Air intakes should be heavier?

[goduranus]

In stock KSP, most of a jet's weight is at its exhaust port. This causes problem for spaceplanes, since they will have their center of mass shift rearwards to the engines when they are empty. To improve realism, improve spaceplane balancing, and to reduce the effectiveness of intake spam, I think air intakes should be made heavier, and jet exhaust ports made correspondingly lighter.

I suppose in a real jet engine, a somewhat bigger portion of the weight should be at the intake? that's where all the compressor\shockwave reflector\precooler is. More weight is probably in the middle at the combustion chamer, with the exhaust port being relatively light as it only contains the servos for the vector thrust system.

So, if stock jet intakes are made heavier and stock jet exhausts made lighter, it simulate the engine's center of mass being in middle of the engine. This would make the game more realistic, improve balancing for space planes as they run empty, and weaken the intake spamming exploit.

Edited July 1, 2014 by goduranus

[Kasuha]

All aircraft parts (wings, intakes, even landing wheels) are extremely light, I assume the reason was that spaceplanes were refusing to lift off without that.

I believe this will get fixed somewhere around the time when more reasonable aerodynamics is implemented.

[Pthigrivi]

^True, but wouldn't be an issue if you made the air-breathing engines proportionally lighter. There might be an issue keeping the COM behind the COL, but all in all I think this is a great idea.