in need of help designing an "airplane" for career missions on Eve

[xendelaar]

Hello,

I’ve been playing KSP for several months now on science mode and recently decided to switch to career mode. I’ve unlocked everything in the Tech tree and I just accepted a mission to perform pressure measurements on and above the surface of Eve. Getting to Eve is no biggy, but I’m having trouble designing an “airplane†that’s able to reach 4 mission-waypoints/landmarks (on different altitudes) without running out of fuel. The waypoints are relatively close to each other, within a radius of say, 10-20 km.

So, in my first design I wanted to build something that:

Was Light (less drag)

Had Lots of Delta V (so I have room for errors.. lots of errors)

Had small wings (we don’t need huge wings in this dense atmosphere)

Had a Low TWR (because we can swim through the dense atmosphere)

I ended up making a small Ion plane, using 2 ion engines, 2 type A wings, some flaps, a small reaction wheel and a drone core. I don’t have any pictures of the plane because I’m at work. The plane flew perfectly during several tests runs on Kerbin.

Weight, 1t – 1.5t

Delta v, 10km/s

TWR, 0.2 on Eve (0,34 on Kerbin)

The results were very disappointing.. due to the high gravity, the plane wasn’t able to climb to higher altitudes at all! And with a maximum velocity of 30m/s this mission would take many (rather boring) hours to complete! I guess I need more TWR to counter the high gravity of Eve.

How did you guys design your vessels for these “scan missions†missions on Eve?I I’m very curious!

[InterCity]

You're right with the TWR. 0.2 is abysmal. I'd suggest going for about 0.6-0.8 for better performance.

The Delta-V is good.

I have done these missions by a network of refuelling stations (Parachute dropped orange tanks + Karbonite mining), and a spaceplane to do the job. Except for the stellar costs, it had no drawback at all. The mission would go like LKO => refuel => Eve orbit => land => refuel => ascend => refuel => go back

I abused the density of eve's atmosphere to have an aerospike to get the plane moving at .5 TWR

Making that flight with one craft is badass, but too damn hard.

Edited March 16, 2015 by InterCity

[mckamx]

If you are open to non-stock, the Firespitter electric engine can allow you to build an infintite delta-V flyer that works on Eve.

This particular design has a top speed of about 120 m/s, and a ceiling on Eve of about 20km, but can take off and land on a dime.

[LordFjord]

That, or you can give Karbonite a try. It has intakes and karbonite jets that also work in Eve's atmosphere. You can refuel with a drill & converter when landed, so you can use it for all kinds of other contracts there.

Karbonite is also very similar to what will come in KSP 1.0 as a resource system.

Of course you could as well make a classical rocket-based plane, but the dV would be very limited. Eve's atmosphere is even more soup than Kerbin's. I'd say almost honey-like.

[xendelaar]

Wow.. Thanks for the quick replies. i just love the idea with the fuel drops. Im gonna try that for sure, next time.

for the moment I try use stock parts only. I will definitely install the karbonite mod later on when i run out of cool ideas/challanges i could perform with the stock parts.

I’m currently taking on a completely different approach, where I’m designing a mothership that will stay in orbit around Eve. The ship will drop 4 separate â€Âone-way-ticket†sensor-drones when it crosses one of the waypoints. The drones will have one 48-7S engine and one FL-T200 tank for navigating through the atmosphere (delta V= 4km/s , TWR_eve>1) .

I'll give an update when im successful.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Not actually a suggestion for a plane, but hyperedit really helps test stuff like that.