SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

[TheEpicSquared]

I made my first successful SSTO, the "Eagle Mk1"! I'm almost certain it can be improved as it's my first one, here's the craft file in case anyone wants to try it: https://kerbalx.com/TheEpicSquared/SSTO (It's called SSTO because I couldn't come up with a good name at the time, and I forgot to change it )

I was so focused on the ascent that I forgot to take screenshots, but here's a couple of them in orbit:

And a screenshot of reentry close to the KSC:

I even managed to land it on the runway!

Again, any feedback it appreciated.  

Edited October 10, 2016 by TheEpicSquared

[Jens Lyn IV]

This is still a WIP, but it works well enough. VTOL SSTO lifting body Laythe lander, 20 tonnes fully fueled, crew of six. Aerodynamically stable, which is bloody annoying when trying to go retrograde for the final descent and landing, but with some "inelegant" control inputs it goes tail-first with little difficulty.

T/W is too low for Kerbin, but with gravity hacked to 0.8 g it achieves orbit and returns with fuel to spare for a precision landing.

Edited October 12, 2016 by Jens Lyn IV

[AeroGav]

I built this in response to a request for an ISRU SSTO.      I would normally recommend 

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/PENTA-STAR-REDUX  for most folk, a mk2 cargo plane that can reach Minmus with a light load, but it's not a true SSTO  due to having two disposable  "Whiplash" boosters.

The Nostromo is an ungainly beast compared with the Penta Star,   getting sufficient delta V with IRSU gear onboard meant building very large, and the landing speed on Duna is higher than the Penta.   Still, I think it's within the capability of the average pilot.  See above for details (my second attempt and first success)

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Nostromo

[ForScience6686]

I introduce the Arrow SSTO Network package.  Wonderful to fly and stocked with 4 short range relays.

ARROW Network package

[AeroGav]

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/flylab

I wanted to try building a 2.5m spaceplane, this is the result - Hitchhiker Habitation module, Science Lab and a Commander's Cupola.

  It can't reach another celestial body without on-orbit refuelling but it has got very stable handling.  The 2.5m command module has better drag characteristics, but switching to IVA view quickly dissuaded me from trying to change the design :

 

The Poodle engine also generates quite a bit of drag (could do with a tailcone and decoupler to lessen drag until the engine is needed) and it could do with a smidgin less oxidizer and a bit more LF.   I did develop a mk2 version with these changes, but it only has enough extra delta V to fly by Mún,  so mk1 is what you're getting for now.

 No SAS below 50km.   It's so stable pitch trim adjustments on keyboard are all you need.

Edited October 13, 2016 by AeroGav

[Arugela]

Slapped this together after seeing Aerogavs mini ssto design.. 8) thought it would be fun. Just barely makes it to orbit. Junos and nukes! 8)(I wanted to see if this combo could make it to orbit) Minimum air surfaces. More like a rocket. somewhat reminiscent of my first ssto.

Craft: https://www.dropbox.com/s/m9bqgcq7jrc1fnh/Juno SSTO.craft?dl=0

My first SSTO:

Edited October 13, 2016 by Arugela

[Exothermos]

So I recently posted a series of mk-3 SSTOs.  A fellow aviation nut friend of mine came over and we were screwing around with the design, laughing and adding ridiculous things too it over a few drinks.  It resulted in some amazing things.  

It started here:

 

"Thats cool, man, make it longer!  And just give it twice as much everything."

Holy crap, what?  IT WORKS?

 

Ok, well, it works great.  That's no fun...

 

 

Thats it, that was far too successful, Make it as long as the SPH!

 

Wait...what?

 

Oh come on!

 

So then, discouraged by unlikely success, we just  blew things up.

 

 

Edited October 20, 2016 by Exothermos

[Rune]

1 hour ago, Exothermos said:

So I recently posted a series of mk-3 SSTOs.  A fellow aviation nut friend of mine came over and we were screwing around with the design, laughing and adding ridiculous things too it over a few drinks.  It resulted in some amazing things.  

[...]

So then, discouraged by unlikely success, we just  blew things up.

Hehehe. Well, same ratios, so same TWR and dV, can't really fly any different, can it? It'll have a bigger moment of inertia, but that's pretty much it.

 

Rune. 'Cause math and stuff!

Edited October 20, 2016 by Rune

[JadeOfMaar]

Managed to make a vanilla plane that gets to Mun. I call it the NOX Bluestreak Z. No Rapiers or Oxidizer here. Its fuel margin is a little tight and may be beyond my piloting skill considering the limited range (of runtime and strength) on the Whips. Added RCS tanks but not nozzles, and replaced the heatshield with a shielded docking port. It's technically still WIP but it's up for download by any ace pilot. Derived from my mod SSTO that can reach Minmus, land and return.

