Spaceplane Parts questions

[Kymlaar]

*Edited due to finding someone else asked some of the questions recently too*

I had some questions concerning Spaceplane parts, so I looked into the files to find answers and just came away with more questions. Please see below for the list:

******** Ignore, answered elsewhere (http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=12416.msg193488)

Circular Intake Vs. Ram Air Intake

Looking at the stats of both of these they appear to be exactly the same. Is that the case, or are there hidden things that I\'m not seeing?

Nacelle Engine Body Vs. Radial Engine Body

The stats of these two seem to indicate that the Radial Engine Body is better or the same in every variable. The Nacelle has less heatConductivity and heatDissipation, but otherwise the two seem to be exactly the same.

TurboJet Engine Vs. Basic Jet Engine

I\'ve definitely seen the Basic Jet Engine lose the ability to run at higher altitudes (around 8000 meters seems to be the point), but the TurboJet Engine seems to run fine for me from lower alt to higher. What exactly is efficiency measuring? At lower efficiency do engines use fuel faster?

I tested the same design at the same alt (around 400 meters) and got around the same distance with both before running out of fuel. The test designs were 1) 3 Basic Jet Engines, 2) 3 TurboJet Engines.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can provide information or guidance! I\'m loving the additions so far.

[sal_vager]

Hi Kymlaar

From what I have read and experienced so far, the two intakes and nacelles are just for show at the moment, they were supposed to route air to the engines but that feature didn\'t make it into this update.

Also the statistics of the new engines are largely just placeholders to get them working in the game, the high altitude engine will be changed so it is only useful at high altitudes.

Everything is going to change again at some point.

Hope this helps

[Kymlaar]

It definitely does. Thanks for the quick reply.

[Zephram Kerman]

The two engines seem to work as advertised, although I\'ve only been goofing around for a few minutes so far.

The basic jet starves and loses thrust at about 6 km, like you said. The turbojet keeps working up to, I think, 10 km. It\'s supposed to have poor efficiency near the surface, but I flew around with it.

So I made them into a launcher! The launch stage is three basic jet engines. The next stage is three turbo jet engines. Both of these consume a single jet fuel tank, which is just enough. The final stage is a normal rocket. Staging was weird because the jet takes a few seconds to build up thrust. So I modified the staging sequence so that the basic and turbo stages overlap before the basic jets jettison.

[sal_vager]

Both of these consume a single jet fuel tank, which is just enough.

C7\'s parts are still massively overpowered I see.

[Frostiken]

I\'m not sure I agree with the engine differences. While yes, a turbofan will operate better at higher altitudes, you can still easily get off the ground with them. And while you people may think they\'re overpowered, I think quite the opposite - they\'re incredibly underpowered. I cannot seem to pull more than a 1.5-2G turn, not only because the game doesn\'t really let me, but these engines aren\'t producing a whole lot of thrust, contrary to what you might think... they\'re actually just piling speed on gradually. If you make a sharp turn, not only will the aircraft fall out of the sky and completely lose control, but assuming that doesn\'t happen, you have to sit there and slowly wait for the velocity vector to catch up - because the engines, even dual turbofans on a very lightweight design - just aren\'t making a whole lot of Delta-V.

If turbofan operated as poorly as you all seem to want, you\'d see aircraft with multiple styles of jet engines on them in real life, which just doesn\'t happen.

I\'m experimenting with small fighter aircraft designs and while they *work*, they don\'t work very well, and if we make it so that I now have to tack on 4 different kinds of engines just to get high-altitude flight, well, that\'s just getting kind of silly.

PS: My wing loading is utterly massive and yet it takes the whole runway to get in the air - that should tell you how these engines aren\'t really that great.

[sal_vager]

It\'s not just the engines though, the wings don\'t simulate lift properly and they actually resist your attempts to turn, the engines themselves are ok I think but the new fueltank isn\'t very balanced, and the new RCS thruster is massively overpowered.

We really need a way to see where the center of gravity and thrust is in the SPH, as it\'s too easy to make a plane with all the weight and lift at the back, and it\'ll then struggle to get airborne without bags of trim.

[Frostiken]

Center of gravity would be awesome.

And I want engines and control surfaces that let me pull 7-9G turns and still maintain control and a modicum of speed

Right now I\'m making two little addons:

1) Turn the Small Hardpoint into a second version with decoupler functionality so I can use it to drop tanks - the current decoupler is just way too big.

2) Add internal fuel to wings.

[sal_vager]

Have you tried the aerospike? its got an output of 225 and is the most powerful stock engine, it\'s not vectoring though, I haven\'t used it yet so don\'t know if it\'s what you\'re after.

Add extra control surfaces for more manoeuvrability

[Frostiken]

Hmm.... can\'t seem to make wings carry fuel

They have fuel in them and they appear to still generate lift, but the fuel won\'t transfer out, even with piping (which shouldn\'t even be required).