Nothing bad will happen. While having the same stock parts as in the VAB, spaceplane design is obviously quite different from pure rocket design. When your jet engines stop working, it is time to ignite the old, reliable liquid fuel engine. Upload or insert images from URL. - Make sure the landing gear is as close to the center of gravity as possible, just slightly behind it (for nosewheel aircraft). Because of how small Kerbin is and how high its gravity is, a perfectly flat surface just north of the equator will cause planes taking off to bias to the right of the runway, as if they were rolling downhill. Heavy transport seaplane inspired to the Soviet Beriev A-40 Albatros which also appears in Evangelion 2.0! What you ought to be using is the Swept Wings and Elevon 1s instead of the Delta-Deluxe Winglets. If you use an Advanced SAS, and raise your front landing wheel so that it is higher than the rear wheels, by just turning the SAS on and going full throttle, due to the 10 degree angle of the plane, it should eventually take off by itself. - SF. T-1 "Dart" engines are unique amongst conventionally-fuelled rocket engines: They have close to the highest efficiency in both vacuum and low atmosphere. However, they are extremely heavy for their power, weighing as much as a conventional rocket nearly 11 times more powerful. You can even try refueling it before recovering your spaceplane further increasing your recovering value. LV-N has less than 25% of its full power at Kerbin sea level. I have also thought about a wider base. Now imagine what happens like that. Also note that for maximum efficiency, you should make sure that your horizontal control surfaces are rotated to exactly the same pitch that you've rotated your wings. How wide is the base. This plane will be able to take off, travel somewhere, perform a crew report, and then land. There are multiple ways to place them: Ailerons control the roll of the aircraft, and are (almost) always placed on the wings, as far out as possible and as centered (compared to the center of mass) as could be. Also, try this mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/99660-0-25-Adjustable-Landing-Gear-v1-0-4%28doors-fixed%29-Nov-14 (still works in 0.90 if you get updated firespitter.dll). Control surfaces are heavier than wings. Edit: I made a simple easy plane in career mode that is both stable and cheap: A trick i've used before is to put modular girders on the sides of the fuselage and putting the gear on the bottom of the girders. If you have trouble pitching up enough to land at a reasonable speed, you can increase your maneuverability by toggling your flaps, canards and ailerons to greater than 100% control authority. 1. tilt of the plane. The problem could be about the angle of wheels, though there could be more problems with the COM and wheels placement. Landing can be trickier for spaceplanes since they are designed for higher speeds than other aircraft and may not be able to fly level at speeds low enough for an easy landing (<50 m/s). Elevators are usually places in the front or back of an aircraft, and their function, as the name implies, is to change the pitch of the nose up and down. KSC's runway is slightly north of Kerbin's equator and perfectly flat. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Display as a link instead, To maximize lift, your aircraft should rest on the ground with the fuselage tilted upward at anywhere up to a 25-27 angle so that the wings will end up tilted back at up to 30. Need to move them up. An altitude set to 18,000 meters tops off at 19,000 meters and drops to 15,700 meters . Note: This tutorial was last updated for version 1.7.2. As you would expect, spaceplanes need wings: they have various shapes and dimensions, and they differ basically in lift rating: you will want to have enough lift to keep your fuselage approximately prograde during your ascent to orbit. A control surface with 100% control surface portion will weigh twice as much as a wing with the same lift would weigh. You can deploy your chutes just prior to touchdown for rapid deceleration. You can also use parachutes on landing, but care must be taken to ensure that an adequate length of runway remains since you'll only get one chance to use them. With initial passes, you start off with a periapsis at 50-60 km and gradually lower your apoapsis until you're in an almost circularized low orbit and then transition to your usual re-entry approach. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries. Thanks for the help guys. FOX 56 News Video More Videos When flying straight the plane is pretty stable but pitching up causes a sharp roll and I cant figure out why. Why is it doing this? Note that canards are somewhat more efficient than horizontal tail fins since canards provide an upward force with upward rotation, and downward force with downward rotation. I have doubled the max stress value for aerodynamics failure in FAR for every category. Landing also often requires rapid deceleration to avoid running off the end of the runway or crashing into a slope when landing on open terrain. Now stick a jet engine on the back, and don't forget to put an air intake or other air-sucking device (you can find them in aerodynamics) on the airplane. Balanced fuel saves Kerbal lives. LV-N engines also have the advantage of using the same liquid for propellant that jet engines use for fuel. 200 m/s runway stability just doesn't seem to have a worthwhile purpose to me, and is inducing counter productive engineering challenges. I have done everything imaginable to try to remedy this problem. Your plane is almost finished. FAR says it would take an Angle of Attack of 24.3 degrees at 119 m/s to generate enough lift to get it to take off. Landing speed (minimum speed for level flight) can be reduced by adding components to increase maneuverability, by using larger wings, by increasing wing angle of attack on the fuselage (3-5 degrees is the recommended range for a spaceplane to achieve the best lift-to-drag ratio [source]), and by decreasing the weight of the aircraft. @TheEnvironmentalist There is one more method I'm sure would work in your case, although I didn't write about it because I think it's cheesy and wouldn't solve the root problem. Keep at around 15 degrees to allow