They will someday, but they don't now. 20 votes, 21 comments. i recently used a single whiplash plane and was able to maintain a stable 21-22k meter altitude. What you should be concerned about is atmospheric drag, and that's minimized by high-altitude flight. That's just a guess, though-- perhaps someone more familiar with FAR could weigh in.). lost birth certificate near berlin; ksp high altitude plane. Designing a High Altitude Jet | KSP: Making Space Home Mike Aben 24.8K subscribers Join Subscribe 85 Share 3.4K views 1 year ago Ep. To get higher with the low tech jet engines, you need rocket assist. To avoid running out of fuel altogether, I have a second plane with small tanks (no oxidizer) attached directly to the jet engines, and the rockets attached behind the fuselage, which is entirely oxidized tanks. The Panther engine can hold 19,000 steady and oscillates around 20,000. Your link has been automatically embedded. The other thing to bear in mind is that tuning the AoA (angle of attack) of your wings makes a difference. It flames out at 25,000. For comparison, the second most maneuverable engine is the CR-7 R.A.P.I.E.R. Using Kolmogorov complexity to measure difficulty of problems? Or it can supercruise at three times the speed of an equivalent Wheesley jet (with nearly equal fuel efficiency) at 15,000 m altitude. Typically, I watch my Apoapsis as I boost to the high altitude, and there's enough momentum to coast to the peak before completely running out of fuel. If you enter the Mun's SOI, it immediately counts as "In Space High over Mun" until you get below 60km Mun altitude. : : . Air Flow: Air Flow represents with how much force air passes the turbine (notice: different amounts of air at the same speed equals in different amounts of force!). Be aware that heat buildup can gradually become a problem when the afterburners are used in sustained flight. Pretty often, the tail "wiggled" and/or the plane became totally unstable when I fired the rocket boosters. I've been trying my hand at some High altitude speedy planes for a while now, but can't seem to get a hang of the altitudes that each engine likes, I know kerbal isn't earth, so looking up the crushing altitude of say the sr71, doesn't seem to apply, but I was hoping that others experiences would help me. as a rule of thumb they all lose thrust at higher altitudes and at high velocities. - "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. Is it correct to use "the" before "materials used in making buildings are"? I didn't succeed with his design, though; I always ended up having somehow unstable airplanes. Do plugins for Kerbal Space Program work on unix? Jets drop thrust at higher altitude and speed, but also drop . 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?). There is no such thing as "so high radar can not detect it", since radar can detect things in outer space. Contents 1 Usage 2 Construction 3 Categories 3.1 Airplane 3.2 Seaplane 3.3 Spaceplane 3.4 VTOL 3.5 Glider 3.6 Mothership 4 Operation 4.1 Flight records 5 Notes Usage @SaintWacko's advice is probably the most practical. KSP - High Altitude Aircraft 16,702 views Jan 22, 2016 172 Dislike Share Save Phoenix Fleet Systems 222 subscribers Have a type of atmospheric craft you'd like to see me experiment with? - "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. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. 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. You could try combining the two. 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. Content titles and body; Content titles only As has been said, ISP is nothing to worry about. Ideally, you'll want to avoid these contracts until you get the High-Altitude Flight tech node and the improved jet engine that comes with it. Keep in mind that wheesley engine's performance decreases significantly as the altitude increases. You'll notice that usually your prograde marker is slightly below your pitch. You get tons of thrust if you put it into "wet" mode, but you lose fuel efficiency. Things that work at low altitude don't work so well up high and the plane ends up going up and down while slowly losing speed until it can't maintain altitude anymore. I looked into the .cfg files and there are no special properties allocated to them. Planes in Space. Display as a link instead, You will find that when you're flying around, will always be slightly below the crosshairs on the navball. You do get certain inertial and lever-arm effects, but those aren't really relevant to 'do I have enough lift to stay up'. This can be done with moar boosters or more calculated wing and body design, depending on the aero model you use. The Inland Kerbal Space Center itself, being in effect the old Kerbal Space Center from 0.2. EDIT: Essentially, make like an SR-71, if an SR-71 didn't have cooling problems limiting it to Mach 3.4. Only the fuel tanks attached to rockets have any oxidiser in them. Main goals: Auto-trimming. . As said above, the Wheesley is specifically designed as a low altitude engine. Maneuver node plans don't take drag into account, so you'll have to overshoot quite a bit to compensate. 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. I've since shaved that down more but that was by going even higher and even faster). You are simply running out of atmosphere (i.e. 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). Pvt. The more successful the flights, the more successful the space program is. Air Intake) and how fast your aircraft ultimately flies (air resistance/altitude)! How can this new ban on drag possibly be considered constitutional? So if you want to make a plane go as fast as possible, you want to minimise both angle of attack and angle of incidence necessary to sustain level flight at your target speed and altitude. Now lets combine these two indicators: The best performance your engine can achieve is when you have an optimal amount of Air Flow (obviously) but also the MAXIMUM amount of Air Intake. This thread is quite old. