Weekly Challenge #30: Explore Kerbin

[Nerdy_Mike]

Primary: Build a jet to explore Kerbin from the air. Fly over the water, the shores, grasslands, and highlands.
Secondary: Go a little further and explore the mountains and deserts.
Jeb: Fly over Kerbin's polar ice caps.
Val: Circumnavigate Kerbin
Tim C: Fly the length of the river to the north of Kerbin's desert.

 

[PicoSpace]

Decided to try my hand at flying a single wing plane sort of based on the B2 Bomber, but for peaceful exploration.


Quickly Noted that Left/Right controls didn't work as I have no stabalizers in those directions so I have to do full turns and adjust atitude to turn etc.

Goodby KSC!

This was a lot of fun to fly near the ground however it was quite slow never going over 200m/s unless I was diving (cruise was about 183m/s). If I want to see the rest of Kerbin I'm going to need a faster jet.


Back to the VAB to if I want to do more than the Primary/Secondary goal... oh and rescue all those Kerbins that landed around Kerbin...


So many Kerbals...

Edited September 16, 2023 by PicoSpace

[PyroSA]

I actually managed to fly the length of the river, but due to a wobbly rockets mishap dropped my external tanks with about 1t of methane left.
Most of the flight was surprisingly stable even though I was at 4x.

The whole flight wasn't very well planned, but I managed to ditch it within sight of KSC even with a bit of deformation in the body that likely coincided with the emergency jettison.
If I knew it would be so close, I would have throttled down earlier to save fuel.

The most confusing part was flying back from the ocean west of the river end to KSC. I decided to go across the poles. Eyeballed a direction then corrected it over time.
It's quite hard to fly in a 'straight' line if you have no idea what the relation between that direction and the compass heading is, so I likely could've save some more fuel by not weaving around as much.

I'll go through the footage later and see if I can find something useful from it.

[PyroSA]

22 hours ago, PicoSpace said:

Decided to try my hand at flying a single wing plane sort of based on the B2 Bomber, but for peaceful exploration.
Quickly Noted that Left/Right controls didn't work as I have no stabalizers in those directions so I have to do full turns and adjust atitude to turn etc.

I've tried building a few of those. Without the software that drives the fly-by-wire, it's really hard to get them controlled, and without a tail they slip all over.

A possible option might be to pop some form of brake on the left and right that can be toggled separately, but that certainly won't give fine-grained control.

[PicoSpace]

3 hours ago, PyroSA said:

I've tried building a few of those. Without the software that drives the fly-by-wire, it's really hard to get them controlled, and without a tail they slip all over.

A possible option might be to pop some form of brake on the left and right that can be toggled separately, but that certainly won't give fine-grained control.

I think I have an idea for the next single wing build, but you are right they slide a lot but they are flyable in KSP(FAR)/KSP2 but not efficient nor fast.

[Mikki]

My Kerbals slapped together a huge Triple fuselage -lifting body - transport -jet thing. It flies great and has up to 40000 dV fully fueled.

But i just made it to the Island Airfield and investigated some rocks at the forest by the mountain.

Thrustreverser for the win!

[Aeolica]

It's a small case for my supersonic strategic airlift "Ilyushin IL-234" (Thor)

Dry mass 40t
Max. takeoff mass 180t
KLO payload 30t
 

Circumnavigation of the Kerbin along the meridian line, to prove that the Kerbin is round.

 

Enter cruising state. 20000m, Mach 5

 

Flying over many mountains and bays

 

Arctic glacier ahead

 

 

 

Flying over the North Pole. Compass flip

 

Pass the arctic glaciers.  In front is an ocean, then a continent

 

 

The Antarctic ice cap comes insight

 

Flying over the south pole

 

Leaving the Antarctic continent

 

 

Kerbolset

 

approaching to KSC

 

The coastline is in sight, but it is still dark below.

 

KSC suddenly appeared

 

 

 

Mission completed! Fly around Kerbin takes 48 minutes in game.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Aeolica

[Barrackar]

Made one attempt with this attempted light-weight design. I made use of a "grumble" seat inside a cargo bay. That is Jeb's helmet clipping through the top there: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198028655071/screenshot/2090288967803297068/

Lessons learned from this failure: (1) Don't forget to balance the center-of-mass and aerodynamics for when fuel tanks are empty...; (2) Green colored things blend into Kerbin terrain coloring.

