Fuel crisis

[NavalLacrosse]

FUEL CRISIS

BREAKING NEWS FROM KNN: Negotiations with Purple Nation continue, but long term solutions are looking less and less likely - Green Kerbal leaders have announced the opening of the national fuel reserves - Expect the price of fuel to rise sharply, and avoid unnecessary trips. Please stay tuned for more updates!

The recent news of the purple Kerbal's embargo on rocket fuel still fresh in the minds of our green Kerbals. A spike in the demand for super fuel efficient transportation has gripped the nation!

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In light of this, KSP has created a challenge for all Kerbal engineers- The goal: Create super efficient aircraft (drone or manned) and fly it as far as it can travel using only the allotted fuel supplies. Innovations from this challenge will be used to develop efficient civilian transportation..... and military craft for a potential conflict with the purples.

MISSION:

Take-Off towards water. (may use any method, I personally vertically launched from the runway)

Cruise.

Glide descent into water.

splashdown.

RULES:

MUST BE ALL STOCK PARTS.

TWO COMPETITION CATEGORIES- Drones (unmanned) and Piloted. Piloted missions must be flow using ONLY the Mk3 cockpit (the three seater)

ONE ROUND-8 Toroidol Fuel Tank is all that is used to fuel the aircraft. No additional fuel tanks can be used, Also No Dumping or draining oxidizer out of the tank.

No taking advantage of thrust generated by control surfaces.

Screenshots of the craft ready for take-off, and of crash scene's flight results displaying "Total Ground Distance" required for scoring.

SCORING:

Straight forward distance challenge: longest land distance travelled wins. All respectable scores get a place on the leaderboard

Note:Before flying your craft hours across the ocean, please confirm that your craft will not infinite glide (I recommend on an attempt, take it to cruise alt, and speed and kill the engines. if the plane slows down, and begins to descend, then you are elegable) I would hate to see people fly for 50 minutes and their plane refuse to land because of some unexpected glitching.

LEADERBOARD:

DRONES:

RANK- - - DISTANCE - - - USERNAME

1)...........655,722...........Nao

2)...........203,133...........NoMrBond

3)...........192,926...........Coneshot

4)...........168,877...........Kappa73

5)

Mk3 Cockpit MANNED:

1)............106,309..........searlefm

2)............37,437............NavalLacrosse

3)

4)

5)

SILLY PLANES! (disqualified/honorable mention)

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Have at it! I wanted to make an easy, simple and fun challenge that doesn't take hours of our time. My flight time was 6 minutes. I can't Imagine a flight lasting more than 10 minutes.. and maybe an hour.... [ Now it looks like people have been doing these long endurence challenges are just refitting their planes with the new fuel tanks!]...

-This is my first competition, and some people defiantly have this efficiency business down. I really underestimated the ingenuity of the people going to attempt this challenge! i've had both my scores tripled!

-I will be creating another simple distance challenge like this, but hope to make it less time: I like short, and easy competitions that take only and hour from starting KSP to submitting screenshots

Edited July 17, 2013 by NavalLacrosse

[NavalLacrosse]

My Feeble attempt, after creating two catagories (manned and unmanned) Here is my manned mission.

Edited July 15, 2013 by NavalLacrosse

[Kappa73]

Here's my submission, no idea if it's any good or not, but you gotta start somewhere, right?

I chose my plane to not be very fast, but really fuel efficient.

http://i.imgur.com/JyF9Cqc.jpg"]

here's a shot of the flight when i ran out of fuel

http://i.imgur.com/RdwDA52.jpg"]

and here's the distance when splashed down

http://i.imgur.com/f3Is7k6.jpg"]

total flight time 25:45, which is quite bit more than your prediction =) distance travelled 168,877m

[Coneshot]

Here is mine 200,139m flown in 26 min 10 sec:

Edited July 15, 2013 by Coneshot

[Pbhead]

I am worried about exploits involving time acceleration and not moving.

May I suggest that a reference point (say, a clamp) be used to measure distance instead of the f3 screen?

[NoMrBond]

I made this for the challenge

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But it's been stuck on ~48.5m/s for a while now and it's slowly gaining altitude even though the fuel has run out?

Is there a way to avoid this infinite gliding absurdity?

[Koolkei]

I made this for the challenge

But it's been stuck on ~48.5m/s for a while now and it's slowly gaining altitude even though the fuel has run out?

