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Kerbal Space Program - Page 27

Forum Index > General Games
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Ljas
Profile Joined July 2012
Finland725 Posts
April 09 2015 11:55 GMT
#521
On April 09 2015 18:52 Cyro wrote:
fuel costs with rocket engine are so huge compared to air breathing engines

I don't know about that. Then again, I've never built an efficient spaceplane. I can build a standard rocket that can get to a stable 2000km orbit with around 12k. The spaceplane you uploaded earlier costs 41k.

I wonder how much reusability comes into play in the long run?
stenole
Profile Blog Joined April 2004
Norway868 Posts
April 09 2015 13:40 GMT
#522
On April 09 2015 18:52 Cyro wrote:
Kinda funny that i fixed it without even realizing >_______>

so i've been thinking, gotta check wing mass etc. With any significant mass on wings, it's probably better to ascend at like 15-20 degrees ish with a spaceplane?

how do people usually do that, or generally make craft capable of maneuvering in orbit for a while and returning? I can get to orbit but the fuel costs with rocket engine are so huge compared to air breathing engines


I play the game mod-less, so if you have any physics altering mods like FAR this might not apply. I assume you're wondering how to get to space in a normal space plane. The problems lie mostly in the design and not so much the flying.

If you have a plane that has enough lift, enough thrust, enough fuel and enough fuel intake, you should be able to gradually ascend to 30000m+ at orbital speed using only air breathing engines. If you want to fly around in space, you need to add rocket fuel and rocket engines as well which means you need to add more lift, air breathing thrust, liquid fuel and air intake. The same goes for if you want to deliver a package into space. You'll need more of the same 4 things.

Your design needs to be able to function in the atmosphere, so you need to make sure you have your center of lift always a little bit behind your center of mass. That means you need to make sure that fuel usage and package delivery doesn't move your center of mass too much. This gets a little harder for a larger craft. If you want your craft to be controllable in space (and the transition into space) you need to make sure that the center of mass is right in front of your center of thrust. If you start putting parts assymmetrically, this will force the plane to pull in some unwanted direction. You can somewhat compensate with RCS and SAS modules. Or you can rotate your engines slightly to keep things lined up. What will happen when your engines start running out of air in the upper atmosphere is that they will fail one engine at a time instead of failing evenly. Because the atmosphere is thinner up there, it also means your wings can't compensate as much. So unless you watch your engines carefully while going up, and throttle down, you'll lose control of the craft. You can make all your engines point individually at the center of mass to fix this.

What I usually do is ascend at 70ish degrees up until about 10000m, then flatten out to 20 or so degrees. Once your plane is going fast enough or your air intake is starting to get low, you flatten your trajectory even more. It might be better to watch the vertical speed meter than your angle at this point. Eventually your engines will start to die and you need to lower your throttle to keep some life in them. Once your engines are running at such low power that they aren't helping you get into space, you switch to rocket engines and close all the intakes (best done with hotkeys). At this point you pull up to go steeper until you are at about 50000m. The drag should be low enough that it doesn't affect your climb as much. After this, use your rocket engines to push your apolapse etc etc.

Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20285 Posts
April 09 2015 14:40 GMT
#523
If you want to fly around in space, you need to add rocket fuel and rocket engines as well which means you need to add more lift, air breathing thrust, liquid fuel and air intake.


I found the RAPIER engine fit nicely there. A single one was sufficient for lighter plane. I could manually disable air engines symetrically or all at once when approaching high atmosphere, then that engine switches automatically when it's too starved

thanks for the post :D
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Jetaap
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
France4814 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-09 14:44:56
April 09 2015 14:43 GMT
#524
Spaceplanes are surprisingly tricky, but the rapier engines does makes things much easier that's true
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20285 Posts
April 09 2015 14:54 GMT
#525
I just wonder how much you can do from orbit, as soon as you cross that line at ~20-40km you go from like potentially hours of fuel to only minutes
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Ljas
Profile Joined July 2012
Finland725 Posts
April 09 2015 15:01 GMT
#526
Once you have a stable orbit almost anything will do. RCS fuel and ion thrusters are amazing when you don't need to fight gravity anymore.
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20285 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-09 15:09:21
April 09 2015 15:08 GMT
#527
I'l try a spaceplane with ion thrusters :D

I'm also interested in building a space station, but IDK what to make it out of, what to generally do with it or exactly how to make it (i know basic theory for rendezvous but not the little details and i suck at manually docking)
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Simberto
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany11493 Posts
April 09 2015 15:10 GMT
#528
Yeah, basically the idea is probably that of a spaceplane as a reusable launch vehicle instead of rockets, which should be able to get stuff into orbit cheaper if you make it work well. And once you have stuff in orbit, you can do anything you could do from orbit anyways. It would probably be a smart idea to detach your mission vehicle, land the plane, and continue on your space mission, since there is not really a point to carrying your gigantic wings and other stuff you require to fly in the atmosphere to the Mun.

Especially for launching satellites into lower orbits it should work very well, but theoretically you should be able to scale it up to get much larger stuff into orbit. And once you are in orbit, there is no difference in how you got there.
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20285 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-09 15:59:56
April 09 2015 15:56 GMT
#529
Would it be ridiculous to create an ion propulsion system to dock a spaceplane onto from an orbital rendezvous?

I'm thinking totally star wars style
[image loading]

but you could have a symetrical system just attached to the front of the ship (docking thing on nose)
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Simberto
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany11493 Posts
April 09 2015 16:20 GMT
#530
I would highly suggest against using Ion Engines. Their Thrust is just so incredibly low that any relevant maneuver takes ages to perform. I am talking about 60+ minute burns, which even at *4 physics acceleration means that you have to just SIT there for 15+ minutes not doing anything just watching an acceleration bar go up. Which is not a lot of fun in a game. I would suggest just grabbing a few Nuclear engines instead.

