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[Rex_Nex]

Alsoalso, how2control plane when you haven't any atmosphere to maneuver in? My plane just starts doing flips. Rocket engines?

[Twi]

Alsoalso, how2control plane when you haven't any atmosphere to maneuver in? My plane just starts doing flips. Rocket engines?

Rockets and RCS, yeah.

Also, I have a reasonable plane! Woot!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(In the second pic, fullscreen wasn't on, hence some of it being cut off.)

I named it Frigate Bird for whatever reason. It flies quite well and can actually take off without falling off the runway, unlike some of my stuff. It does have the problem that if you get up high enough for its engines to cut out it starts tumbling like crazy. D:

EDIT: See my epic journey across the sea with Milnand, Dilney, and Ronger Kerman! Sadly, I only decided to start taking pics when I was partway through the flight, so there are no shots of it taking off . A shame, too, because I had to get a little bit inventive to get this behemoth off the ground.

Spoiler: Behold,the creatively titled MegaWings! (click to show/hide)

K is the version: I've gone through a lot of iterations on this craft, largely in pursuit of air-launched cruise missiles. Sadly, that endeavor has been much less successful, but the plane itself works. Since it's so big, it uses four rocket boosters to help it take off. Admittedly, it can still get off without them, but it's fairly iffy, to say the least. And yes, those canards look like they were added on as an afterthought because they were. But look at it, it has a vertical canard :3

Spoiler: Just flying around, across the ocean. (click to show/hide)

Despite the altitude meter glitching out, this thing was pretty easy to fly. Most of my flight consisted of flying at a very slight upwards angle at 7,000-8,000 meters and making minor adjustments every so often.

Spoiler: Land ho! (click to show/hide)

Fourteen minutes later, we saw land!

Spoiler: Land ho, now closer! (click to show/hide)

Just a shot a little bit closer to the destination.

Spoiler: Making the approach run (click to show/hide)

Landing this was slow, but easy enough. I just dialed down the engines and nosed down enough to drop altitude at a reasonable speed.

Spoiler: Coming in for a landing! (click to show/hide)

Then I cut the engines and kept the nose up a bit so I didn't crash. Or at least, I tried to keep the nose up. I don't know if it actually helped that much.

Spoiler: A bit of Map View for reference. Should have zoomed out more, but eh. (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Touchdown! (click to show/hide)

I finally landed!

Spoiler: ...And then slid. (click to show/hide)

Finally I got tired of sliding and ended the mission VICTORIOUS.

Spoiler: Pictured below: victory. (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Additional victory! (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: A map of how it worked out in the end. Why the plane isn't on there, I've no idea. (click to show/hide)

[Sean Mirrsen]

To get a spaceplane off the runway:

Canards are your friends. Take a look at the Albatruss pictures I posted. Even with canards, the thing won't budge up until it's off the tarmac.
If your design is nose-heavy, steer it off the side of the runway and take off from the green. The drop at the end of the placeholder runway can kill a heavy craft.
Place rear landing gear in a smart manner. You want them as close to the center of mass as possible, and yet still allow enough clearance for any low-hanging engines or fuselage elements to stay off the ground when you pitch up for takeoff or landing. If you have engines all the way out at the back of the craft, consider putting the landing gear on something long, propping the craft up so that you have more clearance and more leverage. It'll sit ass-upwards on the runway, but if the aft gear are near enough to the center of mass, the elevators and canards will pitch it up easily.
Place control and lift surfaces in a similarly smart manner. In the air, you want all the drag and lift focused at the back, where the weight is usually. Don't put fixed wings out front, anything they can do canards can do better. If you need extra steerage up or down, you can pre-rotate control surfaces and even fixed wings to properly balance the lift force.

To get the plane to land: First and foremost, you will usually need to turn off any engines you have running and land in a glide. Unless you're landing right after you took off, your plane will be much lighter and will likely keep flying well at speeds far slower than what you needed to take off. For my flying brick designs, I usually turn the engine power way down (to barely-working threshold for the turbojets) and fly down to about a 1000m altitude, and then level out and gently glide until I see a good spot to land. Just glide, watch your speed and descent rate, don't be afraid to pitch up - if your plane is built right, the landing gear will hit the ground first anyway. My spaceplanes come in for landing at roughly 80m/s, with 2 m/s descent rate. Just don't hit the brakes as soon as the rear wheels connect, you can drop the nose hard and break up. Try to gently lower the nose down, then start braking. That's what I do in my landings. Well, those that don't end in a fireball, at least.

