Redshift OTF

Hmm, that gives me an idea.

You could always attach a command pod to your plane with a decoupler, move the kerbal to the seat and then decouple the pod. But it depends on what personal rules you want to follow. As numerobis said, I think it is impossible to raise your periapsis above 30-35km with jets alone. I think this is due to an in-built speed limit in the game with jets and without any more speed the periapsis won't go up. A 70-30 orbit is still a very good orbit and you'll probably only need a small amount of deltaV to make it circular. It sounds like you are almost there so don't give up. Without wings you will need to angle your craft more to keep it level as the jet engines are party fighting gravity which means you aren't going to go as fast. This will mean you use more fuel to get anywhere so wings, if balanced properly are a big help.

Using Mechjeb you can set the final orbit to say 100km, and change the turn shape to about 10%. When using the jet engine get the apoapsis as high as you can, around 75km if you can and coast above 50km before switching to rockets. The rocket engines will get your apoapsis to 100km, (if you're good enough you can get an apoapsis of 100km with jet engines alone). The final burn you make at the 100km apoapsis is entirely dependant on how high the periapsis is. If you flew well enough to get the periapsis as high as 35km then the final burn will only be in the region of 50 deltaV but it takes a lot of horizontal flying and speed to achieve that, (with small planes you may even run out of jet fuel). Getting your periapsis to -50km is quicker and more achievable, (that's what I use), and you will still only need 150 deltaV to get that final orbit. Another way to look at it, particularly if you are not using mechjeb, is to climb quickly to 10km and then set the glide angle of your plane so that the yellow pro-grade marker is at 10 degrees. You may need to angle the plane 20 degrees to get the prograde marker at 10 degrees but it depends on how much thrust your jet engine has. Finally, light weight is not always better. I like the challenge of building light planes but sometimes they are so light the plane ends up with a very large thrust to weight ratio and you end up flying out of the atmosphere before you have had a chance to go more horizontal to raise your periapsis which means you will have to spend more deltaV using the rocket engines to achieve a circular orbit. Hope that helps!

Incidentally I'm using the Munshine IX to launch my new orbital fuel tank, (the top part is empty of course). All went well without a hitch!

Awesome lifters! My procurement department will be in touch soon.

Awesome! Although I think I would need a parachute if I used it. :/

No part clipping? If not, the ram intakes will attach to the tiny octagonal struts and you can attach them to the wings quite easily. You only need 4 rams per jet engine in 0.23. Also you only need 1 pair of wings for a craft of your size. To aid stability you want control surfaces behind the centre of mass as that stops the craft flipping. It naturally wants to correct itself.

I would like to submit my entry for the K Prize with the Cormorant XI. She's not the smallest plane in the world but as small as I could get it while keeping it looking as much like a plane as possible and retaining excellent flight characteristics. She has enough fuel to get into a 100 Km orbit with fuel to spare and land. (Sorry about the Mechjeb!) http://imgur.com/a/lzHLi#0 Sorry if the pics don't fit the page. I couldn't get imgur to resize them. Click link instead.

I like these a lot as I am a fan of SSTO's. Personally I would use the other jet engines and try and go for maximum horizontal speed before engaging the rocket engine but obviously I haven't tried that with these specific ships.

Here's my current Eve lander: http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/919019506139168885/D32073363809897790BEA1603D385A9FD60E6215/ It has almost 12K delta V which is enough to deorbit it and provide a bit of thrust to cushion the landing as the landing legs can't quite take the strain. It can get into orbit from sea level, (well 300m anyway), with a tiny amount of fuel to spare, (so another ship will have to rescue it from orbit). The outer stage with the big fuel tanks is non-asparagus with 4 Aerospikes on each tank while the inner stages are all Aerospike asparagus, except the very top which uses the new 20 thrust probe engine. The fins are essential to stop the thing from tipping over when the outer tanks are almost empty. No RCS as this is pretty much bare-bones. It does have ladders! Yeah this is quite a challenge but it is do-able. Now I just have to design a 2-man version to rescue all the kerbals I trapped on Eve. Or maybe stick a control ring on it somewhere and leave the pod empty.

I would probably use tons and tons of jet engines to get that thing really high and use orange tanks and mainsails to finish off the orbit.

I definitely use RCS on rovers. 1 on each corner forcing the rover on the deck when things get hairy really does the trick and returns traction to the vehicle.

That is a very cool design. It would be nice if you could use it to escape planets with an atmosphere, like Eve for example.

