Planes for alien skies

[Ixamus]

Traveling long distances, visiting multiple biomes or anomalies on atmospheric worlds can be problematic. Covering large distances by rover takes excessively long time, and rocket powered vehicles are inconvenient for many reasons. Therefore I believe that atmospheric flight is the best option. I would like to see your crafts that are made for fling in atmospheric world other than Kerbin. I'm interested in any designs, be it stock or modded, new or old KSP version. They can be planes, helicopters, airships or any other crafts that are made to operate in non-kerbin atmospheres. Especially I would like to see designs that fly on Eve and the solutions for very thick atmosphere.

This topic is for discussing solutions for varying atmosphere thicknesses, flying in non-oxygenated environments, dealing with terrain issues, how to deliver the crafts to other celestial bodies and other issues around the topic.

So far I have flown only on Duna. I have made two planes for my career save. Both planes rely on electric propellers from Firespitter mod for propulsion that doesn't need free-range oxygen.

This is Dunaplane. It's my first fully developed plane for non-Kerbin flight. It uses single electric propeller which is powered by two fuel-cell-arrays. The plane is designed for science gathering and carries full set of science equipment. The thin atmosphere of Duna is overcome with quite large wings, so flying it is reasonably similar than flying planes on Kerbin. Duna's atmosphere in general is not a huge issue for planes. Instead the biggest issue is landing. Most planes on Duna have quite high stall speed and low gravity makes wheelbraking very slow, so horizontal landings are difficult. I have made a few horizontal landings with this plane, but mostly I use parachutes and downward thrusters to land safely.

This plane can fly at very high altitudes. For some reason the thin air seems to provide enough lift up to at least until 20km and propellers wont lose any efficiency (which I believe is unrealistic) instead flying higher makes the plane significantly faster. Flying low the plane flies 230m/s but after height of 13km the speed increases rapidly to 500m/s. The only limiting factor for height and therefore speed seems to be heat control. The engines create heat, which cant dissipate in super thin atmosphere so it starts to build up and makes the plane explode if flown too high for too long time. The Dunaplane has three small radiator panels to allow it to fly slightly higher than otherwise.

The other one is The Red Eagle. It's significantly bigger and made for crew transfer around Duna and from surface to the low orbit. I can carry 18 kerbals but needs only two to operate. A pilot to fly the plane and an engineer to repack the chutes. This one is in theory easier to land horizontally but even so I have just strapped more parachutes and downwards thrusters to it for landings.

It has four electric propellers which are powered by six fuel-cell-arrays. To get to the orbit it also has four aerospikes. The electric engines are used to get it to the highest possible altitude and speed before switching to the aerospikes. Unfortunately four electric engines generate awful amounts of heat so the plane has in total 16 small radiator panels to help with thermal control.

These are my planes. Now I would like to see your crafts for alien skies. :-)

Edit:

This thread is a thread of the month for May

 

 

Edited May 3, 2018 by Ixamus

[AeroGav]

Interstellar is a huge mod that takes a lot of supporting,  and i think it has balance issues.   But if you want to go to Eve,  it has something you absolutely need for this - dual mode nuclear  thermal engines that can function as nuclear turbojets (running off eve's atmosphere below mach 3.5) and then operating as a traditional nerv in close cycle mode.   Use a 2.5m pebble bed reactor and hydrazine or ammonia fuel for best results !

Stock,  I have various spaceplanes able to land on Duna.   Pure aerodynamic lift like a Fieseler Storch -

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/stol

I have not actually flown this to Duna but I'd be amazed if it couldn't land there.  As for getting there,  it took off from the rooftop and got to orbit with enough Delta V to  reach Duna, if not come back without some refuelling 

 

Here is a 5 seater IRSU plane that could straight shot Duna in 1.3.    I haven't tried it in 1.4 since fairing drag is bugged, it might not go so well....

