Jet engine thrust

[chrisl]

One last screenshot. This here is my latest plane which uses three different sets of engines. It uses the same turbojets as my previous setup which allows it to reach just about 42km. Then it has four of the Rockomax48-7S rockets which are only used to push it to 80km. I found that even with 8 of the ion engines, there wasn't enough thrust to finish getting into orbit. Finally it has four Dual Stage 4-Grid Ion Thrusters (from Near Future Propulsion) for all space maneuvers. The engines are mounted on a pair of SM-4 Stack Quadruple Adapters (from Near Future Construction). I replaced the two Mk2 Long tanks with long cargo bays and removed the science package from the small cargo bay. Inside the cargo bays are two large XE-600 Xenon Tanks (from Near Future Propulsion), a FL-T400 and FL-T100 fuel tank, and a modified M-EXP Fission Generator with XR-500 Heat Radiators (from Near Future Electrical... I modified the M-EXP because I feel the fission generators from that mod are a bit anemic for their size). The finished product weighed in at 26.8t which is about 3.2t less then it's liquid fuel counterpart. It has just shy of 11km/s deltaV available for space maneuvers (about 5 hours of constant thrust) using the ion engines but only about 800m/s deltaV from the liquid fuel engines. Getting into space is a bit tricky as you have to switch between the three different types of engines at fairly precise times. Plus you have to open the small cargo hold, extend the radiators and turn on the fission generator late enough in the flight so wind resistance doesn't destroy the radiators but soon enough so you'll have the electrical power to run the ion engines to complete your initial orbital maneuver. Also, once in space I've had to rethink some of my orbital maneuvers because of the long burn times required by the ion engines. But ultimately it's worked great. As the screenshot shows, I've got the asteroid and I've been moving it into a more useful orbit. As of this posting, I've managed to move the asteroid from it's initial 8.5kkm-88kkm eliptical orbit down to a 3.8kkm-20kkm eliptical orbit and I've still got just under half my Xenon fuel remaining. I'm hoping to get the asteroid down to a 1000km circular orbit though I'm not sure I can do that with just the single flight. All in all, this plane has been great for asteroid catching.