UnusualAttitude

"Testing" an engine usually means simply activating it through staging by pressing the space bar. "Splashed down", in case you hadn't understood, means that this must be performed with the engine landed on a body of water. Launch a simple rig with the engine and a probe core (it doesn't even need to have fuel) ontop of a booster. Drop it into the sea with a parachute and activate the engine. This should complete the contract.

OK, I'll give FAR a try then. Thanks again WanderFound, your content is a particular source of inspiration for me and many other spaceplane builders, I'm sure.

Thanks for these suggestions. I was hoping to avoid the use of too many fuel lines, as they really do spoil the looks of a spaceplane (not that she's a particularly pretty spaceplane in the first place!). I will look into TAC, as the ability to dump fuel is appealing for landing after an aborted launch, although not very environmentally friendly... By the way, I'm considering going from NEAR to FAR. Do you think that this sort of unshielded payload solution would work, or would she start falling to bits as soon as I go through Mach 1 ?

Hello All, New player here. I'm from the flight simulation crowd. I bought KSP a couple of months ago and I've been having a huge amount of fun designing and flying spaceplanes, so thanks for the inspiration and advice of all the SSTO designers on this forum. In my career campaign, I got to Mun and Minmus using small landers that fit neatly into the Mk2 cargo bay, but I was quickly restricted by its limited size so I designed the ExHaul class twin-boom spaceplane to lift unshielded payloads. Here she is delivering Station Alpha to Kerbin's North Polar Icecap. Designed and flown using NEAR, she's a bit of a pig to handle but she will lift 15 tonnes to LKO, and at least 6 tonnes to Munar orbit. However, she has a small fuel flow problem, as demonstrated by this static burn... Firing just the RAPIERs. Forward tanks are locked off as reserves, but with all other tanks open, the forward bicoupler tank drains first on the port boom whereas the aft bicoupler drains first on the starboard boom, creating a fuel imbalance. This can be checked by locking one tank or the other, but it's an annoyance to have to worry about this during a long burn into orbit:rolleyes: Is there something I'm missing about the way fuel should flow ? Any ideas or fixes ? Will provide more pics or download if required, thanks a lot in advance. Using; NEAR, Kerbal Engineer Redux, KAS, Fine Print. Cheers, UA.