I made it 75% of the way around, through two sunsets and one sunrise, before the unstable weight balanced caused it to spin out of control. On the way it starts off cruising around 4km altitude and 240m/s; but towards the end was cruising at 12km up and 440m/s. Stupidly fuel efficient at the higher altitudes. Its a shame the only way to balance the weight of the engine at the back is probably to add weight at the front. Probably use a real cockpit at the front to match the dry-mass of the wheesey engine at the back.

Some shots of Kerbin along the way: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198028655071/screenshots/

 

[PyroSA]

On 9/18/2023 at 1:50 AM, Barrackar said:

Made one attempt with this attempted light-weight design. I made use of a "grumble" seat inside a cargo bay. That is Jeb's helmet clipping through the top there: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198028655071/screenshot/2090288967803297068/

Lessons learned from this failure: (1) Don't forget to balance the center-of-mass and aerodynamics for when fuel tanks are empty...; (2) Green colored things blend into Kerbin terrain coloring.

I made it 75% of the way around, through two sunsets and one sunrise, before the unstable weight balanced caused it to spin out of control. On the way it starts off cruising around 4km altitude and 240m/s; but towards the end was cruising at 12km up and 440m/s. Stupidly fuel efficient at the higher altitudes. Its a shame the only way to balance the weight of the engine at the back is probably to add weight at the front. Probably use a real cockpit at the front to match the dry-mass of the wheesey engine at the back.

Some shots of Kerbin along the way: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198028655071/screenshots/

 

That balancing is indeed crucial. I'll post my plane shortly - it was specifically made with this in mind - the COM shifts very little between empty and full, and a little bit of trim kept it level.

[PyroSA]

Pictures: https://imgur.com/gallery/0Z6oh53 - I didn't get around to editing any video.

This was quite fun, the plane turned out to be super stable even at 4x, so I decided to go for that river in the distance - still don't know if it was the right one...

Managed to make the entire trek over there and almost back. If my fuel tanks didn't decide to go all wobbly after the canyon, I would've had another tonne of fuel, which should have been plenty to land.

Quite a few pretty sights during the flight, but the one that surprised me most was those DENSE clouds just north of the desert. Sure it shows on the satellite, but I never actually flew through them! Wasn't sure if the river actually ends under them, but managed to find something.

Then after finishing the river trip, I had no idea how I'd get home. First trekked out over the ocean before deciding to gun it towards the north pole. It was pretty obvious crossing over it wouldn't be the shortest route, but as you get closer I had no idea what direction I should be flying. After the drop tank mishap the frame was a bit bent so the plane yawed to the left. Normally I'd just correct and fly toward a heading, but once the poles got closer the actual heading changed even while going straight...

As the crow doesn't fly, I did manage to get home though.

With tanks, approaching the canyon:

Without tanks, heading home:


Didn't make it... but close:


A second mission was much more successful. I headed to the opposite side of the river starting from the ocean. The hairiest part was trying to navigate at night - since the flight started later. I did at least one backtrack when I took the wrong branch on the river. The map was too dark too see...

Most of the flight was completed with only external tanks, and I easily made it back with plenty (I packed more) to spare. Even burned 60% throttle much of the way.

[Aeolica]

IL-234 performed another mission

Landing in the desert

 

Landing on the north pole

[Socraticat]

I put Tim in the cockpit of one of my SSTOs and had a little jog north through the Great River's winding turns. After spotting the southern boundary of the river I cruised down to see how the craft would handle the turns. It's not bad, but not great. It's built for building up speed up to 20k and coasting for short suborbital reconnaissance, or it can use it's reserve of Ox to extend small suborbital jumps into full hemisphere transfers or ultimately Orbit.

Somewhere near the beginning of the river run I decided to give the ole' 'ctrl' "Fine-Adjust" a shot and wouldn't you know it... it worked like a charm. It's terrible when you need to make a large adjustment, or for landing- at least that's my experience.

