10 Second Burn Endurance Run

[NeoHoltsky]

Hello Ladies and Gents, I come to you with my first offer of a challenge. The mission, regardless if you accept it or not, is an endurance run. Our engineers want to know how long a 10 second burn can carry our best space-planes, so you pilots have been chosen as guinea pigs testers. What you testers must do is fire up the engines for a total of 10 seconds, then attempt to achieve the highest ground distance possible. Now, our engineers didn\'t want faulty results because a current lack of proper stall physics, so 'glitches' such as Infinite Thrust have been banned. The stuck-up engineers also want photo proof, so 3 photos are a requirement, 1 just after the initial burn, another during the gliding period after, and the last showing the total ground distance covered. I have personally made a test run in the Arkbird II, and I started off slow for competition\'s sake. Good luck pilots.

The Leaderboard

1. NeoHoltsky - 12,187 ~ Arkbird II

The Rest - Zit, Zero, Nada

[Alexander.O]

Question; do the engines need to remain on the plane, or can it just be a rocket launched glider?

[NeoHoltsky]

The engines can stay or go as you please. In my run, I used the engine\'s decoupling to take off the lower half of my craft. Rocket-Launched gliders are strongly encouraged.

[witeken]

offtopic: why does your water look like a desert?

[gabyalufix]

Don\'t all gliders technically 'take advantage' of the odd glide physics? The way the physics system works currently, all wings basically generate free lift. I feel like the only difference is a matter of degree, no?

So is the challenge to build a glider with a glide plane that is almost but not quite horizontal?

[NeoHoltsky]

offtopic: why does your water look like a desert?

I have a really old graphics card, that apparently does not like the color blue. Makes my water all messed up under 100,000 meters

Don\'t all gliders technically 'take advantage' of the odd glide physics? The way the physics system works currently, all wings basically generate free lift. I feel like the only difference is a matter of degree, no?

So is the challenge to build a glider with a glide plane that is almost but not quite horizontal?

Well, that did come to my mind when making the challenge. I could make control surfaces on the actual glider banned, which would basically force you to glide to a halt, or possibly canards-only. Would that helps things a bit?

[Iskierka]

Canard surfaces induce the infiniglide bug to a greater extent than tail surfaces. Only way to avoid the infinite glide is to not use any part which uses the 'control surface' module, which means no aerodynamic control whatsoever.

[DonLorenzo]

The furthest I get with a pod/LFT/LFE/6booster setup gets me to about 3km. Not a lot of effort, since I don\'t have any or really like the whole plane thing, but I thought I\'d give it a shot with some simple tools. The boosters make nice fireworks when prematurely separated

[foamyesque]

Canard surfaces induce the infiniglide bug to a greater extent than tail surfaces. Only way to avoid the infinite glide is to not use any part which uses the 'control surface' module, which means no aerodynamic control whatsoever.

Could just use a beefy RCS or modded pod to do it instead.

[gabyalufix]

Well then you\'re just getting thrust using the standard real-physics reaction mass method, no?

[witeken]

Total distance travled: 9,307m

Ground distance: 306m