Rocket Gliders on Eve?

[Zosma Procyon]

Do rocket assisted gliders work well in Eve's crazy atmosphere? Something with huge wings and a bunch of rocket to give it a push?

[Snark]

21 minutes ago, Zosma Procyon said:

Do rocket assisted gliders work well in Eve's crazy atmosphere? Something with huge wings and a bunch of rocket to give it a push?

Depends.  "Work well" for what, exactly?

If you mean for ascent to orbit, then yes, people have built spaceplane-style Eve landers that work.  It's a legitimate approach.

If you mean for just cruising long distances, i.e. like an airplane on Kerbin, then I'd say no (though I suppose it depends on what your definition of "well" is).  Rocket Isp is tiny compared with an air-breathing jet engine.

You can certaily build a rocket-powered "cruising airplane" whose flight performance is reasonable (especially if you're cruising at high altitude where the engine Isp is better)... but its endurance will be abysmal compared with long-distance fliers that use air-breathing jet engines, due to the very different Isp.  You'll run out of fuel fairly quickly.

 

As with so much in KSP, "does it work well" generally depends on exactly what you're trying to do.  Could you give a mission description?  e.g. "I plan to go to Eve and <do things>".  If we have a better idea of what you have in mind for the ship, we'll be in a better position to give advice. 

[Laie]

What Snark said.

For a ballpark figure, you can expect a rocket plane to have an effective range of dozens of kilometers. You know that crater lake on Eve? If you can manage to cross it's entire width, you've already got a pretty impressive endurance flyer.

For something that goes to space, have a look over at the challenges subforum. Someone tried to pose a challenge for Eve SSTOs last week and got a comprehensive list of existing designs for a reply... it's not many, and most don't look very plane-like.

[bigcalm]

Yeah, so I think a lot of us have wanted to 'explore' Eve.  After the mammoth task of designing something that can get to the ground and back to orbit, it's not likely that craft can move about much when you get there.  The ideal would be to have a plane to go and cruise about in.

However, the density of the atmosphere and the lack of oxygen is a problem here.  Engines are horribly inefficient and require you to have oxidiser.  Even an ISRU-combo type thing will get you a handful of kilometres at a time and need a lot of refuelling.

Mods do provide another option though (and in theory you might be able to do it without mods, though my knowledge of building stock-bearings is lacking here).

How about an electric propeller?  Use electricity to drive a propeller, and you've got a plane that can go anywhere, given sufficient power.  These things suck down a lot of juice, and you won't be able to power it using just solar panels - for this kind of application you'll need some kind of on-board nuclear reactor.  I believe that BD armoury mod, and SXT both provide some electric propellers (and likely other mods too), and nuclear reactors can be picked up from NearFuture, amongst other mods.

Electric prop-planes on Eve are not fast, and special care should be taken to make them as aerodynamic as possible (one of my examples wouldn't get off the ground with a cargo bay door open, for example).  If you can fly at speeds exceeding 150ms I would be surprised.  But it does allow constant exploration of the entire planet if you're patient.