Ground Effect and Exhaust Compression Physics

[JMBuilder]

Ground Effect

Now here's a feature that would open up some awesome possibilities. Imagine being able to build realistic hovercrafts, ekranoplans, etc.. This would also make landings a bit easier, since you get an extra blob of air pressure under your aircraft as you near the ground.

 

Exhaust Compression

Basically, take a regular engine part, build an aerodynamic shell around it, and ta-da! Makeshift extra-large ramjet. The engine itself gets you going, and then as the shell takes in larger and larger volumes of air for the engine to heat up and compress, the more thrust you get. This would be a great way for players to create their own rocket-ramjet hybrid engines or more unique supersonic aircraft. This would also allow more realistic hovercrafts since the player could build a functioning skirt that compresses engine thrust while also having the Ground Effect to work with.

[The_Rocketeer]

Ground effect would be nice, but I don't foresee it being implemented and would at best be a ground-based, atmospheric only niche. Kerbin and particularly Lathe's oceans are ideal for ekranoplans, as they're almost perfectly smooth. However, KSP hydrofoils are easily competetive with RL ekranoplans anyway.

I suspect that modelling dynamic air pressure in KSP would be very difficult and resource-intensive. Perhaps a feature for KSP II?

[JMBuilder]

KSP II? Is that the nickname of a future update, or am I going to have to buy another game?

[THX1138]

34 minutes ago, JMBuilder said:

KSP II? Is that the nickname of a future update, or am I going to have to buy another game?

He means he doesn't think it will be added to this game.

[vsully]

This would be a really cool feature to add to the game!

[moogoob]

The Whiplash is already supposed to function as a turbojet-ramjet hybrid, like that in the SR-71 Blackbird, unless I'm misunderstanding your point in #2.

[JMBuilder]

6 hours ago, moogoob said:

The Whiplash is already supposed to function as a turbojet-ramjet hybrid, like that in the SR-71 Blackbird, unless I'm misunderstanding your point in #2.

I know. I'm just thinking of things like rocket-ramjet hybrids, like sticking an aerospike into a shell to make it even more efficient.

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Ground Effect might be fairly easy to implement if a system where the lift value of wing parts increases in proximity to the ground was added. I can understand the difficulty with implementing Exhaust Compression, though.

[Van Disaster]

Not sure hammering an oil drum into a ram tube for a rocket is really the way to do it... let's just use the compund engine module to simulate ramrockets for now ( I was looking at them last night in fact, I've been looking at radial aerospikes for inspiration ).

Ground effect would be interesting & should show up in FAR sometime, but I suspect in stock it would come with a nerf to general lift which wouldn't be too popular...

Edited August 8, 2016 by Van Disaster
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