Round Kerbin in 60 minutes

[palker]

Managed to circumnavigate Kerbin without crashing for the first time today. Almost succeeded yesterday but i crashed on final approach because the aircraft's CG was shifted due to bad fuel management but today i finally did it after many failures. The most challenging part of flying around the Kerbin is the fuel management. The almost 4000 km you have to fly require a lot of fuel that weighs a ton. And if you are not careful and let the game pump the fuel as it sees fit you will easily end up with aircraft that is completely uncontrollable due to CG shift.

During the design of this aircraft I also learned that it matters how you put fuel lines on the aircraft. There are tiny black arrows that show you the direction in which the fuel will be pumped. In my first iteration on this design i put the fuel lines wrong way so i run out of some 80 km from KSC with 480 Units of fuel that i could not use.

Another thing specific to my design is that at high altitudes engines may flame out due to lack of air and they never flame out at the same time so any flame out will result in ridiculous flatspin that will cost you 10 km of altitude or the entire aircraft. After like way too many such spins i had to keep my eye on the throttle and air intakes all the time at altitudes above 20 km. Once i spun so hard that my engines were torn of by centrifugal force luckily i fitted the aircraft with stack separator and some parachutes so even though the aircraft crashed the Kerbal test pilot lived.

Here are some screenshots of my aircraft.

Flying at Mach 4 over Kerbin I had the reentry effects displaying pernamently, the Kerbals on the ground must have reported plenty of UFO sightings that day

On final approach you can see one of my less than successful attempts just below me

Heroic test pilot Aldwin Kerman posing for photo with the machine that enabled this historic achievement of Kerbal aviation.

Landed with fuel to spare.

Flight stats

[Pursuedtank]

Congratulations, I was going to point you to the circumnavigation thread, but I see you've already found it, I have done this as well, and It is quite hard to do. It took me nearly an hour and a half.