Stop Before Running out of Runway

[something]

I am not sure, if this has been done before, at least, I didn't find any challenge like this...

There are various vehicles in use in KSP, serving a lot of different purposes. It is hard to say which vehicle is the best - unless you compare them under equal conditions. Obviously, a faster vehicle is better. Same goes for a vehicle that does accelerate fast and for one that can stop fast. But what is fast?

In order to find out, build a vehicle, launch it from the space plane hangar, achieve a maximum speed and come to a stop, before you run out of runway.

Rules:

a) A vehicle is any given set of parts that can carry Kerbals or payloads (or both) (you don't need to have wheels, it may lift off, whatever...)

b) You may use any form of propulsion or acceleration as long as it is included in the stock game.

c) The runway is defined by that big long rectangle of tormac at the KSC (the green slopes are not considered to be part of the runway as of this challenge)

 

Highest "speed over land" wins.

Screenshot/Video or it didn't happen.

 

The List of Best Vehicles

Danken94 - 713 m/s

Jefzor - 618 m/s

qzgy - 447 m/s

Martian Emigrant - 289 m/s

something - 265 m/s

 

 

So here's my attempt: 265m/s with quite some runway to spare. However, at 270m/s I constantly ran out of runway....still wondering how Jeb and Bill survived those 14.8G ...

Edited April 14, 2017 by something
Added Ranking

[Martian Emigrant]

Here is my attempt.

 

Why is there two speeds?

Highest Speed Over Land: 289m/s

 

ME

Edited April 11, 2017 by Martian Emigrant

[qzgy]

Nothing in the rules about ditching parts....

Max speed on this run was 432 m/s

I did get a run of 438, but I did go off the runway and it was in a slightly different vehicle

Edit: Redid with more courage, got a run of 447 m/s

 

Edited April 12, 2017 by qzgy

[MR L A]

You should probably add that the vehicle needs to be touching the runway... as soon as you said "it can fly or whatever" I was thinking, okay, I'll fly straight up with a reusable rocket stage (designed to go to orbit) and land right at the end of the runway. It'd take some very precise flying, but it isn't impossible.

OR

A better rule change would be quickest time from one end to the other (obviously flying up and landing again will take a lot longer than the above ideas).

Just my thoughts! Like the challenge though

[something]

18 hours ago, Martian Emigrant said:

Why is there two speeds?

 

1 hour ago, MR L A said:

You should probably add that the vehicle needs to be touching the runway... as soon as you said "it can fly or whatever" I was thinking, okay, I'll fly straight up with a reusable rocket stage (designed to go to orbit) and land right at the end of the runway. It'd take some very precise flying, but it isn't impossible.

Speed is the projection of your velocity onto a given plane of reference. The "speed over land" is the projection of your velocity onto the surface of Kerbin, while your "speed" is projected onto a plane which is aligned with your movement. If you start a rocket and fly straight up, press F3. You will realize that your rocket might very well have a velocity of 300m/s, but your "speed over land" might be as low as 0m/s if you fly straight up in the sky. So, the speed we're interested in, is the component of your velocity which is aligned with the runway - the "speed over land".

 

 

1 hour ago, MR L A said:

A better rule change would be quickest time from one end to the other (obviously flying up and landing again will take a lot longer than the above ideas).

Just my thoughts! Like the challenge though

Your idea would require precise time keeping, while KSP offers seconds at best. In order to convert that time to a speed, we had to divide the distance covered by the time needed, since we do not require the vehicle to stop at the end of the runway (if you cope with half a runway that's fine). As a result we would obtain an average speed which - unfortunately - wouldn't tell us the maximum speed of that vehicle since the acceleration phases are still unknown.

 

I like to go with a minimum set of rules since the challenge should be easy to understand - nobody likes reading through three pages of rules, just to understand what he has or has not to do. Also, a minimalistic attempt to rules leaves many options to fulfill the task which again gets you quite some creative solutions. My vehicle used 'chutes mounted behind the rear axle in order to pitch up the vehicle during the slowdown process. As a result, the increased air resistance lead to much shorter slowdown distances (originally I tried to use the canards as a sort of spoiler to get me the additional downforce to make use of the breaks of the wheels...but well, science, you know?) But seeing those reverse engines, I actually should think of carrying the extra weight...

[Jefzor]

 

First attempt with embarrasingly slow sub-500 m/s speed in the spoiler: 

Spoiler

 

495 m/s

I'm hoping I can surpass 500 m/s if I improve the design. I'm not sure if the chutes and airbrakes are helping much, so maybe I could remove them end rely entirely on sepratrons for the slowing down part. 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 12, 2017 by Jefzor
gfycat not displaying properly

[Jefzor]

I improved my speed to 512 m/s. Feel free to disregard my puny first attempt.

