The E Program

[Akagi]

Early one morning, the geeks at the SPH (me) decided to build the strangest plane they (me again) could think up. The builders (once more, me) thought up the most excellently stupid aircraft EVER.

• Engines in the front
• No vertical stabilizer
• Almost no control
• Two dry-mode Panthers

 

After that, the plane-pushers (no one) put, and by put I mean teleported, the plane onto the runway. We took off, banking-turned over the launchpad, went fairly fast with the plane level, and then pulled up, placing the nose at 20 degrees with SAS on. This is crucial to the flight.

I jumped out, piloting brave test pilot Criseny Kerman towards the ground, and switched back to the uncontrollable plane.

This is where things started to get weird.

Criseny had parachuted maybe 2.5 kilometers down. Strangely, the plane was still flying off into the distance. The plane kept going

and kept going

a n d k e p t g o i n g

a  n  d  k  e  p  t  g  o  i  n  g

And it flewandflew

And began to climb

And sunk back down

And climbed

And sunk

And on Skip 3, I took some screenshots.

And we just

kept

going

On Skip 5, we passed some mountains which I named the E Mountains

And finally, on Skip Six, the engines didn't give us enough thrust because the plane was pointing too steeply up for the intake to collect enough air. The E impacted the water and was destroyed.

It had reached a highest point of 14,609 meters and had traveled roughly 1.6 million kilometers of ground distance. Rest in peace, E. Our "E"xperiments will continue shortly with the launch of the second E, named the El-ahrairah. 

The Story of Project "E"-for-Excellence will continue...

[fleventeen]

I didn't really grasp the absurdity of this design at first. I am interested to see how this goes.

[Akagi]

Up again!

[Admiral Fluffy]

E

Sorry, I had to.

[Akagi]

2 minutes ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

E

Sorry, I had to.

Listen to Rush E for 25 minutes and I'll make you an E badge

it's OK

We're on Skip 3 now, the descent phase

[Akagi]

Skip 6!

Flight stats so far:

I've been using some rather unorthodox techniques to fly this, including dropping out of warp to lower the nose.

[Akagi]

Sorry...

[Davi SDF]

What can i say except "KSP "aerodynamics" are really weird and an enigma in itself"!

[fleventeen]

RIP.

I swear this is possible. I set out this morning to create a passively stable craft that could circumnavigate, but immediately got distracted, and ended up working on something completely unrelated.

Edited April 17, 2022 by fleventeen

[Vagrant203]

11 hours ago, Akagi said:

 El-ahrairah. 

I seem to remember that name from a worship song. Sure you wanna name that thing after God?

[fleventeen]

E is for F, clearly.

Let's all take a moment of silence.

[Akagi]

9 hours ago, Vagrant203 said:

I seem to remember that name from a worship song. Sure you wanna name that thing after God?

Nope, it's the Prince with a Thousand Enemies from Watership Down

13 hours ago, Davi SDF said:

What can i say except "KSP "aerodynamics" are really weird and an enigma in itself"!

Passive stability and upward trim!

1 hour ago, fleventeen said:

E is for F, clearly.

Let's all take a moment of silence.

?

[fleventeen]

8 hours ago, Akagi said:

?

Yeah I have no idea.

[Akagi]

Hey guys! I'm back!

Here's some shots of me tesing air-launched Es.

But sadly, the pic I snapped of the deployment was accidentally overwritten. 

It kinda tumbled off, so powered deployments are a must.

(Note: the A-1 mothership plane landed hard and exploded, killing all crew)

[fleventeen]

4 hours ago, Akagi said:

It kinda tumbled off, so powered deployments are a must.

You could try angling the deployed craft slightly upwards, giving it a lift vector which passively pulls it away from the mothership.

If you notice in my Stratolaunch craft, the payload pylon is angled slightly downward for this reason.

I am not 100% sure this will solve your issue though. Your E craft seems to defy conventional physics.

Edit:

They did a similar thing for Space Shuttle testing.

Also RIP A-1 crew...

Sometimes progress means sacrifice.

Edit 2:

Just throwing this out there, you could try using the Strato-1 to launch this. 

I'd like to get feedback on the usability of it.

Shameless plug:

https://kerbalx.com/fleventeen/Strato-1

Edited May 7, 2022 by fleventeen

[Akagi]

STATUS OF A-1:

Left and right wings: destroyed

Crew cabin and nosecone assembly: destroyed

Main fuselage: fragmented

Upper wing ridges: destroyed except for the command pods, which were inline mk1 cockpits

I'm going to redo the A for the A-2 Amaterasu.

I swear if I crash this, I'm just gonna stop making As

Edit: @fleventeen can I release the Strato-1 with an E attached to KerbalX?

[Akagi]

Shots from Strato-1 testing (I had to strut the E on):

STATUS OF VEHICLES:

Strato-1: landed intact

E: broke its intake off

Takeoff

View from the E's cockpit (all the test drops are crewed)

This is how I'll launch all my Es from now on!

Landed. Those thrust reversers were very useful.

Splashed!

[LHACK4142]

On 4/16/2022 at 3:55 PM, Akagi said:

Listen to Rush E for 25 minutes and I'll make you an E badge

I've probably listened rush E for a total of more than 25 minutes

[Vagrant203]

I've the sudden urge to create Badger, Mushroom, and Snake probes.

[fleventeen]

15 hours ago, Akagi said:

Edit: @fleventeen can I release the Strato-1 with an E attached to KerbalX?

Go for it. I guess just credit/link the original, and make sure it's named something to clearly to indicate what it is (E launched via Strato-1).

14 hours ago, Akagi said:

(I had to strut the E on):

Interesting. I never really had to use struts in my testing (granted, there was some slight wobbling). Did you have a catastrophic issue without any struts?

[Akagi]

12 hours ago, Vagrant203 said:

I've the sudden urge to create Badger, Mushroom, and Snake probes.

?

8 hours ago, fleventeen said:

Go for it. I guess just credit/link the original, and make sure it's named something to clearly to indicate what it is (E launched via Strato-1).

Interesting. I never really had to use struts in my testing (granted, there was some slight wobbling). Did you have a catastrophic issue without any struts?

The nose kept falling and then ripping off

[Watermel00n]

I want to make my own E, but how?

[Akagi]

5 hours ago, Watermel00n said:

I want to make my own E, but how?

Tutorial coming soon

[Akagi]

On 5/9/2022 at 2:10 AM, Watermel00n said:

I want to make my own E, but how?

It took me a year but I found out how: 

You just need 3 things:

-aerodynamic center of lift over center of mass

-powerful engines

-lotsa fuel