500 kg "Jetpack"-ride around Kerbin in 7 hours

[xendelaar]

I’ve flown across many planets in the Kerbol system during the last 3k hours I wasted on this game… yet… I’ve never payed any attention to the planet where it all began! KERBIN!

So that’s why I decided to circumnavigate Kerbin for a change :D. To make things a bit more interesting, I was wondering if i would be able to do it with a tiny light weight “Jetpack”!

I’ve been playing around a bit and came up with this design. It’s more of a tiny helicopter then a jetpack to be honest. But it’s nice and compact!

Here are the key features of the design:

Weight: 480 kg (inlcuding lard ass Jeb)
Top speed: 175 m/s
Max Flying distance: infinite
Power consumption: 0.4 u/s
Power source: one huge RTG

I made a small video (3:00) of Jeb using it to fly around the globe. I flew 4.000 km in 7 hours or so. And with Mechjeb as a flight assisstent, things were pretty manageable !

Hope you boys and girls like it.

 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by xendelaar
Words are hard

[Vanamonde]

What could be safer than flying around with a nuclear reactor on your back? 

[VoidCosmos]

Wow! That was awesome! Could you please post the craft file? I love this thing!

[xendelaar]

On 4/4/2020 at 8:13 PM, Vanamonde said:

What could be safer than flying around with a nuclear reactor on your back? 

Haha no kerbals were harmed during the making of this video.  Only a lawn chair died

[xendelaar]

On 4/4/2020 at 8:46 PM, VoidCosmos said:

Wow! That was awesome! Could you please post the craft file? I love this thing!

Sorry for the late reply! I put the craft file on kerbalsx. 

https://kerbalx.com/Xendelaar/Xendelaar-TinyCopter

Please note that it's a petty unbalanced craft and that it will start spinning if you reach high velocities. 

Duplicating the seat and rtg in radial placement would mitigate the balancing issue but would also increase the mass by 160kg. If you're not flying with mechjeb2 than I highly recommend doing this. 

If you dont know what I mean, I made a video of a chopper that was really well balanced:

Replacing the rtg with a solar panel would shave off an extra 50 kg or so. 

 

[VoidCosmos]

9 hours ago, xendelaar said:

Sorry for the late reply! I put the craft file on kerbalsx. 

https://kerbalx.com/Xendelaar/Xendelaar-TinyCopter

Please note that it's a petty unbalanced craft and that it will start spinning if you reach high velocities. 

Duplicating the seat and rtg in radial placement would mitigate the balancing issue but would also increase the mass by 160kg. If you're not flying with mechjeb2 than I highly recommend doing this. 

If you dont know what I mean, I made a video of a chopper that was really well balanced:

Replacing the rtg with a solar panel would shave off an extra 50 kg or so. 

 

Thanks! Your piloting skills are really cool