Girders as landing gear?

[regex]

3 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

(feels like cheating the physics engine to me)

The Wright Brothers and Ze Germans totally cheated reality.

[jwenting]

28 minutes ago, Fallarnon said:

Didn't the wright flyers land on skids?

I did this way back when career was brand new, then I unlocked landing gear so naturally the first thing I did was to not build an aircraft with them

The first few did, but they quickly switched to wheels.

Skids seem nice, but don't offer much in the way of ground steering

[N_Molson]

The X-15 spaceplane landed on steel skids. It was heavy as hell and glided like an iron. Skids however allowed very high speed landings (around 225 mph) on the salt lakes (harder than concrete) in the Mojave desert.

So yeah, the structural girders in KSP make nice skids The drawback is their mass (0.25 tons each, if I'm correct), which is much heavier than the more "traditional" landing gears.

Quote

Skids seem nice, but don't offer much in the way of ground steering

Use a drogue chute at touchdown, the drag will not only slow you down but make sure you don't go sideways. The X-15 had none (the lake beds were very large), but the Space Shuttle had one.

 

Edited April 29, 2016 by N_Molson

[Znath]

I've noticed that ships seem to be way more durable.  At least during my torture tests of my jet-train it would hit the incline, break some landing gear and go sailing but when it hit the ground it didn't shatter into a million pieces like it usually did.  It actually hit the ground and skidded and rolled but the main cabins stayed intact.

Landing gear are still really weak, not glass-like as they were in 1.1  but better?

 

 

[MaxxQ]

6 hours ago, N_Molson said:

The X-15 spaceplane landed on steel skids. It was heavy as hell and glided like an iron. Skids however allowed very high speed landings (around 225 mph) on the salt lakes (harder than concrete) in the Mojave desert.

So yeah, the structural girders in KSP make nice skids The drawback is their mass (0.25 tons each, if I'm correct), which is much heavier than the more "traditional" landing gears.

Use a drogue chute at touchdown, the drag will not only slow you down but make sure you don't go sideways. The X-15 had none (the lake beds were very large), but the Space Shuttle had one.

 

Heh... I was going to mention the X-15 as well.

 

I think the later X-15A-2 (somewhat longer for more fuel storage, as well as side-mounted drop tanks and white ablative coating) might have had a drogue 'chute attached at the base of the upper vertical tail, but I'm not completely sure.

Check out videos of the X-15 landing.  The nose gear slams down pretty hard just a few short seconds after the skids touch.  After watching military and civilian aircraft touching down and keeping the nose in the air for a long time (see especially the F-15, where some showboat pilots will keep the nose up until they're only going 10-15m/s), watching the X-15 land is sure to generate a wince.  One of the early X-15's had to abort to land with a nearly full fuel load (for some reason, he couldn't dump it), and the craft broke in half.  Stayed together though, and stayed moving more or less straight, and he walked away, IIRC.  I think that was the one that was converted to the A-2.

Edited April 30, 2016 by MaxxQ

[Rath]

13 hours ago, regex said:

This is still a realistic, viable option.  Reference the ME-163 just as a "off the top of my head" example.

My kod!  I liked something the realism space hippie said!

i was just going to make this point.  They were evreywhere on interwar biplane tails to

[Superfluous J]

13 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

(feels like cheating the physics engine to me)

Hey, right now the physics engine is cheating. We're just cheating back.

(ignoring, of course, the very good arguments that this is perfectly reasonable)

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Wow, love the X-15 pics, I wonder how a hybrid skid/wheel system would work in KSP?

As far as drogue chutes I haven't had a need for it yet as the friction from the girders plus drag from landing flaps seems to stop the craft pretty darn quick, plus I was at the 30 part limit of my level 1 SPH.

I imagine a larger, heavier skid/ski based plane might need the drogues...or even possibly some kind of landing leg "brake" at the rear that digs in and slows it down.

If anyone has built any more of their own skid/ski based planes, I'd love to see a pic!

[purpletarget]

This is old school KSP... girders used for landings was how Mun landings were cheated before landing legs appeared in the game. Nicely done.

[ZentroCatson]

Skids are cool! I gave 'em a try today, and they are pretty stable in 1.1.2. I don't know if its because KJR or the update, but skids are really fun  

Here's the aircraft I built:

(Imgur doesn't allow me to embed the album so here's the link.)

The plane itself is really well balanced and flies like a leaf on the wind. Its (manual) takeoff speed is 55m/s, but you can takeoff quicker if you drive it over the edge of the runway. I'll provide a .craft file if anyone wants to give it a spin, but I highly advise you install KJR 

Edited April 30, 2016 by ZentroCatson
Wrong link :V

[Stratzenblitz75]

I've been having a lot of fun with skids recently. I don't think they offer much advantages over wheels, but still, they are fun to play around with:

 

[Aragosnat]

2 hours ago, purpletarget said:

This is old school KSP... girders used for landings was how Mun landings were cheated before landing legs appeared in the game. Nicely done.

Actually the AV-T1_Winglet predateds the girders and where used as such. But, girders are nicer in they can be stacked to make longer.

[Renegrade]

20 hours ago, N_Molson said:

So yeah, the structural girders in KSP make nice skids The drawback is their mass (0.25 tons each, if I'm correct), which is much heavier than the more "traditional" landing gears.

Actually, half that mass I think (0.125 if I recall correctly, or close to that). I'd be more worried about drag though than mass..

[Snikersnee]

Made a plane in 1.1.2 (or whatever the current version is as of now) with landing legs as skids just to see if it would work now, and it does. Yeah, they break often, but if you want to stay true to your X-15 replica as I tried, then I suppose it would work.

[DChurchill]

On 4/30/2016 at 1:16 PM, Stratzenblitz75 said:

I've been having a lot of fun with skids recently. I don't think they offer much advantages over wheels, but still, they are fun to play around with:

 

The caption "Like a boss." Applies here I think.

LOL

[herbal space program]

I did the same thing back in 1.0.5 for a Juno-based SSTO challenge. I can't say it worked great, but it worked!

[max_creative]

It actually might be a good idea to use girders for rear skids to replace wheels in 1.1! Keep the front though, for steering. Maybe this invention can stop attacks from the killer wheels!

[herbal space program]

On ‎4‎/‎30‎/‎2016 at 11:58 AM, Renegrade said:

Actually, half that mass I think (0.125 if I recall correctly, or close to that). I'd be more worried about drag though than mass..

When I did this, I used those near-massless cubic octagonal struts, not girders. They were plenty rigid enough to do the job, at least for my itty-bitty plane  in 1.0.5.