Leave the Atmosphere Without Rockets?

[Nao]

After trying many different things, involving spinning with canards and wings, using decouplers or adding low drag weight. Nothing worked. Kerbal Technicians were very grim, but one young kerbal named Raysel stepped up and declared: I'll do it, ill EVA and beat the record. And to the astonishment of other older pilots he did, reaching magic height of 50km with nothing but his trusty and bouncy suit.

6 more pics here:

http://imgur.com/a/SYro4/

Second pic shows that he would have gotten above current record with craft alone, but being brave little thing he continued onwards with his mission to break 50km.

Around 25s before apogee brave Raysel exited his craft and done a 15s burn upwards, achieving 50km altitude. Return trip was unforgiving and he jumped inside the craft only seconds before time window closed on him.

Edit: added craft file, thou there isn't much to my design, I got best results from starting with 18,3 l of fuel.

also eppiox its Nao not Neo , short of Naota (from FLCL anime)

Edited September 9, 2012 by Nao

[VincentLaw]

I think now is a good time to turn this into a thread about magic turbines.

Max altitude: 261334 m

Fully stock, and craft file included. Just trim roll controls left as far as they can go, spool up the jet engine, and release clamps.

[iplop]

50,492m! : D

The rest of the pics: http://imgur.com/a/vcClj

The craft file is pretty much the same as the last one only every fuel tank is double stacked with jet engines(one more half-size fuel tank added as well).

Edit: Here's the craft file if anyone wants it: [ATTACH]32754[/ATTACH]

Edited September 10, 2012 by iplop

[Fendleton]

I love the fact that even when faced with craft equipped with magic turbines *and* a jet engine, the highest-traveling craft is still a single standard canard thrown away from a crashed jet. Albiet not by much.

Edit: Hmm. Wouldn't attempting a zoom-climb from an aircraft let you get more speed than just going straight up? Or are the buggy areodynamics enough to prevent us from doing that sort of thing?

Edited September 10, 2012 by Fendleton

[iplop]

Edit: Hmm. Wouldn't attempting a zoom-climb from an aircraft let you get more speed than just going straight up? Or are the buggy areodynamics enough to prevent us from doing that sort of thing?

I tried several attempts at that without success. I think the issue is that the jet-engines don't function at a high enough altitude to make establishing orbit via a tangential trajectory feasible. Air resistance is just too much to overcome at the engine's reasonable flight ceiling. I'd say that's realistic.

Edited September 10, 2012 by iplop

[Nao]

Using iplop's idea of double mounting engines i managed 52,8 km with capsule and 55.262m with EVA boarding again at 17km.

Craft design is roughly the same , just double number of engines, also somehow its easier to place tanks near each other with engine inside , one more trick i used is making pod be shot upwards at decoupling with the engines giving me extra speed (not much thou, probably 100-500m more). EVA burn upwards is only 25s rest is getting into the craft, so there is a room for another ~1km with perfect EVA , and maybe other pod (with drag of 0.1 - the same as Kerbals)

3 more pics: http://imgur.com/a/fyKgE/

Magic turbines are awesome thing indeed but for me they feel like cheating, so ill not use them, still impressive results

The problem with parabolic or even more space-plane approach is in current designs drag is still number one energy drain, going more horizontal will just increase drag (square of velocity) even if we get savings on weight due to lift (low craft weight - low effect of wings) or centripetal force (linear gain from orbital speed).

Also the EVA part of my flights is really pumping adrenaline for me haha <3 KSP.

[Hooligan Labs]

I think now is a good time to turn this into a thread about magic turbines.

Max altitude: 261334 m

Fully stock, and craft file included. Just trim roll controls left as far as they can go, spool up the jet engine, and release clamps.

I'll put you on the front, but I can't give an award for something so utterly blatantly physically impossible.

50,492m! : D

The rest of the pics: http://imgur.com/a/vcClj

The craft file is pretty much the same as the last one only every fuel tank is double stacked with jet engines(one more half-size fuel tank added as well).

Edit: Here's the craft file if anyone wants it: [ATTACH]32754[/ATTACH]

iplop, you have not only beat your own height, but also the crazy Fooly Coolyness of Nao, who apparently can get back into a free falling cockpit in atmosphere. There is some pure crazy in this thread!

