The VERY Longfellow

[Wasnbo]

Ladies and gentlemen, I am a very amateur spaceplane builder, forced to come before you with what is both challenge and plea for help.

You see, I have created what I believe is a relatively viable, small spaceplane that is at least twice as long as it is wide, which I have dubbed the Longfellow. I rather like how it handles, and it has a reasonable amount of power and usability. As a first attempt, I was rather pleased. Yes, I am pleased with my Longfellow. lol.

But then my fondness for excess and absurdity got the better of me. The original Longfellow has a body of just five mk2 fuselages. I got bored and created a monstrosity that uses (assuming I counted right) twenty-eight mk2 fuselages! After many, many tweaks, I have made it capable of not immediately exploding upon hitting the end of the runway. I have named it, rather aptly, I think, the VERY Longfellow. Yes, I tried to get it all in one screenshot, it did not work.

As you might imagine, it still doesn't work. I've tried a few more tweaks, such as adding canards and winglets to the top, affectionately calling the resulting experiment the Sailback... not even worth the link.

So, now we come to the challenge/plea part of this post. Using no fewer than twenty-eight mk2 fuselages, all connected in one unbroken line, create a flyable spaceplane that still manages to maintain its serpentine look. I've been playing Shadow of the Colossus as well, recently, so I've been taking some inspiration from Phalanx.

[JumpsterG]

Fun. I want to try this. Maybe when I get home tonight I will make some KSP time happen.

I assume this is a stock challenge? I don't intend to use mod parts or FAR (at least at the moment), but it's nice to clarify.

[panzerknoef]

Maybe allowing people to make even longer planes, the longer, the higher up the leaderboard!

[JumpsterG]

This was a fun, simple attempt. I really would like to optimize this, but time is not something I have a lot of right now. Amazingly, uses no strut connectors.

I feel that this probably won't fly well after most of the fuel has burned off (center of mass shifts backwards as the tanks empty), but near it's takeoff weight, it does pretty well, considering what it is.

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Despite visible plugins in the album, the craft itself is made of stock parts only. Dropbox link here:

Silly Long .craft file

[BagelRabbit]

Augh! This challenge!

My plane keeps breaking in half, because of its wing position. It has the lift... now it just needs more struts! (Or a better design.)

Here's a teaser...

[SasquatchM]

I think I will try to make a version with modified MSI hinges

[Pds314]

I have yet to see anyone make a spaceplane here, that is, one that can reach space or orbit.

[Pds314]

Ok, so.... first attempt..... Took off..... in pieces. Front end was a flyable plane however.

[Pds314]

The problem is that the stupid controlling algorithm doesn't know how to fly a giant freaking snake, it knows how to fly fighter jets and missiles. So when you try to pitch up, instead what happens is this wave of increasingly severe bending flies down your craft until about 40 meters in where it just decides "now is a good time to cut the snake in half" and both halves take off like planes. Still, it is pretty cool to have three giant snakes wandering around, occasionally exploding some debris off in mid-air that you have to dodge.

Also, I've confirmed that if you get a decent chunk up there, mine will reach 2 km/s surface speed in FAR.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Pds314

[JumpsterG]

I have yet to see anyone make a spaceplane here, that is, one that can reach space or orbit.

True. Challenge accepted. I enjoyed tinkering with this so far and have ideas for improving it. Time permitting, I will make this work. (if someone else doesn't beat me to it.)

EDIT: You're successfully getting it (or chunks of it) into the air with FAR? Awesome and sounds difficult. Once I finish a design that I'm happy with using stock aerodynamics, I think I'll use this challenge as an excuse to finally dive into using FAR and try making another design that works in it.

Edited February 19, 2014 by JumpsterG

[JumpsterG]

Redesigned a bit last night. Swapped jets for turbojets, changed out straight delta wings for 5-degree angled swept wings. Still takes off fine, and could probably land under full load, but I'm having a nasty issue with the nose pitching up.

Obvious suspect is fuel draining from front to back causing center of mass to shift backward (expected, and will probably be fixed with fuel lines). A less obvious problem is the 5-degree angled engines I'm using... As the center of mass shifts, the thrust vector will not be in line with it. I need fuel to drain more evenly from front and rear (or from all tanks simultaneously) and I need to compensate for thrust vector being off (reaction wheels?) or otherwise reconfigure my engine placement so they can all point forward without blocking each other.

Anyone know if engine thrust vectoring is still reversed when engines are placed ahead of the center of mass? Or was that bug fixed with the last round of SAS changes?

[Ryu Gemini]

Oh no...

You are making me want to get out infernal robotics hinges again and attempt a repeat of the disaster that happened in the longest spacecraft challenge. Because what better way to call forth the kraken then with a Kraken tentacle with potentially infiniglide-triggering wings attached to its wildly whipping form?

Edit: And to top it off, hinges are a bit more flexible then a typical connection too, so its practically guaranteed that the thing will weave about like a flying death snake.

[Xaiier]

Managed to achieve this at fuel-out after a couple test runs.

I'll see if I can make it more controllable or get it into orbit tomorrow.

EDIT: Probably should note that the MK2's were empty of fuel at launch