This one uses Vernier lift engines to reduce landing speed on Duna,  as you can see from the first part of this video, you can also land on Minmus flats with them.

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Starsailor

 

[Ixamus]

16 hours ago, AeroGav said:

Everything that AeroGav said

 

 

 

Thanks for your reply and advise! I'm very positive that your first craft will fly nicely on Duna. Although I believe that it can be relatively tricky to land, since it seems to have no retro- or downward thrust. But I believe that these issues can be mitigated if you will mostly land at low altitudes, which you did in the third video you showed.

The Interstellar dual mode nuclear engines seems to be something that I need to investigate. So far I have been thinking about trying the Explodium Breathing Engines Mod. I'm not sure if it has been updated for 1.4.x versions of the game, but I have stayed with 1.3.1 in order not to disturb my career save. Other possible methods that I have been thinking are using these same Firespitter electric propellers but in larger numbers to overcome the high drag, using electric helicopter engines from the same mod or creating a floating vehicle with Heisenberg airships mod. Many of these approaches have the problem that the crafts using these are not going to be very fast and are therefore somewhat inconvenient. At least the electric helicopter approach has proved to be possible in my initial tests.

I hyperedited this to Eve and it does indeed fly. It can achieve horizontal velocity of something like 100 m/s, but I kept losing the control while flying it for some reason. Lots more design and testing needs to be done if I'm going to use this helicopter based approach to flying at Duna in my career save.

Edited April 19, 2018 by Ixamus

[AeroGav]

1 hour ago, Ixamus said:

I hyperedited this to Eve and it does indeed fly. It can achieve horizontal velocity of something like 100 m/s, but I kept losing the control while flying it for some reason. Lots more design and testing needs to be done if I'm going to use this helicopter based approach to flying at Duna in my career save.

Helecopters can never manage a particularly high forward speed - possibly you are encountering "retreating blade stall" which is why it loses control.   

That said, if you can get up to 30-40km   the ISP of stock engines dramatically improves.       I built a NERV spaceplane that could make the ascent from these altitudes to orbit if hypereditied there.      However, nuclear turbojets make it all much easier.

[Gordon Fecyk]

Explodium Breathing Engines works on 1.4.1 and 1.4.2. Watch the lower altitudes on Eve with the denser air and greater thrust.

[Ixamus]

My work on crafts for extrakerbin atmospheres has progressed! I have made my first "career save -ready" craft for flying at Eve.

It is a helicopter for short to mid-range science gathering and crew transport on Eve and Kerbin. It uses electric helicopter engines from Firespitter mod and the cockpit is from Airplane plus. In Eve atmosphere it has cruising speed of 40-60 m/s and can achieve height of 11km. I admit that in honest comparison with planes using the Explodium breathing engines mod and perhaps most other types of modded Eve planes, this has no practical advantages. It's quite slow, atmospheric autopilot mod can't fly it and it's generally more difficult and hands on to fly. Even so I decided in favor of this to be my first Eve aircraft since helicopters are cool.

I have also been testing the Explodium breathing engines mod. It seems to work very well and flying in the thick atmosphere feels maybe even easier that in Kerbin. (At least if I count out the times when my plane could not take the air resistance and wings fell off.)

[Gordon Fecyk]

Originally the thrust of the ExV engines topped out at 1 kg/m³ air density like the stock jet engines do, so it shouldn't have risked your airframe too much. But I had wondered out loud if jets could do more in thicker air since they are 'pulling' otherwise-inert nitrogen to propel themselves. I had "Hunt for Red October" in mind when thinking about this.

Turns out Advanced Jet Engines models this quite well in a thicker oxygen atmosphere, so I took the thrust numbers from that on Tellumo, a Galileo Planet Pack world that has 10+ kg/m³ air and oxygen, and extended the stock jet engine atmCurve past 1 kg/m³. Then I used the same extended curves on the ExV engines. This is why I suggested to be careful and throttle-back in the lower atmosphere, as the greater thrust will do more damage as well as consume a lot more oxidizer.

