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Any up to Date SSTO Tutorials


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Not that I know of. But this forum is -crawling- with SSTO enthusiasts who can't wait to give general advice based on the problem description, very specific advice based on pictures or even direct doctoring if you attach a .craft file.

I can already try the first. Burning wings means too much speed. That could indicate a too steep descent. Coming from a like 300km AP to a 40km PE can be painful. It's best to lower the AP before attempting to land as low as possible. 100-70km should do the trick.

Now that's logical, and I doubt it's the problem, just wanted to rule out the too high AP option. What's more likely is that you aren't putting the widest profile (read: the 'belly' of the plane) into the airflow. You should do it as soon as reaching the upper atmo (70km). If you reenter by pointing the nose prograde, you can't slow down enough before the thicker atmo around 40km hits hard.

Another common problem is if you know that you should hold that belly into the flow, but can't pull up the nose (~ raise the angle of attack - AoA - to 30-40°). If that's the case, it's happening because when you used up the fuel, the center of mass (CoM) shifted backwards, probably even behind the center of lift. If that's the case, you'll need to redesign the plane. Check how the CoM-CoL looks when the tanks are full and when empty. Ideally the CoM shouldn't move much, or at all (and should be slightly infront of the CoL). Rearranging the tank placements and tweaking the wings can fix this.

Edited by Evanitis
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I found the best way to get in to space planes was to copy someone's design from a picture on here, and once I'd worked out how to fly that to orbit and back set about making my own.

A few random tips from a relative newbie

  • Use the F12 aerodynamic overlay to see how much force your tailplane is applying, this will give you an idea what the CoM/CoL/Drag relationship looks like, and you have tanks on the nose and tail you can transfer remaining fuel to balance it out better
  • Keep some fuel in reserve for a powered landing
  • Check the maximum temperatures of parts, as said above some wings don't have a good temperature tollerance
  • The Big S wing is a really good one to use as it can hold fuel which will be right on the CoL too.
Edited by RizzoTheRat
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Now I've only built a few successful space planes, but never had an issue with burning wings.  But more info would help solve your problem.  You should be belly to prograde as long as you can hold it, until slow enough that heating won't be an issue.  Pics are worth a thousand words...

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21 hours ago, Vegetal said:

Which wings? Airliner wings have very low max temp.

From what altitude are you re-entering? What is your attitude during reentry? Pics of your craft?

I might not know of a tutorial, but I can help ya.

Ok, yea, I was using the Big-S wings and MK3 parts, so there's issue one, and this is reentering from a 75km orbit...

 

6 hours ago, ForScience6686 said:

Now I've only built a few successful space planes, but never had an issue with burning wings.  But more info would help solve your problem.  You should be belly to prograde as long as you can hold it, until slow enough that heating won't be an issue.  Pics are worth a thousand words...

Yes, I was going noes first into the atmosphere, there's issue two

I'll see how well I do by going in belly first. If not, I will look at your tutorial, Alpaca.

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Naw, Big-S wings are perfect and very heat-resistant. Going nose first was the only problem. The difference between going belly-first and nose-first is like using an opened parachute and one tightly curled into a ball. ^_^

Happy landing!

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1 hour ago, Kosmo-not said:

I don't have any problems with reentry with my SSTO. I separate the command pod and use that. It doesn't even need a heatshield from LKO.

For any of my Mun missions, I add a heatshield with no ablator; does the job just fine.

 But then you've wasted the point of using the ssto, fund recovery.

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On 2/6/2016 at 10:22 AM, ForScience6686 said:

 But then you've wasted the point of using the ssto, fund recovery.

The point of an SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) is to get into orbit with a single stage. What you do with that stage beyond that is up to you.

I am able to recover the first stage of my rocket, so :sticktongue:. Sure it reduces the overall costs of a mission with that rocket by about 10k (compared to launching without recovery equipment), but is it really worth it to me? I don't know.

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5 hours ago, Kosmo-not said:

The point of an SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) is to get into orbit with a single stage.

I think that's the 'meaning' of SSTO. The 'point' of it for a space program is reusability and extreme cost efficiency. Though I doubt that many KSP spaceplane enthusiasts play such a hard grindy career where that matters from a gameplay perspective (same with actually landing on the runway).

For me the 'point' is the fun of flying them. That includes re-entry and landing too - it's just awesome to substitute the hassle with heatshields and 'chutes with only aerodynamic forces of wings. I like the designing difficulty too, and that gets harder if you want to bring the whole thing down afterwards.

Not that I don't have SSTOs that decouple some (or much) of their weight on orbit. I'd never mention someone's design choice in a negative manner, because it doesn't fits mine. I'd rather try it to find the fun in it. But I can totally see where the other commenters are coming from.

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21 hours ago, Evanitis said:

I think that's the 'meaning' of SSTO. The 'point' of it for a space program is reusability and extreme cost efficiency.

The Apollo lunar ascent module was an SSTO.

An SSTO can also be used to reduce complexity and thus less things to go wrong.

 

The reason for using an SSTO is really up to the designer.

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