High Altitude Payload Delivery Challenge

[Resilient]

Some Kerbals have gotten to thinking it may be better to fly rockets to high altitudes and then launch them from there to save on that costly fuel needed for those first 10,000 meters of altitude, but they need help getting those rockets up there.

They are looking for working prototypes of aircraft that run only on air-powered engines, which launch horizontally, can deliver a payload to 10,000m and land safely.

The criteria they are judging on is the payload capacity of the aircraft.

They are only interested in launching big rockets. So the winner will be determined by the aircraft which can deliver the most full Rockomax Jumbo-64 fuel tanks to an altitude of 10,000m+, drop them safely then land back at the airport. Should multiple entries be able to deliver the same number of Jumbo-64 fuel tanks, then ties will be broken by the number of additional full X200-16 fuel tanks which can be dropped with the 64s. If there is STILL a tie, then the highest altitude at which the tanks were dropped will break the tie. No mods should be used.

As proof the require a photo of the aircraft in flight with the fuel tanks, an image of the fuel tanks being released, an image of the empty plane still flying and finally an image of the empty plane having landed back at home.

As proof that it is possible, they submit their currently working prototype.

http://imgur.com/a/9SXph

PS. it was not until they inspected these photos that they realized their best engineer forgot to install a right wing landing gear.

Results:

Pirke: 4! Jumbo tanks! That beast looks more like a flying aircraft carrier than a plane!

the_bT: 3 Jumbo tanks (along with 3 X300-32s, this might be a hard one to beat)

Edited August 4, 2013 by Resilient

[acealeam]

Seems like a really cool challenge! Just one question first, I'm god awful at landing, so do you have to land at the runway?

[Boex]

Great challenge, but I think it would be better to score based on payload mass, as I can't see people sending up more than 2/3 jumbo fuel tanks...

You can see the payload mass if you switch to it using [], enter map view, and bring up vessel information from the "i" tab on the right.

[the_bT]

I can't see people sending up more than 2/3 jumbo fuel tanks...

Meet the Spruce Moose:

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OK, technically that's three jumbos and 3 X200-32, but the weight is the same as 4 jumbos and 2 X200-16.

It might be possible to lift even more but I ain't going to try it...

Landing didn't went terribly smooth, but I had TONS of lag and the thing is a nightmare to control (and maybe landing with parking brakes on was not as good an idea as I thought)

Damage was minimal, Pilot survived, I say that was a safe landing.

Am I in or what

[Boex]

Wow, that's impressive

You just crushed me though, I was proud of sending up 1 Jumbo XD

[Pirke]

Meet Big Momma MK IV

(Big Momma MK I to III failed miserably....)

Big Momma uses a very modular design: each unit is a very narrow part that has 600 jet fuel, 8 turbo jets and 8 air intakes. It can carry 2 jumbo's to 10000m easily.

Given enough air intakes to simulate scram jets and a liquid burner, it can go single stage into orbit and back.....

The Kerbal engineers just click as many units together as they need payload to go up. In this case: 4 to beat the current record Also, when I add more units the physics engine or my pc can't handle the part count... but the runway is wide enough for 5 or 6 of these babies, giving a theoretical 10 or 12 jumbo's to 10000m.

Testflights confirm that 2 units fly the same as 1 as they are simply strutted together.

http://imgur.com/a/Ph6nH#0

Edited August 7, 2013 by Pirke
Using imgur for images now