anyone land a space plane on eve?

[mattig89ch]

well, we can all go the easy route. but wheres the fun in that?

Still no luck on finding a design that glides btw. I'm about to load up one of the designers planes to see if they glide.

*sigh* maybe the rocket parts are just too heavy when compared to the space plane parts. every design I've tried with jet parts works great, but when I replace them to rocket fuel and engines they turn into sacks of bricks...

Edit:

A thought occurs, perhaps I've been looking at this the wrong way....every design I've been using thus far has had all the parts stay on the craft. Basically the've all been SSTO's. maybe...just maybe they don't need to. what if i attached the egines via mini rovers....the craft glides down, finds a good spot then lands. then I parachute in the engines, attatch them with docking ports and take off....now the question is, would that work?

Edited September 12, 2013 by mattig89ch

[Brofessional]

With most designs the center of mass should be slightly behind the center of lift. That will make it easier to get your nose up during take-off, and as the fuel tanks are drained, the center of mass will shift forward.

You also have to watch drag, all those nosecones and stuff look nice, but they increase the drag significantly due to KSP's aerodynamics (or lack thereof)

Don't forget you can tilt your canards in the editor to give you more influence over the center of lift if needed.

Landing a glider on Eve would be pretty easy as long as you're not too picky about where you land.

You'll never get far trying to fly on rockets only though. They're too inefficient for horizontal flight.

This is my most reliable SSTO

[tavert]

I'm going to quote Stochasty here (source: http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1lnwbc/feasabiliuty_of_eve_return_space_plane/cc17rny), as he's the only one I know of who has done an Eve ascent spaceplane with stock parts (see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/11214-The-K-Prize-100-reusable-spaceplane-to-orbit-and-back?p=576873&viewfull=1#post576873).

Spaceplane style ascent for Eve is about 19 different varieties of painful, ranging from minor annoyances ("my drop tanks keep crashing into my tail fins") to oh-God-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into (realizing that she's so heavy the only way to get her landed safely is to descend to near sea level).

So far as I know, I'm the only person to have ever accomplished it stock, for good reason. The major problem is that a spaceplane style ascent is less efficient than a normal rocket ascent, because you climb more slowly and thus incur higher drag losses. So, even though wings let you fly with less thrust, any putative savings on engine mass is outweighed by the need to carry more fuel.

Also, spaceplanes weighed down by a full fuel load glide like a brick, so it's not like the wings actually help you when it comes to landing. I have landed a spaceplane on every landing-capable target except Tylo (yes, even the airless bodies) and Eve might just be the most difficult of them simply because of the size of the craft required (sure, it's easy to land a glider there, but landing something that can make it back to orbit is a different story). You are probably better off fitting parachutes to your plane rather than trying for a glide landing.

The next big problem is the need for staging. You will need drop tanks and drop wings (the wing surface required to land is dead weight on ascent; you'll want to start shedding wings as early as your ascent profile allows). However, decouplers do bad, bad things to structural integrity. As you can somewhat see from the link tavert posted above, the plane bends rather dramatically in flight when fully loaded. That's after strutting everything I could find to strut, and it took many redesigns to get a craft that only flexed that much. Most of my tries would flex until their flight characteristics were compromised; overcoming structural issues was probably the hardest part of this design process.

All told, it was a fun project and I'm glad I did it, but don't fool yourself into thinking that wings are some kind of "get out of Eve, free!" card. It took me six months of intermittent effort to get a working design. It's worth doing for the sake of the challenge (it's by far the most difficult thing I've done in the game), but I highly recommend that you practice getting off of Eve the normal way first.

[KerbMav]

This is my most reliable SSTO

You didnt upload this cuty anywhere by chance?

