The default max stress value is just ridiculous, its like flying in hair gel, everything gets torn apart so easily, like that will ever happen in real life. Control surfaces are heavier than wings. Drive gently off the runway and use the huge grassy field to take off, without care in the world about the plane veering to a side. Hit the launch button and watch your magnificent bird fly! This page was last edited on 14 April 2021, at 01:04. As with everything in KSP, experiment, experiment, experiment. You need to make sure that the Orange axis on the rotate sphere is parallel to your, nose-tail axis. So I started a new career file after not really playing for a long time and I'm now at the point where I just dropped 45 Science to unlocked Aviation to get some of the plane parts that I need. KSC's runway is slightly north of Kerbin's equator and perfectly flat. So yesterday I was playing some KSP2, and resumed the game from a save where I had landed in Duna. I was wrong. Lift maxes out at 30 and declines beyond that point, so avoid excessive fuselage tilt.[1]. Having landing gears near the front and back of your aircraft can also help to ensure that you won't break your engines or smash your cockpit into the runway. Such as not producing lift, which is not what you want with a plane. Even a small deviation can cause serious instability, making your aircraft bounce and jolt left and right even during takeoff. Here is your convenient solution to this problem! For an example, see the A-10 Warthog's landing gears: link. Be warned that if you do not provide sufficient air intakes for the engines you've placed, you may find that some of your engines shut down before others. If your spaceplane is difficult to land when full of fuel but easy to land when empty, then it may be helpful to burn off or transfer out most of the excess fuel before landing to make the aircraft lighter. everytime i make a powered plane, it always flips over and points backwards after i take off. Some testing is usually required with new designs to determine the best ascent profile. Having said all that, these are the issues you must contend with. Keep your spaceplane pointed about 90 degrees above prograde so that the wings and body of your aircraft slow you down as much as possible. However, I want to place my wheels where i want to and not only on X parallel surfaces. You main problem is your landing gear. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Similar principles apply when finding suitable landing sites away from the KSC. In contrast, if you attempt a landing at the KSC runway on a 270 degree bearing, you run the risk of colliding with the upward slope shortly beyond the runway if you can't slow down initially and then can't speed up fast enough. Notice how the landing gears are placed out on the wings. 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. If you can't slow down in time, you can simply flick your engines back on to take off and turn around for another try as you pass over the coast. if mounted on not struted part). Aim to get your speed below 50m/s, and have plenty of water ahead of you; keep the plane level, and pitch up to shed velocity. To minimize drag, vertical tail fins can be kept minimal, since aircraft can be maneuvered adequately by roll and pitch alone. Any ideas? You could do it the kerbal way by attaching two SRBs to the nose of the plane pointing upwards. I have never successfully landed a single aircraft before as they all tend to roll over when landing at high speed. Note: Some high-efficiency rocket engines lose most of their power and efficiency in low atmosphere. Unstable Aircraft: "FAR Firehound" (Stock). 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. This is also the same reason why planes start rolling toward the middle of the runway; because both ends of the runway are further from . (For test purposes, all aircraft are not pitched up and SAS is turned off. 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. For all your gaming related, space exploration needs. I just thought my planes were too heavy or not enough control surfaces. I shouldn't have placed landing gears on the fuselage, I found that placing landing gears on flat surfaces like wings make landing gears a lot more stable. T-1 "Dart" engines are unique amongst conventionally-fuelled rocket engines: They have close to the highest efficiency in both vacuum and low atmosphere. LV-N exceeds 75% of its full power at just 7700m altitude on Kerbin. It is advised to place your control surfaces as far from your center of mass as possible. I have also thought about a wider base. This can easily cause you to crash on landing. Conversely, if you keep all of the fuel in the back, you may find that your center of mass gradually drifts so far in front of your center of lift that you can't keep your nose up anymore, also potentially resulting in a fatal scenario. Your link has been automatically embedded. Powered by Invision Community. A FedEx cargo plane in Austin nearly landed on a runway where a Southwest flight was preparing to take off. For example, having your landing gears located near the ends of the wings is an easy way to ensure that you don't roll and shred your wings when landing or taking off. Not sure why you would want that stability for speeds in excess of 200 m/s though, as most planes will take off and land at far slower speeds. (Sorry For Poor Image Quality) : r/KerbalAcademy 385 votes, 49 comments. Why is it doing this? How wide is the base. Hello, I am having a small problem with a plane I have built. Plane spins/lurches to the side during takeoff? 