SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

[Jens Lyn IV]

I made a taildragger. Not because that layout makes a lot of practical sense, but because it lets me place the cockpit downstream of the engines. This gives the pilot a very... Kerbal view.

Yeehaw!

Taxiing involves considerable guesswork...

...But it looks cool.

Profile.

Planform.

Cargo bay and docking port opened, solar panels extended.

Edited September 2, 2016 by Jens Lyn IV

[dire]

 

9 hours ago, Jens Lyn IV said:

I made a taildragger. Not because that layout makes a lot of practical sense, but because it lets me place the cockpit downstream of the engines. This gives the pilot a very... Kerbal view.

Yeehaw!

Taxiing involves considerable guesswork...

...But it looks cool.

Profile.

Planform.

Cargo bay and docking port opened, solar panels extended.

That looks like the rolls royce of SSTO's Jens. To me it looks like you could tilt the wings to give them a passive AoA and make it a bit more efficient, but it is very impressive either way.

[Samniss Arandeen]

So my work-in-progress Mk. 3 spaceplane made it into orbit when I wasn't even planning...

 

[Rune]

Definitely  a WiP, but also definitely a SSTO. One that can carry >50mT up! And as easy to fly up as any rocket. Now, flying down, that is another thing... it is intentionally about as good a glider as the Shuttle was... which is to say, "not a whole lot". However, runway recovery is where the √ are! A lesson in energy management if you want to reach it, that's for sure.

Also, KSP tank body lift is certainly bugged: when sideways, tanks create all short of issues by acting as sideways wings. And while we are at it, the lift visualization tool in the SPH doesn't take them into account at all, which means making this flyable took a lot of fiddling, manually finding out the true center of pressure by trial and lots, lots of error.

 

Rune. The plus side is, the margins are big enough to fly it back on main engine power for a short while, in case you just miss KSC.

 

[Cinocal]

Quick to orbit crew shuttle. 20deg climb profile from runway to orbit.

Face armor was required to keep cockpit from melting on the way down.

Edited September 8, 2016 by Cinocal

[Samniss Arandeen]

On 9/6/2016 at 2:01 PM, Rune said:

Definitely  a WiP, but also definitely a SSTO. One that can carry >50mT up! And as easy to fly up as any rocket. Now, flying down, that is another thing... it is intentionally about as good a glider as the Shuttle was... which is to say, "not a whole lot". However, runway recovery is where the √ are! A lesson in energy management if you want to reach it, that's for sure.

Also, KSP tank body lift is certainly bugged: when sideways, tanks create all short of issues by acting as sideways wings. And while we are at it, the lift visualization tool in the SPH doesn't take them into account at all, which means making this flyable took a lot of fiddling, manually finding out the true center of pressure by trial and lots, lots of error.

 

Rune. The plus side is, the margins are big enough to fly it back on main engine power for a short while, in case you just miss KSC.

 

Neither angle gives me any idea what engines your craft has, Rune.

 

2 hours ago, Cinocal said:

Quick to orbit crew shuttle. 20deg climb profile from runway to orbit.

Face armor was required to keep cockpit from melting on the way down.

Not the most efficient design, but still a fun one nonetheless - I'd say it's the AK of SSTO designs. Those Big-S Strakes make the best tailplanes. What's your reentry profile look like? I've never had to up-armor any of my designs, just add more airbrakes to some, so you doing so is quite weird to me.

[XB-70A]

Just now, Samniss Arandeen said:

Neither angle gives me any idea what engines your craft has, Rune.

 

Seems like there is a Mammoth and a pair of Vector.

[Cinocal]

4 minutes ago, Samniss Arandeen said:

Not the most efficient design, but still a fun one nonetheless - I'd say it's the AK of SSTO designs. Those Big-S Strakes make the best tailplanes. What's your reentry profile look like? I've never had to up-armor any of my designs, just add more airbrakes to some, so you doing so is quite weird to me.

All my designs are made using FAR.

This thing was inspired by and built around the solid booster, because bored.

Reentry is shallow, less than 10deg. Long mach 3+ glide above 20k.

 

[fourfa]

4 hours ago, Cinocal said:

Quick to orbit crew shuttle. 20deg climb profile from runway to orbit.

Face armor was required to keep cockpit from melting on the way down.

I love the wet strakes as vertical stabilizers!  Going to have to try that

[Rune]

5 hours ago, XB-70A said:

Seems like there is a Mammoth and a pair of Vector.

Yup, called it perfectly. When building chemical SSTOs, they are by far the best engines, especially the Mammoth with its higher TWR.

5 hours ago, Samniss Arandeen said:

Not the most efficient design, but still a fun one nonetheless - I'd say it's the AK of SSTO designs. Those Big-S Strakes make the best tailplanes. What's your reentry profile look like? I've never had to up-armor any of my designs, just add more airbrakes to some, so you doing so is quite weird to me.

And I never use airbrakes...;) A lifting reentry is all about the descent profile!

I reenter at high AoA, so I use the whole wing as a giant airbrake and slow myself down that way. If you reenter close to AoA, though, you will get to the lower atmosphere with much more energy, and you will need a much tougher leading edge part. My Heinlein, for example, is the ship I have that can get more temperature gauges showing, because it does a ballistic reentry pointy side first.

 

 

Rune. Airbrakes have awful temp ratings when extended.

[Fellow314]

2 hours ago, Rune said:

Yup, called it perfectly. When building chemical SSTOs, they are by far the best engines, especially the Mammoth with its higher TWR.

 

 

Damnit, now I have to redesign my heavy lifter because I just didn't think of putting a Mammoth on instead of four of the Vectors and didn't even stop to consider that might be more efficient.  I was wondering how you managed to put so much more into LKO with so much less fuel.

