Simply changing the intakes made it fly completely out of control and impossible to land. Proceed with caution. Unfortunately, most space plane designs are impossible (or at the very least impractical) at your current tech level. If it's above the cross-hairs, you need a little less. Running the 60U engine at about 40U seems to give me a good balance between reduced drag and air intake. Thankyou all, I now reckon I have a much better understanding of the engines, hopefully that'll translate to better aircraft. Redoing the align environment with a specific formatting, Trying to understand how to get this basic Fourier Series. Another problem is jet engines stealing fuel from the rockets' tanks - you may want to pump the fuel manually (requires an R&D centre upgrade) or add some pipes between them. Your answer got me in the right direction, though I ended up with a different design (see my own answer). From my experience using a panther it starts to lose speed after 15-16 kms, a more suitable cruising height is 9-13km. EDIT: Didn't notice you were using FAR. Fighting oscillations. The Inland Kerbal Space Center itself, being in effect the old Kerbal Space Center from 0.2. - "In Space Low" means your craft is inside the "Space Border" altitude and in an orbital path. If it's below the cross-hairs, you need a little more AoA. KSP doesn't care (much) about aspect ratio; the total lift is the same regardless of configuration. As I understand, the OP wanted "the most efficient way to fly", and simply needed a bit of help in realizing that that is a hypersonic, high-altitude, high-performance aircraft which is a RAPIER and a little oxidizer away from being an SSTO spaceplane. Be aware that heat buildup can gradually become a problem when the afterburners are used in sustained flight. But you'll need to unlock: High Altitude Flight Which cost 300 science. Most SSTO space planes would be able to accomplish this easily. Your airspeed is mostly limited by terminal velocity; you can go much faster if you climb a little higher. Basically I can hit a target altitude of 20,000m but can not maintain it. I was even able to do this with three pairs of Junos instead of the large jet engine pair (I don't have the technology level for that). Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. I currently have a contract where I'm asked to take crew reports at certain spots on Kerbal at an altitude of 18,000m. If you nudge your wing's angle up slightly with rotate tool then it'll move your prograde closer to your direction of flight and significantly reduce drag. The high performance engine for me performs pretty good till about 15000 meter. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. It may work with stock too, I just don't know. Really. Your previous content has been restored. All the information you could want to know about science, including the altitudes for each celestial body, and what altitudes a given experiment works on are available at: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Science. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. I start with the normal jet engines (which takes almost the complete runway). Make sure you have lots of control surfaces because at very high in the atmosphere, there's not much air for the wings to control the craft with. For example, the RAPIER engine doesn't seem as the first choice as the "best" high altitude air-breathing engine but in long-distance and high-altitude challenges it is. even stranger is that the surface is textured. To get there, you're going to want to climb at the fastest rate you can manage to 18-20 km, at which point you should mostly level off and start accelerating horizontally. 3x06: I design a new, high altitude, jet to collect high atmospheric science. Whiplash is the engine you would want to use on a plane meant to go 20km. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com, Press J to jump to the feed. Your link has been automatically embedded. I didn't try for 20000m as it probably wouldn't do well. This works, but it's not optimal. Either finish the low-altitudes and then spend all your fuel on the high-altitude boost, or do the boost first and save a little fuel or try to hit the rest through unpowered gliding. Note that KSP planes get one substantial speed benefit that's much more pronounced than IRL aircraft, due to the freakishly small planet sizes: they're actually flying at a large fraction of orbital velocity. I followed a similar strategy. As high and fast as you can go without engine flameout: preferably ~2000 m/s at 25-30 km (and yes, that's almost orbital velocity). There is no such thing as "so high radar can not detect it", since radar can detect things in outer space. How to know if you've nailed it perfectly: when you're cruising in level flight, you want the marker to be precisely centered in your navball cross-hairs. One problem is i'm running stock on career mode and only have 30 part to spare, so large planes are out of the question. So, to correct " is below crosshairs", what you need to do is to add a little AoA to the wings. Very cool. Espaol - Latinoamrica (Spanish - Latin