March 6, 2017 by Numerlor