Eve Spaceplane

[willow]

Hey,

I've been trying to accomplish this for a few weeks now. And I just can't figure it out.

I'm trying to build a spaceplane which can achieve orbit from eves surface. With experiments I found that landing is very simple, you can pretty much just do it unpowered. Taking off is also trivial.. That is as long as you have the infinite fuel cheat on. It just takes a very long time to get through the lower atmosphere.

I'm not a purist, I don't mind using any mod as long as it's not a blatant cheat. I'd prefer something in the karbonite direction though. I've seen scot manley do it, but the engines he uses are a bit OP and high up in the tech tree.

Does anyone know of any examples I can look at that are able to do it? In youtube vids, screenshots or just some good advice (and encouraging words )

[numerobis]

You'll need electric propellers or balloons, so that you can, without using any expendables, get to about 30km or a bit more. From there, a well-designed rocket can SSTO IIRC (might be a bit higher even).

FAR should help cut the atmosphere down.

[RocketPilot573]

An Eve SSTO is literally mathematically impossible without cheated / mod parts.

[GoSlash27]

^ This.

In stock form and using stock parts, an Eve SSTO is impossible without cheating or using loopholes in the physics.*

You'll definitely need mods to make it happen, and since I've never used mods, I'll leave that advice to others.

Best,

-Slashy

*subject to change when .90 comes out

[panzer1b]

This is exactly what im trying to make (although i dont have anything against drop tanks on the spaceplane im working on).

Is it theoretically possible to make a PLANE that will get into orbit from the plateau or whatever that higher spot is on eve? This assumes no mods whatsoever. And finally, if it were possible, what would be the engine configuration that is the best for it, and how should it be staged (obviously ditch empty tanks asap)

[GoSlash27]

Oh, absolutely that's possible.

We had a member make a successful 2 stage rocket from Eve a couple months ago. If you can do it with a rocket, you can do it with a plane.

Now... having said that, I should point out that the 2 stage rocket was grossly mass- inefficient and there were far smaller and more efficient options out there. The 2 stager was merely built to see if it was possible to do it.

I've never tried to build a multistage Eve spaceplane, but I suspect it'd look like this:

Stage 1: Aerospike

Stage 2: LV-N

Stage 3: Ions

Dropping empty tanks and engines along the way...

[panzer1b]

Just made a EVE SSTO!

That WORKS!

Ofc i used a krakendrive as propulsion, once you make it past 750m/s its basically impossible to not get in orbit (the krakendrive i used wasnt that great and refuses to work below 750m/s ish).

But legit SSTO, i dont think its possible......

Now to make a multi-stage spaceplane thats eve takeoff capable! (and doesnt abuse glicthes)