To control the plane in space: Use thrust-vectoring engines, (at least one or two, even if you use aerospikes as primary thrust providers) and do your best to align all engines with the center of mass. You won't have nearly the same amount of steerage in space, so you have to make sure you have as little imbalance as possible to begin with. RCS I consider a "backup" measure, mostly for efficient maneuvering and course corrections between burns, but not as a main means of keeping course. On a ship of any considerable size, you'll need to have far more RCS tanks than you can afford to have, if you plan on using RCS throughout the flight.

[alway]

It seems it's still possible to create perpetual-motion planes/ornithopters. Pretty damn good ones, too!

Spoiler: The Albatross Mk1 (click to show/hide)

The albatross line were specifically created as experiments in version .15 ornithopters; craft using the jiggling of components by the ASAS in low-altitudes to get free energy. They have massive wingspans, built with very low mass; consisting primarily of the swept-wing. They turn out to be very easy to launch; the mk1 takes off at 20 m/s, the mk2(not shown) at 15, and the mk3 at around 30. The mk1 was the initial craft; designed to test low-altitude, low-speed conditions to determine the viability of perpetual fliers, and nearly hovers at around 13m/s, losing very little velocity, and actually gaining a little altitude. The mk2 was part way between the mk1 and the final mk3 design, with 2 main wings and many more small ones; it could reach speeds, entirely unpowered, of 200 m/s at an altitude of 500 meters.

Spoiler: The Albatross Mk3 (click to show/hide)

The final Mk3 design adds even more wings, and removes the permanent engine; who needs engines anyway? The takeoff mechanism is a single solid thrust, jetisonned immediately after takeoff at about 50 m/s, as the rapid acceleration shakes the vehicle too much, and would otherwise self-destruct (as a side note, the design of the takeoff needs to be reworked; the solid often hits wings and knocks them off on jetison). At this point, the vehicle's ASAS responding to movement of the wings is capable of generating enough thrust to reach maximum speeds nearing 300 m/s, and as pictured, a maximum height of about 10 km, at which point the air is too thin for adequate lift to be generated. Not bad for an unpowered craft using vanilla!

They're actually pretty impressive to watch fly; the delay on the ASAS responses means those wings actually do flap a little.

[Scelly9]

That is really cool.

[LoSboccacc]

My plane got to minmus without thrust vectoring and without rcs...

[sneakey pete]

Ever since 0.15 came out i've been building long distance high altitude aircraft. Most of the flights take place at a cruise of 13000-15000m.

After a few designs I got something that could make it across the sea by the launch pad, it could fly about 800km, and had good handling characteristics so it could land properly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Naturally once i had that good design i enlarged it. That was enough to get 1400km! However, there were issues with fuel flow causing engines to stall out to early, which the fuel lines did not remedy. In hindsight, I now realise that the wing area is also grossly inadequate for the short take of that the KSC runway presents, hence the rocket booster.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Due to the general floppyness of that design, i decided to go even bigger (of course), but with a slightly different method. This one could do 1600km! It also flew much nicer than the old one, and had no fuel flow issues. Was still fun to get off the ground. Boosters ran out just after liftoff, but then had to get some altitude, kill the engines, wait for them to spool down, before i could safely jettison the boosters, otherwise they'd explode as soon as they entered the flow stream.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After realizing that the other fuel tanks had less weight for the same fuel amount, i did a redesign of my design again, giving this. Much easier to take off and fly than the previous two designs. It did 1380km on the first iteration. next i'll enlarge it and try to add drop tanks.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[jaxy15]

I love how no one makes rockets anymore.

[Scelly9]

I love how no one makes rockets anymore.

I do!

*Is still playing .14*
*Is currently afflicted with "Canhaznomoneyz" disease*

[Sordid]

Nice. Here's my monstrosity designed alongside the same design principles:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And yes, it lands. If you're very very very careful.

[bertix]

I bet Floppy wings othat design

[LoSboccacc]

Now that I reached mun, my next challenge will ve to fly all over the world using only atmospheric engine and boosters. (And mechjeb because I'm lazy)


Also: note that while they weight lot less, aerial fuel has an extremely bad density compared to rocket fuel so it currently is a better choice to use rocket fuel on larger designs

[Sheb]

Re-donwloaded it, and in only 3 tries I managed to go to the moon, orbit it and come back (well, almost, I'm stuck in orbit with no fuel, right above the athmosphere).

Now, a couple modifications and I should be able to land on the moon.

[sneakey pete]

How far could you fly with that, sordid?

[Sirus]

I still have not landed on the Mun successfully

Get there? No problem! I just always crash and burn on the surface, or best-case scenario knock off the engines I was planning to use to escape.