The "no-engined" flyer challenge!

[Themohawkninja]

Objective: Make a plane that gets into the air without using any engines.

Rules:

-You CANNOT consume: Liquid fuel, oxidizer, Solid fuel, monopropellant, or xenon.

-You CAN consume air, and electric charge.

-You CANNOT use mods, or cheats.

-All Kerbals MUST be on the craft when the velocity proof is given.

-Survival of the craft is NOT required.

Scoring:

The scoring equation is:

s=v*m*(k+1)

v=The crafts highest provable velocity (m/s)

m=The crafts mass (T)

k=The number of Kerbals on board the craft

s=The score

Scoreboard:

1 - 250 parts:

-------------------------

1. Scott_H - 74,036.16

2. 0muffins0 - 2,715.84

3.

4.

5.

251 - 500 parts:

-------------------------

1. SteevyT - 1,823,637.6

2. Coneshot - 913,015.504 (I think it says 443, but some confirmation would be nice).

3.

4.

5.

501 - 750 parts:

-------------------------

1. Scott_H - 513,690.65

2.

3.

4.

5.

751 - 1000 parts:

-------------------------

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

1001 - 1500 parts:

-------------------------

1. Scott_H - 4,621,943.8

2. Tw1 - 416,379.81

3.

4.

5.

1500+ parts:

-------------------------

1. Tw1 - 1,232,155.47

2.

3.

4.

5.

Unknown part counts:

-------------------------

M83 - 343.962

searlefm - 30,852.144

Tw1 - 39,100.00

dshuck - 1263.735

Honorable Mention: SpaceK531 has succeeded at making a no-engined flyer that can circumnavigate Kerbin.

Proof of Possibility:

Craft: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q7qgz0kklj1br4v/Water-strider.craft

Back:

Front:

Velocity Proof:

This craft's score is: s=198.7*1.33*2=528.542

HAVE FUN BREAKING PHYSICS!

Edited August 12, 2013 by Themohawkninja

[dshuck]

I've got one!

I'm using it as a Laythe rover for my mission there. I can get 2 kerbals into the air in the .5 atm pressure above Laythe sea level

Craft File: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9541787/Stuff/SuperGlider.craft

I included links to the pictures that prove mass and velocity, instead of adding picture clutter to my post.

Mass: 1.85 tons

Max Velocity: 227.7 m/s

Crew: 2 Kerbals

Score: 227.7 * 1.85 * (2+1) = 1263.735 points

Edited August 5, 2013 by dshuck

[numerobis]

Is safe landing required?

[Themohawkninja]

Is safe landing required?

Not really, because for one thing, it takes FOREVER to horizontally land these things, because moving the control surfaces ends up accelerating them, however on the other hand, if you can get slow enough, than enough parachutes should work, so there isn't a huge challenge there, it would either be time consuming, or just getting below 50 or so m/s so the parachute doesn't rip your craft apart.

[searlefm]

SO I did a 11 kerbal flight, why you say because the more kerbals the more points you get, especially as you did not set an upper limit

it weighs in at 5.72 unkerbaled 6.12 when full

i achieved a speed of 420.1 mp/s

so i get speed times mass (number of kerbals +1)

giving me 420.1 * 6.12 (12)

so i get 30852.144

you may call me the winner now unless you with to have a thing with evermore kerbals and then it will just be silly

and the aftermath is 11 broken kerbals

Edited August 5, 2013 by searlefm
sums wrong god dam it!!

[Themohawkninja]

I foresaw the spamming of seats, but I don't mind. I am quite impressed with that. You beat my example craft by four whole digits!

Edited August 5, 2013 by Themohawkninja

[searlefm]

thanks all tho it took me around 10 minutes to get one of those to take of as it just tryed to frount flip

after that it was piss easy to back flip geting up speed as it would not do anything else regardless of what buttons i pressed once it got beyond 20mp/s.

i did go up to 500mp/s but it self destructed so I'm only counting when it was controllable(well kind of controllable )

[dshuck]

SO I did a 11 kerbal flight...

Your plane looks a little silly but that only makes it AWESOME.

+1 Reputation.

[0muffins0]

328 m/s

2.07T

3 Kerbals

328*2.07*(3+1) = 2,715.84

[Themohawkninja]

Already, the first three have beaten my example by at least twice the amount. I am becoming more and more impressed.

[Scott_H]

I don't know how:

420.1*5.72*12 = 1,648,046.4 for searlefm

420.1*5.72*12 = 28,835.664

Regardless,

you may call me the winner now unless you with to have a thing with evermore kerbals and then it will just be silly

Evermore Kerbals it is, 32 to be exact...

304 m/s

7.38 T

32 Kerbals

304*7.38*(32+1) = 74,036.16 for my score

And for the proof:

Speed: end of flight after a horrible explosion

Weight: info screen while on the runway

Kerbals: It's called the Ker-buss for a reason, took around 20 mins to fill up

I hope that someone makes something insane to top this xD

And if you want more screenshots I'd be glad to show more, it is a pain to fly but it's so fun trying to handle it

Edited August 5, 2013 by Scott_H

[searlefm]

Your plane looks a little silly but that only makes it AWESOME.

