Exothermos

Yeah I'd love to get her flying again, but the new aeromodel hates the way some of the shapes are replicated with wing parts. Specifically the long section on the Inlet trunk and the blended section to the fuselage (in red below). I may conquer it, but I wish we could toggle lift on / off on the structural wing parts so they would just be draggy.

I just couldn't help myself, so I whipped-up the slimmed-down versions of the Arbalest. The performance gain and ease of ascent was too satisfying to stop. These all use the run-up style ascent profile discussed previously. Arbalest Reloaded This version is slightly longer than the original Arbalest and capable of lifting more than 2 orange tanks (72 tons+) to low orbit. Download Arbalest Reloaded Arbalest GT Reloaded The GT will lift anything you can cram in the bay. Want to lift a bunch of full large ore cans to orbit? Why? But...OK. Or it can lift an orange can with enough DV to go to 200 km orbits and more. Download Arbalest GT Reloaded ArbaLEAST Reloaded The ArbaLEAST is even more rewarding to fly now. Its a little rocket ship in the atmosphere and light and responsive during reentry. Download ArbaLEAST Reloaded

This is a whole different level of building. Incredible.

Thanks guys! Yeah, I really like the look of the nacelles, but I am realizing that they are far too draggy to take advantage of the RAPIER's best ascent profile. The Arbalest family was a long time in development, and frankly I wasn't aware how much some things had changed over the different versions of the game. The ships work great as released, but they would benefit from an overhaul in the engine / streamlining department. I have some in development that greatly reduce drag, weight, engine count, and fuel use, AND do it all with much more DV left in orbit, while lifting more weight! This allows for the low altitude Rapier run-up ascent profile, which is the best way to do it right now. The huge performance increase is accomplished by dropping the very draggy mark 3 engine pods in favor of 2.5 meter parts. That 2.5 meter tank is quite ugly (lets get a revamp squad)! It may have less character, but overall it's a nice "slimming" effect, and the performance alone is enough make it beautiful in my eyes. 8 engines to lift an orange tank is certainly not an efficiency record, but it is leaps and bounds better than the 14 (!) in the original machine. Or, almost twice the weight to orbit as the Arbalest, with 12 engines. I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in a re-release of these improved versions, but I may edit-in the craft files into this post at a later date.

XB-70, I really liked your T-tail design, and though it may not have been a successful Duna-capable machine, it makes a fine low orbit machine with a few tweaks.

Well, if it is a reliable indicator (and I think it is) there is a pretty noticeable difference by looking at the f12 aerodynamic overlay while in flight. This is a "Rapier-cone" test plane with one plain rapier (starboard), one rapier with a nose cone offset into it (port), and one open node (centerline) as a baseline control. We are near sealevel here at a little over 300 m/s. It's a pretty significant difference in drag with the nosecone installed. In fact the rapier is nearly as bad as having an open node, which was surprising. Here is the same thing with a "rapier-spike" This is all super important now as it seems the sealevel "scud-run" is the best way to build up velocity in rapier powered craft. Obviously drag is critical in the thick lower atmosphere. This flight profile is how some of the more deft SSTO builders here (like Val and Rune) are able to get such awesome performance out of really simple designs with low TWR. Raidur Ng's design here follows those principles of streamlining, simplicity, and relatively low TWR. And yes, fairings are an awesome choice for the pointy ends thanks to their heat resistance (2600 degrees), but other things work well too if you are careful.

It's capable of a lot more than 30 tons! Nice simple design. Also interesting to me was the inclusion of a nosecone offset on the back of the Rapiers. That was deemed no longer beneficial a couple versions back, but my tests in 1.2.1 confirm that they do, indeed, work in this version. Now whether the weight penalty is worth it is a different calculation, i suppose.

I was experiencing a similar issue. During flight, KSP would crash whenever I held the right mouse button down to rotate the external camera IF my mouse's path intersected the ship model. Highlighter off has fixed this so far. (edit: only in 1.2.1)

Yeah me too, but I couldn't crack it! I'm trying to SSTA a cupola based rover. I get ungodly amounts of instability with any sort of Angle of Attack with the ramp part faced forward. It creates huge lift (and drag) with anything more than 5 degrees AoA at speed, and the plane does backflips and rips apart. Did you nullify that some how? 1) simple. Unstable 2) move lift generating part closer to CoM. Not much Better. 3) 5 degree pitch down on the part and push CoL further forward. Same problem. 4) Go conventional to immediate success. There were close to 10 other iterations before I gave up that I didn't bother to screenshot. They would all SSTO easily, but if I messed up at all with the elevator it was instant disassembly.

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.

ha!, Yeah thats not happening anytime soon. Rune uses math and stuff. That tends to have good results

Simplicity at its finest! Dayum...

