Plane size

[Lanley Kerman]

select plane size

[James Kerman]

Hello @Lanley Kerman, your topic has been moved to KSP discussion.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Mk2 wins for me- it looks the best, there are a good variety of parts for it and you can build reasonably small planes and even shuttles with them whereas Mk3 parts are too big and bulky to be used as anything other than a large space shuttle that gets launched vertically and Mk1 parts don’t have the heat resistance or the ability to carry payloads that you need from an SSTO launcher. There aren’t many really big stock aircraft parts that can be used with the Mk3 system but Mk2 is the perfect size for 1.25m parts which have an abundance of engines, from a turbofan to a ramjet to air breathing rockets and even standard rockets too, and air intakes etc. to match. There are plenty of mods out there that add more parts for various sizes including Mk2, Mk3, a 2.5m flat bottomed shuttle set and some 1.875m and 2.5m airliner parts, but Mk2 is still my personal favourite.

I have made a single SSTO plane in my current career game using JNSQ where the planets are 2.7x bigger and orbiting Kerbin requires about 3800m/s not 2400; that uses Mk3 parts and a whole lot of mods including air-fuelled nuclear engines for atmospheric flight to get around the much higher delta-V requirements and higher atmosphere (85km versus 70km in stock).

[RealKerbal3x]

Since I rarely make actual planes, I'd have to say Mk3. It's best for making space shuttles.

[overkill13]

Mk2 looks the best, but the drag is brutal for their size.  Mk3 has more and larger options.  Also, unless MH changed something, Mk3 has the best fuel to tank mass ratio in the game and stock LF only tanks for nuclear engines.

[Lanley Kerman]

22 hours ago, James Kerman said:

Hello @Lanley Kerman, your topic has been moved to KSP discussion.

oh ok

[KerikBalm]

18 hours ago, overkill13 said:

Also, unless MH changed something, Mk3 has the best fuel to tank mass ratio in the game and stock LF only tanks for nuclear engines.

It hasn't be that way in a while. They do have the largest LF capacity though, which is something.

What do you call this for spaceplane size though?

I mean... it has a few mk3 parts, for that large LF fuel capacity, but.... I wouldn't call it a mk3 sized spaceplane

I mean... what can I say... I like spaceplanes that can carry useful cargos... or pretty much anything I want, including other spaceplanes for use on duna or laythe.... and do so when kerbin is rescaled 3x.

 

And what do you call this? its got no mk3 parts, and uses mainly 2.5m and 3.75m parts. The larger carrier plane issuborbital on 3x, but fully recoverable. Both the carrier and orbiter go to space, and are thus space planes

Flying the carrier back to base:

recovered orbiter: