Improbably Dangerous Experiments Agency (IDEA) land speed milestone!

[Wayfare]

After the resounding success of the program to break the sound barrier, IDEA engineers put on their funny hats and decided it would be cool to see how fast they could make a Kerbal go... Over land!

They built the XL-1, which didn't do too well, and the XL-2 didn't do much better:

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But then came the XL-3 and with it, an old hand returned on the stick: Jeb!

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The XL-3 had a bit of kick to it:

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Peaking at just over 300 m/s:

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The boosters burned out and the drogue deployed:

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Mission success! The current IDEA land speed record stands at 306 m/s with a maximum G of 7.4. Thanks to the drogue chute, the pilot survived - a first in the land speed program!

Now to break the sound barrier on land...

[kacperrutka26]

Nice, How did you think of those designs? I would never beat even 200m/s on land

[Wayfare]

How did you think of those designs?

Through trial and error evolving design philosophy and dozens of killed test pilots heroic sacrifice

The biggest problem is keeping the vehicle stable and on the ground. Because the area behind the KSC runway is not perfectly flat, it tends to want to take off and set new air speed records instead. The wings are flipped upside-down so, according to the SPH lift indicator, they provide the necessary downforce. After that is was just a matter of dialing the power down to prevent catastrophic failures: The XL-1 and XL-2 used large booster which were simply too powerful to make for a survivable run.