How does one land a spaceplane on water?

[InterCity]

Hello, fellow pilots.

I have transitioned to spaceplanes, because they look cool and now I even make a space station using nothing but spaceplanes (Hello, B9 Cargo bays). I usually pick my landing spot in the desert, but sometimes... well, let's say that Enwin and Billy-Bobbles got a bit wet, and Jonwin and some other guy even lost their lives due to my poor judgement when deorbiting.

I've figured out that it's possible to save the guys in FAR by flying about 20 m over the water and stalling the plane; however it usually leads to disassembly of the aircraft and requires ridiculous amounts of controlablity that the bigger planes just can't offer without risking aerodynamic disassembly.

So how do you land your planes on the water? Are emergency chutes an option?

[steve_v]

So how do you land your planes on the water?

Generally not in one piece... Water is Evil, and EVA parachutes have saved many test pilots.

There's something seriously fishy about Kerbins water, it seems unreasonably hard, not to mention devoid of fish

IIRC firespitter has floatplane landing gear.

[DrMonte]

Theoretically possible even in stock. Though didn't saw anyone doing this.

Use of Radial intakes as floating pontoons allows speed boats to reach ridiculous 80m/s. How about planes? Note that no other part can touch water during landing. That would be really soft landing.

[JebNeedsHelp]

Every water landing I've made rips the wings off (in stock). You might try landing vertically, like a rocket, then let the plane settle, but I've never tried that yet myself.

[Geschosskopf]

So how do you land your planes on the water? Are emergency chutes an option?

My #1 method is to use the pontoons provided in the Firespitter mod. This is by far the best solution because they were specifically designed for this purpose. Not only do they work great but are also capable of steering on the water, which is next to impossible otherwise. Plus, you can optionally fit them with retractable, powered, steerable wheels to make the plane amphibious. Just be sure to right-click and jack the buoyancy setting up to make for each and every section of pontoon you use.

The SXT mod also has some pontoons in it but these so far aren't very useful. Keep an eye on them for future development, though.

The USI Survivability Pack and SXT both have inflatable airbags. These work for landing but taking off again can be tricky, although it's possible.

Otherwise, there's stock. As mentioned above, radial intakes are probably the best floats. Build some girder structure below the plane's fuselage and attach however many stock radial intakes you want to it. It really doesn't take that many. You can also attach the Small Gear Bay to this same structure to make the plane amphibious, because the Small Gear Bay can survive the water. Another option is to build a boat hull out of structural panels but that makes it difficult to mount the wheels. Steering is a bit of a problem with stock boats/seaplanes, however. In general, you can only pivot in place using torque or RCS but can't do much about your direction of travel while moving, no matter how many rudders you have both above and below the water.

One final thing. Be sure your rescue plane has a ladder that extends into the water. Otherwise, it will be next to impossible for the stranded Kerbals to get into the plane. They have great difficulty climing onto things from out of the water.

[numerobis]

The reason water is so hard to land on is that you can sink through it. Your normal plane has wheels which can withstand fairly strong impacts (50 m/s), maybe a jet cockpit (45 m/s), but most the other parts are comparatively flimsy (8-12 m/s). On land, only the wheels hit, so the rest does fine. On water, the wheels hit, but they don't stop the plane. That means the flimsy bits hit. If your landing speed is slow enough you'll do fine, but that's painfully slow.

The exception to parts being flimsy is the radial intakes. They can take 80 m/s impact speed for some reason. Trusses work well too, at 85 m/s, but they're much heavier and they don't have the side benefit of providing airflow.

[Yakky]

Check out this link for a video of someone who built a boat that appears to have long pontoons made of nothing but landing gear. It's not my boat, but I thought the concept might prove useful in designing a seaplane with more rugged landing capabilities.

[cantab]

Engines will work when underwater, so any VTOL that floats level should be fine.

[Alshain]

One does not simply land a space plane on water.

(couldn't resist)

[KerikBalm]

Are emergency chutes an option?

Yes, I use chutes quite often on my designs, action grouped, because its reusable, and its meant for laythe or duna, and staging only works once.

I don't use them for water landings, I use them for landing in areas that don't really have appropriate terrain to do a horizontal landing.

[zekes]

Try a VTOL; that makes it easy

[Claw]

Water seems like it's really hard, but it all boils down to impact speeds. You need to land as slow as possible. The problem is that if you have low impact speed parts (which a lot of parts are in the range of 7m/s), then they will get peeled off when you hit the water. That's the crux of the issue. So landing big planes on water is hard because of the speeds.

Cheers,

-Claw

[Batz_10K]

Like this:

Air intakes mounted on trusses have a very high impact resistance and high buoyancy. Although this plane is vtol capable, it can land and take off again from water like a regular aircraft.

[Wanderfound]

By flying to land...

You can glide halfway around the world in FAR if you have any substantial speed and altitude.

[Slam_Jones]

Before yesterday, I would've said it was nigh impossible, but last night I had an SSTO coming back into orbit that didn't quite have enough fuel to make it to land... so I deployed chutes around 1000m (two of them attached near the rear), and used thrusters on low power to keep the nose from hitting the water first. Smacked down at around 16 m/s (mostly horizontal momentum) and lost the rear engines, but everything else stayed intact.

Not recommended, but definitely possible.

[MarvinKitFox]

So how do you land your planes on the water? Are emergency chutes an option?

When landing on ground(without wheels), you are matching the impact quality of your parts against the ground. Many parts are 12m/s, 20m/s, even 100m/s rated. And if one part fails, it leeches off quite a bit of speed, making the next impact softer.

When landing on water, you are matching the *joins* between parts against the impact. And virtually all such joins fail at 7m/s, and *dont* absorb any speed in the failing.

So to land on water, you need to either:

1) land such that no join gets submerged, like that delicious floatplane of Batz_10K

or

2) land at a surface speed of less than 7m/s

As it is VERY hard to fit enough 'chutes on a plane to slow it to 7m/s total speed(not just vertical!), I suggest VTOL.

Possibly assisted by a single chute just to save vtol fuel.

[Deddly]

The new intakes make for wonderful landing floats. Maybe this can give you a little inspiration - it takes off and lands on water just as easily as it does on solid ground.

Craft file: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20576590/KSP/Seaing%20is%20Believing/Sea-ing%20is%20Believing%20Mk%20II.craft

[cantab]

Oooh, now that does look good. And clever clipping the gear with them.

[magnemoe]

Oooh, now that does look good. And clever clipping the gear with them.

Yes very nice, has to try it out.

Another option is to make an VTOL tailsitter like this.

it has an benefit then landing on Laythe who have an lack of good landing areas.

Two set of wings around 60 degree seperated with canards as tail fins and something to put the landing legs on.

For landing it I two of the small orange radial engines to lift nose and two parachutes, engine to slow down from the 20 m/s with only parachutes.

Discardbable science experiments in the wing roots.

[Deddly]

Glad you liked the idea. Just for the record, no part clipping was used

[randomness5555]

I seem to remember landing the now very old HOPE shuttle in the water safely by landing straight down and firing engines, but that was rocket propelled so I don't know if that counts.