 

 

 

[VeryShyProxy]

2 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Managed to make a vanilla plane that gets to Mun. I call it the NOX Bluestreak Z. No Rapiers or Oxidizer here. Its fuel margin is a little tight and may be beyond my piloting skill considering the limited range (of runtime and strength) on the Whips. Added RCS tanks but not nozzles, and replaced the heatshield with a shielded docking port. It's technically still WIP but it's up for download by any ace pilot. Derived from my mod SSTO that can reach Minmus, land and return.

Looks cool, but you should replace the whiplashes with rapiers, since they work better at SSTO engines even if you don't plan to feed oxidizer through them.  Definitely put some shock cones on those engine pre-coolers too, it'll reduce drag and make the plane a LOT faster and more fuel efficient.  What's with the backwards torodial aerospike? 

Edited October 21, 2016 by VeryShyProxy

[JadeOfMaar]

1 hour ago, VeryShyProxy said:

Looks cool, but you should replace the whiplashes with rapiers, since they work better at SSTO engines even if you don't plan to feed oxidizer through them.  Definitely put some shock cones on those engine pre-coolers too, it'll reduce drag and make the plane a LOT faster and more fuel efficient.  What's with the backwards torodial aerospike? 

Thanks very much for the critique, yo. I'll put small cones on the precoolers.

I named it Bluestreak because the air engines all produce blue emissive and that gave me the idea to set the illuminators and gear lights to blue to match. And part of the awesome of the craft is supposed to be that it gets to space without any Rapiers, even though I know very well that Rapiers are way better than Whips for the job.

The "backwards aerospikes" are actually shock cone intakes.

Edited October 21, 2016 by JadeOfMaar

[AeroGav]

9 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Managed to make a vanilla plane that gets to Mun. I call it the NOX Bluestreak Z. No Rapiers or Oxidizer here. Its fuel margin is a little tight and may be beyond my piloting skill considering the limited range (of runtime and strength) on the Whips. Added RCS tanks but not nozzles, and replaced the heatshield with a shielded docking port. It's technically still WIP but it's up for download by any ace pilot. Derived from my mod SSTO that can reach Minmus, land and return.

 

 

 

 

Interesting.   Looks like there's two ways to make a Whiplash/NERV design.

One way is to have the Whiplashes dominate, build up an incredible climb rate in the atmosphere and zoom up into a sub-orbital climb, that hopefully gives the nukes plenty of time to circularize.

The other is to fit the minimum amount of Whiplash engines to bust mach 3 at altitude and have lots of NERVs, low drag and plenty of wing area,  so that your aircraft can continue to sustain a shallow climb and steadily accelerate on the power of the NERVs alone, at altitudes too high for jets to work.

Looks like your design goes for the first option, I usually aim for the second.  

eg. this old thing

really need to update the Astrojet Citation.  It was built in 1.05, and I had to jump through considerable hoops to get fuel to the engines (those horribly draggy fuel ducts)  and to not have the thing unbalance itself as the fuel burned off,  due to the way fuel used to drain from tanks.    If I get round to updating the design, I can remove those horrible ducts, get rid of the tank locking, and consider layout changes (previously, the NERV engines could only feed off one tank each , which had to be on the CG)

 

 

[kopapaka]

[XB-70A]

Working on a new small/medium project, the XC-62.

Just 4 RAPIER.

I will probably asign her to crew tansfert and tourist orbital flights.

[volcanicshrimp]

http://imgur.com/a/DXngM

One of the various single stage to LKO spaceplanes I've made. Not particularly difficult to fly (otherwise I'd have no chance) but also only capable of reaching LKO and probably very inefficient.

[TopHeavy11]

Hey @Rune (and everybody else)! Are you ready for a Cringefest(TM)?! This was on the very first page of this thread. This pic really makes you really appreciate how far KSP's parts have come since just v.23!

Perhaps a certain @Rune could post a pic of one of his current SSTOs to show you the difference side by side! For such awful parts we had back then, @Rune made them look pretty good...but nowhere near what he/she (I don't know his/her gender, so deal with it) can do today with all the parts we have now!

[Rune]

2 minutes ago, TopHeavy11 said:

Hey @Rune (and everybody else)! Are you ready for a Cringefest(TM)?! This was on the very first page of this thread. This pic really makes you really appreciate how far KSP's parts have come since just v.23!

 

Perhaps a certain @Rune could post a pic of one of his current SSTOs to show you the difference side by side! For such awful parts we had back then, @Rune made them look pretty good...but nowhere near what he/she (I don't know his/her gender, so deal with it) can do today with all the parts we have now!

Whoa, that takes me back! What a clipfest I had going on there. For comparison, this is in the same size category, and recent:

So, yeah, we have all come a long way since then, as you say. Part count is much reduced, the whole thing is way smoother and pleasing to the eye (thx for that, @Porkjet!), and it is actually easier to put together.

