Hypersonic Aircraft Challenge

[BadSpecs]

Here is a second entry, this time with a capsule and a whole lot fewer octagonal struts. It uses a drop tank located on the COM for the climbout and initial acceleration. TWR seems to be most important in order to get high speed at 20k, even more important than reducing drag by reducing parts count. I decided to turn north for this speed run because heading into the sunset was starting to lose it's interest. Jeb seems happy enough with the landing, though I would call it 'disastrous.'

I used my desktop this time since my laptop isn't quite capable of running this game even at the lowest detail settings and with low parts numbers on the vessels.

1964 m/s

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[NavalLacrosse]

Nice job. How's the handling on yours? Mine was an absolute beast until I added reaction wheels.

Just make it overly nose heavy, place the CG about one jet engine length ahead of your center of lift. It won't turn well, but it is stable at mach 5

[Fendleton]

Just make it overly nose heavy, place the CG about one jet engine length ahead of your center of lift. It won't turn well, but it is stable at mach 5

It's not the mach-5 part that's the issue with my designs....my currently winning design and its derivatives have two weak points. First part is getting off the runway and into a climb, and the second is staying in that climb and not levelling off at around 13,000-15,000m when the fins start to become less effective....both of them being exacebated by the high weight and forward COG. In the end I solved it by using a reaction wheel in the main body and 4 of them on the boosters, mounting my cockpit and canards a long way forward to increase leverage on the airframe, and using a half-sized 3m tank rather than a full one....but I'm quite interested to see if there's other ways to handle it, since it does impose a mass and drag penalty, even though it does give me very fine attitude control.*

*And the structural side of things is......interesting. Not as interesting as my microjets that keep blowing up on the runway, tunnelling into the ground or spinning end-over-end when I try to level out, but it got close in some versions.

[Megalodon 720]

Can my attempt go in the non-airbreathing catagory, i used an SRB to get to top speed (3,621m/s).

[Redshift OTF]

Here is a second entry, this time with a capsule and a whole lot fewer octagonal struts. It uses a drop tank located on the COM for the climbout and initial acceleration. TWR seems to be most important in order to get high speed at 20k, even more important than reducing drag by reducing parts count. I decided to turn north for this speed run because heading into the sunset was starting to lose it's interest. Jeb seems happy enough with the landing, though I would call it 'disastrous.'

I used my desktop this time since my laptop isn't quite capable of running this game even at the lowest detail settings and with low parts numbers on the vessels.

1964 m/s

http://imgur.com/a/56FpD

Wow, that's a kick ass design. I might have to borrow the look of that for a standard space plane.

[Brandano]

This probably breaks several rules. Assembled in the SPH, but launches vertically from the runway, has no wings or control surfaces, and a total part count of 4. 1744m/s in 4 minutes, but could probably do better with more care, a probe core in place of the cockpit (though it needs the reaction wheels for control) and a RAM intake. A derivative of this turned out to be my smallest SSTO with a part count of 8 (I added a bigger fuel tank, two small radial rocket engines, a solar panel and a parachute)

[Pauly]

Two of the aircraft I made for this challenge.

1887 was my best run in first design

1949 was my best run in second design

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[nli2work]

very cool idea! No need for solar panels though. the jet engine generates charge while it is running.

[Brandano]

The reason I added a solar panel is because the small radial rockets don't generate power and the jet engine uses up almost as much power as it generates above 30k. With a probe core and a lander can it could be used as a single passenger taxi, I guess. Hmm, I think I might try and make a single stage to Minmus design, just to see if it's feasible. Just a hint: if the mission ceiling is under 20k you don't need to spam multiple intakes per engine, I bet a single intake for two engines will work just as well.

[BadSpecs]

Wow, that's a kick ass design. I might have to borrow the look of that for a standard space plane.

Thanks!

You are welcome to it, I sort of borrowed the shape from the Horten brothers as best I could. With some tweaking to fuel capacity and the addition of a 48-7S or two, some solar panels, docking port, etc, it might be a good ssto.

[panzerknoef]

I have an entry! It's a completely ridiculous infiniglider that is so powerfull, that I didn't dare to man it. In fact it is so powerfull that it completely obliterated itself, but in doing so it has reached a speed of 2712m/s. I have no screenshot of it's top speed, cuz hell it went fast, you can see on top of the second screenshot that my entire flight only took 1min and a half, I hope the flight log does aswell. I don't know if infinigliders are even allowed (didn't read anything about them) and if they are air breathing or not. I'd say airbreathing because they need an atmosphere to work, but they don't have an engine that breaths are so... Anway, here it is the SelfShredder. Oh, did I mention it's full stock? (the capsule holds the kerbal that usually mans it, but earlier tests showed out they better don't)

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Edited May 21, 2014 by panzerknoef