Is there a way to avoid this infinite gliding absurdity?

i'm having the same thing. even worse. i'm climbing AND speeding up

here is my tiny unmanned plane.

it's the simplest plane i've made yet

only using 1 of that small orange engine thingy....

well, it took full throttle and half a tank to take it to flight

half more to speed it up.

and i'm surprised that it infinitely gliding

here's the flight.

ane here's exactly 1 minute later, look at the time, speed , altitude, and fuel

and does control surfaces really have thrust?

Edited July 15, 2013 by Koolkei
wrong pic

[NavalLacrosse]

How super! Ha I sure did underestimate the time of flight. Everyone basically trippled my score! There really isn't a sure fire was to eliminate all the aero glitches, but what suspect is causing the absurd ascent is the asas rocking the plane back and forth, resulting in thrust generation by the control surfaces. I think the way to illuminate it may be remove either the front or rear control surfaces. I'll go through and enter in scores when I'm on my pc... And maybe build a better craft myself. I'm open to suggestions as to make this competition better.

[NavalLacrosse]

And that's when I think a simple scoring algorithm should be implemented, relating time to splash down and distance, but to prevent things like rocket hops for 20 meters in .002 seconds. I'll see what I can come up with. Maybe I can eek out an advantage for myself ;-)

Edited July 15, 2013 by NavalLacrosse

[NoMrBond]

Yeah, after 57 minutes and 300,0000+ meters I just pulled the plug as it was slowly gaining both altitude and speed

Going to try and make one with no control surfaces at all to avoid the glitch, if that's even possible?

[NavalLacrosse]

All my planes have only had two Elevrons and twin rudders. They haven't experienced the glitch.

[Nao]

Guys guys! You are using the wrong engine , thrust and thus ISP increases with speed for Turbojet and decreases for standard jet engine. Turbojet cruising at 1000m/s at high altitude will have effective ISP of 38400s

Tried one flight, no glitches / intake spams (one small circular intake) / time accelerations / part detachment (this would be nice to add as a rule) / and mods / lifted horizontally.

Ran out of fuel at around 400km, then run out of energy before 600km(i even have a solar panel but nobody told me it need light for it. And it was such a perfect evening for launch) and started spiraling down at around 655km. (probably could go above 750km on a battery instead of the stupid blue table like thing).

Also ASAS ended up being a dead weight since i used it only for vertical climb (at terminal velocity).

first image flaying on no power, second one is at the official end of flight, third one right after fuel cutout and last at the runaway. (edit: "official end of the flight" screen was take before spiraling - before making more than 90deg turn, so the distance traveled was inflated very little)

All my planes have only had two Elevrons and twin rudders. They haven't experienced the glitch.

Unfortunately having only one control surface generates phantom forces when they are used (i think the delta deluxe winglet generates the least of them) all it comes down is ships mass to control surface amount.

for example: "only" 12 small surfaces and almost 8000m/s below 1km alt. on the glitch alone with very light craft.

I would say that ships that weight at least 1t for the whole flight gain little from it unless there are more than ~6-10 control surfaces and they flap constantly under ASAS.

Edited July 16, 2013 by Nao

[searlefm]

so i decided not to build an infinity glider instead i did a powered launch abusing rover wheels that is not banned

and then to gain as much height as possible to abuse a ridiculous glide profile

getting me a total distance of 106,049 meters

i do hope that this is a good score for a first challenge done

Edited July 23, 2013 by searlefm
fixing the pics

[NavalLacrosse]

so i decided not to build an infinity glider instead i did a powered launch abusing rover wheels that is not banned

and then to gain as much height as possible to abuse a ridiculous glide profile

Ha the longer this competition runs the more crazy flights people pull off. When I made this competition the loophole I intended was for a rover to accelerate the plane, then detach, then as fuel runs out, detach the engine, and proceed to fly the .01 ton craft to the mun somehow (of course not, but the bazinga is implied)

I'll throw you up on the leader board (beating me!)

Edited July 16, 2013 by NavalLacrosse

[NoMrBond]

Messing around with control surface placement to avoid the glidecceleration bug

Also swapped the radial decouplers for tiny stack decouplers off cubic struts, works well for ditching the extra weight, although I forgot to put a decoupler behind the engine so I could ditch the weight at fuel out.

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203,133 travelled, but that took 1:23 which was just a bit slow. Going to try a higher cruise next time