How2FoldSoup

[quote name='Rune'] Rune. A single Vector would lift a Heinlein... more efficiently and with higher TWR and gimbal.[/QUOTE] Agreed! I posted this in the SSTO thread already but I wanted to test out the vector on my older designs but instead just build one around the vector. It's super broken(In my opinion, anyways). This has 26 parts and took me 5 minutes to throw together as a proof of concept and still had 600m/s left in the tanks in a 100x100 orbit. I'm pretty sure you could make some very interesting chemical SSTO's with it. It's got potential. It also has a TWR of 1.6 on the pad which allows you to scoot out of the atmosphere pretty quickly. [img]http://i.imgur.com/9PFLIAG.png[/img]

I'm a little bitter. Prepatch I spent hours getting my chemical SSTO to work right. I tried to incorporate the new SSME on it to see what they could do. I found they were a bit over powered...so I thought why not try to make the most ridiculous thing out of [I]one[/I] of these engines. I present the unnamed SSTO. I built it in 5 minutes and it has 26 parts. It's in a circular 100x100 km orbit. I did the math by hand since I don't have KER on this flight and it still has about 600m/s in the tanks. Something is wrong with these engines. [img]http://i.imgur.com/s14MF2y.jpg[/img] Edit: I just realized my KER readouts were pulled to the side. :huh:

[quote name='Mikki']I made a 1.0.5 SSTO. Project name is[I][B] SWAN 6B[/B][/I]. [B][I]All Stock[/I][/B], just KJR (obviously), no clipping. Partcount: -SSTO 229 parts -Kerbodyne tank 10 parts Startweight: -540 tons+ Engines: -12 Whiplashs -24 Rapiers Max thrust: -more than 16,000 kilonewtons (at 15.000 meters altitude) It pulls [B][COLOR=#ff0000]179.5[/COLOR] tons[/B] ([B][I]5 Orange JUMBO TANKS[/I][/B]) to 105x95 LKO or more, some fuel is left... [I](In 1.0.2 i managed to pull up 183 tons with a similar construction, this one has more parts and much more startweight ...its on page 310 of this thread :).)[/I] Full Show :0.0::0.0::0.0::0.0::0.0:, 10 pics [URL]http://imgur.com/a/j403j[/URL] Picture from start [SIZE=1](All my Kerbs refused to enter this plane with the following comments: Jeb: [I]"Naahhhh..."[/I] Bill: [I]"Meehhhh..."[/I] Bob: [I]"Are you kidding me???" [/I]Valentina: "..." making an obscene gesture with the middlefinger...)[/SIZE] [url]http://i.imgur.com/GvFRNJp.png[/url] Picture from landing [url]http://i.imgur.com/vEdin3V.png[/url] I should have call it[COLOR=#0000ff][SIZE=3][FONT=impact][FONT=arial narrow] [B]"THE TERRIBLE BANANATOAST OVERKILL LADY IN WHITE"[/B][/FONT][/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR][/QUOTE] I'm totally hijacking your style. Nice!

All future launches will feature a landing attempt. The orbcomm launch is only to LEO so it's no problemo. Falcon 9 also recently got a few upgrades that will now allow it to attempt a landing even with GEO missions. This means that for all payloads to LEO or GEO will feature a landing attempt. Expect one from every launch from now on .

I added an extra pair of engines and filled up the other two wings with fuel and had improvement! 1970 m/s left in the tanks! I think I could push it a little higher I stayed a little low in the atmosphere for longer than needed so I think with better flying I could push another 50 or 100 m/s out of her. I'm pleased! I promise I hadn't seen your ships before this I saw someone elses with the wings just reversed and I thought about what would happen if I put one facing forward off of a deltawing(it's what's clipped under there). From there I thought they would look even cooler if I set a mirrored pair facing reverse! It worked out pretty well. She's amazing to fly and handles wonderfully. It takes off at a mere 40m/s and has no problems slowing down in the atmosphere because of high area of the wings and being extremely light when empty. The S turns work wonders on reentry and I was able to land with only using 1/4 of kerbin's atmosphere to aerobreak.

