Kerbin Circumnavigation Challenge 2: Electric Boogaloo

[Wait- Was That Important?]

It may go by the same name, but just making around the planet isn't much of a challenge these days, especially using modded parts. Vanilla parts, 15km altitude limit, and FAR would have at least made things interesting. Cool beans, but I'll happily stick with your circumnavigation challenge, especially since it has submission categories and a goal to strive for: time.

Sweet, thanks for the encouragement! I was a bit worried everyone would give up on this one. It was a bit disorienting to see the two challenges on the front page, but I suppose the titles are different- and this one was created before the bump, so it's not exactly a copy either.

Two questions for you:

1.) Do you want to be entered in the "width" engineering challenge section? Your plane certainly is the widest so far.

2.) Why use the wings as the main structural component? Instead of fuselages you used the long wings. I just found it curious, but your times are quite good so I figured it works somehow- your plane wound up looking an awful lot like a real-life circumnavigatior!

[keptin]

Thanks! It's not the big meaty bastard that deserves holding that title, but I'll let you make the call; it's certainly wide. Wings are very light and together act as a guide vane to keep the plane pointing straight. They allow me to position the rudder & elevator further away from the wings and center of mass.

[keptin]

Constellation-ID, (stock)

36mins, 55secs

A Winnar Is You: completed the challenge and landed safely (-5s)

Monolithic: no decoupling or breaking off of tanks (-11s)

Speed angel: hit a top speed of over 2,000m/s (does not stack with previous acheivement)(-20s)

Total time w/ achievements: 2179 secs

This marks a 10 minute improvement over the Constellation-IB. I cut the wings shorter to reduce drag and moved the landing gear back to prevent tail hits on takeoff. More notably, I used an aggressive flight path leaping up to 35k ft at nearly 80 degrees and then came down pretty steeply. It's a few minutes faster than the previous run, but could still be improved.

Shorter wings may help further; the Constellation design is quickly on its way to becoming min-maxed for the challenge. I could take advantage of more achievement bonuses, but I think mission time on eastern circumnavigation is the purest goal to shoot for and changing course would increase that time, even if it led to a better final score. As of now, this is the fastest circumnavigation time in the thread, despite only using stock parts.

Cruise

Deceleration

Landed

Flight Data

Edited May 22, 2013 by keptin

[Akalaël]

If using the debug menu you enter in the cheat category I gess ?

This challenge is really fun, the main problem I have is to NOT put my planes in a orbital flight, obiged to pitch to a -30° to do so

[Akalaël]

I did another try, this time with no mod at all.

The Circum Thing 2 ( pure stock, MJ is just to see the weigh : 7.12t )

And the results :

Time 2008 seconds !

Achivements :

Oh, so close: crash landed in the KSC zone (-4s) (this time I follow your advice : a proper and nice crach )

Monolithic: no decoupling or breaking off of tanks (-11s)

Speed angel: hit a top speed of over 2,000m/s (does not stack with previous acheivement)(-20s)

And makes a 1973 sec

Don't know if the plane can take place on the "Little Baby" challenge, think it's a bit heavy to figure there...

[tavert]

Can do this with shockingly little fuel if you just orbit at 44 km: http://imgur.com/a/XQo54#0 Don't even need more than 2 intakes, if the plane's small enough.

This is an entry for Little Baby Plane at 1.62 tons. I even had enough fuel left over that I could've replaced the 2 Round-8's with 3 Oscar-B's to cut off another 0.036 tons...

Time was 38 min, 15 seconds. Achievements were Winnar, Precision, Monolithic, and Speed angel. Could've slapped on a ladder or a seat and taken a Kerbal along for Going green, maybe next time (I think I'll try westward with more fuel for a speed run). So I believe my score should be 2295 - 42 = 2253.

Edit: Used MechJeb obviously, and Kerbal Alarm Clock is there but didn't do anything on this run.

Edited May 23, 2013 by tavert

[Sesni]

Tomorrow... I shall go on a boat/road trip. And watch some glaciers.

I give up after two crashes and four deaths.

Edited May 25, 2013 by Sesni

[Namesplosion]

But electric boogaloo!

[Torham234]

Since I have already done the Captain Kalawang's challenge, I thought I will make a new aircraft for this one.

Lark V. :

- 470 fuel, no detachable fuel tanks

- cruising height - 30 km

- cruising speed - ~1300 m/s

The only mod I have used is the lazor flight autopilot, so that I could run through the cruise on warp 3. Take off and landing done manually. All other parts are stock. I was doing a good time, but I came for landing too soon, and I had to cruise the final 80 km at low altitude that costed precious time... maybe next time.

[Tex_NL]

Has anybody gone round completely electric yet? I have a plane that in theory could do it but it would take an eternity. It struggles to reach 8000m and won't do much beyond 120 m/s.

[Torham234]

I never had much luck with electric planes, mostly due to the performance limitations of my outdated PC.

