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ULTIMATE AVIATION CHALLENGE: Fly an aircraft around the world


Sordid

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This one could probably do it:

...just needing more fuel conservation tactics practice o_o

Sorry but that probably wouldn\'t count because those tanks have a ridiculously high dV, considering their mass.

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just Learnt the Supersonic approach is not the right idea :P

i was up at the 15k mark and going about 650+ m/s i ran out of fuel just before kuba. BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD!

doing this with only stock and C7 parts is hard :P

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Great looking plane, but how come it\'s not burning any fuel, basically?

Magic.

KSP\'s winglets do not provide drag appropriate for their lift; I\'ve reported it as a bug before. It\'s disguised a bit with the new stall mechanism but my thrust isn\'t to keep me aloft, it\'s to maintain my forward speed, and there\'s nowhere near enough drag for realism.

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Magic.

KSP\'s winglets do not provide drag appropriate for their lift; I\'ve reported it as a bug before. It\'s disguised a bit with the new stall mechanism but my thrust isn\'t to keep me aloft, it\'s to maintain my forward speed, and there\'s nowhere near enough drag for realism.

You\'re joking, right? Drag is extremely prevalent, which is why they slow down to 10m/s as soon as you cut engines.. and also why you can supercruise above 30k when the drag falls off.

Its not soup-thick like it used to be, but its working fine - its the lack of the rest of the flight-modeling that makes these planes 'iffy'

Edit: Erm.. less than 1/4th of a tank in 2 hours? What engine is that? Something is iffy, C7 parts alone won\'t allow that.

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Edit: Erm.. less than 1/4th of a tank in 2 hours? What engine is that? Something is iffy, C7 parts alone won\'t allow that.

Check his throttle - it\'s a hair above \'0\'. Full burn on C7\'s engine is only 6 fuel/second, so you\'re looking at well under 1 fuel/second at that throttle. It\'s also entirely possible that he\'s doing a lot of gliding between burns.

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You\'re joking, right? Drag is extremely prevalent, which is why they slow down to 10m/s as soon as you cut engines.. and also why you can supercruise above 30k when the drag falls off.

Its not soup-thick like it used to be, but its working fine - its the lack of the rest of the flight-modeling that makes these planes 'iffy'

Edit: Erm.. less than 1/4th of a tank in 2 hours? What engine is that? Something is iffy, C7 parts alone won\'t allow that.

No, I\'m quite serious. Winglet drag does not work properly and is far too low (and increasing the drag coefficients in the winglet portion of the .cfg appears to have no effect). I am maintaining forward speed with one or two percent thrust on a Sunday Punch miniliquid engine (maxT 65, mass 0.5, consumption 2), as it has the best thrust-per-fuel unit of any engine in the three allowed packs (Sunday Punch, Nova Silisko, C7). C7\'s engine might allow me to avoid needing a first stage except as a tower to keep the tail clear of the ground, but while it has a better TWR (maxT 150, mass 1, consumption 6), it is prone to overheating at full throttle, would take too long to reach control-surfaces-work speeds, leaving the launch vulnerable to sideslip and rolls, and in any case has worse thrust-per-fuel stats.

If I was using one, with the same throttle settings, I\'d be going faster at a higher altitude with around three times the fuel consumption over time. If I could set the throttle fine enough to have the same thrust as I currently. There\'s enough fuel in the plane to allow that, but why bother?

If I was able to match the thrust of my current engine (by slightly-more-than halving the throttle, something I\'m not sure is possible), I\'d have a fuel consumption rate 30% higher than my current one. It\'s not really that out-there.

It would be impossible with proper drag modelling, I am pretty certain. I am violating Newton\'s Laws nine ways from Sunday right now. :P

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Ah I was able to reproduce it - they don\'t seem to produce much drag at all, so your mondo lift rating from all of those wings allows miniscule horizontal speed to keep you going - do you actually stall if the thrust is zero, or does it just glide?

I am wondering if this is causing the instability - the drag on the wings should serve as a stabilizer, but its really easy to get into a tumble from which you can\'t recover with surface controls - only SAS or RCS helps.

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Spaceplane will be a PAIN to optimize and balance. (Something NASA knows very well...)

But, for now, do you really NEED all that fuel then? :)

For staying aloft, no; for spacing out the wings, yes. :P

And additional flight logs! A minor throttle bump resulted in an increase in speed and altitude but irritatingly higher fuel consumption through these next images. I\'ve tried bumping it back down, we\'ll see where it stabilises.

Sunset at the north pole:

KSP - Ultralight sunset.png

Post throttle goof:

KSP - Ultralight hour 4.png

Bob needs to use the washroom:

KSP - Ultralight hour 5.png

The ASAS is chugging along like a champ:

KSP - Ultralight hour 6.png

Bill just landed on one of Jeb\'s hotels.

KSP%20-%20Ultralight%20hour%207.png

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I\'ve tested it independently with a smaller, yet similar design, foamy\'s not using cheat parts.

Never mind, that\'s been established, in any case, it\'s ludicrously easy with the ADV SAS, just set it, set push on the pitch up key, alt tab and use the window viewer to occasionally check.

I\'m only using six tanks (And one extra to get me off the ground) atm though that and C7\'s engine, so basically, I\'ll get about 2/3 around. Not bad though, on a single stage.

EDIT: If my calculations are correct, I\'ll make it about halfway on six tanks and C7\'s engine, so basically, unless I add another stage to get me to altitude and use that engine foamy\'s using, no chance. Oh well, I\'ll have gone halfway, that at least warrants a cookie!

The ship

318677_10150860301490203_726140202_20937499_1839935542_n.jpg

EDIT: Went to see a movie, came back and there my ship was, crashed halfway around the world. nearly 8 kerbal hours later.

Centre of the crash site is approximately on the centre of the following screenie. 301131_10150860600305203_726140202_20939410_1466042481_n.jpg

EDIT: Added 20 of those solar panels to my plane, she\'ll now fly indefinitely.

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Well, for my non-symmetrically placed control surfaces-- the canards and tail-- what I did was build one wing, clone it with Alt-Click, and then place the whole assembly at once, allowing me to line it up vertically and have all the horizontal symmetry taken care of. The only issue was the tailfins and landing gear on the tail, since those invert when you do it, so I had to remove those and replace them manually. The horizontal is still in close alignment but the vertical may be out.

Also:

KSP%20-%20Ultralight%20hour%2010.png

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Well, for my non-symmetrically placed control surfaces-- the canards and tail-- what I did was build one wing, clone it with Alt-Click, and then place the whole assembly at once, allowing me to line it up vertically and have all the horizontal symmetry taken care of. The only issue was the tailfins and landing gear on the tail, since those invert when you do it, so I had to remove those and replace them manually. The horizontal is still in close alignment but the vertical may be out.

So, that must be what caused you to drift off course? Also, how do you keep this running for when you go do other things?

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So, that must be what caused you to drift off course? Also, how do you keep this running for when you go do other things?

Pause it. It\'d be nice if KSP stopped running my CPU full speed when I did so, but ah well.

Are we there yet?

KSP - Ultralight hour 11.png

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