Hello, this is my first post on the forum and I’m relatively new to KSP having played for about 2 months. I looked around the forums but couldn’t find any ships that did what mine did, (apart from infinigliders), so I thought I would post them here instead of the Spaceship Exchange as I thought the mechanisms these work with would prompt further discussion. Sorry if this post is a bit long. A little background first. I had completed many challenges in the game but hadn’t got around to getting a ship on and off Eve and didn’t want to build a 200 ton monster to do it. So, after being inspired by some of the stock helicopters people had built I wondered if this would be a viable method for escaping Eve’s thick atmosphere. Despite my enthusiasm and after numerous failures I decided that while the concept did work to a degree I always ran out of fuel before making it very high. It then struck me, why not build an infinicopter? People have made infinigliders so surely I just need to make some rotors, put some control surfaces on and use SAS to make them twitch like mad and the thing should start spinning enough to carve itself through the atmosphere. Right? In hindsight this shouldn’t have worked since the latest update had changed the way SAS worked so you don’t get control surfaces that twitch so much but I didn’t think of that at the time and tried it anyway and came across an interesting effect. (Links instead of emdeded images because they haven't been resized, sorry) http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/921270022883021005/676E74D1E3A393EA5D88D6443B682DEDC79A3542/ http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/921270022883083665/3B06DD13B95BD0F6B4D4B281925A71D95B922193/ This is a base configuration as an example. I haven’t included a craft file as it should be simple enough for anyone to build. To fly it you simply turn on SAS and prime the rotor by holding down Q to turn it clockwise until the rotor becomes self sustaining. The flaps lock into an downwards position and they generate thrust which turns the rotors fast enough for the airflow over the flaps to generate lift and the thing takes off. I have no idea why this works as the SAS is supposed to try and stop the ship spinning but it actually does the opposite. It is definitely SAS that is powering this because as soon as you shut it off it drops from the sky like a stone. It is also MechJeb friendly with the effect working with both the Ascent guidance and Smart Ass enabled. There are many different configurations you can play about with and it can lift very heavy loads with only a small number of control surfaces, (well over 100 tons), but the disadvantages are that you can’t really control the craft, (it can only go up), centrifugal forces tend to put a lot of strain on complex payloads and of course there is the dreaded cartwheeling. I’m not sure what causes this but it is when the craft starts to tip off centre and slowly becomes uncontrollable until it falls to its death. It doesn’t seem to be a centre of gravity issue and flex on the rotors affects this whereby if it spins too fast then centrifugal force straightens the rotor arms, increasing the effect and then the craft ascends to quickly and cartwheeling starts to appear. Adding vertical wings seems to mitigate this, I think because centrifugal force on the tips forces the rotor arms to bend back downwards moderating the lift but after many tests I cannot be sure. If anyone can cure this once and for all I would be very grateful. Anyway, I eventually built an Eve version and hacked the save game file and deorbited it. Unfortunately the spinning on the way down, (even with high altitude parachutes), broke one of the 8 arms in half. It landed ok and it did work propelling the ship up to 13500m high but when I decoupled the rocket from the base rotor the wobbling caused the rocket to hit the rotor and it blew up. Further attempts to make Eve infinicopters have been futile and I’m a bit too burned out to attempt more. It does work though! http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/921270022883044043/D4E4BB06F1A9500E0AD71217A37A6E5887DC78C8/ http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/921270022883131818/2FD81CD4B9A7F4D558A7D0DB6127B9E29BDCABA6/ So after giving up on Eve for a while I thought I would go all out and build a proper infinicopter inspired by such helicopters that have been built by the likes of MeticulousMitch. As you can see I copied the bearing design from him. Now, with the ability to stack SAS that the latest update enables this infinicopter doesn’t even need RCS or engines to hold it steady, the SAS modules are enough to hold the infinicopter stable. It uses no fuel and only needs electricity to run, (powered by about 28 RTG’s), although it is more of a novelty as you can’t really control it well enough to steer it anywhere. http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/921270022883183947/F1AD42215CC3395F138E50B71131AF856C373708/ http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/921270022883227141/FCD4F187EDFF88961BE7CC2A8FDF341FCC3588EF/ http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/921270022883260691/B5AF4C9B00FF0E664D9E8151792236D6DED66335/ Craft file - Super Copter III : http://www./?7ua32ep70x4iap7 Instructions for use: 1) Retract gears 2) Press Space to decouple the rotor from the main body of the craft 3) Lower gears 4) Press the close square brackets key to switch to the control ring on the rotors 5) Engage SAS 6) You will need to prime the rotor by holding the Q key. You will probably have to turn it the other way a bit using the E key and then prime again with Q just to get the rotor to start spinning 7) Once the rotor becomes self sustaining switch back to the main body of the craft by pressing the open square brackets key and engage SAS to ensure the craft is stablised during flight Now you’re flying! I say flying but you’re a better pilot than me if you can actually make this thing go wherever you want to. It has a control ring at the base of the vehicle as well as a horizontal facing cockpit so you can choose your method of piloting. Like I said if anyone else has made these I apologise for the long post and wasting anyone’s time but I’m fairly sure this is a new thing that the latest update has introduced into the funky aerodynamic system, (not complaining, it makes the game interesting). Hopefully some of the better builders out there can make better vehicles than I can with this technology.