Anyway, I have a much better stab at this challenge.

Lark VI. :

All stock, no mods used ( I piloted this one by hand).

Fuel used - 155 - No detachable fuel tanks

Cruising altitude : 37 km

Cruising speed - ~2000 m/s

Total Time : 43 m 24 s

There is a point at around 36 km and speed of around 2km/s where you start getting into the orbital speeds and than you are using only tiny amounts of fuel. I expect if I really wanted I could have raised my apoapsis out of the atmosphere, easily.

I was too nervous to attempt an air strip landing, and since the penalty is so small, I would have probably wasted more time aligning for the air strip landing...

Time: 2604s

A Winnar Is You: -5s

Monolithic: -11s

Speed angel: -20s

Total : 2568

[Wait- Was That Important?]

Updating OP right now- thanks for all the cool new entries, guys!

[1096bimu]

I'm actually not sure because of all the modding I do, but I think some of the entries here are no longer possible to beat in .20 because the jet engine will not have any thrust at 1000m/s so I don't think you can go to 2000 without rockets.

Also maybe because of FAR, I find it impossible to run jet engines at the altitudes run by people in the top places regardless of how much intakes I spam. ISP gets too low and it takes too much intake air.

Right now I am running a plane with shock cone intakes and ramjet engines and the highest I can go is 30,000 and 1900m/s. I could go higher I think if I mod the engine, but this is already impossible with stock jet engines.

I think this challenge has a serious problem of being a contest of maintaining orbit at aroung 40,000 meters. The ceiling is too high and the drag gets low enough for orbit, and since orbit speed the same regardless of what mod you use, it's more about the liftoff and landing than about the actual journey since everybody's top speed will be roughly equal.

Edited May 28, 2013 by 1096bimu

[Teirusu]

BOOYAH! Finally got something I was happy with! Check it~

4 Ram intakes

1 Turbojet

Less then 150 fuel

A little over 3 tons

No modded parts

Base time: 2246 seconds.

Acheivements: Winnar Is You, Precision pilot, Monolithic, and Speed Angel

Bonus time: -42 second.

Final total: 2204!

[Torham234]

I'm actually not sure because of all the modding I do, but I think some of the entries here are no longer possible to beat in .20 because the jet engine will not have any thrust at 1000m/s so I don't think you can go to 2000 without rockets.

That must be all the modding you do. I have not noticed anything like that. My entry was made in 0.20, and I had the top speed of over 2km/s only using 1 turbojet.

[tavert]

I'm actually not sure because of all the modding I do, but I think some of the entries here are no longer possible to beat in .20 because the jet engine will not have any thrust at 1000m/s so I don't think you can go to 2000 without rockets.

Also maybe because of FAR, I find it impossible to run jet engines at the altitudes run by people in the top places regardless of how much intakes I spam. ISP gets too low and it takes too much intake air.

<snip>

I think this challenge has a serious problem of being a contest of maintaining orbit at aroung 40,000 meters. The ceiling is too high and the drag gets low enough for orbit, and since orbit speed the same regardless of what mod you use, it's more about the liftoff and landing than about the actual journey since everybody's top speed will be roughly equal.

That's because of FAR, it completely changes the aerodynamics and reduces the top speed of the jets as well. I'm not positive what it does to intakes, but I think the revised drag model in FAR defeats the purpose of having as many as in stock.

I agree in principle, and you can see how my entry did exactly what you're describing, using a tiny amount of fuel to get up to 44 km altitude and orbital speed, then fighting the miniscule drag the whole way around. But there are some subtleties still - orbital speed is a bit higher at lower altitudes, so you would need to fight more drag with more fuel, but probably get a faster time. And if you go west instead of east, you have to cover the same surface distance, but now Kerbin's rotation is reducing your orbital speed instead of adding to it. This means you can actually sustain faster surface speeds without ever getting into a true orbit, and you'll need a constant upward pitch to fight gravity (if you're at a high enough altitude that lift isn't helping much). Then you can basically go at max jet speed, around 2300 m/s surface (varying a bit depending on your design), the whole way around. Otherwise you're right, a major source of variability is the ascent and descent trajectories. Personally I was finding it very tricky to descend in a stable controlled manner.

Edited May 28, 2013 by tavert

[palker]

I did it in 3493 seconds, maybe a little less than that, as i went on EVA to take the pictures. Check the pics in this thread http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/32334-Round-Kerbin-in-60-minutes?p=399110#post399110 .

Achievements:

A Winnar Is You (-5s)

Precision pilot (-6s)

Wrong way, champ (-7s)

Monolithic (-11s)

After deductions 3465

Stock parts

Addons used: Kerbal alarm clock and Kerbal engineering system.

[1096bimu]

Finally did it, yeah! This is moded with FAR enabled.