I whipped this thing together tonight because I had sudden inspiration on the wing design. It's still a little bit shaky and needs a LOT of refining. I didn't have the front pair of wings with any fuel in them so the TWR was higher(Because I'm lazy for testing purposes) so this was missing a potential 1200 units of LF for the nuke. I'm confident it can break the sound barrier because she flies like a dream lift-wise. It has a problem with wing flexing and giving you weird forces in certain directions but more struts or better control surface placement is in order. I could definitely have put a payload in this and probably take up anything that fits in the bay. My circularization burn was only 110 m/s and it felt like an old airhogger because I could just cruise at ~21km until I started losing speed then light the rockets and pitch up. It also needs some fuel flow fixes because I had to manually transfer into tanks the nuke could pull out of to get the total dV but I'm pretty proud of this for it's first official orbit/test flight. I REALLY like the aesthetics on this one. I'm considering a 2nd pair of rapiers just to make it snappier. I need to sleep now. Edit: The first SPH screenshot isn't entirely accurate or up to date.

Thanks! A good portion of the part count is a 1.25m service bay between the mk2 adaptors and the nose cone(just translated down) with a battery and solar panel in each. That alone x6 costs me a solid 18 parts plus 4x4 verniers but they are a necessary evil . Great idea about the capsule though! I'm going to do that immediately. I also forgot to mention she's 85t on the pad so she's a bit heavy but isn't the worst to send 3 kerbals to LKO. It's around 4.2km/s fully fueled in orbit and should be capable of landing and returning on anything except Eve.

Hey Rune, I worked on it a bit last night and was just using MJ to fine tune the ascent to see what she was capable with a better pilot than me. This was the best ascent I was able to make. She's also a full 30t lighter than my previous attempt so I'll call that a huge improvement.

I only meant compared to pre-1.0 days where they had ~385s and it was a dream to fly with them. I do enjoy the Isp they have at SL. That's actually one of the problems I was having with them was the low TWR. That's why I packed on so many engines. I'm struggling to come up with a solution although just as I'm replying I think I may have it. It will be a balancing of my solution here(many spikes) and my first experimental build which used a mix of spikes and sparks.

Hey Rune, A week or two ago I got inspired by the Heinlein and took it in my own sort of style. I feel your pain in trying to make it work! That capsule is way too heavy and the aerospikes just don't have the Isp needed to make chemical SSTO's kinder. Anywho, I was able to land on the Mun with mine and figured I'd share it. I went with the bigger and more engines line of thinking that gave me an extra 100-200 m/s that made making orbit a bit easier.

Currently studying for my B.S. in Applied Physics and in Mathematics with a minor in Polysci. 5th year senior finishing up my victory lap currently. I plan to head to grad school to get a PhD in Aerospace Engineering as well(if I can get accepted).

Cooler heads prevail If you have any questions(that hopefully don't begin an argument) I'd be happy to answer them. I thought I'd update the thread and say that we're past the 50% threshold but we still need a lot of funding. If anyone has seen this and became interested/might like a game like this in the future or knows someone who might be interested, please help spread the word!

You can just barely see it(because he's on the ground) but you can see a 30km station that's orbiting around the planet. Ridiculously large stations confirmed Edit: A better view!~

Went right over my head, sorry about that. Probably cinematic as Navy has already said. I'm not sure if there's a video or livestream where the pilot flies with assist-off to show it better. It's newtonian though so it's self explanatory(like you said you already know it) and it's there. I have flown in the atmosphere in the new prototype and it is quite draggy and you can definitely feel the loss of control if you try to turn to hard.

Could you link to which video and a time? What you saw was probably the correction assist correcting for gravity wanting to pull the ship down or fighting against the atmosphere but I can't tell for sure unless I know when you mean. It could have also been accelerating at the time. I've played the prototype myself and I can assure you that with correction assist off you tap forward you will go forward forever until you hit something.