Using the nuclear turbojet from Atomic Age

[Edax]

2 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

It's possible to actually fly a plane (as opposed to ballistically jumping around with rocket thrust) on Duna but the best powerplant is an electric prop running on fuel cells or some other form of lightweight resource-eating generator.  This is because Duna has such thin air that even a very light plane needs beaucoup wing so the sheer weight of the Atomic Age nuke jet make it pretty much a non-starter.  Also, the nuke jet needs air to run at all and there's not much of that on Duna.

Laythe is pretty much the same as Kerbin.  The thinner air is balanced by the lower gravity so a plane that flies on Kerbin will fly pretty much the same on Laythe, except it will have a lower operational ceiling due to Laythe's atmosphere not being as tall, and might not be able to land safely on ground several km about sea level  So, nuke jets on Kerbin are pretty much limited to low, slow flight.  Same on Laythe, but they're limited to even lower altitudes.  You can get around a lot easier with a regular jet so the only reason to use a nuke jet on Laythe is if you just don't want to bother with refueling.

As @fourfa said, there's not much reason to fly on Jool, mostly because there's nowhere to land.  And the nuke jet is too low-powered to regain orbit, and too heavy to be worth carrying by a Jool plane with rockets.  If you want to dip into Jool's atmosphere, use aerospikes or something that has high thrust in dense air.

Basically,nuke jets are only useful for exploring planets with thick, non-oxygen atmospheres and more and/or harsher terrain than you want to drive a rover on.  They need thick air to run very well and so that you can lift their heavy weight with a reasonable amount of wing.  So Eve in stock, Tekto if using OPM.  On Eve, a nuke jet is not a viable component of an SSTO due to the high gravity and too little thrust-to-weight.  They'll work as the jet part of an SSTO on Tekto, however, where the gravity is minute.

Oh yeah, I forgot Jool has no biomes.  I was thinking you could send a plane in to all the different cloud layers on Jool to gather science but I guess that's not in the game.  Thought it would be cool to achieve a perma-glide with a nuke turbojet and travel from south-to-north through all the different cloud layers, then jettison the turbojet when the mission was done and rocket back out.

Edited January 31, 2016 by Edax

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Edax said:

Oh yeah, I forgot Jool has no biomes.  I was thinking you could send a plane in to all the different cloud layers on Jool to gather science but I guess that's not in the game.  Thought it would be cool to achieve a perma-glide with a nuke turbojet and travel from south-to-north through all the different cloud layers, then jettison the turbojet when the mission was done and rocket back out.

Yes, if that were the case then it would be an excellent reason to use the turbojet on Jool. 

And actually, come to think of it... it would be a great idea if Jool did have biomes.  Posting that over in the Suggestions forum:

 

Edited January 31, 2016 by Snark

[fourfa]

Thanks Snark - I was thinking the exact same thing.  Will take up the conversation over there