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. The main body is a fuel tank with a Swivel engine at the end. Challenges 3x06: I design a new, high altitude, jet to collect high. Strictly speaking this optimisation is unnecessary, but it can win you a bit of range. It seems to be based on the General Electric F-404 Afterburning Turbofan, which shares the same name and maximum thrust (85 kN dry). By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Which lets you go faster, which lets you climb higher. Along with rockets, planes are one of KSP's most commonly referenced kinds of vessel, and are a vessel type . The longest flight got them down to a little more than half full. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Which makes this engine ideal for those missions which require doing many science activities above particular altitudes. This is the first version. I'm in career mode and got all groups of the 45-science-cost level, except Flight Control, and additionally have Electrics, Heavy Rocketry and Fuel Systems. Clear editor. Have a plane that ditches its wings and rockets up to 18km once you reach the right point. Chapter 4. I currently have a contract where I'm asked to take crew reports at certain spots on Kerbal at an altitude of 18,000m. The X-37 is operated by the United States Space Force for orbital spaceflight missions intended to demonstrate reusable space technologies. A destructible memorial to the old Mk. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one. Upload or insert images from URL. 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. Check out the website and try the game out for yourself :Dhttps://kerbalspaceprogram.com/ First is thrust; the higher you get, the lower the thrust your engines deliver. Once you're at that regime, you should be able to cover huge distances on tiny amounts of fuel. Here's my example of dealing with the situation. Which is capable of high altitude, high speed flight. Another approach, which I was managing with some success before I figured out jets, is to build a rocket and catapult yourself towards the measurement point. The returns are diminishing so eventually you will hit a ceiling. 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. That's all true, but just read the OP: hypersonic appears to be completely out of the question. Originally posted by lord bird: yep thats right jool has a surface. Kerbal Space Program 2 . Once you're at that regime, you should be able to cover huge distances on tiny amounts of fuel. Privacy Policy. This causes the body of your plane to generate additional drag. If you upgrade to the panther (or get one on a contract) that engine can get you much higher. Trying to do something without the right part is long and difficult path. Welcome to the forums. Powered by Invision Community. I wasn't expecting so many excellent answers! You can post now and register later. It'll probably be more efficient with more intakes, but I wouldn't increase the number of engines. Using indicator constraint with two variables, Is there a solution to add special characters from software and how to do it. At the equator, sea level temperatures vary between a nighttime low of 9 C and a daytime high of 15 C. Don't be too surprised if KSP's aero model breaks down in edge cases. That's sub-optimal, because having the fuselage pitched like that means it'll have more drag than it otherwise would have. But since when do Kerbals wait for ideal conditions? Anyway thanks in advance. June 3, 2022 . The Boeing X-37, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), is a reusable robotic spacecraft. Fighting oscillations. Secondly don't think of engines working better at different altitudes, think of them working better with different air intake quantities. *I use FAR these days, which basically means completely replacing every spaceplane and rocket you ever designed to account for its much more realistic aerodynamics. I recommend using a solid rocket booster (or 2 or 5) to you get you the altitude and then launch a small rocket powered plane. AoA and G-force moderation. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. 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. Really. It is stable but can not maintain altitude. 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. Did any DOS compatibility layers exist for any UNIX-like systems before DOS started to become outmoded? Hopefully this will be helpful to you. Your answer got me in the right direction, though I ended up with a different design (see my own answer). (Disclaimer: I've never used FAR myself; all of the above is based on my experience with stock aerodynamics. If too much air runs into the turbine, the excessive amount just flows out unused through side-vents (I think). General Electric F-404 Afterburning Turbofan, Stratus-V Cylindrified Monopropellant Tank, Kerbodyne KR-2L+ "Rhino" Liquid Fuel Engine, LFB KR-1x2 "Twin-Boar" Liquid Fuel Engine, T-1 Toroidal Aerospike "Dart" Liquid Fuel Engine, S1 SRB-KD25k "Kickback" Solid Fuel Booster, IX-6315 "Dawn" Electric Propulsion System, AE-FF1 Airstream Protective Shell (1.25m), AE-FF3 Airstream Protective Shell (3.75m), PB-NUK Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?title=J-404_%22Panther%22_Afterburning_Turbofan&oldid=95515. 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. Yes. So, to correct " is below crosshairs", what you need to do is to add a little AoA to the wings. I'd almost expect it to work better in stock since infini-gliders can be done. That's because wings need to have some AoA to the airstream in order to generate much lift. http://www.youtube.com/user/Cruzanak?sub_confirmation=1Quicklinks to topics in this videoJet Engine Concepts: 0:30Air Intakes: 1:13Flameouts: 2:22Control Surfaces: 5:08Flying Tips: 5:57This video will go over everything that you need to know about to design a capable plane that can fly in the thinnest of atmospheres. Rockets aren t the only way to get to space. . Personally, I don't enjoy survey contracts on Kerbin. Whiplash is the engine you would want to use on a plane meant to go 20km. A full suite of flaps on the trailing edges of the main wings give it exceptional low-speed lift, and small hydroplane steps mounted on each side of the fuselage bottom help lift it out of the water (lowering water drag) during takeoff runs. Your engine burns the same amount of jetfuel per second regardless of how high or fast you are! The stratospheric region, where temperature rises as altitude increases, spans the region between the altitudes of 10 km and 22 km. 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. