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[buckets]

Currently my favourite Kerbal video.

Set to private sadly

close all intakes

This is a new thing for me, I didn't even know you could do this in the first place. Gonna have to try this out when I get home from uni tomorrow.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Closed intakes generate no intake air (obviously), but also have greatly reduced drag. There's usually little reason to have open intakes when your jets are shut off, unless you need extra airbraking power.

The intakes may be one of the reasons your ship flips out (if they're on the front especially). Another reason is too many lifting/control surfaces up front. If you have them, make sure you have enough steering power in the back to retain control when they become useless.

Yet another reason is plain old unbalanced power load. An SSTO deals with two different situations. When in atmosphere, it needs to be balanced not to flip out due to atmosphere, but when in space it needs to also be balanced not to flip out due to thrust not being aligned to the center of mass.

Tip to not have your engines die out early: At 12000, you already need to be flying nearly level. Angle yourself up early on to get through the first 10000m, but gradually level out afterwards. Watch your intake air level. If you see it drop too fast, level out and gain speed - don't rush to the stratosphere. To get enough air at 18000m you need to fly at almost 900m/s, without intake spam.

[Skyrunner]

Yeah, I have four intakes on the front. :/ Also was going at an angle.
Okay, whenever I have time I should try again Dx
Main reason I used aerospikes was because they're pretty <_<

[Sean Mirrsen]

If you want to have a better look at what I build (or play around with it), here - Space Harrier 10, the latest revision of my SSTO. It's a bit on the unstable side, and likes to pitch up when empty, but very much capable of getting up to a 100x100 orbit with fuel/oxidizer to spare for maneuvers.

Control groups:
[1] turns all turbojets and intakes on and off.
[2] turns the NERVA engine on and off.
[3] turns the LV-T30 main engines on and off.
[4] turns two outer turbojets on and off - for flying empty.
[5] extends the antennae around the hull, for aesthetic purposes
[8] turns the four tiny forward-facing radial engines on and off, for quick deceleration during docking maneuvers.
[Abort] detaches the cockpit and opens its parachutes. Cockpit is a micro-shuttle, with dockport, dedicated RCS tank, and thrusters.

Takeoff instructions:

• Turn on fine controls, throttle up, stage once. Turbojets will activate. Pull up at around 100m/s, be gentle with it - it's easy to blow off the NERVA engine with too quick a takeoff.
• Angle the nose to about 45 degrees up, turn ASAS on. Keep flying like that till about 12000 meters.
• Start levelling out, hard if necessary, keep an eye on the IntakeAir gauge and the climb rate dial. Balance climb rate against horizontal acceleration. Try to reach at least 20km altitude and 1000m/s speed. Ideally, it should be 22km and 1100m/s.
• Stage once. Rockets will fire. Pitch up slightly, but don't pull up hard yet. Turn RCS on. Wait till the IntakeAir gauge drops below 0.05 (or 0.03), and activate Action Group 1. Turbojets will cut out. Pitch up immediately. Craft will be slow to respond, but keep pitching up till you can push it to about 50 or 60 degrees, and keep it there with ASAS. Switch to map view.
• Wait till the projected apoapsis of your orbit reaches 80km. Switch back from map view, and activate Action Group 3. Main thrusters will cut out, leaving only the NERVA. Pitch the craft down until it is pointing prograde. Switch back to map view.
• Circularize using the NERVA. Just keep going prograde, adjusting as necessary. You'll likely circularize at about 90 to 100km, with about 100L of oxidizer left for about 400m/s delta-v. Don't use the main drives for orbital maneuvers.

Deorbit when and as you see fit. Keep in mind, the craft tends to pitch up hard when flying empty, especially at high speeds. Keep it pointing prograde, and keep ASAS on. Use RCS if necessary. Remember to turn off the NERVA with [2] and turn the intakes and jets back on with [1]. Turn the outer jets off for more balanced flight with [4]. Once you get past the initial reentry phase and are close to the ground, the craft pretty much lands itself. Mind the NERVA in the back, and just glide into the landing. The craft won't drop forward easily, it has a heavy tail, so you will need to brake and pitch down to get its front wheel on the ground.

[olemars]

Currently my favourite Kerbal video.

Set to private sadly

Video was reuploaded for some reason. New URL.

[buckets]

Currently my favourite Kerbal video.

Set to private sadly

Video was reuploaded for some reason. New URL.

Wow, that's realy well done. I'm gonna have to look into space stations at some stage, they look so helpfull.

[Aseaheru]

I made a boat and floated a bit. link!

http://aseaheru.tumblr.com/post/44119373045/my-fourth-boat-design-with-matbro-taking-a-swim

[Mageziya]

Project: Tallos Eve; Nickname: Probeception

Purpose: Deliver a Large Probe with 4 Small Lander Probes to the Orbit of the Planet Eve, then proceed to land the SLPs on the planet. Research developed from this project will be put towards sending the Tallos style probe to Duna, Laythe and working on Manned Interplanetary Flight.

Outcome: Success

I developed a large probe with four small probes attached to it. The small lander probes have 2 of the smallest fuel tanks, 4 lander legs, 2 radial parachutes, 2 small solar panels, 1 ant engine, 2 antenna, and a array scientific tools attached to them.

The Mother Probe, Tallos Eve, has 4 Gigantor solar panels, 4 blutonium reactors, 3 xenon tanks, an array of scientific and communications devices, and the 4 hosted probes.

