Reentry and winged spacecraft

[NFunky]

Hey all,

With all these threads about spaceplanes and shuttles recently, I decided to dive back into designing winged craft, but also attempting to discover things that can only be done with wings. As most people point out in every thread on the subject, the wings are just dead weight for most of a spacecraft's mission, so I've been trying to find ways to justify their use.

The biggest one I think I've found is, of course, the ability to land at KSC for 100% recovery. This really isn't that big of an advantage though, as a skilled pilot can retroburn at the right time and drop a good old capsule right there too too. A shuttle has more cross range capability than a capsule, but (especially playing large scale Kerbin) it takes nearly as much skill to time the retroburn and reentry for a KSC approach. So it seems precision landing isn't a good enough reason to add wings.

Finally I've come to what I think is one of the biggest and most underlooked advantages to wings. Reentry. (Disclaimer: I play with 3.7x scale Kerbin and 3.35x convection heating, so reentry can be very dangerous.) With a capsule or small payload, one must rely on heat shields to come down safely. However, if you want to land/recover any parts other than a capsule and a few other odds and ends, a typical heat shielded reentry becomes much harder or even impossible. If the heat doesn't get you, you'll still have a very hard time decelerating to safe chute release speeds before crashing headlong into the ground.

So I see two options for reentry of large objects. One is use rocket assisted breaking which works very well, but also requires fuel, and sometimes a lot of it. The second option, of course, is wings! They are the biggest aerobreaking surfaces you can take along with you, and as long as you have good RCS/wheel torque, you can maintain a very high AoA throughout reentry. In fact, my favorite shuttle design could reenter without seeing even a little bit of glowing plasma. I could break from 4,250 m/s (3.7x Kerbin orbit) to under 600 m/s before hitting 20 km. I also found that, with or without a cargo bay, I could safely land pretty much anything, except the really fragile (read low max temp) parts like the PresMat and OX-STAT.

Anyhow, sorry for such a long post. This thread isn't really a question, more just a general shout out to one of the main reasons I ever use wings these days, and something I never hear discussed on this board. Anyone got any more? I feel like there must be other practical uses.

[panzer1b]

Ive found the only way to destroy a winged craft with reentry is stupid stuff (like going right in perpendicularly).

Overall ive NEVER used radiators once sofar (except for purely aesthetic reasons on ships that dont actually have any heat generation such as stations for example).

While i do very much like the heat as is, i am of the opinion that winged craft are EXTREMELY difficult to destroy with aerobraking (if you follow the correct aerobrake profile and dont do anything excessively stupid). Really the only planet ive had major issues with is Eve. Eve has 2 reasons its difficult, it has a smallish radius (for the speeds you are coming in at), AND speeds from kerbin (with no previous braking) are in excess of 4km/s which is dangerous). Jool, while also an issue has such a large radius that you can take your time braking without going too deep. Aside from that, laythe is a joke, i can coem in at ~3.5km/s and aerobrake a average vessel easily if i face sideways to the airflow, kerbin is also fairly easy, returns from jool system are reliably done even at low fuel levels from my single stage to laythe aircraft.

Im happy with how it is, its works as youd expect with most pod like vessels (you do need heat shields for anything that isnt ultra light and has a very large cross section/high drag levels). And it makes SSTOs doable without too much pain (and even interplanetary SSTOs work fine).