Does anyone ever put fuel in the wings?

[KerbalChamp2006]

So last night i was playing ksp and i couldn't help but notice that the big wings with fuel storage capabilities are empty by default. I was wondering if anyone ever uses the wings as fuel tanks.

In my case, i only put fuel in the wings to alter the CoM. Please put your preference and the reason behind your choice.

[Just Jim]

I fill them all the time!!! IMO, that's a lot of fuel storage space to let go unused.  

[wumpus]

My understanding is the whole point of putting fuel in the wings (IRL anyway) is that it *doesn't* alter the CoM.  Since the Center of Lift is presumably somewhere on the wing, draining the wings fuel doesn't change the CoM.  The other thing is that since the wings carry the plane, it makes the most structural sense to put the heavy fuel in the wings to avoid any structural issues: of course this leads to weird "wing wheels" in cases like the B-52 as this is only true *after* takeoff.

[AngrybobH]

I do all the time.

 

[klgraham1013]

I mod my game to add fuel to most wings.

[KerbalChamp2006]

The only reason i do it to alter the CoM is because i'm really good at landings, not so much takeoffs. So that perfect CoM/CoL is really important.

[Zeiss Ikon]

I haven't put fuel in wings to date, though I'm not against it.  I've only used the Fat 455 wings once, for a glider (one of the newbie mini-challenges), and filling them with fuel would have been counterproductive in that case.  Since then, the only wings I've used with tank capability are the B9 procedural wings in RO, and their capacity is so small (at least in the aircraft I've designed so far) that it's not worth bothering.

[Ratwerke_Actual]

Yep.

Edited July 17, 2018 by Ratwerke_Actual
Img link fix

[FinalFan]

4 hours ago, KerbalChamp2006 said:

So last night i was playing ksp and i couldn't help but notice that the big wings with fuel storage capabilities are empty by default. I was wondering if anyone ever uses the wings as fuel tanks.

In my case, i only put fuel in the wings to alter the CoM. Please put your preference and the reason behind your choice.

I do it just because it's fuel storage capacity.  Never even occurred to me not to, even when I was trying to nudge the CoM forward and had fueled wings in the back.  I guess I'll keep that in mind in the future, but I'm still loading those wings up any time it's not a problem.  In fact, I'm still a little disappointed any time I see the "fuel storage" thing in the description of a part that doesn't let me do it.  It hasn't yet bothered me enough to get a mod to do something about it, though. 

[katateochi]

Occasionally I reduce how much fuel I put in them if the COM/COL really demands it, but otherwise yeah, fill 'em up! Especially with cargo aircraft/SSTO-spaceplanes, as there's not as much room in the fuselage for fuel.

[Freds]

I Almost don't use those big wings for spaceplanes, only for regular airplanes, but, when i use it, i fill them with fuel.

If you want to put a space plane into orbit, and don't mind with SSTO, just attach drop tanks to  the wings. You can go to orbit using only droptank's fuel, and use internal fuel for space.

 

[Kerbital]

14 hours ago, FinalFan said:

I do it just because it's fuel storage capacity.  Never even occurred to me not to, even when I was trying to nudge the CoM forward and had fueled wings in the back.  I guess I'll keep that in mind in the future, but I'm still loading those wings up any time it's not a problem.  In fact, I'm still a little disappointed any time I see the "fuel storage" thing in the description of a part that doesn't let me do it.  It hasn't yet bothered me enough to get a mod to do something about it, though. 

You can add any type of resource to any part by inserting something like this into the part's .cfg file, liquid fuel in this case. You can change the capacity number to whatever you want it to be. maxAmout is the tank capacity and amount is the amount of fuel added by default to the part. Just make a backup copy of the cfg file before messing with it.

RESOURCE
    {
        name = LiquidFuel
        amount = 360
        maxAmount = 360
    }

[blakemw]

Yup. For spaceplanes wings make by far the most mass-efficient liquid fuel storage - that is assuming you need the wings. This is because wings with fuel capacity are identical in terms of mass per lift/drag as wings without fuel capacity, the fuel capacity is a freebie in terms of mass.

[KerikBalm]

Why wouldn't you use the capacity if it is there?

The only time I don't use them is when I'm making a duna spaceplane that has no LV-Ns, but if there were some Oxidizer only tanks, I would use the wing fuel. As it is to add oxidizer storage you also ass proportional LF storage, so I empty the wings and "lock" the tank so that the LF fuel display will accurately reflect my total fuel available

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Not to self advertise but;

If you like fuel in your wings, simple and easy; then WetterWings might be for you!

And yes, I put fuel in my wings all the time of course! 

[AngrybobH]

12 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Why wouldn't you use the capacity if it is there?

The only time I don't use them is when I'm making a duna spaceplane that has no LV-Ns, but if there were some Oxidizer only tanks, I would use the wing fuel. As it is to add oxidizer storage you also ass proportional LF storage, so I empty the wings and "lock" the tank so that the LF fuel display will accurately reflect my total fuel available

This

with Fuel wings (or probably wetter wings) you can have any kind of tank you want. I wouldn't leave Kerbin without it.

 

[LordFerret]

Yes, I do.

I also wish the smaller swept wings had fuel holding ability as well ... stock that is, not wanting more mods.

[jackdown]

sure, almost every time, with procedural wings.. Saves plenty of space for cargobays...

Edited July 21, 2018 by jackdown

[Klapaucius]

If I have wings that hold fuel, I use them. I build a lot of experimental planes,and having my lifting surface double as a tank means I don't have to add tanks (or as many) as well. I can save the space for crew, science experiments etc.

