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Unit 340 wrote:Hey prototype, would you be as so kind as to show some design specs of that spaceplane you have, a top-down view maybe with the CoG/CoL shown? See, i'm trying to design space-planes so I can land and fly with style, but all of mine keep, erm, spinning out of control once it reaches high altitudes (I.E 15000 M), but are otherwise fine lower.

EDIT: I also just realized the utility of nuclear engines. Hyper-efficiency. Good, good.

The reason they spin out of control might be because your jet engines aren't getting enough air and burn out. You need to add more air intakes. Jet engines need at least 0.06 air intake to function. With enough air intakes, you can get them to work up to 30km altitude.

Tau wrote:Nuclear engines are not only very weak, but are also STILL nowhere near the efficiency of jet engines. Also, they weigh a lot.

That's because they are supposed to be for space only.

No, I have more than enough air. They are still going, no burn-outs. Air intake there is still high enough for them to be useful. Even SAS can't keep it on course with RCS, and it spins out all the way to the ground.

Let's see some photos.

Alright. Here's the current working design, with CoG and CoL shown. It's 140 Tons


It can get off the ground, here it is around 10,000 meters, just before it spins out


I'm using the Sabre engines from B9. As soon as I switch engine modes to rocket mode, it spins into death mode.


And then I regain control, and manage to land.




My guess now is that it's way too heavy, and therefore, when the atmosphere thins so much, it loses the lift keeping it up and it nose-dives. Please supply your input.

Also, previous iterations? It simply did not regain control and spun until death. This one, as designed, stalled nose-down so I could recover it.

Try cutting throttle before switching modes. Also, add moar wings.

Really bothers me that Ion engines are so slow and that you can't speed up time while they're working.

I'm trying to get my Hexion V3 shuttle to Duna and I've got a several hour burn timer to adjust my orbit with Duna.

Actually... how many ion thrusters would you say is a good number for an interplanetary ship? The Hexion class is named so because it has 6 ion engines, but now I'm not sure that's enough, though I don't see how I could add more without just redesigning the whole thing.

I usually don't use stock ion engines for ships, I would suggest nuclear for interplanetary ships. The stock ions are more for probes than anything else. Well, assuming you're using stock.

I do use stock. Guess I'll modify the shuttles to use nuclear engines instead of ion. Shouldn't be too hard, it's already got a pretty big fuel supply, and now I can replace all the Xenon and batteries with additional fuel tanks, and remove some of the engines that were only there to slow it down in case it entered a planet with gravity equal or higher to that of Kerbin.

Or just go into the game data files and chance the ISP of the liquid engines to over 9000

I would recommend using this for large interplanetary vessels. Also, for 3-hour long ion burns, hold alt while increasing time dilation to use physics warp.

Prototype wrote:Or just go into the game data files and chance the ISP of the liquid engines to over 9000

Then you might as well just go play Sins because by doing that you're pretty much removing the whole point of Kerbal space program.

Tau wrote:I would recommend using this for large interplanetary vessels. Also, for 3-hour long ion burns, hold alt while increasing time dilation to use physics warp.

Problem here is that I'm basically killing all of Kerbin to get a single Kerbal to another planet. Doesn't sound like a good trade off.

I use a shit-ton of ion engines for anything bigger than a probe, and those are just to supplement my nukes and other random engines. They're efficient, but slow.

Very slow which actually makes me question their efficiency compared to all the mass you gain while putting them.