Picture time:

Spoiler: First conscious visible sighting of Eve. (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Tallos Eve, deployed in full glory orbiting Eve (click to show/hide)

Spoiler:  Probe detachment. Closest solar panels closed to reduce chance of accident. (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The Purple Probe (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Parachtes Deplured (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Dangit, I even took precautions to prevent this! (click to show/hide)

Then it fell over.

3 probes remain on Tallos Eve.

Also, all the Parachutes on all the probes are accidentally deployed due to a staging kerfuffle. Whoops.

Note: Tallos is named in honor of Tallon IV.

Note: I would have had this done a day earlier, but as I was being slung by Eve's gravity, I accidentally pressed space and decoupled the nuclear engine carrying Tallos Eve. Whoops. This is attempt #2.

Note: I need sleep.

[Twi]

Welp. 0.18.4 came out, and for the first time in KSP history, I made a spaceplane that works reasonably. (As opposed to a plane that doesn't go to space, a field I have far too much experience in.)
And by reasonably, I mean it's bloody cool.

Meet the newly christened Laika!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Everything is completely reusable... well, as reusable as it can be, which is that it WOULD land safely if I happen to be looking at it. This plane's main feature is that it is in fact a SPY plane, and thus mounts many antennae for... er... spying or something.

Oh, and it's landing sequence is really cool. In the grand total of two landings I've made with it, I had one success and one that landed gently only a few miles from KSP. With Jeb himself in the cockpit. IT was great, but sadly, I wasn't thinking about pics at that moment.

But I am now, so I'm going to see about doing that mission again! With actual screenshots from start to finish!
...soon, I swear.

EDIT: Here, have it on the runway while you wait. Also, I feel stupid for not realizing that KSP has the f1 key set to screenshot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[DrPoo]

I prefer building my spaceplanes in the spaceplane hangar.
Though i rarely do that because the only gain is that you have a far bigger chance of landing at KSC.

Spaceplanes usually cant carry cargo(though i do have one in mind for a future one) amd if they do, its usually very light cargo, and.very hard to place right.

For any sort of functional vessel, i use regular rockets.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Any SSTO worth its salt will take off from the runway. Because it's not an SSTO if it can't land, refuel, and fly back up into space.

[Twi]

This is, of course, not in any way an SSTO.

Now excuse me while I get these 80 screenshots into a coherent story.

[Mageziya]

Beep boop boop

Spoiler: The Second of Tallos Eve's probes has arrived (click to show/hide)

And on land this time.

Not sure if I should post the  other probes as I land them.

[Twi]

Behold!

Spoiler: Laika, piloted by Jeb himself! (click to show/hide)

Laika's mission, of course, is to take off, orbit the planet and do spy stuff, and come back in over KSP.


Launch! Sadly, this image was a failed attempt. If you take the launch vehicle off SAS and attempt a gravity turn too early, it starts wildly spinning around in the direction of pitch. While you can recover from this, it's still not a good thing to happen, so I just redid the launch.



Alas, I was too busy flying in the launch to get a pic of the separation of the stages. But I have tested them, and they both land softly. Anyways, you can start turning in the neighborhood of 15,000 meters up and/or slightly before the liquid booster runs out of fuel.



Getting an orbit takes a while. The LV-909 is quite efficient and more than sufficient for surface-level flight, but it's pretty weak by rocket standards. On the plus side, the Laika is not particularly heavy, since it doesn't have to carry that much fuel.


There we go!


Laika deploys its antennae and starts listening in for secret transmissions and the like.


After it's mission is done, Jeb fires the engines to put Laika on a return trajectory.


In the upper atmosphere, I turn the craft perpendicular to the surface, a technique that seems to increase drag, which makes sense.  When we're coming in like this, it's more ballistic than aeronautical, so the angle is perfectly safe. Of course, we can't pull shenanigans like this in the lower atmosphere.



Laika more or less glides in, using a small amount of power from time to time to keep airspeed up.


At this point, I come to the conclusion that I have significantly undershot KSC. I might have been able to fix that by burning back upwards, but I didn't really feel like changing the landing formula that's worked twice for me before. And besides, I was rather wary of running out of fuel, even if I might have been able to survive that as well. In retrospect, I probably wouldn't have run out, anyways. Alas.



Landing chutes open up! Not only do these slow me down from screaming reentry to gentle glide, they'll also help me land. If I didn't have these pre-deployed, I could have probably gotten some serious distance, but ah, well. There are a lot of things that I could have done, but skipped for the sake of brevity. That smile on Jeb's face is about how he's going to murder mission control for this, by the way.


Several maneuvers are performed to speed up descent slightly, because I'm impatient.


This shot just LOOKS cool.


A shot taken just before full deployment.



Parachutes deployed!


Laika splashes down almost vertically. The engine firing is mostly a safety measure.


[
Successful landing is successful. Not quite where I wanted it, but still. This makes 3 out of 3 landings without a single bit broken. Laika is awesome.

Things on the to-do list:

-Actually fly around in this thing, without parachutes.
-See if it can splash down unpowered.
-Land on land?
-Try what I originally made it for: bouncing around the upper atmosphere at high speeds, thus being ultra-efficient, at least in theory.

[Sheb]

I don't mean to be rude, but isn't your space plane just a rocket with winglet? A fully-reusable rocket yes, but especially the landing doesn't seem very planey to me.