Intake air mass

[Teilnehmer]

Before 1.0.5, there used to be the ‘Intake air’ indicator in the resource panel. And the intake air used to have mass.

Does intake air still have mass in 1.0.5, or it was removed along with the indicator?

[Snark]

Coulda sworn that intake air was massless. How do you know it had mass?

[Teilnehmer]

I’ve made a test in 1.0.5. I dropped a probe with 4 ShockCone intakes (2 intake air units each) from above the atmosphere down to the ground.

Its mass was 2.617 t up there. But while flying from 40 to 35 km, its mass rose to 2.657 t according to MechJeb Vessel info.

So each intake air unit weighs 5 kg.

 

Edited December 25, 2015 by Teilnehmer

[Starhawk]

Intake air definitely had mass previously.  I haven't checked in the latest version, but I assume it still does.

I found this out by running an experiment which seemed to indicate a drag difference between open and closed intakes.  This result surprised people who know a lot about the inner workings of KSP and I rethought my experiment and realized that if intake air had mass this would give the result I observed.  A new experiment confirmed both that intake air did have mass and that there was no drag difference between open and closed intakes.

Happy landings!

[Red Iron Crown]

Intake air did and still does have mass, you can see in ResourcesGeneric.cfg that it is the same 5kg/Unit as LF or O. The indicator in the resource panel was removed because it was misleading.