[Ultimate Steve]

 

This is ESREP, which stands for Eve Self Refueling Exploration Plane. It has yet to actually land on Eve, unfortunately my work in this mission report save is often interrupted. However, during testing it has been shown to be capable of 100km+ hops on a single fuel tank, but slides when full of fuel due to wheel glitches. It is powered by a mammoth and two vectors and as the name implies is fully equipped for self refueling.

EDIT: I have a few more planes and SSTO's for Laythe but they aren't really any different from anything you'd find on Kerbin, for most intents and purposes you can take your Kerbin planes to Laythe and they will work just fine.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[Ixamus]

@Ultimate Steve That's magnificent! For some time I thought about trying similar approach my self. At the time I opted to pursue more practical and modded means of aviation on Eve. Although I must admit that my helicopter most likely isn't any more practical than your ESREP. Especially I like the fact that your craft is stock (or at least similar plane could be made with stock parts), which I feel is cool. Even if I use a plethora of different mods, many of which add additional parts, I do believe that doing something with stock limitations has it's value. Also I believe that flying a refueling hopper aircraft could be fun and possibly more interesting (at least for a while) than a conventional aircraft.

@Gordon Fecyk I admire your work on this! I'm planning to do at least one or two "career save -ready" aircrafts using your ExV engines. But there is still a lot of testing and designing to be done on the field. Also I would like to thank you for your mod. I use a lot of mods which are a major reason I'm playing this otherwise very unpolished game, but I'm not really giving them anything back or even thanking since I mostly have absolutely no connection to modders.

[Ultimate Steve]

43 minutes ago, Ixamus said:

Especially I like the fact that your craft is stock (or at least similar plane could be made with stock parts)

It's stock, there's just a boatload of visual mods installed so it can be a bit hard to tell.

[JadeOfMaar]

During the brief time I played in 2.5x GPP, KSP 1.3.0, I tried my hand at high speed planes that don't need oxygen in order to function. This is one of them.

The Fire Strider. Once atmospheric Karbonite is sufficiently abundant this little thing can get up and go...Infinitely, and wit the generous cruising speed of 1100m/s. 4x karbonite turbojets and 2x karbonite rockets with 50% thrust limit. I have my doubts it would perform well on Eve with its high gravity, but it's promising nonetheless on Eve (or Duna if the resource RNG allows).

 

Long before the Fire Strider, in a much earlier version of GPP I did the same thing and tried to get as near to orbital velocity as possible on only Karbonite. I came close, but ~2140m/s was the limit of this plane, the Catullus Surfer, and the target velocity was 3 km/s.

 

Edited April 28, 2018 by JadeOfMaar

[Ixamus]

@JadeOfMaar Very nice planes! Both Karbonite and GPP mods are unfamiliar to me. The Galileo's Planet pack does interest me highly. Does the pack contain planets with atmospheric flight conditions significantly different than those of stock planets? Like very different atmosphere thickness vs. surface gravity combinations or something?

My own project has progressed even further! I have now flown my helicopter all the way to Eve. This has lead me to a realization that the hardest engineering challenge of creating an Eve aircraft is not the design of the craft it self, but how to deliver it from Kerbin to Eve. I had similar issues when delivering my planes to Duna, but Eve is once again more difficult. Since I don't design my crafts to be SSTO's which could fly themselves to the destination, I need to design a launch vehicle to them.

After lots of testing and different designs I ended up making overtly huge rocket to deliver the helicopter to Eve.

It has a crapload of extre delta v to make a powered descent to Eve atmosphere, because my attempts to build sufficient shielding from heatshields and fairings proved to be difficult. My descent vehicle tended to fall wrong way down or it was pain to get the helicopter out of the shielding without destroying the chopper. So I opted for rocket powered descent. This also didn't prove to be very safe way and my descent was survivable only be the slimmest of margins.

