Raideur Ng

Appears to have been the wheel friction causing the instability. I'm still unsure how the auto setting works, but it was definitely was not playing nice. I appreciate the help from everyone. That was the last thing keeping my light SSTO from being functional. She thanks you.

For some reason, landing gear, specifically the LY-10 just wants to bounce around and destroy my craft, takeoff and landing, to the point the plane isn't even usable. I have no idea why and I've done all the 'proper' steps to make stable gear: Symmetric wide-spaced triangle arrangement All on root part and rigid Steering disabled for rear gear No matter what I do, upon landing, it just steers violently into a turn and roll. This also occurs with the larger gear as well, they just induce bounce and Im dead.

Quite the opposite, a lighter object is far less likely to burn up. Heavy objects like a shuttle need more wing surface area to slow down. That's why you usually want to eject extra stages and deplete fuel prior to entry if you know its a toasty ride.

Space shuttles are one of the most difficult things to get stable and overall make work. You have an unsymmetrical vehicle with control surfaces on one side, etc. A much more stable option for small payloads would be to have the orbiter at the top of the rocket, possibly inside a fairing. Far more stable, at the cost of throwing away more of the rocket.

Poor roll control, nose droop when maneuvering, and general instability that requires you to fight it to achieve desired attitude.

I've got a standard heavy lifting SSTO that does it's job pretty darn well. The only issue is that it has some very wonky and downright difficult flight characteristics during descent and landing that make it almost a pain to get on the ground. I've done everything I know to try and get to fly better, but Im stumped. CG is perfectly balanced for all cargo/fuel states. Wings have proper AoA and CoL is behind and slightly above CG for stability. The CG is even balanced so there is no rotational torque. The entire craft is optimized for low drag ascent performance. Not sure if that would create descent instability, but I figured I'd throw the question out and see what smarter people than me think. Craft file: https://nofile.io/f/ZJPtdzjjgum/Heavy+Lifter.craft Any ideas?

It would cost less just to build every building with additional requirements against wind and flooding in hurricane prone areas so that they simply resist the hurricane better than currently than ANY of the proposals above (And we already do this) and let the hurricane kill itself.

In my experience, any gains from using the Whiplash over the Rapier is cancelled out by the inferior falloff of thrust at high speeds by the Whiplash, exactly when you need to get the most speed out of your air-breathing engines. Additionally, having more engines (Nerva/Whiplash) means more frontal area, which increases drag and degrades overall performance. A very aerodynamically slick vehicle with Rapiers can perform very well, especially since drag losses are minimized in the upper atmosphere, where you must use rockets. I've never settled on a liquid-fuel only design that is aerodynamic, practical, and has sufficient thrust throughout the entire flight regime while carrying any appreciable payload. Better to lift your space-optimized vessel into orbit with the SSTO and have the same SSTO grab returning missions for a safe landing with 100% returns.

Question concerning the Mk4-1 Pod, how is it meant to safely re-enter the atmosphere? I feel silly asking but with its overhanging edges, it's presenting an issue for use with a heatshield. Any thoughts?

If you're flying a drag-optimized SSTO into orbit (as it should be), then the last 10km is not really of any importance. Optimizing drag isnt hard to make very low drag rockets, specifically use of bays and fairings. That along with very low thrust requirements for re-entry profiles. I'd stick to 75km.

http://www.strout.net/info/science/delta-v/ Start with your final stage, and as you add stages under it, lock the fuel and take readings off the Build Aid. Works quite well, The Build Aid ought to be in the default game, honestly.

At full load, the TWR with both linear aerospikes is 0.2....it crawls into orbit, but I get 1900 m/s out of the Shcramjets. It isn't designed to go exploring. However, I want to figure out a way to get down to Tellumo. Aerobreaking just doesn't work for spaceplanes on that god-forsaken planet.

The Speedy McGoFast 6.587t / 3.387 Wet/Dry Get's into orbit with almost half the tank left. Not the smallest, but during ascent, briefly had a ballistic coefficient of 40mil+ (Highest I've ever seen). Docking port included.

Megatanker 2: The Tankering 860t runway weight - 41k/49k units of LF/O to orbit

Trololo. It's what's for breakfast here.

1.25m fairing will not explode due to Rapier thrust acceleration. You'd have to expose it to intense, re-entry speeds head on to cause a failure. The fairings are just that good.

The best nosecone I've encountered is a 1.25m fairing tapered as slim as possible. It has high heat resistance and can be very aerodynamic. 2600K Max Heat vs Shock Cone 2400k as seen below.

Megatanker with large docking port. 600.8 T on the runway. This is, hands down, the most insane thing I have ever built. The wings are holding on for their dear lives.

Drag-optimized SSTO to carry your space-optimized vehicle into orbit. Release, explore. Mixing the two gets ugly.

Jade, I believe my station is bigger than yours.

All of that is generally valid, but one of the largest factors in control surfaces, specifically fully moveable ones, is location relative to the center of mass and lift. Control surfaces near the center of mass will impart very little torque on the vehicle for their area. Surfaces farther will impart far more. Thus, having control surfaces far from the center of mass can impact significant control for even a relatively small wing area. Test it. I assure you that having smaller control surfaces on the tips of the vehicle will result in superior control than large surfaces near the CoM/CoL. If this ISNT correct, inform us! That would be groundbreaking and something that should be known.

Slashy is correct in every regard here. Streamlining is extremely important to produce an efficient and effective SSTO spaceplane. You can make it into orbit with 0.5 TWR if your craft has very low drag. Keep in mind every part you add, unless it fits properly into a streamlined body, produces considerable drag. That includes your physics-less parts that give that drag to its parent part, like your solar panels. Key observations: Too much intakes, 1 shock cone can generally feed 4 engines. Wings lack fixed Angle of Attack (or incidence). You will need to test this to see how much is required in order for your vehicle to fly straight. Wings, and thus center of lift and drag is very far back, which means you need more control surfaces to fly. Streamline everything. If you remove the Ramp intakes, replace them with tail cones, advanced cones, or NCS adapter with nosecone. Hit F12 during flight and see what forces are in play, red is bad, minimize it.

Lili is one weird little pebble, but Tellumo is nice. Now if only I could get down there...

Finally got it working, lovely.

Points out the difficulties and limits associated with this. You could release your craft, burn to desired AP and once it is above 25km, it will follow the physics rails. Before it is 25km away from the launching craft, you'd need to switch back and land / recover before the spacecraft reaches AP. A bit brutal but do-able. Never tried it, but it sounds pretty nice. I have no idea if it would refund your aircraft once out of range automatically.