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. A Mk1 Cockpit, two Mk 1 Liquid Fuel Tanks, and then cap the back with a round nose cone (use the A/D keys to rotate it as necessary). If your aircraft is burning up during this stage, you may need larger wings to slow you down faster, radiator panels to carry away the heat more effectively, parts with a higher temperature tolerance (like the Mk2 liquid fuel fuselage instead of the Mk1 liquid fuel fuselage), or parts to increase your maneuverability, like RCS thrusters, reaction wheels, or canards and elevons. I feel tat it is either due to the symmetry placement in this game being inaccurate or certain parts where i anchor my landing gears on are not perfectly symmetrical and the physics calculation is just too sensitive about even the slightest misalignment. First, I'm sure this is WAY overengineered, but I haven't gotten to the point of caring about that yet. Even if you can takeoff, landing will usually destroy tat aircraft so survival rate on an aircraft for a typical kerbal is nearly zero. Saves a lot of headache in wheels placement. Your previous content has been restored. My Space Plane Keeps Flipping Backwards On The Runway. With a tail-dragger, the plane is already angled up just sitting on its wheels so once the speed is high enough, it should just float up by itself. If rear landing gear are strutted together, or braced to a center point, they are less likely to torque in different directions. Clear editor. When your altitude reaches 35km, start pulling up gently. Those and the fixed main gear are NOTORIOUSLY bouncy. Now I'll walk you through a basic aircraft; fancy stuff like science equipment can be added later. Alternatively, you can try landing at higher speeds with your nose pointed further down, but this increases challenges with stability and deceleration while on the runway. LV-N "Nerv" nuclear thermal rockets are commonly used on SSTOs for the rocket stage if Rapiers are not used. The Mk1 fuselage parts only tolerate up to 2000K, while Mk2 fuselages tolerate up to 2500K, and Mk3 fuselages tolerate up to 2700K. Then you want to put something called a "Small Circular Intake" on the front of the tank, and a "J-20 Juno" engine on the back of the tank. If you placed the main wings at the centre of mass and then added the smaller wings behind, this should be correct already. It's a prolem enough I have sever differen gear subassemblies that are stable (un wobbly) I can then position depending on COM. Check out the following guide for some good info: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures - KSP - YouTube 0:00 / 31:25 Flying a Space Station through a GAS GIANT! my center of lift is always slightly infront of my mass. So if I start encountering wobble it's time to pull back on the stick and get in the air. Descending greater than -10 m/s usually makes a mess. If you've been able to successfully re-enter on previous low orbit test runs, you should be able to use this method to achieve similar rates of success once you've slowed down sufficiently. This is starting to get really frustrating. It is also advisable to add some control surfaces to your plane to have some control in the atmosphere: you can manually add them to the wings or choose winglets with effective control surfaces, like the Standard Canard. 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. Also note that shock cone intakes appear to provide the best air supply at all mach speeds, and unlike other air intakes, they do not decline in performance beyond certain mach speeds. 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. This is all right if their high efficiency saves enough fuel, but that may not be the case in small spaceplanes with limited fuel capacity. Enable mirror symmetry to save yourself some alignment effort. I am accelerating it to over 200m/s on the runway just to test the stability of those wheels since the faster you go, the more likely the plane will wobble and flip on the runway. Firstly, inadequate air intakes for the number and type of engines you're using (causing some engines to shut down before others). Suggest a Correction Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. To avoid wobble, wheels need to be absolutely vertical, and they shouldn't be attached to something that is likely to flex as speed builds up, as this could also affect the vertical alignment. Here's a quick installment in to the. 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. Here are a few pictures of it: Take a picture with center of mass and center of lift turned on. FOX 56 News Video More Videos Either one of those being misaligned will cause instability on the runway during takeoff (and the engines misaligned will cause flight problems). Note: This is ONLY to be used to report spam, advertising, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts. For heavy rockets, it might be required to use structure to space the gears away from the body to allow more pitch. Next you need landing gear. I have done everything imaginable to try to remedy this problem. Just like with rockets, get some courageous Kerbal in the cockpit and let's get started! 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. 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. The plane is clearly unstable. Increasing the number of intakes will not allow you to continue using your jet engines at higher altitudes. Ailerons to roll your aircraft should be placed as far off to the edges of your wings as possible. Now for the engines. When I use it for spaceplane guidance it keeps me on the correct heading, but the flight is very busy sine wave of a path. First try speed over land reached over 210 m/s before flipping in the last second. Display as a link instead, You can also angle the wings themselves slightly upwards (using WASDQE) in order to make them generate more lift when horizontal. While all other cargo bays are fine for making spaceplanes, the Mk3 Cargo Ramp produces obscene amounts of drag, which can easily prevent reaching orbital velocities by itself. 