Planes on Eve, stock aero

[Cirocco]

Hello fellow forum-dwellers.

With 0.25's new spaceplane parts rapidly approaching, I am once again feeling the spaceplane itch come up. So I decided to have a look at what is possible in terms of planes on other planets. More specifically, planets without oxygen in the atmosphere (So Duna and Eve).

I have some experience with flying planes around on Duna, and the new spaceplane parts will help a lot there. However, I now also have my sights set on Eve. Hence my question: do any of you have experience flying planes around in Eve's atmospere? What are the main difficulties? Is it possible to maybe get orbit with one (note that it would NOT be an SSTO plane. I'm trying to think up designs that drop just about all tanks as they run out and ditch the wings on high altitude as well.)

Given how stock aero works, I think that the super thick atmo should give me ridiculous amounts of lift as well (and ridiculous amounts of drag too)? I'd have to run it through kerbal engineer, but I think I might get away with a TWR quite a bit below 1 ?

But yeah, all of this is pure conjecture and theorycrafting since I have absolutely zero experience with flying winged stuff on Eve. What are your experiences flying winged stuff around in the purple tartarus?

[cantab]

Flying on Eve will I think be harder than on Kerbin because of the greater gravity. It's easy to see that at the same pressure you need more lift. Also a chemical rocket won't give you much endurance while an ion engine won't give you much speed.

[Random Tank]

Flying on Eve might as well be like flying around inside a brick wall...

The biggest problem with flying on Eve though is the lack of oxygen, meaning that you will probably have to use LFO engines (the most efficient being the Aerospike in most cases). This cuts your flight time down considerably, but fourtunately with the super thick atmosphere, a plane with large wing surface will be very flighty and will require very little thrust to fly. Because of this, Ion planes are actually quite useful on Eve, especially so that solar panels are more efficient.

Don't expect to get any Eve plane back into orbit though, Ion planes are hard enough to get into orbit in Kerbin, so even harder on Eve, and the amount of fuel need for a LFO plane would be insane, so that's unlikely too!

[Renegrade]

This is where I wish that electric propellers (ex. from Firespitter or others) were available in stock. I don't think such things have been used in the real world to date, but there have been some proposals.

Of course, such things would be more useful if Eve had more than two quasi-biomes and the science tree was deeper.. :/

[KerikBalm]

In KSP's incomplete state, there is no shame using mods.

I want to see electric fans and air aumented rockets... and a titan analogue... a titan analogue would be boss.

IRL, Titan or Venus are really the only bodies worth considering for planes.

Mar's atmosphere is way way way too thin, less than 1% the density of Earth's in most places (also, solar power is weak out there, the same is even more true for titan, but its lower gravity + thicker atmosphere would be more conducive to flight with RTG power).

Venus would only work as a solar powered high altitude plane that never lands and always stays in daylight... and given the super rotating winds of venus... thats a pretty tall order

[WWEdeadman]

From my experience I can only say a few things: Very light planes tend to infini-glige glitch to supersonic velocities in the lower athmosphere if SAS is on. This will end in the plane becoming uncontrollable if you don't turn off SAS. I, for instance, had an Ion-powered plane ( pic: http://puu.sh/bOFpp/007c4b0d00.jpg ) that literally only needed the ion engine to start rolling, after that the infiniglige glitch did fine in keeping me going forwards.

Also, the thick athmosphere might lead to aerodynamic failures, even in stock. I had a plane loose a wing once. ( pic: http://puu.sh/bOFBP/ca6ac2dbf5.jpg )

And when it comes to getting back up from eves surface with a plane, even a plane that stages away stuff will be really really hard to build. SSTO wouldn't be possible at all, at least with stock engines. There are people who did staged planes and succeeded, though. Check YouTube, you'll find some. (And a few more who failed)

[Frank_G]

I built a helicopter using the Firespitter electric folding propeller for Eve in .21... it performed excellent. I think in the lower parts of the atmosphere, it would be a cool way of transportation to use the lift to counter the gravity. But i have no experience in using spaceplanes for that. It is worth exploring for sure.

[Pecan]

This has been discussed many times.

THE benefit of planes comes solely from jets, not wings. THE requirement for (stock) jets is oxygen in the atmosphere. No oxygen => no jets => no benefit from planes.

Since you need to use rocket-power (or ion) and the thick atmosphere just gets in the way you want to get UP and out of the thick atmosphere as quickly as possible. For that it is best to follow a normal rocket-ascent profile and for that it's a waste of mass to carry wings.

[magnemoe]

This is where I wish that electric propellers (ex. from Firespitter or others) were available in stock. I don't think such things have been used in the real world to date, but there have been some proposals.

Of course, such things would be more useful if Eve had more than two quasi-biomes and the science tree was deeper.. :/

If you have electrical propellers things are totally different, still if the engines is light its better to make an helicopter and go straight up if you want to reach orbit. At some attitude the propellers get little effective and you will probably run out of power, here you activate the rocket and dump the helicopter stage.

Wings has only one benefit if you want to get to higher attitude, you can do it with an twr below one, and yes they are nice for going sideways like from New York to London, the other option would be an ballistic missile who would be faster and much more fun but far more expensive.

[KerikBalm]

With proper aerodynamics, in some cases, perhaps wings will let you do better by minimizing losses to gravity drag.

But a high TWR should allow that too.

With something like FAR, terminal velocity is rather high, so you can just punch straight up really fast as well.

I'm not sure its ever that practical.

Certainly, if you want flight time in atmoshere, wings are better than a rocket just hovering along... but once the distance gets to a certain amount, a ballistic rocket trajectory will likely be better.

[Renegrade]

If you have electrical propellers things are totally different, still if the engines is light its better to make an helicopter and go straight up if you want to reach orbit. At some attitude the propellers get little effective and you will probably run out of power, here you activate the rocket and dump the helicopter stage.

Wings has only one benefit if you want to get to higher attitude, you can do it with an twr below one, and yes they are nice for going sideways like from New York to London, the other option would be an ballistic missile who would be faster and much more fun but far more expensive.

Well, my thought is that eventually Eve will have biomes (it kinda already sorta does in that there's a 'splashed' and 'landed' status but.. meh that doesn't really count), and that a nice light/fast electric flyer might be the best way to collect all the science from those biomes.

For launches back to orbit, I would imagine that a plane-type design would work better than a helicopter-type design, as it would be able to gain a lot of horizontal speed and then zoom-climb for the launch. I don't know that much about helis, but I'm under the impression that they're both slower and have a lower service ceiling than planes...

[RocketPilot573]

I've flown an ion plane there once. The gravity is no problem due to the air pressure, but the plane couldn't really go any more than 15 m/s. Eve is much worse than soup, quicksand maybe?