Fastest Plane under 1.000m. [WE HAVE REACHED MACH 5!, Tidus Klein at 1,714 m/s]

[fluffysnowcap]

a heat shelded nost cone maby

[Visari]

As a more official FAR record entry: 1311 m/s

Note I am using RSS, so my 1.9km is still roughly stock 1km in air pressure.

Just before losing the ship to overheat

Detaching the fairings/engines

Landed

This plane is far from optimized, could probably be quite a bit faster.

I'm forced to retract my previous statement though, pc will fry before DREC fries my plane.

Edited January 30, 2014 by Visari

[fluffysnowcap]

that is huge and insane now can we get a video as that woud be insane and fantastic

[m1sz]

That's a good idea, but having intakes behind fairings is not so... legal. Im not gonna bane it, as one alrdy did something similar putting intakes on the cargo bay, but well!

anyway, please, make picture under 1.000m!, or a video of it, it would be awesome... as it's a VERY fast plane!

[m1sz]

Also, how can you have 1893 LF left? xD

[Visari]

as I said, far from optimized

I'm currently back into full real career stuff, so won't have much time to record the lag that is this plane.

[cyberklad]

That's because the plane is built for super stability with a center of gravity very far ahead of the center of lift. That's also why the wings are swept back like that. My plane is practically impossible to stall when flying with only 1 engine, even when it's fully throttled up.

My design is built as a plane through and through.

Seems you have found a huge flaw in kerbal physics. A plane with the centre og gravity very far ahead of the centre of lift should only be stable going straight up or straight down. Or in a ballistic trajectory.

[Hejnfelt]

Seems you have found a huge flaw in kerbal physics. A plane with the centre og gravity very far ahead of the centre of lift should only be stable going straight up or straight down. Or in a ballistic trajectory.

Hmm not really. That's exactly why I have a Canard design so the front is pivoting up and down rather than the tail, as it is on a regular plane.

The XB-70 Valkyrie was one of my inspiration designs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie

For a plane built with high speed in mind, you need the centre of lift far behind the centre of gravity or else your aircraft will become very unstable during flight as the centre of gravity moves backwards as the speed becomes supersonic. I have the centre of gravity ahead, so it moves closer to the centre of lift as the speed increases. With the current design, the centre of gravity actually moves so far back that it goes behind the centre of lift during top speeds.

Since I was using FAR I doubt that there are any flaws in the aerodynamics or physics.

Edited February 1, 2014 by Hejnfelt

[Visari]

indeed, although it is ultimately better to have the CoL (at max speed) straight on the CoM because it provides the best potential lift per drag, it's not very stable and will probably make your ship tumble and disassemble due to instant 25G+.

a CoL behind the CoM is stable, but won't be flying straight, nose will fall down which needs to be compensated for by angling the wings, be it with control surfaces.

Hejnfelt's plane was great, it only suffered from suboptimal thrust vs drag.

the only way to majorly improve in that area would be to build more smoothly.

eg:

you could probably reach beyond 1400 m/s if you tried for a serious record without DREC, Hejnfelt.

Edited February 1, 2014 by Visari

[Hejnfelt]

...snip

You could probably reach beyond 1400 m/s if you tried for a serious record without DREC, Hejnfelt.

Perhaps, but looking at your screenshots, there are several issues which I personally don't like. Intakes behind fairings and also control surfaces behind fairings.

But yes the record could be faster. I've pushed my current design to 1,060 m/s below 1000m Let that serve as a guide to anyone going for my record

But then there's the question of DREC. Considering that e.g. the Chinese cruise missile YJ-91 operates at > mach 4.5 at just 20 meters above sea level, then we should realistically be able to manage that sort of speeds without disintegration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YJ-91

Then another issue is engines, which probably do not have the thrust capable of pushing an actual plane to > mach 4.5 below 1000 meters in KSP

[m1sz]

If we did with rocket engines, thing would be a lot diferent!, but then, that would be a new challenge at all

[Sevant]

My latest run is posted below. Sorry for the jumpy video (especially one really bad skip right after take-off); I think my video card was getting warm or something. Max speed 1090 m/s using B9 and FAR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0oWladmjvI&feature=youtu.be

Improvements made:

1) Made the aircraft smaller.

2) Used stock landing gear (creates more drag on bottom of craft making it nose down, but seem to have less overall drag and seem stronger).

3) Changed air intake system.

4) Reduced number of engines and made aircraft shorter.

I wanted to reach 1100 m/s to make this run a significant improvement on the record, but this is the best I could do with this design.

[Hejnfelt]

1,141 m/s - MACH 3.364 - B9 and Procedural fairings with FAR

Well. I decided to optimize drag as suggested by Visari.

