ISP of an RCS thruster...

[Piramic]

I have a very small probe and am trying to figure out of it is more efficient to use a small RCS tank and one of the linear RCS thrusters vs say the ant engine and an oscar B tank...

If you dont know, perhaps you can help me figure out a way to find out.

Edit:

I answered my own question.

Small probe body + 50 unit RCS tank and single thruster delta v = 1767

Small probe body + two toroidial tanks and an ant engine delta v = 2283

Both weigh about the same 0.400 for the RCS setup and 0.402 for the ant engine...

Edited August 4, 2013 by Piramic

[numerobis]

An ion engine and tank is in the same ballpark mass, half the thrust, and ridiculously higher delta V...

[zxczxczbfg]

Honestly I prefer the Oscar B and Ant, but if you're not going to do complex maneuvering, get an ion engine, it'll last for a bajillion years.

[CactusLynx]

Ion engines are by far the way to go for small probes. While they don't produce a high amount of thrust, the lsp of the stock ion thruster gives you over 2200m/s of delta-v over 1h36m of the thruster being activated. compare that with a stock linear rcs port which gets a piddly lsp of 290, your going to go through monopropellant way before you approach what an ion engine can do.

[annallia]

Honestly I prefer the Oscar B and Ant, but if you're not going to do complex maneuvering, get an ion engine, it'll last for a bajillion years.

My thoughts exactly. The only time I use RCS only is on probes intending to be de-orbited (granted they are dropped by a ship which used Ion/Nuke engines to get there) or for escape pods on my station...