Specula

Yeah, it's weird... I make sure the fuel lines all feed into the centre... And then launch to see the fuel drains from all tanks evenly instead of just the centre line tanks. It's mind mindbogglingly stupid.

Sorry, don't care for mods myself. Sadly, I don't have the luxury of just clicking on and off every tank as I need them mid flight, especially not in atmospheric transmission. Also, I find that fuel lines don't actually do anything in my planes sadly. =\

Hi forum goers! I've been on a bit of an SSTO bend recently, and there's been one part of the game that I normally adore for making rockets but utterly infuriates me with spaceplanes: Fuel crossfeed. In most of my SSTO designs, the rockets and rocket fuel occupies the central area while the jet engines and jet fuel sit further out. Unfortunately, the jet engines always drain the central rocket fuel tanks as priority rather than the jet fuel tanks they're directly attached to. Is there any reliable, stable and non weight intensive way of making engines drain only from fuel tanks they're directly attached to?

So I've had this problem for the last two versions now where I'd go into the spaceplane hangar, use some of the funky new parts, launch and when it gets to the runway, the parts have reverted to older variations of similar parts. These older parts remain if I revert to the hangar too. I had hoped that 0.9 would fix this problem so I could play the game again, but this problem is STILL here. I've updated, uninstalled, reinstalled, updated and nothing. In addition to this, I now have a listing of two of every older part in the parts window during hangar construction. I'm running a Windows 64bit system with the current 0.9 patch. The game doesn't crash so no long can be given, but here's a few screenshots showing what I mean: Alright, everything looks good. Let's launch... ... Wot This bug was still there last patch too. Why has this not been fixed yet? It's not a small problem either.

Sorry, should have included some pics. Anyway, here's a few pics of my two current SSTOs/High altitude circumnavigation planes: Atmosphere skipper: Orbital/Interplanetary SSTO: Ah, so it's true you can add more than one control wheel. Thanks, I was under the impression that any more than one did nothing and was just extra, wasted weight.

Huh, after a quick bit of testing, I think you're both right. The CoM and CoL being out of line seems to be causing it. Thanks folks. Managed to follow Maverick's advice and while not perfect, showed vast improvements.

I've made several basic and a single complex SSTO spaceplane design, all of which have been quite effective for their purpose except for one simple and common problem they all share: They all spin wildly out of control during atmospheric decent from space or from very high altitude flying (above 30,000m). I've only successfully pulled a single one out of it's deathspin to land it, and it's frankly INFURIATING me. I simply don't understand why spaceplane SSTOs do this. Are there any SSTO designers out there that have had this problem with earlier designs and worked out a solution for yourself? Considering this seems to happen to all my planes no matter the size or shape, I don't think my craft themselves are the problem, I'm guessing either it's the overall 'wide wing/delta wing' design shape I stick to or there's some other unknown mechanic or problem I haven't addressed. Any help from the better/most knowledgeable SSTO designers on what causes this and how they fix it would be really appreciated. Addendum: I'm a stock player. Please don't suggest using modded parts/flight control mods to fix it. Atmosphere skipper: Orbital/Interplanetary SSTO:

... Yeah-no, I'm not taking that bait despite how completely wrong you are. -snip- I come in here asking for some suggestions and stating concerns that I'd like to keep it stock-like and balanced, and in less than 5 posts, people are already denouncing developers and non mod users alike and in less than 10 posts, it turns into passive-aggressive personal attacks. Now I remember the OTHER reason why I steer clear of mods and their communities. I'm out.

.... Yeah, no thanks. Posts and attitudes like that are precisely why many have problems with modding communities, modders and their fans. I'll pass on those.

Thanks for the input! I'll give them a look over the next week or so. Much appreciated.

As much as I normally don't like mods (Many modding communities for games seem to have a penchant for making mods that suck the fun out of the game by making it too easy), I'm finally getting bored enough of stock KSP that I'm looking for some mods to offer plenty of additional parts to play with. But I'm still not interested in really overpowered parts and since I've not got hours upon hours to research and go through trial and error, can I ask for some suggestions? What mods look fantastic and are filled with extremely fair and balanced extra parts in your estimation? Both rocket and spaceplane parts (and maybe some space station parts too) are desired, I play with SSTOs as much as I do conventional rockets. Thanks for any input you've got to offer.

It's even worse when the R.A.P.I.E.R runs out of air. The switchover from air intake to internal oxidiser is horrendous and very late to happen, only kicking in long after breathable air has dropped past 0.0 and your engines have flamed out. And then when the oxidizer kicks in... It consumes fuel at an abhorrent rate. Once it switched over, it consumed 660 Oxidizer in 2 R.A.P.I.E.R engines in about 20 seconds.

Cool. So how many of those were done with a Rapier engine where you have to run fuel and then fuel/oxidizer through the same set of engines for both phases of the flight? I'm betting the answer is: None.

You can tell WhiteWeasel is the only other person in this thread that's done anything with SSTOs and knows what's up. And Supernovy, I'm talking about getting MORE Oxidiser on board, not LESS.

I've been wanting these for a while since I began my foray into designing SSTOs, but now with the R.A.P.I.E.R engine especially, I crave it. The idea of a fuel tank, the same width as the small jet fuel MkI tanks, that carries nothing but oxidizer. Especially since jet engines and the Rapier engine are just going to use straight liquid fuel to get up out of the atmosphere, there's always going to be a fuel/oxidizer imbalance and I could really go for some extra pure oxidiser tanks to keep them separate. Just my two cents.