But now it has been done.

It finally flies on Eve without hyperedit!

Next on my list is a plane for Eve. A plane that could fly significantly faster than my helicopter and circumnavigate Eve, the purple mother of kerbals.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

15 minutes ago, Ixamus said:

@JadeOfMaar Very nice planes! Both Karbonite and GPP mods are unfamiliar to me. The Galileo's Planet pack does interest me highly. Does the pack contain planets with atmospheric flight conditions significantly different than those of stock planets? Like very different atmosphere thickness vs. surface gravity combinations or something?

Yes, there are several combinations of atmosphere pressure and gravity. There are 8 or 9 new combinations (excluding Gael itself, Augustus which is near exact to Duna, and the gas giants). You'll have quite the party ahead. In total there are, I think, 16 atmosphere bodies in total.

15 minutes ago, Ixamus said:

Eve, the purple mother of kerbals.

Have you been inhaling that atmosphere??? Lol.

[Gordon Fecyk]

On ‎4‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 12:50 PM, Ixamus said:

Next on my list is a plane for Eve. A plane that could fly significantly faster than my helicopter and circumnavigate Eve, the purple mother of kerbals.

If you already have ExV Engines and Ferram Aerospace installed, and If you can get it there, you might be able to fly around Eve in this.

Assuming you can get this thing to low Eve orbit from Kerbin.

But assume you can get this thing to low Kerbin orbit somehow on full LFO tanks and maybe 500 OX in an OX tank. Maybe launch it empty on boosters and refuel it in LKO. It has about 3 km/s vacuum delta-v with that fuel, and can reach Eve LEO without aerobraking. If you are very, very gentle with Eve re-entry, you can get this thing to the lower atmosphere and land gently in Eve lowlands. Put some ISRU kit in that cargo bay and it can mine Ore for OX, then putt around Eve as much as you want to.

I really want to fix the wings to look more like my Fat-Star series space plane, which will give more lifting surface and a more streamlined look.

This is a prototype for Alien Space Programs, which uses Realistic Atmospheres with a 55 km ceiling for Eve. It is very much a Beta design, with a lot of testing needed yet. But if you don't need to take it back to space, it should be OK for flight in the stock Eve atmosphere.

Quote

Also I would like to thank you for your mod. I use a lot of mods which are a major reason I'm playing this otherwise very unpolished game, but I'm not really giving them anything back or even thanking since I mostly have absolutely no connection to modders.

People write add-ons and mods to scratch an itch they have. Mine was flying efficiently above Eve, and there was lots of talk about 'reverse jet' engines but no parts made by anyone. I'm just grateful you and others have found a use for this thing, so no worries. Jade, DStall, and ShotgunNinja all had a hand in this as well.

Edited April 30, 2018 by Gordon Fecyk

[Ixamus]

On 4/30/2018 at 9:01 PM, Gordon Fecyk said:

If you already have ExV Engines and Ferram Aerospace installed, and If you can get it there, you might be able to fly around Eve in this.

That looks like a cool plane! Seems very capable. Although I don't think I will use it on my career. Maybe I could hyperedit it to Eve and take it for a leisure flight. Primary reason is that I wont' be needing LF/O engines or tanks while in Eve atmosphere. They do help the plane to get to Eve in the first place, which is of course crucial to all atmospheric flight on Eve, but on the destination they become a burden. I'll probably make a plane that has no vacuum capabilities of it's own and attach it to a delivery vehicle that can take it to Eve. I am not yet sure about how I'll make the plane survive the re-entry. Possibly with a very shallow dive to the atmosphere and some kind of implementation to introduce lot of drag. I hope I don't need to use heatshields for this.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

@Ixamus Congrats, man. This is a thread of the month.  

[Ixamus]

I have conducted new research on atmospheric flight on Eve and designed a few career-save-ready Eve planes using Explodium breathing engines.

