The Great Desert Jet Race

[ralanboyle]

The challenge is simple:

Take off from KSP and land at the Desert Airfield. 

Rules: 

Your aircraft must have a pilot onboard, seated inside a MK1, MK2, or MK3 Cockpit (inline or standard variant.)

Your craft will be powered only by stock (inc DLC) air breathing, jet engines. RAPIER in air breathing mode is fine.  

Your craft will not discard any parts. (A part or two broken due on a bad landing is acceptable.) 

Aesthetic part offset is acceptable within reason. Parts must touch. 

No part will be clipped more than 50% inside another, except landing gear (because landing gear are normally fully occluded IRL.)

No Fairings. No Heat Shields.  

Time is recorded by the game clock. It starts when you move and it stops when you stop (<2m/s)

The pace time is 30 minutes. Only runs which qualify faster than the pace will be entered on the leaderboards. 

 

Good luck! 

 

Leaderboards are divided into weight classes. 

Bantamweight = <3,000kg

Featherweight = 3,000-7,999kg

Welterweight = 8,000-14,999kg

Middleweight = 15,000-39,999kg

Heavyweight = 40,000-99,999kg

Super Heavyweight = >100,000kg

[camacju]

Duplicate of submission for Pds314's challenge (:

Here's my submission for featherweight class at 8:36. Single rapier powered plane, 4.7 tons.

Launch

Cruise at 12 km. The ideal efficiency regime of the Rapier is such that it's at full throttle and still at the edge of flameout. That means that there's usually an optimal altitude to fly the Rapier at - the lower the drag the lower the altitude.

Death dive toward dessert airfield, trying to scrub off velocity

Approach

Landed