Leaving planet to space

[Btkidd]

I have a ship with atmospheric combined hydorgen and works great to leave planet to travel space I am wondering if it is possible or worth the effort to switch from Hydorgen to Ion thrusters for reaching space. What little experience I've had with Ion is they are not very powerful on a planet but Hydro sucks down fuel like mad and was wondering if Ion would be more practical conversion.

[cptsavarus]

Your experience is right, Ion thrusters do very little in atmosphere.
It is possible to launch a ship into space using only Ion thrusters but you need an awful lot of them for even the lightest ships.

The most economical combination of thrusters uses all 3 types...
Ion thrusters all round
Atmo thrusters on all sides except down (no need unless you want to fly upside down)
A small number of Hydrogen thrusters facing downward & maybe a couple facing forward depending on the size of your ship & whether you're using a max speed mod (this is to slow you down as you enter the atmosphere - they can be turned off for launch)
and enough forward hydrogen thrusters to break the planets gravity.

Ships built like that will fly more like a plane than a spaceship in atmosphere but that's a good thing, as it makes them nice & easy to control and means they'll use less hydrogen.

Also, if you find you're using up Hydrogen too fast on launch, remember you don't need to hold the thrust button down the whole time - just get up to max speed then release it & tap it occasionally to top up your speed as it drops. As long as your velocity vector is pointed at space and you're moving, the ship will get you there.

[casualsailor]

Yes, you're correct.

Here is the wiki that explains this in detail.

http://spaceengineerswiki.com/Thruster

Also Splitsie has some good tutorials and has tested many things such as this. Here is his video on thrusters which demonstrate the relative strenghts of each in the atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMtWSSMdO7w

You know the old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words.

[Kimmaz]

I used only hydrogen thrusters. 4 large at the bottom, 4 small in each direction except only 2 small for backwards thrust. 4 (full) arge hydrogen tanks (connected directly to the large thrusters) 6 oxygen generators filled with ice, 2 small containers filled with ice.

After leaving earth and refilling the tanks as needed i had consumed one small conainter of ice (i use 10x inventory)

I have "increese thrust/decreese thrust" on the 4 large engines on my hotbar, so i dont use W to keep myself at 95m/s, no tapping, only starting at max thrust and lowering it as the gravity becomes weaker.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1256188256

Im 64km away from my earth base where i am building my space base:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1256793943

Side note: how do you build Ion thrusters on earth with no access to platinum?

[Btkidd]

Video has some nice comparisons in the engines but I noticed he was using small reactors and batteries for the atmospheric and ion,I know it can be done but I can't make that work even with my bare bone ships I just start with a lrge reactor. Anyway Thanks guys I have an idea now on using all 3 that I hope will seriously cut down the amount of hydrogen I need and hopefully allow me to bring more ore back without splatting down.

[Btkidd]

Kimmaz as I have found out, you don't period. You have to get to space if you are on a planet find an asteroid with the platinum and get back. Well I guess there may be an exception I have read of others taking down drones and pirate bases to get a little that way.

[cptsavarus]

If you play with Meteorites turned on, when one lands on a planet (usually on top of your base) there's a random chance to find rare elements in the crater it leaves.
This includes Platinum. The quantities are very small but as I recall you don't need massive amounts of the stuff to build a thruster.

Probably easier to & less frustrating to kill drones though...