First I determined that I have a range of requirements I need my planes to fulfill. These requirements don't need to fulfilled by one plane but in a reasonably small number of planes. I need a plane to: Land and takeoff from the Explodium sea, carry lot of kerbonauts, have a very long range, full science kit, be very fast and to be able to land and takeoff from very short runway. Many of there desires have turned out to be very difficult to fulfill.

Main issues I have is the range my planes have. On Kerbin it's trivial to build a plane capable of circumnavigating the planet. On Eve I haven't been able to do it. I have fitted one of my planes with full ISRU capabilities so it can refuel itself and that's the best I could do. I could also send more surface based ISRU units to Eve. Without refueling my bigger plane can fly about 2500km and my smaller maybe 1300km (and then be stranded).

This is my smaller plane. It can land and takeoff from the seas of Eve and has a full science equipment. Like most flying things on Eve, the plane is very agile and easy to land/takeoff. I believe that the optimum cruising altitude for the plane is about 15000m. The main problem with the plane is that I cant take it more than 600km from my Eve surface base, since it couldn't come back for refueling if I did. If I send this to Eve in my career save the plane will be dependent on surface bases that have ISRU.

As I have pursued the goal of a long range Eve aircraft I have had two routes. The route of low speed and the route of high speed. This plane represents the low speed approach. It's a very large and tremendously heavy plane with range of 2400km and cruising velocity of 220m/s in the optimum height of 20000m. The plane can carry 20 kerbals and has a full science kit. It can also refuel it self independently (albeit it is a slow and tedious process). It unfortunately has the issue of being slow. If I were to circumnavigate Eve whit it, it would take hours of playtime even with the 4xphysics warp on flight and refueling.

I have made some attempts to make a very fast plane with a long range. My problem is that planes won't accelerate to supersonic speed until they are flying on very high altitudes of about 30 - 40km. Getting to that height with engines capable of supersonic flight takes a long time and drains a huge portion of the fuel I got. I have been able to fly 1000m/s on Eve but only a very short amount of time since getting to the altitude had drained my fuel. It's was a 1000km hop and then my plane was stranded. So designing a plane that can go somewhere far away in supersonic speed, land there to do the thing I sent it for and then come back is very difficult and I have not yet managed to it in satisfying way.

Meanwhile my helicopter works like a dream

 

[valens]

In my preparations for my pending exploration of Duna, I have been inspired by @Frank_G's excellent mission report, especially his solar bird and MOLE crafts.

I have then developed my own take on a high-altitude solar-powered ion propulsion plane for the exploration of atmospheres: HAAF.

Not only is HAAF quite manoeuverable, but its large wing area means it can easily glide or aerobrake in the high atmosphere and ride the Karman line in search for atmospheric science. So far I have deployed one on a polar orbit around Kerbin in order to get missing high atmosphere science as well as a live test (I can already say that it lacks some electric storage, but that can be circumvented, around Kerbin at least). Further possible development could see the addition of a docking port for (partial) recovery, of more science instrument or a more efficient antenna.

Now on to Duna!

Spoiler

Less than three tons, over 4km/s.

Neatly packed with a disposable RCS manipulator.

Deploying HAAF.

HAAF over the pole.

[x]Science is immensely useful in grinding science.

 

[Frank_G]

Thank you @valens!

Designing compact stuff is so much fun! Your glider looks very nice, both packed and assembled. Good luck on Duna!

I´d still love to see a simple configurable rotation motor part for KSP, so we can build electric propellers (and ramps, robotic arms, artificial gravity systems and and and...) without the need of spending dozens of parts on creating a custom one.

 

Edited May 10, 2018 by Frank_G

[Klapaucius]

Pretty much any standard jet will fly fine on Laythe.  When the Mission Builder first came out, I spent a heap of time trying to fly things on other worlds, including many of the stock aircraft, like this Thunderbird.

  Here's my little amphibious flying wing that I am quite proud of. It's the first aircraft I have built that is not junk.