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. However, it's not a matter of "atmosphere or not", just a matter of air pressure which decreases rapidly with altitude. Note that no wings will tolerate more than 2400K, so the difference in temperature tolerance between Mk2 and Mk3 fuselages isn't terribly significant. Valve Corporation. They all had to use the runway drop to take off. The centre of mass was between the 2 landing gears. Canards and horizontal tail fins should be placed as far towards the front and back of your aircraft as possible, respectively. As lift increases you remove some strain on the gear, however you've just increased the amount of sag. (Yes, you personally, you lucky thing! All of them had one thing in common though. At around . 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? Real planes do this as well. KSP Stock Space Shuttle by _ForgeUser18393701. You probably won't have much luck landing the fuselage intact if your Mk3 plane gets its wings scorched off on reentry. When I Start Why Engine, It Goes Straight But As Soon As I Takeoff. KSP v.22 Takeoff Troubleshooting Guide/Tutorial Lots of info to help get your plane off the runway! It is also said that a good landing is one you can walk away from. While I am not a great plane builder there is a part in the structural (I think it is a pylon?) Make sure that all of your landing gears are pointing in exactly the same direction. In vanilla KSP, wings have a predefined lift factor. So I have played the game for 200 hours and I love it. All I have are the parts from the Aerodynamics tech and the gear bay (wheels). 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. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. Note that the lift rating does not mean that the wings will automatically lift a spaceplane into the air when it's moving forward. You want to start by attaching a Mk 0 Liquid Fuel Tank under the wings, making sure you're mirrored so it goes under both wings. Cure: Draw a mental axis from the nose to the tail of the plane and use the rotate tool (summetry on), on one of the wheels. This is good for spaceplanes operating in low-oxygen atmospheres where jet engines can't be used. This thread is quite old. 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! Note that most air intakes tend to produce less drag than aerodynamic nose cones and pointy cockpits, especially shock cone intakes. When your nose is stable at about 10 degrees above the horizon, pull up hard and keep it pulled. It provides a wider, more stable wheel base while keeping the wheels straight up and down (no camber). I have no problems using Mechjeb to launch rockets into orbit, rendezvousing and docking with other craft. Cookie Notice One idea I haven't noticed here yet: "wire up" the landing gear, with strut connectors. Thanks for all the help. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. S5 moon rocket by lightbreaker_64. This is just a general briefing section with lots of "to do" or "not to do" things: when you think you've got it, check the Aeris 4A tutorial mission to learn how to get into space easily. How to Fly a Plane - KSP Beginner's Tutorial - YouTube 0:00 / 25:53 How to Fly a Plane - KSP Beginner's Tutorial Mike Aben 30.6K subscribers 78K views 2 years ago KSP - Absolute Beginner's. Valve Corporation. There are several forces in Kerbal Space Program which have an effect on the flight characteristics of SSTO craft. Check out the following guide for some good info: Your wheel base is the problem. One final point to consider is the mass you're planning to store in the fuselage. 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). 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). You can slow down either by deploying landing gears (and airbrakes if you have them) or by repeatedly pitching up and then back down to increase your drag. 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. To survive re-entry, it's recommended to start your approach back into the atmosphere at a shallow angle, ideally with a periapsis of around 30-35 km. To survive re-entry, it's recommended to start your approach back into the atmosphere at a shallow angle, ideally with a periapsis of around 30-35 km. Your link has been automatically embedded. If you're planning on landing on a somewhat uneven surface, like an open grassland somewhere on Kerbin or an island on Laythe, consider packing some parachutes for deceleration. I do add a strut to each wheel out of habit since my earlier versions use to roll, better safe than sorry. Upload or insert images from URL. This page was last edited on 19 February 2020, at 07:08. Clear editor. 6.4K Downloads Updated Jun 7, 2017 Created Jun 7, 2017. . You should have something called an "Elevon 1"; this will be the moving part for your wings. I found biggest cause of this as well as not being able to possibly correct is having sas on during takeoff, make sure that is off during take off and should find problem is less likely to occur, but I too struggle to make working space planes even when center of lift, mass, thrust are all as needed. Maybe ;making the tailwheel less stiff would help, too. Slowly pitch up to avoid overheating. Kerbal Space Program 2's simulation is a lot more in-depth than its predecessor, where it was feasible for any wannabe Goddard to punch through the atmosphere with overwhelming thrust. An alternative is making sure you have complete control of the craft. But regardless of that, try very hard to let the plane fly itself off the ground without you applying any controls. This makes them a very effective choice for SSTOs since they do a good job of getting maximum velocity out of air-breathing mode, and then allow you to use oxidizer without needing the added weight and drag of a separate rocket engine.