EVE Plane

[KevinW42]

I'm planning on finally doing a manned Eve landing at some point, and I wanted to use a basic plane for descent and surface transport (I'll be ditching the plane before returning to orbit).

I built this little ion-powered doohickey and I was wondering how well it would work on Eve:

(I found I actually don't need that many batteries, but they're massless, so whatever)

On Kerbin, its a little on the slow side and the climb rate kinda sucks, but otherwise seems to work well enough. I figure the higher gravity and denser atmosphere on Eve should more-or-less cancel each other out and it will work about the same there. Am I correct in assuming this?

If this turns out to be a bad idea my other thought was to just use a rover with detachable wings.

Edited November 7, 2014 by KevinW42

[Vaporo]

I'd add more engines, more panels, more control surfaces, and more wings. In my experience, Eve's gravity mostly cancels any improved lift from its atmosphere, so I would definitely add more power.

[GoSlash27]

Flying on Eve is almost like swimming below 11KM. Everything's extremely draggy and heavy, so don't expect much in the way of performance.

You need less wing than you think, and your wings should be as efficient as possible. I recommend the pork jet strakes.

Finally, use the solar panels. You'll get better flight time for the same part count than batteries.

Best,

-Slashy

[magnemoe]

One interesting desing would be an ion plane with an twisted candle style upper stage you use the plane to get out of the soup atmosphere. jettison the ion part and the wings and burn for orbit. Main benefit would be good cross range and you can land at sea level.

Twisted candle is an aspargus like design with multiple stages, fuel line keeping the upper stages full and radial engines (48-7S on small struts) rotated so fire from upper engines don't hit the lower engines. it has improved performance over standard aspargus but don't scale up so well.

[KevinW42]

So I went with more power, more panels, less wing and fewer batteries.

On Kerbin it seems to have plenty of power, but not quite enough lift. Does that sound good for Eve?

One interesting desing would be an ion plane with an twisted candle style upper stage you use the plane to get out of the soup atmosphere. jettison the ion part and the wings and burn for orbit. Main benefit would be good cross range and you can land at sea level.

Twisted candle is an aspargus like design with multiple stages, fuel line keeping the upper stages full and radial engines (48-7S on small struts) rotated so fire from upper engines don't hit the lower engines. it has improved performance over standard aspargus but don't scale up so well.

That sounds like an interesting idea, but I'm not trying to get to orbit with this. For that, I'm just going to use a more conventional rocket design (as far as anything taking off from Eve is conventional).

[Vaporo]

That looks good to me. The only thing I might consider is more fuel. But, you know, you can always cheat and Hyperedit your ships ahead to see if they work employ a transportation utility to determine the functionality of your craft on other planets before the official launch is scheduled.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Vaporo

[KerrMü]

I flew a plane at eve today. Above 11-12km the behavior was comparable to a flight on kerbin. Below that you go definitely slower. So if you want to cover some ground, then I would suggest you take enough fuel with you. But you can glide for a pretty long time there.

[GoSlash27]

KevinW42,

That has worked well for me in the past, but I recommend different parts for the wings. You want the least mass and drag for the lift, and those panels aren't ideal.

Porkjet strakes and Structural D are the best out there according to my calculations. Strakes are a lot lighter, while structural D is slightly less- draggy.

The classic swept wing is barely lighter than strakes, but is *much* draggier than either of these two.

Anything else can be out- performed by one (or all) of these 3.

Best,

-Slashy

[KevinW42]

OK, thanks for the help. Now I just need to figure out how to actually get back and then I can test it out.

KevinW42,

That has worked well for me in the past, but I recommend different parts for the wings. You want the least mass and drag for the lift, and those panels aren't ideal.

Porkjet strakes and Structural D are the best out there according to my calculations. Strakes are a lot lighter, while structural D is slightly less- draggy.

The classic swept wing is barely lighter than strakes, but is *much* draggier than either of these two.

Anything else can be out- performed by one (or all) of these 3.

Best,

-Slashy

I'll try that out.