 

 

If you have Firespitter, take advantage of the electric props. This is a modified stock Stearwing (I was just learning). You can see by the uneven number of engines that I did not have a perfect landing:

 

Adding several more engines I managed to haul this thing into the air (soup?) of Eve. It certainly will not win any beauty contests, but it worked, more or less.  Eve is just so hard on fuel consumption, that I think electric is the way to go.  If I recall, this aircraft definitely need more and better batteries, but at least recharging is possible.  I've never managed to make anything that is 100% stock fly for more than a few minutes on Eve.

 

 

I also modified my flying wing to take rocket motors for Duna. It certainly did perform nearly as well as on Laythe (or Kerbin), but it managed to stay in the air.  Again, I think the solution is to add props, but I am currently mod free since the new update came out.  And I kind of like the stock challenge.

[Gordon Fecyk]

Modified Big-OX for Eve

I managed to improve on the Big-OX, making it a little safer on re-entry. Here's the craft on Kerbal X.

I need help with this one though. While I can take this to orbit and back, as you can see I have very little delta-v left. I doubt I could take much cargo up.

My biggest problems are:

• Picking up enough thrust between 8 and 10 km up to maintain altitude and start picking up speed. Like the JX-4 Whiplash, the JX-5 Beelzebub engine needs thinner air to take hold and start accelerating in earnest. Eve's atmosphere in Alien Space Programs is just around Kerbin sea level density at 10 km up, which seems to be too thick for the JX-5 to catch hold. Lower than 10 km is better because denser air gives more thrust, but I run into very high dynamic pressure counteracting the benefit.
• Maintaining control above 20 km with the Twin Boars ignited. The craft wants to pitch up too much, even though I use fuel from back to front to try to shift the centre of mass forward. But I get so close to empty tanks that CoM shifts backward again. I could try replacing the monopropellant in the cockpit I suppose, and attach reasonably light O-10 engines to use as an OMS.
• Maintaining a safe angle of attack on re-entry, though I found that setting flaps to a negative value seems to help. Those front fins are my flaps. After a test re-entry today I discovered that negative flaps can help hold a 10-15 degree AoA during re-entry. I then went through a full flight and this craft in the screen shot made it back in one piece. The X-200 tanks are much more heat resistant than the orange tanks.
• Figuring out how much payload I can take up. I haven't tried adding any payload yet as this thing barely makes it to orbit. Any additional mass will steal delta-v, but adding more LFO tanks just kills me.

And is it at all possible to reduce the drag on the Twin Boars by putting a nose cone on the bottom of them? They don't normally have an attachment point down there, but add one cubic octagonal strut and I can put things there. FAR's hypersonic analysis tool even shows a slightly reduced cross section curve by doing so.

[v2.1 Update] I added a pair of J-34s as mused later on, and replaced those small tanks behind the Twin Boars with another tapered fuel tank. The J-34s are attached to those tanks. This brought my in-orbit delta-v up to about 350 m/s. I'm thinking the J-34s can help lift cargo off the runway and also help feed 'air' to the JX-5s, which pushes them past Mach 1 more easily.

The 2.5m to 1.25m tapered fuel tanks are attached to the bottom of the Twin Boars using a cubic octagonal strut and then autostrutted to the rest of the craft. This seems to please Ferram Aerospace a fair bit, and oddly it doesn't obstruct the engines.

Edited May 24, 2018 by Gordon Fecyk
Edited the craft

[Gordon Fecyk]

On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 4:51 AM, Ixamus said:

This plane represents the low speed approach. It's a very large and tremendously heavy plane with range of 2400km and cruising velocity of 220m/s in the optimum height of 20000m.

Jetliners aren't normally fast aircraft, and that was the equivalent with those Atlas engines. What about a more traditional jetliner design approach, such as adapting the stock Mallard with OX wet wings and Zephyrus engines? I just attempted that, and FAR told me I had a range of 2000 km, at speeds close to Mach 0.96 and about 11 km altitude in the ASP atmosphere. That would probably be about 20 km in the stock atmosphere.

