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[Glloyd]

A note for efficient aircraft use; keep the intakeair as low as possible by climbing higher. I realised just now while flying to the south pole that your intakeair level in the resources tab shows your surplus, so you want it to be minimal so you're flying through thinner air.
Also re-entry effects on aeroplanes is a fun thing.

This is why flying on Laythe is the best thing. With some skill, you can easily make orbit without any rocket engines.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'd imagine you'd need rockets or ion drives or something to actually get into a real orbit, though.

Anyways. While launching a bit of interplanetary decor for my LP, I made what could probably be an SSTO with a weird take-off pattern. It started by lifting off slowly, and well...

...a lot more sideways than expected. Like, sliding sideways, not tilting.

That wasn't until it was a few kilometers up. Redesigning so it shouldn't do that. I hope...

EDIT: The eventual (final?) redesign managed to get a TWR of 3.67 before its first engines went out (about 34 km ASL, going straight up). I think I have enough boosters.
EDIT2: Between not having enough Δv and spinning, it didn't make it. I guess I might want to give up on making a Single-Stage to Vertical Escape vehicle...

[Sean Mirrsen]

Exactly how big is your payload, anyway? If you're playing with the ARM update especially, "less is more". The lifter that launches my VASIMR Asteroid Tug pretty much gets the whole thing to orbit by itself.

edit: of course, if you're in career it's a different story. But I just built a rocket that gets a 3-man capsule to escape velocity with like three engines, using a modified lifter stage of my asteroid tug. Had to stuff two extra ginormous halftanks on, and swap the little toroid engines for the humongous bell thrusters of doom, but it gets there no problem.

[MarcAFK]

Are those all orange tanks? You should be able to get 40-50 tons up with those.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Are those all orange tanks? You should be able to get 40-50 tons up with those.

He's going SSTO, which is more about balancing TWR and delta-V than massive amounts of fuel.

[MarcAFK]

I was just trying to estimate his payload.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I was just trying to estimate his payload.

And I'm pointing out that he is trying to SSTO his rocket, so that estimate it way off. ^_^ From the looks of it he's trying to send up nothing but a capsule and some solar panels.

[LoSboccacc]

People alway err on the moar fuel side when building ssto..

[Sean Mirrsen]

People alway err on the moar fuel side when building ssto..

And hilariously, it doesn't always work. It's about a balance of dV and TWR. My current SSTO planes achieve orbit on one long tank of kerolox and an extra liquid fuel tank, and that's while carrying three inline hydrogen tanks, four small MPDTs, and enough batteries and capacitors to run those MPDTs at full thrust for half a minute straight. Plus a pair of humongous solar arrays. Unfortunately most of the shots I have of my recent flights look like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's apparently a very bad idea to start a solar-powered SSTO flight in the dead of night. And I forgot to use the mini-lights mod that I installed for this exact reason. >_>

[Sensei]

And I forgot to use the mini-lights mod that I installed for this exact reason. >_>

What... You don't mean... for the solar panels?

That's just so...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Sean Mirrsen]

No, I mean for self-illumination on the dark side. If you can see the ship in those shots, your monitor gamma is set too high - to me it's just a sea of black with white specks. And blue specks where the capacitors are.

And although blowing into your own sail might seem silly, a boat can actually be propelled that way. Turning the fan around is still more effective of course, but still. No comment on the free energy though.

[MarcAFK]

I used to try using nuclear engines for ssto, but not ions are stupidly overpowered, I can easily make solar powered planes that do a few hundred meters per second.
I haven't tried doing anything big yet though.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Exactly how big is your payload, anyway? If you're playing with the ARM update especially, "less is more". The lifter that launches my VASIMR Asteroid Tug pretty much gets the whole thing to orbit by itself.

1. Career mode. No big rockets yet.
2. Um, not that big. Still, having a rocket I can fire-and=forget straight up out of Kerbal SoI isn't easy.

edit: of course, if you're in career it's a different story. But I just built a rocket that gets a 3-man capsule to escape velocity with like three engines, using a modified lifter stage of my asteroid tug. Had to stuff two extra ginormous halftanks on, and swap the little toroid engines for the humongous bell thrusters of doom, but it gets there no problem.

I'd like to point out that I'm operating under different restrictions than you. Restrictions I eventually gave up on, which makes me sorta sad because getting all those fuel tanks there would have made it much more impressive.

Are those all orange tanks? You should be able to get 40-50 tons up with those.

Nope. I don't have those researched yet.

[da_nang]

Spoiler: I Haz SSTO? (click to show/hide)

I thought it had too much mass, not enough thrust. Guess I was wrong.

[miauw62]

That looks really cool.