I'm also a big fan of flying wings. My first really good plane I built was a simple flying wing, and I experimented with a few flying bi-wings that hold enough fuel to circumnavigate Kerbin.  The one below is here on KerbalX if you are interested.

If I was a modder, the first thing I would create is are wings that hold oxidizer as well for making better Duna fliers.

[Snark]

On 7/16/2018 at 2:52 PM, KerbalChamp2006 said:

Please put your preference and the reason behind your choice.

It doesn't come up a lot for me, since I'm a rocket guy and not really a spaceplane guy, so I don't generally use wings.

But on those occasions when I do make a spaceplane... yes, of course I put fuel in them.  I mean, why wouldn't I?  Empty fuel tanks are dead weight.  Dead weight is bad.  By filling the wings with fuel, it means I don't need to put as much other fuel tanks on the plane, which saves weight, which means more dV.  It's free storage!

On 7/17/2018 at 11:52 AM, Rocket In My Pocket said:

If you like fuel in your wings, simple and easy; then WetterWings might be for you!

Nice! 

Looks like your mod goes through and hand-crafts a specific LF capacity for each wing-like part.  I'm a lot lazier than that myself ... so here's another MM patch that's in kind of the same spirit, but does its work "procedurally" so that it automatically works with basically any wing:

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleLiftingSurface],!MODULE[ModuleCommand],!RESOURCE[*]]
{
	@description ^= :(.)$:$0 New and improved model now has liquid fuel.:
	RESOURCE
	{
		name = LiquidFuel
		amount = 0
		maxAmount = #$../mass$
		@maxAmount *= 500
	}
}

Paraphrased:  "For any part that has ModuleLiftingSurface (so it's all wings), but not ModuleCommand (so it excludes things like the Mk2 cockpit), and which doesn't already have any resources in it (so we don't double-tip the wings that already have fuel storage), then add an amount of fuel equal to the mass in tons times 500 units."

It works out pretty well, for the most part, and is low maintenance.  It's fairly self-balancing:  smaller parts get smaller storage.  The tweak to the description makes it easy for the player to see in-game which parts have been touched and which haven't.

[adsii1970]

1 minute ago, Snark said:

Looks like your mod goes through and hand-crafts a specific LF capacity for each wing-like part.  I'm a lot lazier than that myself ... so here's another MM patch that's in kind of the same spirit, but does its work "procedurally" so that it automatically works with basically any wing:

Does this work with the stock wing pieces?

[Snark]

22 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Does this work with the stock wing pieces?

Yes, exactly.  That's the whole point. 

It kinda self-balances because the KSP designers have stuck fairly rigorously to "amount of lift per ton of wing stays constant".  So the wings generally scale linearly in their properties with their mass, so that provides a handy way to pick the fuel amount.  Double the wing mass = double the fuel storage.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

Nice! 

Looks like your mod goes through and hand-crafts a specific LF capacity for each wing-like part.  I'm a lot lazier than that myself ... so here's another MM patch that's in kind of the same spirit, but does its work "procedurally" so that it automatically works with basically any wing:

Thanks! Great idea; I don't want to out and out steal your work, but I will definitely be adding a description modifier to mine soon as I think that's a great idea for clarity! 

[linuxgurugamer]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

It doesn't come up a lot for me, since I'm a rocket guy and not really a spaceplane guy, so I don't generally use wings.

But on those occasions when I do make a spaceplane... yes, of course I put fuel in them.  I mean, why wouldn't I?  Empty fuel tanks are dead weight.  Dead weight is bad.  By filling the wings with fuel, it means I don't need to put as much other fuel tanks on the plane, which saves weight, which means more dV.  It's free storage!

Nice! 

Looks like your mod goes through and hand-crafts a specific LF capacity for each wing-like part.  I'm a lot lazier than that myself ... so here's another MM patch that's in kind of the same spirit, but does its work "procedurally" so that it automatically works with basically any wing:

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleLiftingSurface],!MODULE[ModuleCommand],!RESOURCE[*]]
{
	@description ^= :(.)$:$0 New and improved model now has liquid fuel.:
	RESOURCE
	{
		name = LiquidFuel
		amount = 0
		maxAmount = #$../mass$
		@maxAmount *= 500
	}
}

Paraphrased:  "For any part that has ModuleLiftingSurface (so it's all wings), but not ModuleCommand (so it excludes things like the Mk2 cockpit), and which doesn't already have any resources in it (so we don't double-tip the wings that already have fuel storage), then add an amount of fuel equal to the mass in tons times 500 units."

It works out pretty well, for the most part, and is low maintenance.  It's fairly self-balancing:  smaller parts get smaller storage.  The tweak to the description makes it easy for the player to see in-game which parts have been touched and which haven't.

You might want to exclude parts which have the RetractableLiftingSurface module. Somehow I don't think that a collapsible wing is going to have any fuel in it.

[Snark]

26 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Thanks! Great idea; I don't want to out and out steal your work, but I will definitely be adding a description modifier to mine soon as I think that's a great idea for clarity! 

Feel free to take it lock-stock-and-barrel, to whatever degree you like.  I originally posted this waaaay back a couple of years ago when someone was asking about "how to do this thing", and just from rummaging around I think a fair number of folks have posted similar things since then (not sure if they took what I posted and built on it, or just came up with the idea independently).

In any case, I think this qualifies as an idea that's "out there" in public nowadays, so I don't think you need to worry about stepping on anyone's toes. 

12 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

You might want to exclude parts which have the RetractableLiftingSurface module.

Huh.  That's a thing?  Have never seen anything like that in the stock game.

If it's a modded thing, I suppose one could always extend the patch to cover it.  Though, is it something that a part would add to ModuleLiftingSurface, or have instead of it?  If it's an "instead" thing, would that not automatically be taken care of?