Echo__3

I made a Kraken powered spaceship today. A little frustrating to get it working right, but the finished product makes me smile.

Part 23

Part 22

I found I could reliably get to 15 km with my propeller designs. Anything higher I considered a bonus. At 15km the atmosphere on Eve is the same density as sea level on Kerbin, so more engines become viable options. I made this design, and it worked pretty well. Probably should have put a couple parachutes higher up though.

Part 21

So, I made a pogo stick...

'80s Style 'Chopper Flight

When placed, the painted side of the propeller should be forward (for planes) or up (for helicopters) when the blades are not deployed or have 0 degrees of deployment angle. When not deployed, generally the leading edge should be perpendicular to the motor axis. Normally on Kerbin, you will not need to use the max torque. For efficient travel you should adjust the deployment angle (variable pitch) of the blades. But for a simple plane, this is not necessary. Just use a deployment angle between 15 and 30 degrees and the plane should work. Authority limiter is how many degrees the blade can adjust itself to control yaw, pitch or roll. Normally this is not needed for planes, but is very useful for helicopters. CCW propellers should be used when you use a CCW rotor. These videos may help.

Yes, you can use the map backwards to calculate your return back to Kerbin. So the landing figure is equal to the return to orbit. Make sure to budget extra. The maps usually reference an almost perfect suicide burn landing.

Use trim and lower the torque of the rotor. Here is a basic tutorial on single engine propeller plane design. You can get more complicated than this if you want to use a variable pitch design.

Your plane has no yaw control. Try adding a vertical stabilizer and rudder.

I used the EP-25 Engine Plate from Making History to mount the Aerospikes. No part mods were used in the build. The goal was to show how the DLCs can make an Eve mission a lot easier.

The Breaking Ground Parts can make getting back into orbit around Eve easier.

I use a couple mods to help with landing. Trajectories and Kerbal Engineer Redux both have a landing prediction marker. Trajectories is able to calculate the effects of an atmosphere and account for the planet/moon's rotation. KER has a wealth of information including a suicide burn timer to help with those "hover slam" landings like SpaceX. Trajectories is also able to help calculate aerobraking passes. A higher Thrust to Weight Ratio can help you. You'll be able to start your deorbit burn later and more easily come "straight down" onto your target area.

I can't see the pictures you posted. But based off of your description, this sounds like something that happened to me. I saved my game and reloaded it. That somehow fixed my craft.

Gravity loss is a far bigger concern than drag for "reasonably" aerodynamic rockets. It sounds like you could be more aggressive with your gravity turn, especially with a starting TWR of 2.0. While you can get into orbit more efficiently in terms of ∆v, you probably will be better served by not having so much dry mass in engine weight. I have found that a starting TWR around 1.3 to work best for me. Have you experimented with different launch profiles? I have done some experimenting and found a fairly aggressive gravity turn to work best.

I use the mod RCS Build Aid for this. It can simultaneously display the wet and dry centers of mass. Without mods, I do not know an easy way to do this in the hanger.

Part 20