The J-34 Zephyrus engine is slightly less efficient than the Atlas, but gets a lot more thrust at Eve sea level and, once you're at cruising altitude, will probably give you longer range.

and... heh, I might have a solution to my Big-OX speed problem by swapping two of my J-X5s with J-34s. Or just adding two J-34s.

Edited May 23, 2018 by Gordon Fecyk
Zephyrus, not Atlas

[KerikBalm]

Pic heavy, so hidden:

Spoiler

This mod planet is rather kerbin like, so the plane looks rather conventional:

(not seen from this angle are a bunch of aerospikes on the bottom because its only 0.2 atmospheres, with 0.53 Gs)

Trying to make planes for Rald that fit in a mk3 cargobay... but this was a really dumb idea

landing them was basically impossible

 

^ modded "Ram Rocket" engines

Modded engines (electric fans) on planes meant for eve:

Ramrockets on Eve:

Small SSTO for 1x Rald:

Stock laythe, stock craft

Stock duna

Teckto

Duna Solar craft

 

[Klapaucius]

@KerikBalm, what planet pack mod are you using?

[KerikBalm]

@Klapaucius somehow the @KerikBalm thing didn't alert me.

Its my own thing, that I shared here:

Unfortunately, I suffered a hard drive crash and lost many of my files (aside from what I had uploaded). I've done some work on it since then and really meant to put an update out.... but keep putting off doing the polish on this or that and organizing the files. I've also been "balancing" a bit around a 3x rescaled system (the changes I made to laythe would make SSTO/Rapierss ridonculous in stock size KSP)

The pic from Tekto is OPM (outer planets mod), I'm guessing you are familiar with that. The rest are my own/stock/ stock and a rescale using sigma dimensions.

An explanation of my mod's stuff:

Spoiler

1) "Rald" - derived from real Mars data, with an atmosphere and thick-ish atmosphere added. Low areas are covered green and have some tufts of grass. Custom biomes and science reports. My favored version makes it a binary planet with Duna, 0.53 g's, ~0.2 atmospheres, with oxygen. Its proportionately bigger than the real Mars, hence it keeps its atmosphere

2) Changes to Duna - gravity increased to 0.376 G (ie, Mars' value), moved in orbit of Rald. I should really do a sigma Binary config for it, because Duna is >30% the mass of Rald

I also made a version that was similar to Rald (as Duna is similar to Mars), which I called Dying Duna (Dying, not dead!)

Basically, Duna with oceans. In my current save, I've combined it with MIP. To make it less redundant with Rald, I thinned the atmosphere (rather than thickening it) not by lowering atmospheric pressure, but decreasing the MW of the atmosphere (0.667 atmospheres is enough for liquid water after all). I also removed the Oxygen from the atmosphere. The lore would be that O2 is there, but the concentration is too low to support combustion. The concentration is too low because of the thin atmosphere to start with, and the % of the planet's surface hosting photosynthetic life is rather low)

2) tweaks to orbits of stock bodies... Mun moves to where minmus was, Minmus moves to an orbit similar to Dres. Jool's surface gravity increases and its moons size and surface G are modified. Eve's surface gravity is reduced, its atmospheric pressure is increased, etc

3) addition of small rocky bodies based on Callisto/Vesta/ ummm I think it was deimos? They are basically as boring as Dres. One is at Kerbin's L5 as an interplanetary trainer planetoid (the transfer window is always open), the others hang out around Dres' orbit, so there's a proper asteroid belt.

Anyway, I'll throw in my most recent laythe seaplane:

It had trouble getting in the air, so...

Vectors fire temporarily to lift it out of the water.

Although its the cargo that made a seaplane desirable that was more interesting

Spoiler

it could be recovered too: