What do you spend more time on, airplanes or rockets?

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

Ps airplanes include spaceplanes

I gotta stop making aero

Edited December 7, 2019 by έķ νίĻĻάίή

[Curveball Anders]

About equal, but with the note that I only do aero in X-Plane, never in KSP (well once, but never again).

 

[Zeiss Ikon]

Kind of an ambiguous question.  I spend more total time on rockets, but I don't build or fly many aircraft.  I can build a rocket, pod to clamps, in a half hour, unless I'm having to scrape for that last m/s, but I  usually need several hours to get an airplane that will fly stably.  Of course, this is with FAR in RO...

[RizzoTheRat]

I spend most of my time in Notepad++ working on my KOs scripts, but after that it's rockets

[paul23]

Even with FAR the aerodynamic model/physics system is so limited that I loathe making aircraft. It's fine for simple things like a rocket, but making an aircraft is just awkward.

 

The big problem I see is that most people here make aircraft that are basically "rockets with draggy wings", very high TWR (far above 1), dynamically unstable (often even statically unstable) and no way to get off the launchpad other than by "hacking throught rotation wheels". A real aircraft has a 0.2-0.4 TWR, and fighter jet 0.8-1. (almost) All upwards force is due to lift, the engine is just a means to overcome the drag of the wing not to "get up there".

One can hardly blame others though, where in real life we use supercritical airfoils to get the aerodynamic center (and perform better near mach 1) further back for delta wings I don't even know the pressure distribution given the parts of ksp. And that's just for static stability.

 

A common unstable mode I see for crafts in ksp is the longitudal phugoid. (You drop down by having the nose go down, then as you gain speed your nose goes up again, losing speed making the nose go down, and the "wave" you hence make will grow instead of diminish without user input. To cancel this the elevators and trim surface are ever so important. Not only the size/position but also the way they are attached, in "hands free" some craft are stable when the elevators are in a fixed position. Other designs are stable when they are in a free flow position where they can rotate freely around a hinge and follow the air stream. And if they are in a free flow position the hinge point actually matters ever so much: is the hinge/rotating point before or after the aerodynamic center of the elevator

 

Oh and then we don't even talk about high lift devices: modern aircraft really can't function without those, the landing and take of speed would be so high they would need runways a magnitude higher than we have now.  KSP doesn't even have those, all my craft have ran off the runway before getting anyways near nose up moment.

 

 

No without wind tunnel tests, actual design choices instead of just visual cutesy. Design for form instead of design for function.

[Superfluous J]

99% rockets, 1% planes launched on rockets to other planets, 0% planes of any other type.

[mikey117]

Yeah I mostly design and fly rocket based missions. Probably 85% rockets and 15%planes. However I answered planes, as the question was ,what do you spend more time on?

Might be different for other people, but for me , building and testing takes way longer for planes to be mission ready than rockets of similar size/complexity.

[fulgur]

Planes definitely. Nothing beats an SSTO spaceplane, except a lighter more manoeuvrable version.

[StrandedonEarth]

I'm with Elton on this one...

 

[qzgy]

Gonna break the mold and say helicopters. Find those really fun.

I have I think messed around more with planes, but if I have to actually do something and go somewhere, rocket time. But thats relatively rare. And I do also like making reusable stuff, which lends itself more to planes and things with wings.

[Curveball Anders]

I have to retract a bit from my previous statement.

I'm currently fiddling with quad-prop drones, inspired by Dragonfly.

But I have to say that fiddling with the rotors/blades/ducts and their idiosyncratic behavior in KSP is creating more grey hairs than my four kids together

 

[Francois424]

Also a bit of time on Rovers... I include planes in rovers most of the time as I tend to build rovers that can fly (especially on larger worlds, like Eve/Kerbin).
With the new shielded rotors and hinges, I might revisit some flying car concept I once tried and failed.

But mostly rockets.

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

Well, idk but I really don’t do rockets much.

I just don’t have the time to do much interplanetary missions

[Vanamonde]

I make more rockets, but craft-for-craft, planes take a lot more tweaking to get them to work. 

[proteasome]

SSTO space planes. I HATE having used stage debris cluttering things up.

[HyperDraco]

Usually, everything.

I do things such as Cars, Ships, Battleships, SSTOs, Rockets, Bikes, Planes and even things such as a fully-sized stock Inline 4 engines and cannon. 

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

On 12/16/2019 at 10:45 PM, HyperDraco said:

Usually, everything.

I do things such as Cars, Ships, Battleships, SSTOs, Rockets, Bikes, Planes and even things such as a fully-sized stock Inline 4 engines and cannon. 

Bro that’s 

Spoiler

Savage boiii

 

[Clockwork13]

Rockets exclusively. For how long I've played ksp i still can't for the life of me build a spaceplane properly.

[Chaotic Protocol]

What category would this fall under?

 

[Guest]

On 12/7/2019 at 4:10 PM, RizzoTheRat said:

I spend most of my time in Notepad++ working on my KOs scripts, but after that it's rockets

Come to think of it, I've never seen anyone launch a HTOL spaceplane using kOS. Is it especially difficult?

[fulgur]

No, I've done it a couple of times. The trick is landing, which I cannot do in kOS or map mode (where my potato runs much faster).

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

I’ve been focusing on spaceplanes recently, specially the MEV (Magic Exploration Vehicles) which I’ve made for easy use. It’s on kerbalx

[HyperDraco]

On 12/19/2019 at 2:14 AM, έķ νίĻĻάίή said:

Bro that’s 

  Hide contents

Savage boiii

 

Thank you 

On 12/19/2019 at 2:17 AM, Chaotic Protocol said:

What category would this fall under?

 

Depends if it flies. Mine are capable of it.

(With a few rockets strapped on however.)

[DoctorDavinci]

What, no slot for F1 race cars?

Spoiler

 

... and what about Drag Racing?

Spoiler

 

.... motorcycles?

Spoiler

 

.... stock turbo prop engines?

Spoiler

 

... catapults?

Spoiler

 

... oh, and you can never go without a Bueller (Ferris Wheel ... completely vanilla stock)

Spoiler

 

 

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I spend a lot more time on planes mostly because they are a) slower and b) require a lot more testing/tuning. Rockets at this point for me are pretty easy, it's mostly a matter of balancing TWR and dV which takes little to no time.