But generally, building some sort of propulsion device and putting it into orbit first, then docking your spaceplane to it for missions would totally be possible (Also needlessly complicated, but that is a different question entirely) I am not quite sure if any of the other bodies in the Kerbol Systems do have an atmosphere with enough oxygen to use air-breathing engines in it. If that were the case, you could use that idea to do a mission to one of those. (Looking it up, apparently Laythe has Oxygen in it's atmosphere). So i guess this would actually be a viable (And cool) concept for a Laythe mission.

For any other mission, while this could work (And be cool) it would also be kind of pointless, as there is really no point in dragging all these Jet engines across the system just to drag them back to Kerbin afterwards.
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20285 Posts
April 09 2015 16:25 GMT
#531
"Also needlessly complicated"

BUT MY FUN :D
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Jetaap
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
France4814 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-09 16:39:18
April 09 2015 16:39 GMT
#532
This would be cool to do a laythe mission like that but that's a very challenging mission: spaceplanes and orbital assembly/rendezvous are 2 of the most difficult things in this game.
But after all this is what this game is about, setting your own challenges
Simberto
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany11493 Posts
April 09 2015 16:40 GMT
#533
As i said, for a Laythe mission this actually makes sense. Get Propulsion thingy into orbit, Spaceplane into Orbit, Dock with Propulsion, Nucleardrive to laythe, Spaceplane down, land, SCIENCE FOR THE SCIENCE GOD, start, Spaceplane back to Laythe Orbit, Dock again, Fly back to Kerbin, Spaceplane down.

You just need to make sure you have enough fuel on board the propulsion System to Carry your Spaceplane to Laythe and back, and possibly to refuel your Spaceplane for multiple Starts/Landings. Also build a plane that can Land rather well without a runway, it would really suck if it explodes on Laythe.
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20285 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-09 17:04:16
April 09 2015 16:44 GMT
#534
I've never done an orbital insertion to a different planet in system before, is it much harder than kerbin to moon transfers?

Ion engines (would need a huge array of them though) are still interesting to me, because they should give much more delta V if you expend a large percentage of the fuel. I'm thinking a LOT of engines though, like 16-32 ish or maybe more - depends how much weight they add to the craft. If i'm doubling thrust on the ion stage for only a 50% increase in overall craft mass, sure that sounds awesome.

I do not know how lack of TWR would impact transferring into a planetary orbit. It might make it difficult to do any more than minmus flyby's with a dockable ion engine array :D
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Simberto
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany11493 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-09 17:07:18
April 09 2015 17:05 GMT
#535
The maneuver itself is not hard to do, the critical part is designing a spacecraft with the necessary amount of Delta-V to achieve that mission, as you require quite a lot of that.

TWR does not affect your ability to do anything on a planetary scale. You always have enough time for your maneuvers, it just becomes annoying if your TWR is too low because you will have to wait for ages of real time. The only situations where TWR is relevant is landing and starting. And possible some sharp brakes for orbital insertion, but usually it doesn't matter.
SKC
Profile Joined October 2010
Brazil18828 Posts
April 09 2015 17:07 GMT
#536
Yes. The work with nodes and stuff is a bit trickier but that isn't really a big deal, the issue is the timing so that you actually hit the planet. There are calculators out there that can show you when to start the mission.
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20285 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-09 17:19:03
April 09 2015 17:18 GMT
#537
If a guy can physically hit Duna by launching a kerbal from Kerbin with a decoupler, i'm sure it's doable :D
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
SKC
Profile Joined October 2010
Brazil18828 Posts
April 09 2015 17:23 GMT
#538
Multi planet missions often use a similar concept as the Star Wars pic. You have a stack of rockets and fuel to move from orbit to orbit and a small lander to get down to each planet that is refueled after each mission.

It just doesn't make much practical sense to use a spaceplane because it isn't helpful in most planets and the whole point of the moving refueling station is being able to go anywhere.
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20285 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-10 01:55:05
April 10 2015 01:38 GMT
#539
Currently routing 32 way asparagus

will be awesome if this thing flies :D

It flew, but not so good returns past ~8-10 way. Not worth the effort to iterate on it
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
nimbim
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
Germany983 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-04-10 03:44:04
April 10 2015 03:42 GMT
#540
On April 10 2015 01:44 Cyro wrote:
I've never done an orbital insertion to a different planet in system before, is it much harder than kerbin to moon transfers?

Ion engines (would need a huge array of them though) are still interesting to me, because they should give much more delta V if you expend a large percentage of the fuel. I'm thinking a LOT of engines though, like 16-32 ish or maybe more - depends how much weight they add to the craft. If i'm doubling thrust on the ion stage for only a 50% increase in overall craft mass, sure that sounds awesome.

I do not know how lack of TWR would impact transferring into a planetary orbit. It might make it difficult to do any more than minmus flyby's with a dockable ion engine array :D


It takes a bit of practice to get decent encounters with your target, but getting into the SOI should be easy. Duna and Eve are obvious first targets because you can use their atmosphere to aerobrake. If you want to bring your Kerbals back home from the surface better try Duna first and Eve after every other planet.


Don't stack ion engines like that, that would increase the mass more than it increases the thrust, thus diminishing the efficiency. Basically if you want to use more than 2 ion engines because low TWR is boring, you should rather use a LV-N or maybe a Rockomax 48-7S depending on the rocket's mass.

Low TWR does not hurt at all during interplanetary transfers. Multiple burns while you are at your periapsis will make full use of the Oberth effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect
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