Hi everyone, it's been a while! I'm going to start uploading some of the deep backlog of craft I've built as I vacuum the floor mats and convert them to 1.2. This thread will be the new dumping ground for those craft. Those of you familiar with my stuff will be totally unsurprised that these craft are largely SSTOs, but there is a fun smattering of other things. First up is a series of Mk-3 SSTOs I've been tinkering on since 1.04. That's a ridiculously long lead time, but I fell off the KSP wagon for a while. These 3 ships fit my personal SSTO design philosophy of being 1) easy to fly, 2) quick to get to orbit, and 3) good-looking and believable. That usually results in pointy things with big TWR. These craft all follow the "Set 10 degrees and Forget" school of ascent, and the 45 degree reentry profiles. Arbalest This is the largest model in the line with a Max payload of around 45 tons. That's an "orange can" and a lot more. It might be able to lift more, but I've never really tried as the air-breathing acceleration time starts creeping up too high for me to tolerate. It's got all the bells and whistles that a big, luxurious SSTO needs like... engines, wings, a cargo bay, um, a docking port. More engines. DOWNLOAD ARBALEST (Dropbox) Arbalest GT Hey, I get it. 45 tons is WAY pointless. Why should you lug all that extra stuff around? You want to feel alive: get pushed back in your seat and hug the (air) curves! Well the GT model will get that done. All the horse power with less weight means you can still lift 36 tons (one orange can) but now you can put the top down and scan for Kerbettes in style (do not attempt top-down operation). DOWNLOAD ARBALEST GT (Dropbox) ArbaLEAST HAH! Get it? 'Cuz it's the smallest? Well. OK, I can see you are the no-nonsense type, and I can respect that. This is the model for the space program operator who is serious about utility. Lighter weight, fewer parts, less TWR, and no superfluous Kerbal seats make this the most efficient in the lineup. This leads to a still impressive 22.5 ton rated payload and the lower wing loading makes the landing sequence much less exciting. DOWNLOAD ARBALEAST (Dropbox) The craft descriptions have pertinent info on Action Groups and flight profiles, let me know if you have questions. I know lots of you are pros, but I am always surprised at the number of people intimidated by SSTOs (and space planes in general). Give 'em a shot: they're fun! Next up is an SSTA i have floating around, or maybe a pack of Mk-2 SSTOs, or maybe some shuttle-style things, or, or, or... EDIT: Here is a annotated imgur album covering development if anyone is interested. It was fun to look back over so many versions and remember all those AH-HA! moments. It might be useful to those struggling with the usual SSTO design issues. IMGUR ALBUM

Impressive building! I have been unable to build a stable SSTO with the ramp pieces oriented backwards like that. They usually flip over backwards in the hypersonic stage.

Way back in the very early game i made this: it was for deorbiting junk from LKO because at the time debris was persistant and needed occasional cleanup. Also there were no "grabbers" so a big claw / basket thing did the trick (usually).

now THAT is pretty darned "kerbal".

Resistance is futile.

Yeah, think bigger. Here's how I big I had to go (with your basic aesthetics) to get a full orange can to orbit, and even then margins are very tight. 5x vectors (though I think 4 would be better) and LOTS of fuel. Reentry and landing can be entertaining too. Edit: Of course you don't have to go anywhere near as big for lighter payloads, I just went kinda extreme to illustrate the point.

Looks like a bigger fuselage composed of mk 3 parts. My guess is the structural beams are the dimensions of the finished product. A ruler.

Nice little Shuttle SSTO Rune! That truncated rear end on the MK-3 fuselage reminded me to share something I've been working on. I like to design Mk-3 SSTOs that have, well, generous TWR. Traditionally I was using "engine packs" on the back of truncated Mk-3 fuselages, or 2.5 meter parts. This allows me to control the CoM and allows cleaner looking designs. Unfortunately the new aero model really punishes those kinds of designs. It hates truncated parts of any type and slaps a severe drag penalty on blunt rear-ends. I've been embarking on an X-plane style program to figure out how the new aero model "thinks" and have learned a ton. Here is a quickie test plane as an example. A shuttle engine mount ends the port side pod, and, for balance purposes, an empty RCS tank on Starboard. The Engine mount has a very slightly smaller drag penalty, but not really significant. This is at 200 m/s at 1000m. So to combat that we need to taper the rear end more aerodynamically. These empty adapter parts will fit the bill, but they look silly, and more importantly they push the CoM very far back. This is especially true once more engines are attached. That complicates things greatly when building a craft that needs to be stable when full of fuel on ascent and when empty on re-entry. The solution is to Offset the aerodynamic parts "Nesting Doll" style into each other. They are empty anyway, so I don't get any pangs of cheater's remorse. Look at that difference! Again, 200 m/s at 1000m. Since the added weight of the aero parts is no where near as important as the drag, it is a good compromise, i suppose. Further Engines can then be attached radially directly to nosecone parts, or pre-coolers and fuselages with nosecones. This will limit their drag penalties as well. This may have gotten out of hand...

Looks good! Downloaded. I love making these kinds of designs.

I'm working on something big. Too big, because my computer cant really handle it.

I continue to tinker with Mk 3 sized payload SSTOs. This one is suuuuper easy to fly thanks to all the wing parts. It's totally overbuilt, considering the payload fraction, but I was going for style on this one.

Yeah, I've not been able to make a similar design work because of drag and the shear amount of engines required. That thing is a beast! The fuselage is clever.

Really fun video! Your models are fantastic.