Eve SSTO landing gear woes.

[Single stage to ocean]

I can't land my Eve SSTO on any land, and must land on water. (Pls don't ask me to land on land) I can't take off with a glorious top speed of 5 m/s, so I must taxi to land and the take off there with my super small landing gear. The issue is that I only landed once(with cheat menu), and that failed b/c the battery ran out, and I forgot solar. All the others failed because the Kerbo-dyne ATDP splashed down and broke, destroying the majority of the thing.(It was on the front and even if I go slow as possible, it splashes down. And the landing gear is not deployed, b/c the drag from an activated gear could flip the plane over.)I used Mechjeb to slow to 1m/s descent and even stayed just above stall speed, of 36m/s, I don't want to redo the cursed thing.

[Guest]

Are you using parachutes? The air is so dense on Eve it begs for chute useage - you could probably slow your descent right down to stop parts breaking.

[king of nowhere]

so, you basically say you cannot land, because you tried that a few times and you always crashed.

well, how much experience do you have flying planes?  because i also was unable to land and had to use parachutes, but i learned when building a space seaplane.

anyway, landing is harder with bigger planes, and i assume you are referring to your eve ssto, so, a big thing.

landing small planes on water is generally easier because it is a perfectly flat surface, but i'm not sure about big ones. to land on water you are supposed to have your landing gear extended, hit the water with the landing gear, and that should slow you down. with a larger vehicle, that may not work.

I think, in your case, landing on land may be actually easier. the important thing is to keep a low vertical speed. it's not hard once you figure it out.

[Single stage to ocean]

I used really wimpy landing gear

It is just 3 medium gear supporting 230 tons in eve gravity.

How fast should I hit the water(horizontal speed)? I'll descent at vert speed of 1m/s.I realized the issues is because I kept on stalling, and i read your jool 5 story, about the plane.Next time I will land faster to avoid stalling. Thanks!

Edited May 22, 2021 by Single stage to ocean

[Single stage to ocean]

NVM All fixed. Still must land in water. Mods, close this thread. Thanks everyone for the tips.

[JadeOfMaar]

On 5/20/2021 at 11:06 AM, Single stage to ocean said:

with my super small landing gear

Well yeah... You can't actually expect those to hold the weight of any large airplane or spaceplane. Especially in Eve's gravity.

2 hours ago, Single stage to ocean said:

It is just 3 medium gear supporting 230 tons in eve gravity.

Nope. That's not enough. But I'll give you this golden tip. It helps quite a lot to have your main gear only attached to the core stack, and offset them as far apart as you originally intend via holding Shift while dragging them. Surface attached things have weak joint strength, and wheels break off easier when attached to the secondary stacks or especially the wings of your plane.

5 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

landing small planes on water is generally easier because it is a perfectly flat surface, but i'm not sure about big ones. to land on water you are supposed to have your landing gear extended, hit the water with the landing gear, and that should slow you down. with a larger vehicle, that may not work.

Splashdowns can be either easier, or harder and more terrifying depending on your design. In any case, you want you vertical speed to be under 6m/s and your horizontal speed to be 60 ~ 90m/s. If you need to pitched up over, say 5deg, to do your splashdown then you're likely to have the nose or cockpit smack down and risk breaking off. Having your landing gear open or closed makes no difference to me. The wheels don't produce any kind of resistance or upward force and are simply submerged.

[Single stage to ocean]

Doesn’t matter. I can take off with those gears just fine. I think you could put 1 megaton on the small landing gear and it wont budge at all.

And I even took off by taxing to land.