Longest craft in orbit

[neistridlar]

The challenge is as follows make the longest craft possible, and make it orbit. I want to see how far we can push the limits of this game. I will keep track of the scores in two classes: Stock parts only and Anything goes.

To qualify for Stock parts only class you must adhere to the following rules:

    1. All of your crafts may only use Stock parts (Obviously)

    2. You must launch the craft from KSC into orbit

    3. You may build it giant on the ground and launch it in one piece, or make lots of little pieces and assemble them in orbit. 

    4. No mods or cheats that alter the physics of the game or the parts.

        - Mods like mech jeb, navyfish docking alignment indicator are accepted.

   [5. No excessive space between parts] <-- should I add this one? (I think so)

    6. Pictures or video of each type of craft at the launch pad, as well as pictures that validates your claimed score.

To qualify for Anything goes:

    1. Mod it, hack it break it, do what ever you want.

    2. Picks or it didn't happen.

To measure your craft I recommend you to use the navyfish docking alignment indicator. Take a separate craft and align it with one end of your long craft, set a docking port on the other end as your target, and read out the distance from the mod. If you have a different method however I will accept that, as long as I deem it rigorous enough.

 

Top scores:

Stock parts only:

1. neistridlar [600m]

2.

3.

 

Anything goes:

1. qzgy  [999 999 900m]

2. EpicSpaceTroll139 [ 6 973 597 m]

3. neistridlar [600m]

4.

5.

Edited February 11, 2018 by neistridlar
Updated Leader Board

[neistridlar]

And to start this one of I will enter my own subbmission. The spacecraft measures 600m long. And as odd as this may seem, those SRBs are purely structural, and in fact empty, They just happened to be the longest parts I could find. Each segment is 75m meters long.

 

https://imgur.com/a/9A8SY

Edited February 4, 2018 by neistridlar

[Martian Emigrant]

The album isn't there for me.

 

ME

[MarvinKitFox]

On 2/2/2018 at 6:34 PM, neistridlar said:

And to start this one of I will enter my own subbmission. The spacecraft measures 600m long. And as odd as this may seem, those SRBs are purely structural, and in fact empty, They just happened to be the longest parts I could find. Each segment is 75m meters long.

 

Album https://imgur.com/KKzO30l will appear when post is submitted

 

Slightly mangled your album posting, but one can get to it by slicing the url.

You have there ONE picture of a vehicle on the launchpad, with 3 * 75m (each is 5 * 15m SRB) with docking ports on the end.

So, you say you launched **THREE** of these, rendezvoused and docked 8 segments together, throwing the 9th one away? thus making the "600m" orbital assembly you claim?

Pictures would be nice, of both the launch, orbit, rendezvous and docking, for all three vehicles.

 

The S1 booster (when empty) is a nice long, light structural element, but stringing 40 of them together in a long spaghetti gives you a noodle with a length/diameter ratio of almost 500-to-one, linked through 24 rubbery joints and 8 joints make of silly putty.. It becomes a monster that wants to invite the Kraken.

 

Edited February 4, 2018 by MarvinKitFox

[neistridlar]

Hm, now I am confused. The album has two pictures in it as far as I can see, one is the final one in orbit. And it was in fact 8 launches, the three SRB stacks do not detatch, but dock with 3 ports for each connection, making ofr a much more rigid structure.

Does this work better? 

https://imgur.com/a/9A8SY

Edited February 4, 2018 by neistridlar
edited for more clarity

[Dundun65C]

If you put the thrusters on the front and drag the lenthy thingy behind you, might it be more stable?

[neistridlar]

3 hours ago, Dundun65C said:

If you put the thrusters on the front and drag the lenthy thingy behind you, might it be more stable?

There may be some aerodynamic and structural advantages to that, yes, but the craft that I launched has no issues with stability as long as you keep the nose pointing in to the wind. If you have not already, you might want to look up the pendulum fallacy (It's about how putting the engines at the front does not really improve stability of rockets).

[sevenperforce]

2 hours ago, neistridlar said:

There may be some aerodynamic and structural advantages to that, yes, but the craft that I launched has no issues with stability as long as you keep the nose pointing in to the wind. If you have not already, you might want to look up the pendulum fallacy (It's about how putting the engines at the front does not really improve stability of rockets).

The pendulum fallacy is about guidance stability, not about structural stability. It's a fallacy to think that placing the engines at the top of a rocket will help keep it pointed "up", because both the thrust vector and the force of gravity act on the rocket as a whole and not differentially.

Structural stability is a different matter. Placing the engines at the front of a very long vehicle with a high fineness ratio (i.e., very thin) improves structural stability because elements are in tension, rather than compression, and bending moments are damped by tension but multiplied by compression. You need a high level of rigidity if you want to push a long, thin object; you need little or no rigidity at all if you want to pull.