[Hooligan Labs]

Using iplop's idea of double mounting engines i managed 52,8 km with capsule and 55.262m with EVA boarding again at 17km.

Craft design is roughly the same , just double number of engines, also somehow its easier to place tanks near each other with engine inside , one more trick i used is making pod be shot upwards at decoupling with the engines giving me extra speed (not much thou, probably 100-500m more). EVA burn upwards is only 25s rest is getting into the craft, so there is a room for another ~1km with perfect EVA , and maybe other pod (with drag of 0.1 - the same as Kerbals)

3 more pics: http://imgur.com/a/fyKgE/

Magic turbines are awesome thing indeed but for me they feel like cheating, so ill not use them, still impressive results

The problem with parabolic or even more space-plane approach is in current designs drag is still number one energy drain, going more horizontal will just increase drag (square of velocity) even if we get savings on weight due to lift (low craft weight - low effect of wings) or centripetal force (linear gain from orbital speed).

Also the EVA part of my flights is really pumping adrenaline for me haha <3 KSP.

Holy Kerbin Batman, you are making this look routine.

I'll have to edit the front later, got to go now... Still, you should video this. Good free recorder: http://www.d3dgear.com/

[Nao]

I thought of making videos but on my OC'd Core2Duo i get maximum of 14fps in KSP, but I'll see if i can create something decent. Btw last attempt was done after 7? tries , i once even grabbed capsule at 1700m (1sec from the impact ). The difference in drag of kerbal and craft is really making it fun.

Edit: Managed to dust off my old recording setup. It's bad since hard drive is limiting bitrate, then CPU can't do fancy real time compression, then my slow internet forces me to halve bandwidth for uploading in timely manner. Also Youtube auto resize sucks! Next time I'll get to 480p by myself (original capture res is 800x600 from 1280x1024 input )

Still at least i managed to upload it without bugging out. Some notes are in descriptions since i lack editing tools (im on XP here , XP foreva!)

Also, managed to beat my record with 55.594m, and on the first try too!

http://youtu.be/LCkSQakjmFw

cheers! =3

Edited September 10, 2012 by Nao

[eppiox]

Ah! over 50k club finally !

Using that double engine trick helped get a huge boost at the start, however the fps are crippling with this ship.

It runs less than 1 fps on the launch pad with a stock i5 2500k. Also mid flight.. parts seem to fly off at around 10k but it's hard to make out.

Also I can only seem to get 1 in 6 launches off as it explodes most of the time .

http://imgur.com/a/dTD9J

*Some engines refuse to mount.

[Nao]

@eppiox I want your computer XD

With that amount of thrust you could test one more of my theories and add a ton or two of low drag ballast (linear RCS for example) to the pod, when i had 18 engines adding a 1.5 tons of 0.01 drag ballast have given me almost the same results, so i don't know if it was worth it, but with 76? engines idk maybe it would work. Don't be shy on using parachutes, they almost help since they have drag of 0.1 and mass only means much because drag gets multiplied by it. Fuel tanks and engines have a drag of 0.2 witch is significant.

Also if it explodes it needs more struts! , or you could make the design symmetrical so that there is no twists on the inner connections under load. From my experience even very wide crafts can fly straight if there is no twisting on couplings.

Edited September 10, 2012 by Nao

[lucidLemon]

My computer sobbed and begged for mercy (a lot), and in-between crying fits, a frame would pass.

But I got 226000m. Not stock though, it has a mechjeb pod on top.

Am I doing something wrong?

[Hooligan Labs]

Ah! over 50k club finally !

Using that double engine trick helped get a huge boost at the start, however the fps are crippling with this ship.

It runs less than 1 fps on the launch pad with a stock i5 2500k. Also mid flight.. parts seem to fly off at around 10k but it's hard to make out.

Also I can only seem to get 1 in 6 launches off as it explodes most of the time .

http://imgur.com/a/dTD9J

Yeah, as you can see from my video the FPS dies pretty quickly.

But you have to get your weight and drag down! Until someone comes up with an even more radical idea than literally jumping out of your ship for extra height (thanks Nao!) there is nothing more important than your thrust to weight ratio. It does not matter how many engines you have if everyone one is weighed down by structure.