As far as the landing is concerned- the final cut just before the landing was a save. I had been gathering footage for a larger cinematic utilizing this craft (and this scene) and had struggled to land the jet in the desert. I must have wrecked a dozen times before realizing that landing "uphill" was what this craft needed in the wild. After having the expectation that I would fail similarly at the river's end I was pleasantly surprised when my practice scored me a "first attempt" landing.

I've had quite the experience with patch 4 so far. This excursion has been no exception- I couldn't get the vessel above 320m/s after a save. Not sure how that changed (drag, weight, thrust, air?); SAS seems a touch aggressive, or maybe it needs to be more aggressive, like sampling twice as often; Graphics are good, but some things are off- on the horizon you can see some "pops" of light, Kerbin's Crust competes with the River from far away, and the clouds look... out of sync? Slow?

All in all quite fun. This is the tip of what I worked on this week and I look forward to sharing the rest later. I'm off to get more footage!

[PyroSA]

On 9/20/2023 at 11:10 PM, Socraticat said:

I put Tim in the cockpit of one of my SSTOs and had a little jog north through the Great River's winding turns. After spotting the southern boundary of the river I cruised down to see how the craft would handle the turns. It's not bad, but not great. It's built for building up speed up to 20k and coasting for short suborbital reconnaissance, or it can use it's reserve of Ox to extend small suborbital jumps into full hemisphere transfers or ultimately Orbit.

Somewhere near the beginning of the river run I decided to give the ole' 'ctrl' "Fine-Adjust" a shot and wouldn't you know it... it worked like a charm. It's terrible when you need to make a large adjustment, or for landing- at least that's my experience.

As far as the landing is concerned- the final cut just before the landing was a save. I had been gathering footage for a larger cinematic utilizing this craft (and this scene) and had struggled to land the jet in the desert. I must have wrecked a dozen times before realizing that landing "uphill" was what this craft needed in the wild. After having the expectation that I would fail similarly at the river's end I was pleasantly surprised when my practice scored me a "first attempt" landing.

I've had quite the experience with patch 4 so far. This excursion has been no exception- I couldn't get the vessel above 320m/s after a save. Not sure how that changed (drag, weight, thrust, air?); SAS seems a touch aggressive, or maybe it needs to be more aggressive, like sampling twice as often; Graphics are good, but some things are off- on the horizon you can see some "pops" of light, Kerbin's Crust competes with the River from far away, and the clouds look... out of sync? Slow?

All in all quite fun. This is the tip of what I worked on this week and I look forward to sharing the rest later. I'm off to get more footage!

The SAS is not well tuned in my opinion. Obliterates RCS reserves or goes in to a rapid correction mode on aero. I don't know if it got worse in 0.1.4, as I had several issues before as well.

[Socraticat]

8 hours ago, PyroSA said:

Obliterates RCS reserves

I don't use RCS for SAS unless I need it for short bursts. Even if SAS is tuned right RCS gets obliterated if it's used for stability.

It's been difficult since the earliest- the "Fastest Underthe Bridge" Challenge is where I experimented the most with aggressive SAS.

[PyroSA]

17 hours ago, Socraticat said:

I don't use RCS for SAS unless I need it for short bursts. Even if SAS is tuned right RCS gets obliterated if it's used for stability.

It's been difficult since the earliest- the "Fastest Underthe Bridge" Challenge is where I experimented the most with aggressive SAS.

I honestly wish they implemented it like in DeltaV (Rings of Saturn).

Those seamlessly merge the thrusters and reaction wheels (which can saturate).

Ideally the reaction wheel should be used first (small movements) and then the thrusters only engage for larger movements (or to negate saturation).

The SAS seems to go for max control much too often even when finer movements would suffice. It would be nice if we could somehow tweak these PID values just like you can tweak your suspension. Perhaps do it per control unit. Or allow it to be set with action groups so you can toggle between different stability profiles depending on the situation.

[Socraticat]

5 hours ago, PyroSA said:

Those seamlessly merge the thrusters and reaction wheels (which can saturate).

Ideally you could set the parameters on a KAL like unit for any automated part. It's a lot easier to say than do, but that does sound like a worthwhile mod.

[Astroneer08]

Can we just have a moment to appreciate the beauty of KSP2?