[loknar]

Please use FAR to make this easier and more realistic no matter the number of parts in your plane. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/20451-0-21-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-9-6-2-Aerodynamics-Fixes-For-Planes-Rockets

Nice ideas here - but apart from the fun of gliding, I don't think there is any advantage of using wings if you can't benefit from the air-breathing jet engines to get you to the higher atmosphere/speed. To be very boring: a nice low drag rocket is the most efficient. It can be very high because your parachute landing will probably kept straight easy.

[lammatt]

the only question here is:

why would you want wings and wheels instead a couple parachutes which is WAY LIGHTER. (it's not like you can run jet on Eva anyways.)

[KerbMav]

The biggest reason for this would be that landing at a specific location would be easier with a glider than thumbaiming an atmospheric trajectory - as mentioned before.

[Bishop149]

I've been sending quite a few planes to Eve, due to the thick atmo they work rather well with minimal fuel consumption. . . . as has been said . . no jets unfortunately.

have some pics:

In fact flight is SO easy that I have been wondering if an ion powered glider will work . . I have made one that can take off and fly (slowly) on Kerbin under Ion power only. . . not enough solar panels to make that sustainable. . . once the 20,000 units of electric charge it carries are out it will have to land and deploy some it XL arrays to recharge.

No pics of that one but I have another glider on route to Eve at the mo. This one works so well its actually really hard to land. . . . it WANTS to be in the air!

In flight on Kerbin:

On its way to Eve:

Edited September 25, 2013 by Bishop149

[Bishop149]

Pls ignore, I messed up!

Edited September 12, 2013 by Bishop149

[leax256]

Electric propeller planes anyone?

well that's just not stock

[mattig89ch]

snip

Thanks for this! This shows me I've been thinking too small. I need to scale up.

Pls ignore, I messed up!

What did you mess up on? Those place do look rather cool, but do they get back into orbit?

With most designs the center of mass should be slightly behind the center of lift. That will make it easier to get your nose up during take-off, and as the fuel tanks are drained, the center of mass will shift forward.

You also have to watch drag, all those nosecones and stuff look nice, but they increase the drag significantly due to KSP's aerodynamics (or lack thereof)

Don't forget you can tilt your canards in the editor to give you more influence over the center of lift if needed.

Thanks mate! now I have to figure out where my center of mass is with empty tanks. Does anyone know of a way to show the center of mass when flying?

And yea, the nosecones do look good right? But I may just have to get rid of them...ah well, we'll just have to see.

Edited September 12, 2013 by mattig89ch

[Brofessional]

You didnt upload this cuty anywhere by chance?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v1qq0lxrqtnyyma/Bodkin%20Mk1%20SSTO.craft

It uses the Aviation Lights mod, and I have Mechjeb on it for monitoring the intakes. I used Editor Extensions to make the engine clusters.

1- toggle jet engine and intakes

2- toggle rockets

3- toggle aviation lights

4- toggle docking port and light

I made it to go to my station at 120km, but I've taken it as high as 200km circular and landed on the runway, though I had to use about 40% of the RCS to help with the de-orbit at that altitude.

It carries nearly twice as much jet fuel as it needs, so try to cruise for a while and burn off the excess jet fuel before switching to the rockets, I usually keep about 15 units of jet fuel in it, just in-case I come in a little short on the re-entry.

[Garek]

Does anyone know of a way to show the center of mass when flying?

The RCS Build Aid will show you the Center of Mass for full tanks and empty tanks. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35996-0-21-RCS-Build-Aid-v0-3-2-Helper-plugin-for-balanced-placement-of-RCS-thrusters

[Cal'Mihe]

I second the RCS build aid, its an awsome little thing that gives you a marker for center of mass when empty.

[-Velocity-]

well that's just not stock

At least electric propeller planes are actually realistic and possible, as opposed to ion airplanes. Ion engines are supposed to have an ISP of zero in the atmosphere, but it's not implemented (yet). IRL, the most powerful ion engine ever created had a thrust of 3 N (compare with KSP's ion engine which has a thrust of 500 N), and also, ion engines ONLY work in a vacuum.