2110 seconds

1.) Oh, so close: crash landed in the KSC zone (-4s)

3.) Precision pilot: landed on the spaceplane runway (-6s)

6.) Monolithic: no decoupling or breaking off of tanks (-11s) (only engines, no tanks)

8.) Speed angel: hit a top speed of over 2,000m/s (does not stack with previous acheivement)(-20s)

Final time: 2069 seconds, beat my own cheating record lol, that thing is just too big.

Jet engine assisted take off (ramjets have no thrust until about 1200m/s)

Jet engine separation, enter ramjet mode. Center of mass shifts closer to center of lift for cruise stability. It was behind for better take off.

B9 MK2 internals

Mach 6.5 hyper cruise

direct decent for fastest time possible

Ops, a little too direct, I'm coming in too high...

At least I tried to land on wheels.

[Wait- Was That Important?]

I love all these new entries! I'm updating the OP now.

@Teirusu Such a cute little plane! It must've been a real challenge to land on the runway, it looks REALLY twitchy.

@1096bimu I really like how you can ditch the turbojets before the ramjets take over, it looks really cool! And I also suck at landings, so no biggy.

I don't play with FAR but I've heard good things about it- I know it makes spaceplanes a lot harder, and I suck at them as it is, but would it be worth it for the sake of having another interesting challenge?

Also, I'm working on a large plane that can carry 32 tons of payload (in this case SRB's to boost my speed) to a decent height. Has anyone else tried the SRB- boosted method in the upper atmosphere? I'm hoping it will work, considering the two hours I put into this beast already.

As you can see, it's quite large. It carries four of the large KW radial-mount SRB's.

After booster ignition, the plane flew to a 79km periapsis at a few hundred dV short of orbit- I figure less liquid fuel mass and more oxidizer, and this will make a 50 ton SSTO. But that's not the point. I'm hoping the air at 44km is thin enough to permit this plane to reach very high velocities and have it glide for at least a quarter of the trip.

And here's a vanity shot of the thing violently decoupling the SRB's. Those gray engines you see pointing retrograde are the Abort Assist Boosters, designed to slow the 70- ton beast if I have to abort a takeoff or landing to a manageable speed (because slowing down something that heavy going 120m/s on the end of the runway is tough).

Any other crazy new planes in development?

[Wait- Was That Important?]

Update: Fixed some broken links to the challenge entries in the leaderboards, sorry for not catching that earlier.

In other news, B9 Aerospace pack is kicking my ass and refusing me to take off, but I'm determined. So far the strategy of "moar boosters" hasn't worked, so I'm adding more boosters and will let you know how that goes later.

[the_bT]

I did the other challenge, might as well enter here too...

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25884-Kerbin-Circumnavigation-Challenge-Reloaded-New-Rules-Once-More?p=401251&viewfull=1#post401251

Base time in the Griffin XR is 7693 seconds BUT only because I went around twice...

I think I achieved: A Winnar Is You, Precision pilot, Monolithic, Speed demon (but that only on lap two) and my plane also seems to be heavier than the XXGC-5109 of Captain Kalawang. Don't know about the wingspan and length though...

[Wait- Was That Important?]

I did the other challenge, might as well enter here too...

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25884-Kerbin-Circumnavigation-Challenge-Reloaded-New-Rules-Once-More?p=401251&viewfull=1#post401251

Base time in the Griffin XR is 7693 seconds BUT only because I went around twice...

I think I achieved: A Winnar Is You, Precision pilot, Monolithic, Speed demon (but that only on lap two) and my plane also seems to be heavier than the XXGC-5109 of Captain Kalawang. Don't know about the wingspan and length though...

I halved the base time and applied the bonuses to that, considering that you went around twice and that it's not a super-competitive entry.

Congrats on getting that monster to fly! I'm still scared by anything over 60 tons in the air. It also does seem to beat Kalawang's entry for "One Big Mother"- let's see if he comes back to reclaim his title!

[Wait- Was That Important?]

Update: Captain Kalawang's entry for "One Big Mother" has been displaced, yet still holds the record for slowest entry (mebbez I should be adding a new category, no?) and instead has earned the "Phallic Symbol" engineering award, as it's still the longest plane by far.

Also, I'm looking for some kind person to make a logo for this challenge as well, just so people can get a shiny for their participation.

Edited May 29, 2013 by Wait, Was That Important?

[GROOV3ST3R]

I think i will submit my Elite circumnavigation entry as i gather is still applies.

Max altitude = 25.000m

Top speed = 1467m/s

Time taken = 55.55

Stock, no debug, no drop tanks. Flew Eastwards, landed on runway

[Wait- Was That Important?]

GROOV3ST3R's entry, along with 12 other entries from the other thread have been added!

A slight change was made to the competition leaderboards however: they are now restricted to ten spaces (the complete leaderboard just holds all, and the engineering challenges are still only awarded to one person at a time) to save my sanity.

Good luck, and fly safe!