Anyone done any figuring on the 010?

[xcorps]

It's a pretty impressive engine.

I built a .9 payload for a Minmus science flyby. A single FL R1 with 8 0 10's gives me 3293 Dv. The TWR on Kerbin for that stage is 3.93, and at Minmus is 68.

A FLT 400 + FLT 200 has the same amount of weight (roughly, about 4.29).

The 48-7S gives you close to the same DV for the fuel weight, but only a sixth of the TWR. The price difference is only 6k. The engine mass of the 010 is only .09 so having 8 of them on the FL R1

still gives you about the same total vessel mass at that point as the 48-7S.

I'm not seeing a downside to this engine, unless the numbers I'm getting from KER and MJ are totally flawed.

[Red Iron Crown]

O-10's are PhysicsSignificance=1 and hence massless, that 90kg mass given in the VAB is a lie. Infinite TWR!

It's only sensible with the 2.5m monopropellant tank, the other mp tanks have awful mass ratios. Monoprop is also more expensive that LFO, so if you're playing with a budget that's a limitation. The poor Isp means there's only a few specific niches where it's really useful.

One of those niches is an orbital assembly tug. I'm imagining launching station or ship modules without propulsion or RCS, and have a monoprop-powered tug rendezvous with it to maneuver it into place. The O-10 provides higher Isp propulsion that's throttleable compared to regular mp thrusters, and the additional cost/complexity of a LFO system can be omitted.

[Jouni]

The O-10 engine is physicsless, so you can get as high TWR with it as you want without affecting delta-v. Otherwise it would just be a slightly inferior version of the 24-77 engine using different fuel.

[xcorps]

I haven't unlocked the command chair in career yet, but this has got to be the perfect engine for Kerbocycles?

[UmbralRaptor]

I wouldn't be surprised if the O-10 is great for skycranes. Or perhaps a tunable SRB alternative.

For a Kerbin-based SSTO, I expect that 1 FL-R1 tank will get you ~0.3 - 0.33 tonnes into LKO, for a decent but unspectacular payload fraction of 8-9%. Well, decent before the 48-7S was buffed. Let alone the ARM engines, and the re-balancing of 0.24...

For landers, it depends very much on design details. If you're not doing something that demands a Kerbin-TWR > ~1, you're likely to get far more ÃŽâ€V out of an LV-909-based design.

[Geschosskopf]

In my own experiments, the O-10 seems OK for tiny ships and probes, although not great. But for anything bigger, say a 3-man pod and service module mostly made of RCS tanks, it's just too thirsty to even make a transfer from Kerbin to Mun. This thing just sucks down the mono, especially when used in any quantity to get a decent amount of thrust with a decent payload. The Poodle (especially since it lost some weight) is what you want for that job.

The main use I can see for the O-10 is on small probes for station-keeping, assuming they already have RCS aboard for fine-tuning. You don't need it for a Minmus scooter or even return vehicle; regular RCS thrusters are adequate for that. And while it might make a good scooter for going between stations, it can't carry much more than 1 Kerbal in a lawnchair while doing that.

[Blind Dead McJones]

I haven't yet thought of anything that I would use the O-10 for that I can't already do with biprop fuel, though I'm sure someone has, or will.

If you wanna get anywhere you will need several of the largest monoprop tanks, which won't lift off unless you add dozens of engines which will use all of your fuel in seconds. Maybe it will get into orbit with biprop and then switch to monoprop. I don't know why you'd do that, but it does give something new to test.