My own design was overly complicated for this task and thus I decided to try with Sevant's design. It is clear just how much drag means as I easily broke 1100 m/s.

Top speed @ 1:05

Landing @ 5:00

Video

[Sevant]

1,141 m/s - MACH 3.364 - B9 and Procedural fairings with FAR

Well. I decided to optimize drag as suggested by Visari.

My own design was overly complicated for this task and thus I decided to try with Sevant's design.

Lol, nice job. I must say though, it was remarkably similar to my design. No worries, I'll just have to think of something new.

[m1sz]

i'll update the leaderboard tonight!

[Sevant]

Right, here is my latest craft which did 1,186 m/s using the mods: B9, FAR, Procedural Fairings. Now with Russian music! ...which is about the only exciting thing about this video.

http://youtu.be/6dSub_EcFOw

I had a run do 1,203 m/s as well, but I completely fubbed the landing and I couldn't reproduce it [it was a slightly different craft design]

Edited February 5, 2014 by Sevant

[m1sz]

leaderboard updated!

we've come so far, almost mach 3.5!!!!!!!!, it's awesome

[fluffysnowcap]

!WOW! that is silly if you got it to hight it woud be able to leave kerbals SOI

[Pds314]

Nope. Those engines cut out at like 1500 m/s tops. Forget Leaving Kerbin SOI, that thing wouldn't be able to leave the atmosphere for more than a few seconds.

[Sevant]

Nope. Those engines cut out at like 1500 m/s tops. Forget Leaving Kerbin SOI, that thing wouldn't be able to leave the atmosphere for more than a few seconds.

True with the air intake system I have. Although with some better air intakes, you can make small planes almost capable of going orbital. Easy to get the speed, just need to be able to fly high enough to coast out of the atmosphere at an extreme angle which gets you to 90 km height while maintaining most of your orbital velocity.

Still need a small amount of dV from a chemical engine to make a stable orbit though.

[Sevant]

Thought I had better streamline my design before it became obsolete. Here are the results: 1,205 m/s using FAR, B9 Aerospace, and Procedural Fairings mods. Russian music again, but much, much less epic :\

http://youtu.be/eBcigsmm-KI

I didn't technically manage to stop the plane on the runway (it rolled past a bit). It will be up to the OP to decide whether or not to keep the speed.

NOTE: Video ran a bit long, so it's going to be an hour and a half or so after this is posted before the video finishes its upload to youtube. On the plus side, I got to add a few crashes this time.

Edited February 5, 2014 by Sevant

[Hejnfelt]

Thought I had better streamline my design before it became obsolete. Here are the results: 1,205 m/s using FAR, B9 Aerospace, and Procedural Fairings mods.

That's awesome

Earlier when I beat your previous record I created a backup video of going 1202 m/s in case you beat me again. When I saw your 1186 m/s I thought it was time to post this, but then I saw you with another 1205 m/s haha. Amazing.

Back to the drawing board!

[fluffysnowcap]

this is a 2 man arms race with about 20M/s improvement each time far far in to levels of insanity that jebediah kerman lives in

[Sevant]

Earlier when I beat your previous record I created a backup video of going 1202 m/s in case you beat me again. When I saw your 1186 m/s I thought it was time to post this, but then I saw you with another 1205 m/s haha. Amazing.

Lol, I wondered if you hadn't beaten 1200 m/s already--I've no doubt you'll top me again and the race will continue

In case it helps, I've found that stock landing gear are not only stronger than B9 landing gear, but they also seem to produce less total drag (that said, they focus all their drag on the bottom of the craft instead of clipping through the wing to spread the drag top and bottom). Also, I've found that the stock air intake (the flat forward facing one) produces the least drag of all the intakes I've tried. Seriously, it's almost as good as a nosecone.

By the way, I like the pic of your plane; I've tried variations on that design with little success. Congrats on getting it to work! I suspect that I know what your next record breaking plane will look like

[Sevant]

this is a 2 man arms race with about 20M/s improvement each time far far in to levels of insanity that jebediah kerman lives in

Now we just need a real aerospace engineer to build something that goes 1500 m/s...Although we're not doing too bad. Today alone we improved the top speed from 1,090 m/s to 1,205 m/s. Considering that I thought I was reaching the limit of what could be done when I hit 928 m/s, I think progress is still racing along pretty quick.

Things may pick up pace with the next patch too. Supposedly, they are working on improving connection points to allow for building more rigid aircraft/rockets. That could make large planes with a ton of engines stable enough to fly at the speeds needed for this challenge.

Edited February 6, 2014 by Sevant