 

Edited September 8, 2016 by Fellow314

[Rune]

1 hour ago, Fellow314 said:

Damnit, now I have to redesign my heavy lifter because I just didn't think of putting a Mammoth on instead of four of the Vectors and didn't even stop to consider that might be more efficient.  I was wondering how you managed to put so much more into LKO with so much less fuel.

That, and tankage fraction. The round fuel tanks have the best ratio, Mk3 slightly worse, and Mk2 tanks are the worst of them. Adapters are also generally crappy but... between aesthetics and keeping it aerodynamic and short-ish, I ended up using a lot of them.

Also, wing weight fraction is a joke on this design... saves me a ton of weight in orbit, and it gives me absurdly low drag losses, since it has a healthy 1,5 TWR (vacuum) at launch and is rather streamlined for such a thing. I didn't make it hard to glide for nothing! 

 

Rune. Chemical SSTOs explain perfectly how rockets work: TWR and tankage fraction are just as important as Isp.

Edited September 8, 2016 by Rune

[XB-70A]

I today reconfigured my first SSTO project, about two years old now, the Comet. Fast and unlogic, she's now totally made of stock parts :

Will share it soon.

[ispeedonthe405]

On 9/2/2016 at 0:11 PM, Jens Lyn IV said:

I made a taildragger. Not because that layout makes a lot of practical sense, but because it lets me place the cockpit downstream of the engines. This gives the pilot a very... Kerbal view.

Yeehaw!

Profile.

 

 

Love it. Looks like it came from the Space Battleship Yamato universe (later gen stuff).

Edited September 12, 2016 by ispeedonthe405

[Arugela]

 Just made these!

Particularly this one:

IDGAD Starfighter <- 36 tons

Shortcuts:

1: Toggle Nukes

2: Toggle RAPIERs

3: Switch Mode: RAPIERs + Toggles intakes

4: Toggle Jet engines + Toggles intakes

Very nice to fly and reenter in. Not as agile as some things but it's pretty good at what it does. As far as I know...

Edited September 28, 2016 by Arugela

[JadeOfMaar]

I happened to make this, answering a request thread for stock +/- BDArmory alien ships. The Invader SSTO Z. Not inspired by but loosely familiar to Invader Zim. Plenty acceleration and good control in atmosphere but little range in orbit.

Where are all the mod crafts though? I'm kinda afraid to post mine...

[Van Disaster]

26 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Where are all the mod crafts though?

I posted some 5 or so pages back ( and occasionally going back a few years ) but FAR ones tend to end up in the FAR thread, and I think we're starting to get a wave of that stock-only elitism again ( in general, not this thread in particular ) that's putting people off posting.

Have a shot of a hardly-stock-at-all Juno SSTO to make up for it ( I don't think I've been to space for months, so I can't find anything new ).

The little aerospikes are from Sounding Rockets, really useful things.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Van Disaster

[quasarrgames]

Brought back this 100m, 160 part interplanetary SSTO, the Orion Class Planet Drainer:

 

[Rune]

19 hours ago, quasarrgames said:

Brought back this 100m, 160 part interplanetary SSTO, the Orion Class Planet Drainer:

 

Note that you are using fuselages with pretty awful tankage ratios Just by doing the structure on circular tanks would greatly improve you dV.

 

Rune. At that scale, the cross-secction of the tanks is pretty irrelevant to aesthetics, isn't it?

[AeroGav]

Well those of you who follow me on KerbalX know that I build a lot of Spaceplanes, but few that are true SSTO , and leave nothing behind.

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/BRel

Today you will be relieved to know I finally managed to get something 100% reusable into orbit.         OH and BTW you might want to hope it's distruptor cannons aren't armed -

To be fair,   I owe the concept to this one,  I was trying to modify it to get it into orbit,  and think I managed to retain the sci-fi look

https://kerbalx.com/Flamingo/Bumpy-Sci-Fi-SSTO

[NoobTool]

Czar Galactica Mk3

Large cargo SSTO. 4 full length Mk3 cargo bays, 900 ton max gross takeoff weight.

34 Rapiers, 14 Turbo Ramjets, 14 NERV's

[AeroGav]

On 02/09/2016 at 8:11 PM, Jens Lyn IV said:

I made a taildragger. Not because that layout makes a lot of practical sense, but because it lets me place the cockpit downstream of the engines. This gives the pilot a very... Kerbal view.

Yeehaw!

Expect that;s good for crashworthiness too.   My WIP mining ship is long and has a 4ton ISRU converter at the front.  Fantastic battering ram to destroy KSC with and Jeb just walks away from all the devastation.

[Jens Lyn IV]

Are you implying that my piloting skills are inadequate?

[fourfa]

Lately I'm in love with cargo bays on SSTOs.  One bay near the center of mass can hide the RCS thrusters, monoprop, drone core, all the electrical gear, the docking port - all occluded from drag, and end up with a very slippery and high-speed ship.

The hidden airbrakes work great!  Turns out (with the cargo bay doors bound to the Brake action group) the brakes and doors deploy at about the same rate.  Looks cool.  This thing flies shockingly well - rotates at 60ms, hits 1600m/s on jets, deorbits on a dime pancaking on radial-out, maneuvers great, and can float to a stop at 40m/s.  Overpowered and overwinged SSTOs = FUN. It's just a simple crew transport, but it's quickly become Jeb's favorite ride to orbit.

For obvious reasons, it's called the I.S.O.C.E.L.E.S.

https://kerbalx.com/fourfa/ISOCELES

edit: I broke the images.  They're here: http://imgur.com/a/IhXqO

Edited October 21, 2016 by fourfa

[Castille7]