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com, Press J to jump to the feed. It was meant for low altitude flight. With only panthers unlocked I might add. Are you using Stock or NEAR/FAR? Or it can supercruise at three times the speed of an equivalent Wheesley jet (with nearly equal fuel efficiency) at 15,000 m altitude. Your airspeed is mostly limited by terminal velocity; you can go much faster if you climb a little higher. 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. You also need to be going very fast to generate adequate lift at high altitudes and unlike the real U-2, you don't need to fear about overspeeding and destroying the plane. I should perhaps start trying out NEAR to get ready of 0.90, though. AoA built into the wing relative to the plane body is called the angle of incidence, just to help clear up. Remember that you need to have intakes somewhere in line with the engine to function at that altitude. From my observations I can say that "Efficiency" is not a good indicator of how well your engine performs. 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. Press J to jump to the feed. - Insane TWR didn't help. These designs are great for getting around Kerbin quickly, but without going orbital. EDIT: Didn't notice you were using FAR. This means it is better to have excessive amounts of oxygen than not to. 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. high-2 A Screenshot of Kerbal Space Program Simply changing the intakes made it fly completely out of control and impossible to land. I decided to look into that two intakes thing, and it turns out to make 11-12 m/s difference at 19,000m with my plane. Ksp engine altitudes I've been trying my hand at some High altitude speedy planes for a while now, but can't seem to get a hang of the altitudes that each engine likes, I know kerbal isn't earth, so looking up the crushing altitude of say the sr71, doesn't seem to apply, but I was hoping that others experiences would help me. One of my planes is small and agile, and can easily enough glide to a safe landing even if the rockets consume all the fuel. 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. I am currently designing a mission that will involve several very long distance plane flights. This means that the only thing that decides wheter your engines run efficient is determined by how much thrust they produce (opt. Note that keeping the plane weight low is critical, only carry a very small amount of fuel. Even better, burn a little more, and you can pop out of the atmosphere for a bit and avoid all that nasty drag stuff. From my experience using a panther it starts to lose speed after 15-16 kms, a more suitable cruising height is 9-13km. When added to a plane it allows tuning of the controls vs speed/altitude/G load/other factors. Under some circumstances, you may want to reduce the engine gimbal range or disable it altogether, particularly when flying at high speeds (e.g. The Rapier, for example, works great as a high-altitude engine, precisely because it can go so fast. For all your gaming related, space exploration needs. edited 6 yr. ago. rev2023.3.3.43278. I followed a similar strategy. Listen to this guy, don't go much farther above 15000 with high altitude engines. What are the altitudes for the various altitude record contracts? These are the building blocks of solid spaceplane design!Subscribe! 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. 3x06: I design a new, high altitude, jet to collect high atmospheric science. I was generally under the impression that basic jets were mostly deadweight on high-performance aircraft: while they are superior for low-speed, low-altitude operations, they become deadweight at hypersonic velocities. 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. You can halve the drag by climbing a bit less than 3500m. Technically, any rocket engine is also a jet engine as it forms a high-speed jet of reaction mass. Aircraft can be very temperamental to fly, especially on the keyboard. 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). Slap that behind a plane you'll be able to go beyond 20km without any trouble. So the faster you go the higher you can fly where there is less drag. But. This lowers their effective "weight"-- for example, a craft flying at 1400 m/s on Kerbin is effectively flying as if gravity were only 2/3 of its actual value. Using very light "engine rich" planes and "reverse swooping" (building velocity at 10km then gently curving up) you can temporarily get above 20km with Wheesely and Juno. Air Flow + max. Very cool. If your using NEAR/FAR, once you get high and fast, kill the engine and glide to save fuel. 600+ m/s) and low altitudes (e.g. In this case lots of fuel is the wrong approach, I can get more than half way around Kerbin on 2 cans of Jet Fuel and a turbojet if I glide most of it. You can spin around the whole world on just fumes. its rather flat but its a solid surface. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Make sure we're on the same page with terminology. Thats my problem right now. The other one I stay around 6000 meters. 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. Kerbal Space Program ( KSP) is a space flight simulation video game developed by Mexican developer Squad for Linux, OS X, Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. It is boosted into space by a launch vehicle, then re-enters Earth's atmosphere and lands as a spaceplane. Well, this game isn't a perfect flight simulator yet, so it will be difficult to figure out. at the very least, you'd need the panther, that'll get you over 16k easily, well to 25k. 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. Any of my search term words; All of my search term words; Find results in. I'm trying to build a high altitude plane and have found out that the rules are different. So long as there's only one high-altitude measurement to take, you should be able to complete a whole set of 3-4 in one flight. The maximum cruise altitude is just over 40,000 feet. At sea level, it produces 120 kn thrust, but at 15 km altitude, it only produces 13.7 kn of thrust, barely enough to provide any thrust to climb higher, Long and narrow wing has less surface area to provide lift, and at higher altitude, the atmospher is so thin that the lift generated by long and narrow wings is insufficient for sustainable flight.