Are Ion drives useless ?

[rosenkranz]

That ship is insanely inefficient. You only get the thrust from 3 ion engines, the rest consume fuel without providing thrust. All the ion engines that point at the ship itself will provide no thrust, leaving you with a thrust that is four times lower than it should be.

Actually, that's not true. If the engine exhaust does no damage it's all good. I've actually tried this by stacking them one under the other and they worked just fine. Dorky looking but fine.

[-Velocity-]

Until we get electrically-driven propellors or ducted fans as stock parts, the only way to create an entirely-realistic solar powered ultralight aircraft is to make unrealistic use of ion engines. I'll cheerfully switch over the instant I can.

-- Steve

Are you one of those folks with an aversion to mods? It's your game, play it how you like, but if you're willing to use mods, what you speak of has been possible for quite some time now, the "Firespitter" mod I think it's called. I know its got propellers in it, and I ASSUME at least some of those are electrically driven. I intend to install it once I start my Eve exploration program, and try to see if I can mate some electric propellers and nuclear reactors (nuclear reactors are another thing that it's stupid that we don't have as stock parts yet) to make a nuclear-powered aircraft with nearly infinite endurance.

Nuclear-powered aircraft were indeed studied in the 1940's and 1950's, and are indeed possible- it appears that you can in fact make a nuclear reactor light enough to fly on an aircraft, and powerful enough to provide enough thrust for flight. Luckily, I think, these aircraft never flew on Earth. Hey, I'm a fan of nuclear power... just not on airplanes that can CRASH. Nuclear reactors launched into space are actually vastly more safe as they aren't started for the first time until they are safely on their way, so even if the rocket launching them exploded, they wouldn't scatter any short-lived radioisotopes... not so with a nuclear aircraft.

Anyway, I guess, why not just install reasonable mods that contain parts we already should have?

Edited September 25, 2013 by |Velocity|

[Benno]

I use the remotetech plugin and have four geostationary comms satellites orbiting Kerbin. They need to stay relatively equidistant from each other to provide proper communications coverage across the whole surface of Kerbin and to the Mun. After a while they get a bit out of alignment and need to be adjusted, so ion engines come in really handy for achieving this. Also, the one ship drops off the four satellites and returns to LKO to complete the network. The satellites then use their ion engines to initially separate and get in to the right positioning.

Trying to use any other type of engine would dramatically increase the size of the satellites (meaning I couldn't take all four up in one go) and dramatically reduce their lifespan/time-between-refuels.

So, no, I wouldn't say that they are useless.

[iStickyDuck]

You can use them to leave solar orbit legitimately ;D thats what I did anyway!

[Aom42]

Far from it. I use them on almost every spaceship for small adjustments and changing orbits. The fact that they practically run on electricity makes them invaluable. I put 8 on my 950 part flagship, and when it ran low on fuel while visiting Laythe, the ion engines were extremely useful for changing the orbits around. It just takes a lot of patience....

[Lohan2008]

I now use the Ion drive/sails for navigation markers.