[neistridlar]

18 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

The pendulum fallacy is about guidance stability, not about structural stability. It's a fallacy to think that placing the engines at the top of a rocket will help keep it pointed "up", because both the thrust vector and the force of gravity act on the rocket as a whole and not differentially.

Structural stability is a different matter. Placing the engines at the front of a very long vehicle with a high fineness ratio (i.e., very thin) improves structural stability because elements are in tension, rather than compression, and bending moments are damped by tension but multiplied by compression. You need a high level of rigidity if you want to push a long, thin object; you need little or no rigidity at all if you want to pull.

Yup, this is what I vaguely hinted at in my comment. But just to make sure this was indeed correct I decided to try it out in practice. So here are some images from my endeavors, in no particular order, and from several launches (most of which failed do to lack of controll):

https://imgur.com/a/EAXNs

The craft was rather difficult to control because of the long length and rather floppy nature, making it rather unresponsive and giving it a bit of a will of its own. It was however aerodynamically stable due to the long tail, and it did not buckle, as I don't think it would not take much to convince you that it would do had the long tail been on top of the craft.

(and please tell me if the link is not working)

Edited February 5, 2018 by neistridlar
forgot to add something

[MarvinKitFox]

Keeping all three columns is a great idea, but yes it makes for a great many launches needed.

Also, docking three at a time is *almost* impossible, the game will SO much rather just dock one, and leave the other two dangling, as the game engine massively prefers a tree-structure rather than a potentially cycling network structure.

 

8 launches?  Impressive!

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I don't suppose my "space elevator" would count?

Anyways, might make a legit attempt at this if I can find the time.

Edit: It would appear it may qualify for Anything Goes though.

Edited February 9, 2018 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[qzgy]

For the anything Goes category! The LongBoi.

I swear its there. It just bugs the game so much since the fairing length was set to 1000000000 m. SO.... Anyone else?

[foamyesque]

On 2/4/2018 at 3:31 PM, sevenperforce said:

The pendulum fallacy is about guidance stability, not about structural stability. It's a fallacy to think that placing the engines at the top of a rocket will help keep it pointed "up", because both the thrust vector and the force of gravity act on the rocket as a whole and not differentially.

 

That's true, but it *can* improve your aerodynamic stability by putting your heaviest bits at the nose, and as most rockets are in fact launched pointing up....

Edited February 11, 2018 by foamyesque

[qzgy]

13 hours ago, foamyesque said:

 

That's true, but it *can* improve your aerodynamic stability by putting your heaviest bits at the nosee, and as most rockets are in fact launched pointing up....

And that on a super noodley rocket, pulling will be more stable than pushing. Less worries about the force you have not going where you want.

[neistridlar]

Sorry it took a few days to answer, Been away for the weekend.

 

On 9.2.2018 at 6:19 AM, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

I don't suppose my "space elevator" would count?

Anyways, might make a legit attempt at this if I can find the time.

Edit: It would appear it may qualify for Anything Goes though.

Hm, this is excactly the kind of sillyness I was hoping to see when I added the Anything Goes class. Though I don't think you used any mods right? If so I suppose you technically do qualify for the Stock Parts Only as well.  I think I will ad you to the Anything Goes Leader board, and maybe add a no excessively disjointed parts rule to the Stock Parts Class, If no one has any objections to that.

 

On 9.2.2018 at 6:28 AM, qzgy said:

For the anything Goes category! The LongBoi.

I swear its there. It just bugs the game so much since the fairing length was set to 1000000000 m. SO.... Anyone else?

Wonderfull. I will add you to the Anything goes leader board as well.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

On 2/11/2018 at 2:48 PM, neistridlar said:

Sorry it took a few days to answer, Been away for the weekend.

 

Hm, this is excactly the kind of sillyness I was hoping to see when I added the Anything Goes class. Though I don't think you used any mods right?

I did have the editor extensions mod to allow me to remove the distance limit on the offset tool, but other than that craft design is stock. But yah if this gets in just put it anything goes. This should not compete with regular stock player creations xD.

By the way it is 3,601,415.5m tall/long.

So @qzgy is beating me by a lot right now.

Edited February 13, 2018 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[qzgy]

8 minutes ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

So @qzgy is beating me by a lot right now.

Part hacking, IMO, will always win over "normal" methods. I'm also 90% sure that the editor readout is wrong as well.....

But yes, I am!

Once you find the method though its really an issue of who's game will bug out less.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

10 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Part hacking, IMO, will always win over "normal" methods. I'm also 90% sure that the editor readout is wrong as well.....

But yes, I am!

Once you find the method though its really an issue of who's game will bug out less.

I know the method, and I suspect that as far as a single fairing goes, we could only get a bit more than twice that length due to 32 bit integer limit. Though if the game uses 64 bit integers for this kind of thing (I don't know why it would) we could get much, much larger.

[Pds314]

Hmm.. I made a spacecraft pull itself apart due to even modest rotations earlier, and I saw someone put Gilly in a box as well...

Edited February 13, 2018 by Pds314