 

Rune. Granted, the new White Dart can't single-stage to Mun and back, but I don't have tanks clipped within tanks clipped within nuclear engines, either.

[Rune]

It occurs to me that it's been a looong time since I posted anything new. The main reason is that I'm so happy with my fleet, I'm mostly playing with it and not coming up with new stuff. But, that's mostly. The other day, I finally finished this thing, a science-equipped SSTA that carries a cute rover inside. Been wanting to use the cargo ramp that way for ages!

The front part of the rover carries the science bits and goes biome-hopping, while the trailer stays refueling the bird and powering the lab for the next hop. Still WiP (power generation with the inefficient small refinery is tricky, might have to resort to an ungodly amount of RTGs), but if you want to build your own knockoff, I basically ripped off the back side of a Spatha, and bolted the cargo ramp and nuke nacelles to it, then placed the lab, command pod, and rover inside the cargo bay.

 

Rune. >1,300m/s on LKO, so you don't actually have to go to Minmus first.

Edited October 27, 2016 by Rune

[TopHeavy11]

19 minutes ago, Rune said:

science-equipped SSTA

SSTA? Wuzzat?

[Rune]

3 minutes ago, TopHeavy11 said:

SSTA? Wuzzat?

Single Stage To Anywhere. Basically any bird that can make it to Minmus with enough gear to refuel itself and keep on going indefinitely. Granted, the usual *except Eve and Tylo caveat applies, since it's a winged airbreather. And I'm doubtful about Duna, actually, it has high-ish wing loading and no VTOL system, so it might be an impossible landing.

 

Rune. I mean, you could go to Eve, but then, I hope your kerbals like purple.

Edited October 27, 2016 by Rune

[TopHeavy11]

1 minute ago, Rune said:

Single Stage To Anywhere. Basically any bird that can make it to Minmus with enough gear to refuel itself and keep on going indefinitely. Granted, the usual *except Eve and Tylo caveat applies, since it's a winged airbreather.

 

Rune. I mean, you could go to Eve, but then, I hope your kerbals like purple.

OOOOH, I just thought of something. Check the Challenges Forum. You might find something you like.

Edited October 27, 2016 by TopHeavy11

[Monsterlunch]

This is the ArcJet (MK3). It's designed to deliver medium sized payloads (< 15 Tons) to LKO. I'm currently working on optimizing its aerodynamic characteristics.

[Jens Lyn IV]

Here's my VTOL SSTO lifting body Laythe lander again, this time in a configuration that actually works on Laythe. 

As it turns out, Laythe's thinner atmosphere (60% of Kerbin's) reduces static thrust enough to require a third engine; hacking Kerbin's gravity to 0.8 g failed to account for this. The original version had insufficient thrust for hovering, but also carried excess oxidiser, so total mass remains 20 tonnes. The added forward control surfaces provide negative static stability at low fuel loads, easing the transition to retrograde flight. Tail-first handling is still a bit awkward since the control surfaces move the wrong way, but below 40 m/s the thrust vectoring and reaction wheels provide sufficient control authority. Finally, a small docking port allows refueling on the surface of Laythe.

Thanks to the third engine, all that's needed for the initial launch to LKO is a pair of LF+O drop tanks.

Not shown: drop tanks required for Kerbin launch.

Forward control surfaces aid retrograde transition in dense air.

[Rune]

On 27/10/2016 at 8:40 PM, Monsterlunch said:

This is the ArcJet (MK3). It's designed to deliver medium sized payloads (< 15 Tons) to LKO. I'm currently working on optimizing its aerodynamic characteristics.

That is a very cool-looking bird. You might have too many engines (four, or even three, should do for such a payload), but damn she is sexy.

59 minutes ago, Jens Lyn IV said:

 Tail-first handling is still a bit awkward since the control surfaces move the wrong way, but below 40 m/s the thrust vectoring and reaction wheels provide sufficient control authority. Finally, a small docking port allows refueling on the surface of Laythe.

If you put them in negative control values, they will work as intended flying tail-first. It's a bit tricky to get a precise number, and you can't action-group it, but if you let up the tweakables for the control surfaces, you can do it perfectly fine for one or two pairs (adjusting one will adjust it's symmetrical counterpart, if they are placed with symmetry).

 

Rune. It was one of the things I liked the most about those tweakables.

[septemberWaves]

Reading the latest updates in this thread reminds me that I need to get back into making spaceplanes; I've learned a lot since I last posted one of my SSTO planes in this forum (I think that was my K-prize attempt, since which I have improved quite a bit at making spaceplanes).

@Rune I think that front-loading SSTA is quite possibly my favourite of yours.