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drewscriver

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    Spacecraft Engineer

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  1. Glad to hear that you got it working. Welcome to the world of SSTO-ing.
  2. Any particular part of the flight you're having difficulty with? Not making it up, or going too fast and exploding? I just swapped the crew cabin for a cargo bay and did a heavy lift as a test. It took a little while, but I made a 100x100 orbit with 8 tons of cargo (the mothership still had 358 units of liquid fuel at this point). Basic profile was as follows: Run off the end of the runway, pitch up to fifteen degrees, drop to ten at 7,000 If you're heavily loaded, your speed may hit a wall in the low 300s at around 10,000 meters. In this case, drop the nose to the horizon to accelerate until you reach at least 450 m/s, then pull up again. First to ten degrees, and then fifteen degrees at 15,000 you should break 1,000 m/s around 20,000 and be approaching 20 degrees Light the nuke when you hear the rapiers start to trail off, around 23,000. The rapiers will switch mode at 30,000. If you're falling short, switch them over manually with action group 3. Let them kick your apoapsis up for a bit 40 to 50 thousand, then gradually drop the nose prograde. By the time you run out of oxidizer, your apoapsis should be in or near orbit. Keep firing the nuke until you have your desired apoapsis. If you have a particularly long ascent, you may have to pump fuel from the wings to the fuselage at some point, if not, do it in orbit. Circularize as normal. I hope this helps; please let me know if you still have troubles.
  3. Definitely great to know. I've been struggling with overheating issues on Eve ascent, and that extra insight into the heating system is invaluable. It's explained why the shielded docking port is so strong as a nosecone, so now I'm balancing tradeoffs. Shielded docking port : less heating -> more efficient ascent path, but more drag Pointier nosecones : less drag, but requires a less efficient ascent.
  4. Well, it certainly looks more like Yggdrasil now, although the 'orbital' may be a bit of a misnomer.
  5. Interesting and useful post. I guess Rapiers must be a special case, as I believe the benefit of adding a rear-facing small nosecone has already been established. I agree that the funnel/cone bug is likely to be addressed (as is the rear-facing open node issue, and reversed nose-cone exploit for that matter). Still, I play the current version, and not the next, so thanks for the heads up!
  6. Another one from me, the Grace Mk1b. I forgot to make it detachable, but I did carry a canister of ore up and back, for what it's worth.
  7. Grace. I didn't set out to create this craft. I was working on a thrust pod for a mega lifter, but one of the wing configurations I came up with in the process quickly evolved into something more. When all was said and done, I was quite smitten with the looks and gave it the first name that came to mind. While not groundbreaking in its capabilities, the Grace lives up to its name in more than just asthetics. At just 58 parts, it's easy on the CPU. Despite that, it can achieve a 100 x 100 with plenty of fuel to spare. The RCS is also carefully balanced for minimal torque when translating, and CoM and DCoM lie very close together. It can easily adapt to other capabilities as well - the shown configuration is just a reference; the docking port, cargo bay and crew cabin can easily be swapped out with other modules as you like. The only thing that needs to be done in that case is strutting the forward fuel tank to the fuselage. It's quite a forgiving flyer, though you do have to be careful of tailstrikes. It can hold about a 10 degree AoA on re-entry, so you'll want a long, slow re-entry. Incidentally, the trick I used to achieve the smooth lines of the rear nuclear engine are outlined here: Overall, this turned out to be one of my neatest builds. Heck, it's even the Mk1b - just the second revision of the design! That never happens to me. Craft is available on KerbalX, if you're interested. I hope you enjoy flying this plane as much as I enjoyed making it.
  8. Testing of the Eve spaceplane design has not gone quite as well as was hoped...
  9. Has anyone tried this in 1.05? I'm guessing with the vector, it might be possible to do with a smaller plane, but the changed overheating might make it worse, instead.
  10. Thanks. I was able to get the hinge working as I'd hoped with the spiders. Unfortunately, it turns out that there are multiple other showstoppers. Ah well, I appreciate your answer!
  11. So spider engines are the bendiest part? Do they pivot at the point of connection, or is it more of a shift to the side? I'm trying to put together as compact a hinge that I can, while still being able to pivot through a large angle without using multiple craft.
  12. Harmony one. Not much to look at; probably the most notable attribute is that it was lofted in a single launch by a SSTO back when this was pretty hard to do.
  13. How to achieve a really smooth looking rear engine, like the following: This particular combination works beautifully for nukes, but the same approach may work for other engines as well. Basically, attach the engine to the node as usual. Then attach the nosecone to the rear nozzle of the engine. Go to the engine and disable the shrouds. Then offset the nosecone forward until it covers the part of the engine you want (in this case, I have shifted the Aerodynamic Nose Cone forward until the curve precisely meets the curve of the atomic motor). Then offset the engine forward until the nosecone is flush with the rear of the tank. This also has the side-effect of eliminating the rear node of the rocket; I'm not sure if there are aerodynamic benefits to this or not anymore.
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