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. So I'm pretty darn new to KSP, and my career has barely gotten started, and the jobs for crew observations seem to dominate 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. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one. Most SSTO space planes would be able to accomplish this easily. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. A jet engine from KSP 0.18 A jet engine is an air-breathing engine which uses onboard liquid fuel and combusts it with the oxygen drawn from the atmosphere. That annoys me but I can't seem to get a design to make it work. i dont know what kind of range youre looking for but i would make a significantly smaller plane. First off as of .15.1 intakes don't do anything. If not, please explain why, which I know you have no problem doing! I did some testing and found that the turbojets get the best Isp around 5.2 km altitude, so I was thinking of flying at that altitude. jet engine efficiency in this game is based on built in thrust curves. Thanks for the help! 2.) 20 votes, 21 comments. More air is better. If the wings are flat and your plane steadily loses altitude in level flight at a given speed (as most designs will by default), it means you either need to pitch up slightly, increasing the angle of attack and keeping your vertical velocity at 0 by flying up slightly to compensate for the pull of gravity that lift isn't compensating for. Now I have a plane that will fly around the world at an altitude of the low-20s. It only takes a minute to sign up. This page was last edited on 22 December 2019, at 20:54. Arqade is a question and answer site for passionate videogamers on all platforms. Each stage of the rocket has a delta-v that depends on the stage fuel mass and the engine specific impulse. The longest flight got them down to a little more than half full. In addition to the traditional giant tube of explosions that flings things up high approach, Kerbal Space Program includes a very useful piece of equipment that became quite popular in the 20th century: wings.. Of course, this thing has very limited range, speed and acceleration because of the extra weight. If that's all a case of Too Many Words, think of it this way: Suppose you just build a plane the "default" way and don't put any. I've since shaved that down more but that was by going even higher and even faster). 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). 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. Yes, although they have only been flown with nearly full tanks. That will unlock: The most efficient way is, of course, to make a high altitude (or space) plane. 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. Personally, I don't enjoy survey contracts on Kerbin. Strictly speaking this optimisation is unnecessary, but it can win you a bit of range. The thrust of jets (turbo or otherwise) depends on airspeed: basics deliver more thrust at low speeds, while turbojets only really come into their own when you fly very fast (which also means flying very high, 20km and over). At the equator, sea level temperatures vary between a nighttime low of 9 C and a daytime high of 15 C. The second, Wet mode, uses the afterburner to produce thrust almost equal to the J-X4 "Whiplash" Turbo Ramjet Engine, but at a considerably reduced fuel efficiency. If you upgrade to the panther (or get one on a contract) that engine can get you much higher. They will someday, but they don't now. Note that you need to activate the afterburner ("Wet Mode") manually. 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 As long a you can fly faster, the lower density at altitude can be compensated for. These are the building blocks of solid spaceplane design!Subscribe! Dedicated to the growth and advancement of amateur rocket scientists! Let me. Cookie Notice You can halve the drag by climbing a bit less than 3500m. What are the altitudes for the various altitude record contracts? (the engines will use very little at high altitude anyway). You cannot paste images directly. - "In Space High" means your craft is inside the given Sphere of Influence and above the "Space Border" altitude listed in the Celestial Body Multiplier Matrix. When I say ", You know you've nailed it correctly if, when you're in level flight, your. Your link has been automatically embedded. @SaintWacko's advice is probably the most practical. I started by attaching two LV-909 rocket engines to a regular low-atmosphere plane: In this save, I don't have custom action groups yet, so I'm using the RCS control to toggle between jet and rocket modes. Thank you, I was able to reach up to 24km altitude with this design. Pasted as rich text. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. The drag differential is because your long-wing layout is using a bunch of struts, and the reason your delta-wing has a higher ceiling is because it has more wing area to provide lift. Pretty often, the tail "wiggled" and/or the plane became totally unstable when I fired the rocket boosters. Once you're at that regime, you should be able to cover huge distances on tiny amounts of fuel. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Is anywhere a list of the altitude levels (I don't know a better term) available? How can this new ban on drag possibly be considered constitutional? 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?). The returns are diminishing so eventually you will hit a ceiling. The stratospheric region, where temperature rises as altitude increases, spans the region between the altitudes of 10 km and 22 km. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. Incidentally, for these speeds and altitudes, ordinary jets are the better choice. Unfortunately, there's no simple rule to tell you what the angle needs to be when you're building the plane-- it depends on lots of variables, such as your weight, drag, intended cruising altitude, intended cruising speed. Information Changelog Stats Thats my problem right now. 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'm trying to build a high altitude plane and have found out that the rules are different. Not only does it conk out at high altitudes, but also it conks out at high speeds, and you need to be able to go fast to fly up high. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. That would argue for going as high as possible, as slow as possible, but apart from drag you also have to fight gravity. Your answer got me in the right direction, though I ended up with a different design (see my own answer). Put a couple of radial mount parachutes just above the com and add a reaction wheel. Ok, the panther engine is still not good enough. 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. - Insane TWR didn't help. Air Intake) and how fast your aircraft ultimately flies (air resistance/altitude)! June 3, 2022 . 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). This thread is quite old. But maybe your patience? Don't be too surprised if KSP's aero model breaks down in edge cases. Clear editor. The Boeing X-37, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), is a reusable robotic spacecraft. Powered by Invision Community. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. The flight time won't be as long, but you'll be able to fly a "plane" above 18km. To reach the initial low Earth orbit of the International Space Stationof 300 km (now 400 km), the delta-v is over six times higher, about 9.4 km/s. Trying to do something without the right part is long and difficult path. You arent doing anything wrong. Pasted as rich text. KSP also tends to have very harsh induced drag if angle of attack gets too high. Highest and fastest possible is best. 3x06: I design a new, high altitude, jet to collect high atmospheric science. 3x06: I design a new, high altitude, jet to collect high. But you'll need to unlock: High Altitude Flight Which cost 300 science. 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. 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. So if you replace the turbos with basic jets, you will have more thrust from the ground up, and your vessel will weigh slightly less. You will find that when you're flying around, will always be slightly below the crosshairs on the navball. A little while back I spent a long time trying to circumnavigate Kerbin on the least liquid fuel possible (i posted the record to the sub: 254 units of fuel. Or you need to put a little bit of angle of incidence in your wings, which will reduce drag since you don't have to pitch the entire plane up, but will be stuck at a fixed angle meaning you'll have to pitch up or down anyway during certain phases of the flight that the plane isn't optimised for. Make sure you've angled your wings up slightly so that you provide enough lift for a 0 angle of attack at top speed. The most obvious solution is try and optimize your craft for high altitude lift by giving it long wingspan like a U-2 spyplane. No, I think it's correct, unless I've got a brain fart going, here. Here's Mr. Manley using it in his tutorial: @Pvt.Grichmann: I think it's at specific locations on Kerbin, not just anywhere above 18km. Using indicator constraint with two variables, Is there a solution to add special characters from software and how to do it. If it's below the cross-hairs, you need a little more AoA. If drag were the only concern, at any given altitude the slower you go, the less fuel you need: the work done by drag over a distance grows linearly with speed (the force grows quadratically with speed, but the time falls linearly). And how many km can I expect to get per v (as calculated by Engineer redux Kerbin atmospheric stats, I know this is weird with planes)? - but they were talking about having two intakes/engine. Slap that behind a plane you'll be able to go beyond 20km without any trouble. as a rule of thumb they all lose thrust at higher altitudes and at high velocities. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. 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. Your previous content has been restored. 1 1: The basics 2 2: Setting it up 3 3: First flight 4 4: Finishing touches 1: The basics First of all, you're going to need an airplane.
ksp high altitude plane