Konkord's New Groove

[TimberWolffe]

The Kerbal R&D Department has been needing a fast way of getting to the dessert airfield recently. Something about being made of raw sugar? Anywho, while they've decided they have this mighty need the Kerbal Aeronautics Society has called it "a great faffing waste of time and money" and refused to fund their escapades, so they've decided to outsource. Thus, welcome to the Konkord challenge.

The Rules

• Your aircraft must have space for at least 6 Kerbals in "safety" (no exposure to open air)
• The aircraft must be 100% reusable (take off and land in one piece, no decouplers etc)
• The fastest plane shall be determined by mission time from start of movement to as close to possible as 0.0m/s on either end of the dessert runway
• Stock only (including making history) UNLESS it is Mechjeb and/or Speed Unit Annex
• Include flying instructions with any craft files so others can try
• Provide screenshots of your F3 screen so we can see just how fast you really are
• You must have a minimum of 120s burn time left as something of a safety margin in case of bad weather/poorly executed high mach turns
• Do try to keep the costs down
• Unlike the Regional Jet Challenge, there are no altitude or speed limits. Our scientists need their research done, and fast!

Basically, fly to here:

As fast as kerbally possible and preferably without blowing up. Have fun, fly safe, ignore safety regulations. It's the Kerbal way. See the first post for a bit of a guide on how to submit an entry 

[Aeroboi]

@TimberWolffe Fun challenge

While I think the answer is "no"
Can you use anything besides jet engines, even vernors, puffs or anything else to accelerate beyond jet mode?

Or are rocket engines allowed also?

[TimberWolffe]

I present: The 'Unloveable'

a top speed of Mach 4.1 and weighing in at a MEASLY 39.2 tonnes on takeoff this beasty is able to complete the trans-atlantik flight distance of roughly 1,300km in a lightning fast 12:29 at a cruising altitude of 13.5km.

Spoiler

Screenshot:

 

 

Craft file:

https://kerbalx.com/TimberWolffe/Unloveable

 

Flying instructions:

• Take off with full control surface range
• turn to heading 270 and gun it
• reduce rear ailerons to 35% range and disable front canards
• restore all surfaces to land

 

3 minutes ago, Aeroboi said:

@TimberWolffe Fun challenge

While I think the answer is "no"
Can you use anything besides jet engines, even vernors, puffs or anything else to accelerate beyond jet mode?

Or are rocket engines allowed also?

as long as you can make the distance you can use whatever you like, just remember you have to be able to take off and land in one piece 

[l0kki]

My great 14 minute trip from the KSC to the Dessert airfield can be found here 

https://imgur.com/a/jWXw31a

Craft file

https://kerbalx.com/l0kki/desert-airfield-transportation-aircraft

Instructions

Close the pilot cabin

Press Z

Press space

Hope you know how to fly

[bayesian_acolyte]

@TimberWolffe How do rocket engines work with the 120 seconds of fuel time remaining? Is it 120 seconds of extra fuel for every engine, just enough engines to power the plane, or something else? EDIT: what about closed cycle on RAPIERs?

Edited March 25, 2019 by bayesian_acolyte

[sevenperforce]

12 minutes ago, bayesian_acolyte said:

@TimberWolffe How do rocket engines work with the 120 seconds of fuel time remaining? Is it 120 seconds of extra fuel for every engine, just enough engines to power the plane, or something else? EDIT: what about closed cycle on RAPIERs?

Would be better to edit the rule to say "enough fuel for 120 seconds of additional flight time".

[Aeroboi]

 

@TimberWolffe

NVM, didn't read the rules properly.

 

Edited March 25, 2019 by Aeroboi

[bayesian_acolyte]

So being my noob self I didn't realize that Making History was needed to have the desert runway. I only discovered this on trying to land where Mechjeb had marked it. I landed anyways, but I understand this entry will not count. I also landed about half a degree of longitude short of the runway coordinates and had to reload the landing a few times due to bumpy ground and messed up break settings. This changed the f3 report, but it still shows the proper mission time of 8 minutes and 58 seconds:

Spoiler

My cruising speed was 1710 to 1750 m/s at around 20km altitude. I was fighting overheating the whole way, often doing quick barrel rolls when it got too bad, and even lost my most forward wings due to overheating (with a max heat of 2400) which might disqualify my run if it wasn't already hopelessly disqualified. This was my first flight of this plane and it is not at all optimized for this challenge, exemplified by the fact that I still had half my fuel when I landed.

Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/Bayesian_Acolyte/desert-speed-plane

[TimberWolffe]

2 hours ago, bayesian_acolyte said:

So being my noob self I didn't realize that Making History was needed to have the desert runway. I only discovered this on trying to land where Mechjeb had marked it. I landed anyways, but I understand this entry will not count. I also landed about half a degree of longitude short of the runway coordinates and had to reload the landing a few times due to bumpy ground and messed up break settings. This changed the f3 report, but it still shows the proper mission time of 8 minutes and 58 seconds:

  Reveal hidden contents

My cruising speed was 1710 to 1750 m/s at around 20km altitude. I was fighting overheating the whole way, often doing quick barrel rolls when it got too bad, and even lost my most forward wings due to overheating (with a max heat of 2400) which might disqualify my run if it wasn't already hopelessly disqualified. This was my first flight of this plane and it is not at all optimized for this challenge, exemplified by the fact that I still had half my fuel when I landed.

Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/Bayesian_Acolyte/desert-speed-plane

That's absolutely fine! I know not everybody has making history, that's why I provided the rough location according to the map. Still a very impressive time!

 

To Clarify: 120s burn time remaining is according to the readout of the stock Δv readout

Edited March 26, 2019 by TimberWolffe

[Aeroboi]

@TimberWolffe For weight reduction I can put the Kerbals in a fairing shell inside a seat. Can I do this? Or does it need to be a capsule. If properly places the Kerbals will get out of the fairing. Or is that a exploit?

[TimberWolffe]

3 hours ago, Aeroboi said:

@TimberWolffe For weight reduction I can put the Kerbals in a fairing shell inside a seat. Can I do this? Or does it need to be a capsule. If properly places the Kerbals will get out of the fairing. Or is that a exploit?

the kerbals cannot be exposed to open air, I doubt you'd enjoy it very much if you were exposed to mach-speed air on a flight. As long as no part of their body is outside the craft anything goes

[hoioh]

Not quite under 9 minutes, but close and very affordable still:

https://kerbalx.com/hoioh/Runway-speeder

Video of speedrun in the spoiler (No Desert runway for me, never got the MH expansion and what with all the mods available the only reason would be the Desert runway):

Spoiler

 

 

[TimberWolffe]

45 minutes ago, hoioh said:

Not quite under 9 minutes, but close and very affordable still:

https://kerbalx.com/hoioh/Runway-speeder

 

 

dang, absolutely demolished my record! Even though the KerbalX readout includes Airplane Plus it looks like everything can be recreated stock without too much effort, so you're still currently in the lead 

now I gotta come up with a better design

[hoioh]

11 hours ago, TimberWolffe said:

dang, absolutely demolished my record! Even though the KerbalX readout includes Airplane Plus it looks like everything can be recreated stock without too much effort, so you're still currently in the lead 

now I gotta come up with a better design

Oh, that's odd, maybe the advanced canard on the front is an AP+ part? I don't really have a clean KSP install, so it can sometimes be a bit hard to tell

[bayesian_acolyte]

3 hours ago, hoioh said:

Oh, that's odd, maybe the advanced canard on the front is an AP+ part? I don't really have a clean KSP install, so it can sometimes be a bit hard to tell

You can use this page to tell: https://kerbalx.com/hoioh/Runway-speeder/parts

It looks like the canrds are alright and there's a single offending part called "hlfSrf", whatever that is.

[hoioh]

I guess that's the tail fin I used at the back "HlfSrf" as in Half Surface would make Half control Surface maybe?

Ah well, doesn't really influence the time it took me to get there, that's mostly optimization of the whole construction, using a larger vertical stabilizer wouldn't really matter in that regard, as long as it has 2400k heat resistance

[Flying dutchman]

I did 9 minutes 45 aprox but i didn't land it exactly on the runway. I will not be entering this just yet but it was done all manually.

 

Edit: i can do this quicker since i end up above the airport at 7 minutes 30 but i keep overshooting. 

Edited March 28, 2019 by Flying dutchman

[Flying dutchman]

i did a 9 minutes and 19 seconds run  all manually flown. i will upload the craft file but i hope it works since i'm using restock.

 

 

Spoiler

 

[hoioh]

1 hour ago, Flying dutchman said:

i did a 9 minutes and 19 seconds run  all manually flown. i will upload the craft file but i hope it works since i'm using restock.

 

 

 

That looks a lot like something I once flew 

[Flying dutchman]

2 hours ago, hoioh said:

That looks a lot like something I once flew 

Mine is designed to fly on a sub orbital trajactory up to 60 km so i think thats the main difference

 

but yeah i mean when you have to ferry six kerbals in the most aerodynamic way possible you take the 1.25m crew cabins. And when you want it to be able to take a little more heat you put a fairing around it. Rapier is great for it's thrust and the possibility of a closed cycle mode so thats pretty much the way to go. Then of course you want minimal wing surfaces so you'll have to deal with less drag. 

 

so i get why our designs look similar, it's form dictated by function

Edited March 28, 2019 by Flying dutchman