America), https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1933948095, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1933948668, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1934517923, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1335577943, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1640213502, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1640214586, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1937826505, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1937931692. When I say ", You know you've nailed it correctly if, when you're in level flight, your. Challenges It may take some practice to hit your target area this way, because you'll be picking up additional horizontal speed, and thus it's possible to under or overshoot. 3x06: I design a new, high altitude, jet to collect high. Though I'm still working on learning to be better at space planes. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Also, jets eat fuel at pounds-per-minute -- if you cover twice as much ground in the same time, your plane will be more efficient. Watch out for your SAS if you're running batteries without a jet for a long time. All rights reserved. Then it is "In Space Low over Mun.". These designs are great for getting around Kerbin quickly, but without going orbital. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. That annoys me but I can't seem to get a design to make it work. Kerbal Space Program Jool Landing Youtube. i recently used a single whiplash plane and was able to maintain a stable 21-22k meter altitude. At about 400-500m/s (~15km), the two engines are even. rev2023.3.3.43278. For more information, please see our But a rockets can do it. Immediately starting rocket engines at full throttle turned out to make most of my aircrafts totally unstable, turning them up gradually worked way better. I also set it to enable the cockpit's reaction wheels to improve control at high altitude, and close air intakes to reduce drag. Thanks for asking this, I've been struggling with the same problem in career mode. The X-37 is operated by the United States Space Force for orbital spaceflight missions intended to demonstrate reusable space technologies. (the engines will use very little at high altitude anyway). I don't have any exact numbers for you, but you can right-click an engine in flight and it will show both current and optimal airflow, which should hopefully let you work out the best altitude. You can spin around the whole world on just fumes. Thanks. as a rule of thumb they all lose thrust at higher altitudes and at high velocities. The most efficient way is, of course, to make a high altitude (or space) plane. If you enter the Mun's SOI, it immediately counts as "In Space High over Mun" until you get below 60km Mun altitude. Have you checked out the wiki yet? 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Make sure we're on the same page with terminology. The longest flight got them down to a little more than half full. Building a rocket to fly vertical seems to be nearly impossible, in the atmosphere they tend to become unstable (or maybe I missed a trick?). My 'plane science' is more advanced than my 'rocket science' (career mode) because I got tired of seeing all the high-altitude missions I had on the books and wanted to finish them. Additionally please know that .16 will feature new code that will change the way space planes work in every aspect. - Inside the atmosphere works the same way, except you need to be on an suborbital trajectory. Even better, burn a little more, and you can pop out of the atmosphere for a bit and avoid all that nasty drag stuff. Why that? It's also worth noting that this engine has the widest thrust vectoring range of all of the jet engines, with a full 10-degree range in all directions. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. I'm going to try adding a small solid fuel rocket engine toned down to get the initial height then dump it, as well as check into that high end gear mentioned. The other thing to bear in mind is that tuning the AoA (angle of attack) of your wings makes a difference. I don't have that cockpit in my career game yet, but maybe it will work with the other one. I am currently designing a mission that will involve several very long distance plane flights. The main body is a fuel tank with a Swivel engine at the end. KSP Career: Episode 13 - High Altitude Surveys Mike Aben 28.5K subscribers Subscribe 7.7K views 7 years ago Day 114: A busy day at the KSC with three missions, the highlights being the launch. 600+ m/s) and low altitudes (e.g. Thrust means that slower-is-better no longer applies: now, slower means less drag but more gravity, so there's a tradeoff (which I'm not going to carefully calculate for you, because it's hard). The Panther engine can hold 19,000 steady and oscillates around 20,000. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. Chapter 4. Highest and fastest possible is best. These are the building blocks of solid spaceplane design!Subscribe! Ep. Powered by Invision Community, Thanks, I'll go try to stuff a few extra turbojets and intakes on my plane, I was generally under the impression that basic jets were mostly deadweight on high-performance aircraft: [] at hypersonic velocities. Is it suspicious or odd to stand by the gate of a GA airport watching the planes? FAR is supposed to take aspect into account, but I'm not very experienced with it and cannot advice you as to how it works. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. How do I align things in the following tabular environment? Slap that behind a plane you'll be able to go beyond 20km without any trouble. Don't rely on the efficiency indicator! - Insane TWR didn't help. Personally, I don't enjoy survey contracts on Kerbin. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. I also added a parachute and decoupler since I find it too hard to correctly land this thing yet ;-) I managed to land in the water once, though. Grichmann's answer has been the most reliable way I've found to complete these missions. Orbiting is the most fun one: the higher the orbit, the less speed you need to maintain to stay in orbit, *and* the less air there is, so that's a double-whammy in terms of reducing fuel consumption. Also, Valley and Theomon fly to different corners of Kerbin and three mapping satellites are launched. Subscribe - http://www.youtube.com/c/MikeAben?sub-confirmation=1 Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/MikeAbenPatreon supporters receive early, ad-free, access to videos, kOS and craft files, and more. Discord - https://discord.gg/HTvT7dZ Making Space Home Playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB3Ia8aQsDKhqoFyoZ4d33MG7rS9KmDm_0:00 - Designing the Dudley Mk16:42 - Test Flights \u0026 Iterating13:45 - Col. Valley take the Seaplane to the Northern Ice Shelf19:30 - Launch \u0026 Insertion of the Maxwell Vb21:04 - Col. Theomon \u0026 Orlin Visit the Badlands in the Panther24:20 - Launch \u0026 Ejection of the Maxwell VI26:34 - Designing the SENTINEL 129:47 - Launch \u0026 Insertion of the Maxwell VIIFull List of Mods: Aviation Lights Chatterer Community Tech Tree Crew R\u0026R Croud Sourced Science Contract Configurator Contract Packs: Bases and Stations Reborn CommNet Relays Exploration Plus Field Research Kerbal Academy Tourism Plus Contracts Window+ Decoupler Shroud Easy Vessel Switch Kerbal Alarm Clock Kerbal Attachment System Kerbal Construction Time Kerbal Engineer Redux Kerbal Inventory System Kerbalism kOS KRASH Maneuver Node Evolved Navball Alignment Indicator Near Future Aeronautics Near Future Construction Near Future Electrical Near Future Propulsion Near Future Solar Near Future Spacecraft Persistent Rotation Rational Resources RCS Build Aid Continued Restock Restock+ SCANsat Scrapyard SMART Parts Stage Recovery Stockalike Station Parts Expansion Redux TAC Fuel Balancer Texture Replacer Trajectories Transfer Window Planner Universal Storage 2 Unkerballed Start Waypoint Manager Don't worry about Isp. Mounting a time-limited rescue mission for kerbal inbound to Kerbin. You do get certain inertial and lever-arm effects, but those aren't really relevant to 'do I have enough lift to stay up'. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. It only takes a minute to sign up. Make sure you've angled your wings up slightly so that you provide enough lift for a 0 angle of attack at top speed. However, it seems as if your delta wing has has more area, might that be it? Display as a link instead, High altitude flight is efficient because the air is thinner, and therefore aircraft experience less parasitic drag. So that means that even if you are inside the atmosphere but still orbital (such as during aerobraking), your science will not count as "Inside the atmosphere", For example, orbiting Kerbin above 250km altitude, your science is counted as "In Space High over Kerbin." If you've attached them to your fuselage with zero AoA, what that means is that when you fly, you're going to have to have the entire plane pitched slightly above in order to generate lift. Thanks, I'll go try to stuff a few extra turbojets and intakes on my plane Do you know how many intakes/turbojet are needed to run in the regime you described? Valve Corporation. I checked the wiki before I wrote my question, it seems I overread this paragraph Something that I think has become less clear since someone updated the wiki. Ok, the panther engine is still not good enough. Press J to jump to the feed. Is there a single-word adjective for "having exceptionally strong moral principles"? How to tell which packages are held back due to phased updates. This causes the body of your plane to generate additional drag. I don't have that other stuff yet. This makes jets built using this engine considerably more maneuverable. Approximately 12km up the main engines stop providing enough thrust to maintain the climb, so it's time to switch to rocket mode. My question is really about controllability. It is somewhat slow but very steady in flight. It is designed to aid in player-controlled flight on generic (space)plane, providing a soft layer between user joystick\keyboard input and control surface outputs. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site.