Ion Egines

[Reinhart Mk.1]

Work incredibly well when you use them just right, actually that's an understatement they are borderline miracles. If anyone has any designs they should show me, I'm really curious

[Vanamonde]

Since this is going to be a craft sharing thread, it has been moved to Spacecraft Exchange. 

[IncongruousGoat]

This design is somewhat old (I don't remember when I made it), but it should still work:

It's a crewed flags-and-footprints Moho mission, under 5 tons and powered (outside of the rapier) solely by a single ion engine. They really are miraculous.

For the curious, here's a link to the full mission album: https://imgur.com/a/PbVRX

[farmerben]

 

Experimental Eeloo lander.   The batteries hold about 600 m/s dV

 

 

 

This one has very few batteries, but the fuel cell array can fully power 2 ion engines continuously.  The solar panels take a long time to charge batteries at Jool.  

 

A difficulty with Ion landers is that the suicide burn often starts at over 10km, and this leads to a buildup of downward speed.   With ion max acceleration over 3 m/s^2 it is possible to land on most bodies.  But having a high thrust kicker engine for the suicide burns really helps.

 

Edited March 12, 2019 by farmerben

[Aeroboi]

I adore ION engines.

I suggest you use the better time warp mod and use a custom timewarp setting and add higher settings to the physics timewarp.

The less parts and the more strutted the craft is the higher you should be able to set physics timewarp. Some craft of mine can tolerate 100x physical timewarp (often only small craft) and most can do 30 or 40 times.
That means a ion tug with a twr of 0.1 could be as fast as 3,4 or all the way up to 10 TWR in real life seconds.

I made a low thrust 45k dv ion vessel at 95x physical timewarp and went to duna. I started my burn at kerbin, ended my acceleration burn somewhat past midway and then did my decceleration burn. While the trip lasted 45 minutes in real time I have actually made a vessel that continuously fires it's engines from leaving departure upon arrival.

I'm not sure why I see people complaining about ION engine burn times when they can use the better time warp mod to do the job.

 

[farmerben]

 

 

Experimental Moho vessel.  Acceleration 3.87 m/s^2 and over 3000 dV.  A single 1x6 solar panel is not quite enough for 2 ion engines continuously.  You could run 3 engines with 2 solar panels...

At Gilly you need just over 3 solar panels per engine.  At Kerbin 6 solar panels per engine.  The non-retractable kind are the lightest.  

My new thinking is that a compromise between charging rate and electric storage is not the way to go.  The two extremes are better.  Either have enough power to fire the engine continuously and not need batteries.  Or have enough batteries to make big burns and then let time warp handle the recharge.  1000 units of charge for one engine lasts almost 2 minutes.  Another way to do it is to adjust down the thrust limiter.  I don't have better timewarp yet, but I guess I'll be getting it.