I feel like I also deserve bonus style points for how ridiculously close that braking was :p. 

https://gfycat.com/LikableWelltodoHornet

[Jefzor]

Please disregard my pathetic sub-600 m/s attempts. 618 m/s is my new record. Special thanks to Jeb, who had to make some compromises on cockpit comfort; that 35G brake must have hurt in that command seat 

I wonder if we could surpass 700 m/s. 

 

[something]

618m/s is impressive indeed. Going to add some sort of ranking to the OP once I am back from my Easter vacation. Doing that with a mobile isn't that much fun...

[Danken94]

713 m/s Can we surpass 800?

 

Edited April 14, 2017 by Danken94

[Hodo]

Mach 2 without leaving the ground.. nice!

[ATEC]

Nobody said anything about kerploding!
So.. around 300 - 400m/s will be reached before exploding

Reached 393m/s !

[Jefzor]

Very impressive. Would you mind giving us a peek what the craft looks like? Do you use some kind of ejection seat to get the kerbal out of the vehicle? 

On 14-4-2017 at 8:52 PM, Danken94 said:

713 m/s Can we surpass 800?

 

 

[ZooNamedGames]

Don't mean to be that guy, but a challenge like this one has existed, but I'm FAR too lazy to find the thread (might've been a reddit challenge, but it was popular). That said, if there was a thread, it's quite old, so cheers to the OP to reviving this concept.

That said, let your builds be swift, and their destruction even faster.

[ihtoit]

It is an old challenge, it was one of mine and it spawned a couple video series (and the Reddit Challenge!). I'll edit this post and add the link once I find it.

 

(EDIT: there are TWO legs to my challenge, one using the OLD aero model, the other using the new, both have a pretty comprehensive set of rules):

 

Edited April 20, 2017 by ihtoit

[KenjiKrafts]

I will post my entry later, need to make a GIF/Video

Also does it count if I explode before the end of the runway? xD

Edited April 20, 2017 by KenjiKrafts

[ihtoit]

14 minutes ago, KenjiKrafts said:

I will post my entry later, need to make a GIF/Video

Also does it count if I explode before the end of the runway? xD

Probably not... I'd defer to the OP though, this ain't my challenge.

[something]

On 4/20/2017 at 0:52 PM, KenjiKrafts said:

I will post my entry later, need to make a GIF/Video

Also does it count if I explode before the end of the runway? xD

The rules say that you have to stop "any given set of parts" before reaching the end of the runway. The rules do not state anything about "staging" and there are some entries here which made use of staging, so that's fine with me.

Now if your vehicle collides with the runway and consequently explodes, it didn't stop in the sense of coming to a halt in the reference frame of the runway. Merely, the game engine detected that your parts moved into the terrain and decided to delete those parts instead of stopping them. That's what we commonly call an explosion. So, technically, you didn't actually stop your vehicle. Also, we might argue, that a non-existent vehicle has no defined state of movement. That is, you vehicle would be both - moving and not moving - if it completely exploded. Now since you cannot tell me where your vehicle actually is, you can't disprove that it left the runway Arguing from a classical point of view, an explosion somehow is a form of violent diffusion which basically means your parts spread over the space in the proximity which includes the terrain that is not the runway. That would mean you left the runway...

So, just stage those parts away

[KenjiKrafts]

18 minutes ago, something said:

The rules say that you have to stop "any given set of parts" before reaching the end of the runway. The rules do not state anything about "staging" and there are some entries here which made use of staging, so that's fine with me.

Now if your vehicle collides with the runway and consequently explodes, it didn't stop in the sense of coming to a halt in the reference frame of the runway. Merely, the game engine detected that your parts moved into the terrain and decided to delete those parts instead of stopping them. That's what we commonly call an explosion. So, technically, you didn't actually stop your vehicle. Also, we might argue, that a non-existent vehicle has no defined state of movement. That is, you vehicle would be both - moving and not moving - if it completely exploded. Now since you cannot tell me where your vehicle actually is, you can't disprove that it left the runway Arguing from a classical point of view, an explosion somehow is a form of violent diffusion which basically means your parts spread over the space in the proximity which includes the terrain that is not the runway. That would mean you left the runway...

So, just stage those parts away

You see it's not a collision that's the issue, the craft rips itself to bits due to heat  

At about half way it hits Mach 4 at this point its gone I can't stop it after that, the Aerobrakes rip off due to velocity upon deployment, it goes from 5-8G's to 15 in like 0.6 seconds. 

The craft is the current contender for the land speed record, it can hit over 1600 M/S, infact the fastest I have ever got it was 2264M/S

I will have to revise the heat system as the braking system gets in the way, sorry for inconvenience as I did say I would make a video last Thursday

Happy Flying, Kenji