+1 Reputation.

dshuck that is no plane its a kerbal roller coaster equivalent with absolutely NO practical use

and Scott_H as it's timesing mutable number with decimal places (manly the decimals) i just used my calculator that is a basic scientific one (the Casio fx-83GT PLUS and asumed it was in M 1 math mode that is basic with order of priority) and i entered the equation with bracts as Themohawkninja originally wrote it out for scoring.

so i was under the assumption it was correct especially as i didn't bother checking after checking my log's on it i found it was in a different set up as i'd been doing orbital equation on the blasted thing and it treated the last bracketed number as a square not a times,

leading me to accidentally overstating my score by only 1.6 million,

my bad.

more to the point Scott_H that thing looks useful and cool well done indeed

Edited August 5, 2013 by searlefm

[Tw1]

While not quite what you're looking for, I made this a while ago.

It flew on and on and on.. once it gets going.

[occar]

Maybe this will keep the infiniglide nonsense out of every other atmospheric challenge. We can only hope.

[Themohawkninja]

Maybe this will keep the infiniglide nonsense out of every other atmospheric challenge. We can only hope.

Yeah, one of the things I would like to see is that the devs see this, and realize (if they haven't already) how exploitable the current model is.

[0muffins0]

24 Kerbals

13.9t

9398 m/s

Currently in space escaping Kerbin's orbit

Wow ... yeah ... I was inspired by an earlier entry to build a 72 seat bus.

I was in the loooong process of filling her up with kerbals when the game bugged out when my 25th kerbal EVA'ed his capsule. Everything except the UI went black and the altitude meter was going nuts. I exited and restarted the game and went to the tracking system to see what was up.

Apparently my bus with 24 kerbals on board was in space and on an escape trajectory from Kerbin.

9398*13.9t*(24+1)=3,265,805

Though technically they got into space without any propellent, this probably doesn't count because it was due to the game bugging out.

I'm more concerned about my 24 kerbals who are stuck on a bus without engines or fuel and are on a course for deep space.

Poor guys

[Themohawkninja]

I'll count it if you can actually get some speed with that thing that doesn't involve the game just glitching out and giving you 10 km/s.

That thing looks really insane though.

[Tex_NL]

You claim 0muffins0's entry is based on a glitch while the challenge itself relies solely on the exploitation of a bug???

[Themohawkninja]

You claim 0muffins0's entry is based on a glitch while the challenge itself relies solely on the exploitation of a bug???

The bug he encountered was while he wasn't even trying to get into the air. The bug that the challenge is based on involves the fact that when you move the control surfaces on crafts with a very high lift to weight ratio, the craft gains speed the more you have the control surfaces in non-default position.

[Scott_H]

I think it is time to make that 72 kerbal bus, Maybe we can start a colony mission at this rate, if each kerbal pack was able to push it I wonder if anyone could ever make an orbit with their planes as they shoot out of the atmosphere

I really hope that this challenge gets into make massive kerbal buses infigliding into space, because that would just be awesome xD

[zarakon]

You claim 0muffins0's entry is based on a glitch while the challenge itself relies solely on the exploitation of a bug???

It's based on the exploitation of a SPECIFIC bug

[Tw1]

24 Kerbals

I'm more concerned about my 24 kerbals who are stuck on a bus without engines or fuel and are on a course for deep space.

This would make a great rescue mission, but you're going to need something like, IDK, 27Km/s worth of Delta V to bring them home.

[M83]

Alright Ben, here's my comically horrible attempt at your challenge.

This was the fastest speed I could get the craft up to.

And here's a general picture of it, you can see one of the Kerbals' heads poking through.

So a max velocity of 58.2m/s, a weight of 1.97 tons, and 2 Kerbals on board.

58.2 * 1.97 * 3 equals.....*drum roll* a lackluster 343.962 points!

[Scott_H]

I do have a question though, for the speed bit, do all the kerbals have to remain on it for your max speed? as I am running into a bit of an issue after the 120~ mark for kerbals, where once I get past around 200 m/s they all just kinda warp off of it and shotgun outwards, here's a picture of the aftermath of one small bit of the sky, though most just pop into smoke randomly, so these are the (un)lucky survivors:

[Themohawkninja]

I do have a question though, for the speed bit, do all the kerbals have to remain on it for your max speed? as I am running into a bit of an issue after the 120~ mark for kerbals, where once I get past around 200 m/s they all just kinda warp off of it and shotgun outwards, here's a picture of the aftermath of one small bit of the sky, though most just pop into smoke randomly, so these are the (un)lucky survivors:

LMAO! I did not see this coming at all!

Uh... Post the score of the highest speed you can get with all of the Kerbals on board. I figure that there is no point in posting the score when your velocity is at the point where the craft loses any real purpose.