Spaceworthy Plane parts

[Delrey]

I think the mk1-3 plane parts should have two grades.

Atmospheric and vacuum. The vacuum rated components having higher weight and cost (lead time if you do construction time) and maybe a slightly different texture.

Del

[Nuranon]

What happens if you go into space with the not vacuum rated one? What happens if you allready researched EVA? Loosing control seems plausible but its somewhat unrealistic and just letting the pilot die is even more problematic (loosing control on the other hand could be easily bypassed by controling the craft from an onboard probe core).

I prefer the idea of having more or less heat & crash resistant version of mk1-3 parts, currently you can fly all this stuff at high speeds, close to mach 4...if you lowered the heat resistance of the base version (with higher relative crash tolerance and lower price but similiar weight), make the second version black like the base pod - clear distinction to the normal models and a nice nod to the X-15 and Blackbird. The black version should have a heat resistance a bit above the current. The command pods have a heat resistance of 2400K while the current "plane" parts are at 2000K...make that 2300 or for the black versions and perhaps 1400K (or even lower) for the base versions - this would also include other aerodynamic parts like Wings, Intakes (there are allready differences here) and landing gears. The current crash tolerances of plane cockpits are 40-60m/s, I think this should be reduced to 5-15 for the black versions (the MK1 Pod currently has a crash tolerance of 14m/s while the lander cans are at 8m/s), make these planes fragile while cool - landing outside the Space Center would be quite a challenge giving them a disadvantage compared to their normal versions.

[Tex_NL]

An all black version would clash with many designs. However a version with heat shielding on the bottom would be awesome.

[Nuranon]

you have a point - black is perhaps a bit extreme, I guess (one dark colour) would only work if these parts were not actually black but a grey closer to the jet engine or the MK1 Pod and base parts would have to get some more grey to make combinations plausible. A heat shielded bottom would be cool too - but the front (usually the cockpit) would have to to be next to completly covered in heat shielding.

Edit: partly covering it in heat shielding could be done via making it available in the parts options (like with normal heat shields) - this wouldn't be too difficult and changing the texture (and skin heat resistance) based on the whether you have heat shielding equiped.

Edited December 8, 2015 by Nuranon

[Delrey]

The atmospheric parts should rupture in vacuum.

The heat shielded bottom is a great idea. 

[panzer1b]

I'm no fan of doubling the part count so no to the extra vaccum only spaceplane parts (id never even use the atmo versions as i dont do pure atmo planes much). 

That said, i would love the ability to load the current spaceplane pats with ablator if you so desire.  That would help with stuff like eve aerocaptures (which are plain sucide right now with anything that doesnt have legit heat shields), and it would help those of us that make crazy designs to go 2km/s at sea level without frying.  Ideally adding ablator would change the texture/model, but id be content with just standard parts that have a toggleable heat shield inside them.

 

Also, please make the standard spaceplane/airplane parts grey/dark, not a fan of everything white (especially bloody stealth fighters which like stand out a tad much white, who paints their space fighter that is designed for stealth missions white?

Edited December 9, 2015 by panzer1b

[Temstar]

It's white for a good reason though - highly reflective white paint tend to reflect thermal radiation while black absorb them. Aircrafts (nevermind spacecrafts in atmosphere at near orbital velocity) experience a lot of heating during supersonic and hypersonic flight, hence why they have the white paint. Look at the Concorde for example.

[Tex_NL]

1 hour ago, Temstar said:

It's white for a good reason though - highly reflective white paint tend to reflect thermal radiation while black absorb them. Aircrafts (nevermind spacecrafts in atmosphere at near orbital velocity) experience a lot of heating during supersonic and hypersonic flight, hence why they have the white paint. Look at the Concorde for example.

Concorde didn't even come close to orbital velocity.
Planes like the X-15 and SR-71 flew much faster. And they were not painted black for stealth or to absorb heat. They were black to radiate heat more efficiently. The SR-71 might have been nearly invisible to radar but at full throttle it lit up like a candle in infra red.