the plane to accelerate past 1000m/s. I just thought my planes were too heavy or not enough control surfaces. You should have something called an "Elevon 1"; this will be the moving part for your wings. Place your rear wheels/gear in front of the flaps on your wings. A good example of this is at the KSC runway when landing on a 90 degree bearing. You're going to have a bad time. The Whiplash's ridiculous fuel efficiency allows a spaceplane to climb high into the atmosphere and gain a lot of speed while barely using any fuel at all. Alright, it's late where I live so I'm gonna hit the hay and come back to it tommorrow, I read on the guide someone sent me and I think it is taht it doesn't have any way of pointing the up, so I'll tinker with some of the wings and see what I can do. If you plan on either dropping off cargo or picking up cargo and traveling with it, you'll generally want to locate your cargo bay at the middle of your center of gravity. Your previous content has been restored. I removed them and it works fine now. However it's huge size can make it tricky to take off from the runway without destroying the engine. The tutorial below explains everything very well. Vice versa a plane with lots of control surfaces will be perfectly controllable (maybe even too much) but may have big difficulties with taking off and landing at reasonable speeds. You can post now and register later. Make sure that all of your landing gears are pointing in exactly the same direction. See the tutorial below. At around . But, likely guess is your craft is not producing enough lift. And above all: have fun! Works well on small craft. If you are using B9 Rocketery or other parts that utilize Firesplitter, this is normal. These should be in the bottom left next to the display of the cost of the aircraft. DO NOT ANGLE THEM! Here are a few pictures of it: Take a picture with center of mass and center of lift turned on. 1. make sure your main gear is not wobbling (ie. You can also angle the wings themselves slightly upwards (using WASDQE) in order to make them generate more lift when horizontal. All of them had one thing in common though. Thank you and happy landings. . It's strongly recommended to keep your landing gears well-spaced from each other to ensure that the aircraft will be difficult to roll into a collision. Though, I use the FAR mod which will change things, so I can't guarantee the results will be useful, but it might be interesting. (For test purposes, all aircraft are not pitched up and SAS is turned off. The centre of mass was between the 2 landing gears. #2 DaSkippa Mar 14, 2014 @ 2:56am as Shkeec said check gear check gear check gear. However, don't bother going overboard with intakes because your engines will still shut off at high altitudes due to the low air pressure regardless of how many intakes you have. Your very own tutorial.). I have no problems using Mechjeb to launch rockets into orbit, rendezvousing and docking with other craft. Even a small deviation can cause serious instability, making your aircraft bounce and jolt left and right even during takeoff. Hopefully this gets you your first aircraft that can take off and land, which is the biggest hurdle to being able to make KSP aircraft. This aircraft handles smoothly, no matter how you turn, roll and flip this aircraft, it will never lose control. if its too far behind plane cannot lift. Keep your nose pointed prograde as you descend through the atmosphere. Display as a link instead, It is also common to add an Inline Clamp-O-Tron, which, unlike all the other docking ports, can be placed in the middle of the spacecraft (a handy solution, since there is not much space at either end of the craft) to allow your plane to dock with space stations or other spacecrafts. KSP Stock Space Shuttle by _ForgeUser18393701. The SSTO I took to Laythe recently has only one minor flaw using this design, I have to raise the landing gear and pull back slightly to take off. Before you can make a successful plane, you must understand what makes a plane go in places other than the ground - the wings. Your wheels should now have 0 degree angle between them, meaning they are both. EDIT: So, I set the front landing gear spring and damper to 0.5, and also set the tail gear spring and damper to 2, and the problem was fixed! Bit late i know, but i had the same problem. This is either a collider or design issue, if the craft doesn't have enough lift initially to get off the ground it will bounce a bit before taking off. If there is, I would have found it long ago. my planes keep flipping backwards on take off . As long as you're in space, your spaceplane won't differ from any spacecraft: you will probably want to add batteries and generators to prevent the command pod from running out of power. When your spaceplane rolls shortly after touchdown, veers to one side and then explodes on the runway, you have a problem with landing stability. Although I usually only need 50 m/s for most planes to wobble out of control. However, it's not a matter of "atmosphere or not", just a matter of air pressure which decreases rapidly with altitude. Try getting the wings to deflect the air down, either by lifting the front end up using canards or by mounting them at an angle using shift + wasdqe. Angled landing gear create rotational force for whatever reason. 2 will usually do nicely, but 3 or 4 are usually better (but of course heavier, and this tutorial assumes you use 2). Note that dropping off cargo from the back with a Mk3 Cargo Ramp is bad for more than one reason. Do agree that the rear wheels either need to be brought closer or or the Nenter of mass needs to be move closer to the rear wheels. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. First, I'm sure this is WAY overengineered, but I haven't gotten to the point of caring about that yet. everytime i make a powered plane, it always flips over and points backwards after i take off. Otherwise, you can either shift your wings till it's right (though this may crowd them near the back), or you can very slightly rotate the big wings so they're slightly higher near the front of the plane. I moved the back landing gear to right underneath the COM. In fact, nothing will happen at all, and that's probably bad, so put an air intake on your plane anyway. Any ideas? mods used are OPT for most of the body and the front canards and tail plane, B9 procedural wings for the wings, and mk4 spaceplane parts for the engines. I dunno why but this picture makes the one side look like it is tipped in but I know they are straight, I believe it just the angle that the picture was taken that is causing it to look like this. Beyond that, you're going to get some wobble once you get close to take off speed. Aircraft in this game is almost unfeasible, especially in career mode, you will lose all your money before you finally design an aircraft that can even takeoff. I have built lots of spaceplanes. wings, unless they're very well braced). When dealing with high-speed landings, you may touch down too quickly and cause the front of the plane to smack into the runway. Keep in mind that lift rating and control surfaces are not connected: lift rating is basically the capacity of your wings to sustain the weight of your spaceplane, while control surfaces are parts of wing that can be moved to change the flow of the air around the plane and through this change a plane's direction, angle of attack or inclination. So the answer is: in the SPH, click on your front gear, set the spring to .5 and set the damper to .5 -- then save it and give it another shot at launching. Suggest a Correction Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. They sometimes coincide with ailerons on some, more space-economical, aircraft. https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:_Basic_Plane_Design&oldid=97453, In the front of the plane - In this position, the control surfaces are also known as , In the back of the plane, on the tail - The most usual position; usually, close to the rudder. 2. Now for the engines. My plane usually take off at a little over 120m/s. If your rear wheels are too far back the aircraft will not be able to pivot on the wheels and lift its nose up. But I am still not sure if there are more reasons or perhaps it is just a physics bug which I am wasting my time on. This can easily cause you to crash on landing. They could go up to 120 m/s on the runway and still not lift up. If the problem has to do with lift then travelling very slowly, possibly even slower than that, should counteract the effects of lift and you won't drift nearly as much. However, I want to place my wheels where i want to and not only on X parallel surfaces. Even with a stable landing, you may find that you don't have enough room on your desired landing area to come to a stop before you reach the end. To avoid swerving on takeoff and landing, it is strongly recommended to turn off or reduce the strength of the front brake on your aircraft, as well as to reduce the friction control. (However, it must be noted that it is bad practice to use ailerons as elevators since it makes it hard to control the aircraft), The rudder moves the tip of the plane left and right; it is rarely used, since it is hard to put it both up and down due to the possibility of hitting the ground. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. Here's a quick installment in to the. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. The issue is my plane rolls very sharply to the left any time I pitch up. This is an important distinction; a plane with great lift rating but without any control surfaces will fly easily but will be almost uncontrollable. How do I fix this? But also check to make sure that your wheels are placed symmetrically and your engines are aligned properly. This page was last edited on 14 April 2021, at 01:04. Note: Some high-efficiency rocket engines lose most of their power and efficiency in low atmosphere. Consequently, atmospheric reentry is less dangerous with a Mk2 or Mk3 fuselage, compared to reentry with Mk1 fuselages. Besides the good advice others have given, I would also be very careful with that little tailwheel. Is there a way to rectify this problem. Or adding a RATO boosters. First of all, since the launch happens horizontally, you will have to include landing gears, and you will most likely want to include jet engines for the first stage for excellent fuel and cost efficiency. You should be able to navigate fairly readily, and with the superb efficiency of jet engines, you should have plenty of fuel to go anywhere you need to go. Second try, speed over land reached over 210 m/s and it didn't flip. Now right click each elevon and the tail fin and set what movement each controls; the ones on the large wings control roll only, the ones on the back wings control pitch only, and the tail fin controls yaw only. After a successful touchdown, high-speed motion on the runway (let alone uneven ground) can be unstable, causing the aircraft to careen to one side or the other, potentially resulting in loss of a wing and sometimes the entire aircraft. The same principle applies here. Is there a way to place landing gear so that i can guarantee my plane can remain stable on the runway even at high speed in excess of 200m/s? Note that when your jet engines shut down simultaneously while climbing in otherwise normal flight, it is generally due to a lack of pressure from the altitude you're flying at. I took off and at 60 m/s I was in the air! The design I used is similar to what I normally used for planes but I had to swap out parts and make it smaller to compensate for Career mode changes. You can either go with four "LY-O1 Fixed" or a tricycle of two LY-01 near the back and one "LY-05 Steerable" at the front; either is fine for now. Thanks for all the help. A Ravenspear Mk3 taking off from the Runway in version 1.0.5. See if there is still a problem when only travelling slowly, say <20m/s. When flying straight the plane is pretty stable but pitching up causes a sharp roll and I cant figure out why. Whether you're storing your fuel in fuselage sections, wing sections, or attached inside of cargo bays, it's generally a good idea to keep equal amounts of fuel at equal distances from your center of mass. Wow, if you need 200 m\s to take off, you should think about adding more lift. I just built a plane but when i launch it just slides and spins slowly to the right, any ideas on why this is happening? If that's not an option, you can still recover some value by landing at any suitable flat place on Kerbin.