Eve Rocketplane Altitude Challenge

[Klapaucius]

Fly as high as you can through the purple soup of Eve.

 

1.  Build a rocketplane.

2. Place it on Eve in the big crater either with Mission Builder or some other method: 106.3 longitude by 33.4 latitude. (You should be under 350 meters altitude).

3. Take off and fly as high as you can.

4. Your score is your altitude above sea level at the highest point of your flight.

 

RULES

1. Must take off horizontally like a standard airplane. (No VTOL, standing on tail etc)

2. No props. Rocket engines only.

3. Must be able to land intact horizontally (no chutes).

4. No dropping of anything. What goes up, must come down attached to the plane (other than fuel).

5. No taking off by driving up the side of the crater.  

6. Stock and DLC only.

7. No physics altering mods.

 

Variant challenge: Unlimited

1. You may drop as much gear as you like (tanks, engines etc).

2. You still must be able to land horizontally without chutes.

3. If you actually get to orbit, take a big bow.

 

LOCATION

 

LEADERBOARDS:

Standard Challenge

1. @EveMaster  120,090 metres

2.  @Admiral Fluffy7165 metres

Unlimited Variant

 

 

This was a quick thing I did by modifying a stock Dove.  I'll put it another entry at some point.

 

 

Edited March 5, 2022 by Klapaucius

[SkyFall2489]

Bradley Whistance, AKA @EvermoreAlpaca, got all the way back to kerbin....

 

Not sure if he too off from the same place though.

[Klapaucius]

7 minutes ago, SkyFall2489 said:

Bradley Whistance, AKA @EvermoreAlpaca, got all the way back to kerbin....

 

Not sure if he too off from the same place though.

I know, but that is Bradley Whistance.  He and Stratzenblitz are on higher plane than the rest of us.  He is also taking off from over 7000 meters.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Klapaucius

[EveMaster]

I managed to get to 120090m, thats more than 30km above the atmosphere. I did not drop anything and landed back on the surface without damage.

Spoiler

The rocket plane I used is powered by 5 Mammoth engines.

I used the Alt + F12 menu to set the craft exactly at the specified position. The ground at the center of the craft is below 350m. Due to the large size of the craft the command pod is at 360m which is the height shown on the indicator.

The craft is just barely able to take off and after some hops on the ground it is finally airbourne. Once I reach about 150m/s I throttle down.

At around 8km height I go back to full throttle and fly vertically up.

At Apoapsis I reached 120090m of height according to the stock height indicator. KER showed an apoapsis of only 120073m. I guess the discrepancy is because the stock indicator used the position of the command pod and KER uses the position of the center of mass.

During reentry I burn the remaining fuel to avoid overheating.

The peak heating is over but I still have to be careful to limit the aerodynic forces on the wings so they don't break off.

At 8.4km height I manage to get the rocket plane back into a stable flying position. There is no eletricity left so the plane is only controlled by aerodymical surfaces.

Safely landed on ground. The stall speed is very low so landing is easy even without recation wheels.

 

[Admiral Fluffy]

I got to 7165m.  Also didn't drop anything and no damage.

Is it fine if I use visual mods?

Spoiler

Start place

This was the highest point that I saw, the log thing said it was 7166.

And landed!

 

Spoiler

https://imgur.com/a/u6NFIl2

 

[Klapaucius]

37 minutes ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

I got to 7165m.  Also didn't drop anything and no damage.

Is it fine if I use visual mods?

 

 

 

Nice!  Visual mods are fine.

I should probably make a subcategory for single engine planes.