Equipped with a variant of the advanced ion engines of the ICR-01, the PIA-21 has the capability of taking off and landing vertically. The powerful effient engines located at the bottom of this spacecraft provide 1.4g's of accelerarion at sea level, and 4.5g's of acceleration at vaccum. It can reach any planet like it’s PIA-11 predecessor. And because of its vertical engines, it can now land on planet without atmospheres.
GENERAL INFO
- Successors 1 craft(s)
- Created On: iOS
- Game Version: 0.8.402.0
- Price: $69,670k
- Number of Parts: 125
- Dimensions: 7 m x 9 m x 37 m
PERFORMANCE
- Total Delta V: 0m/s
- Total Thrust: 1.2MN
- Engines: 10
- Wet Mass: 51,345kg
- Dry Mass: -41,303,128kg
STAGES
| Stage | Engines | Delta V | Thrust | Burn | Mass |
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3 Comments
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12.5k lordvader02194.9 years ago
@TopSecret2 I managed to land this craft on Cylero by reducing my horizontal speed in orbit using the VTOL engines at the bottom. I pointed the nose 90 degrees up and then kept the angle perpendicular to the direction of the plane. Once I got to 10km, I increased the thrust of the VTOL engines until the velocity was less than 100m/s. I then pulled down the nose to near horizontal, keeping it slightly above the horizon.
At this point is it important to keep the nose pointed in the direction of the craft, we wouldn’t want the landing gear to land on its side. Also make sure to keep the speed low and make sure the direction of the the descent is almost vertical.
Once the craft is near the ground, perform more burns to keep the velocity less than 10m/s. Be sure not to fire for too long or else the plane will fly upward and change direction. Then you will have to point your nose in that new direction.
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547 TopSecret24.9 years ago
There’s one problem pretty prevalent in all of your SSTO plane designs, especially the XIA and PIA planes: Airbrakes. Not that you can add parachutes but I tried to land the Tydos Rated spaceplane (your first one) on Cylero, and after flying across the entire planet and even turning north, it still flew at over 1000m/s. To say the least these planes are excellent at getting to speed, but landing these is harder than the ICR especially on planets where the atmosphere cannot slow you down well.
@lordvader0219
Ok, what about Droo? By which I mean how do you avoid the aerodynamic stability which makes the plane point prograde as it would be designed to if it were not to be used to vertically land. Cylero becomes then a situation where the atmosphere does not affect the aircraft enough to prevent a vertical landing, whereas in Droo... retrograde ion engines? Haha, then you get downward, backward and forward firing ion engines. But I don’t want to impose on your designs being terrible; they are truly amazing in terms of their use of this engine. However VTOL wise it’s a WIP.
Edit: oddly enough the hinge rotator lost the brake input. That was so useful for making airbrakes which would help tremendously in slowing this plane down in thick atmospheres.