my first good spaceship is not so good!

[computerpro]

hi everyone

i finally made a good space ship

it is a massive monster using the largest fuel tanks, 1 for each of the 4 stages

it takes off from the runway, and uses no boosters but jet engines to achieve mach 3 at 11km high

then we point the nose up 35 degrees and use the air to angle our massive momentum upwards to launch us into space

at 22km high we release the jet engines

then we use a stage and a half to circularize the orbit at 72km

now we are in orbit with a large amount of fuel and ordinance!

we fly to the moon, jettisoning the 3rd stage halfway there

now we are flying the main section of the craft:

we circularize the orbit on the moon at a low 7.5km

then we jettison the ordinance!

those conspiring moon peasants don't stand a chance!

and we still have plenty of fuel to fly back to earth and land

to find the runway i must stop using mechjeb and fly manually

but this is impossible. the craft cant seem to fly well without mechjeb

it gets into a dizzy spin very easily, especially when trying to yaw

can anyone suggest an improvement to make the last stage easier to fly manually? or try it yourself! here are the files for the whole ship:

https://mega.nz/folder/rDgzWS6K#edPu1HIaQlElNwJJwctNOQ

thanks in advance guys!

Edited April 7, 2023 by computerpro

[Vanamonde]

That is a lot of wings. 

[Ryaja]

17 hours ago, computerpro said:

hi everyone

i finally made a good space ship

it is a massive monster using the largest fuel tanks, 1 for each of the 4 stages

it takes off from the runway, and uses no boosters but jet engines to achieve mach 3 at 11km high

then we point the nose up 35 degrees and use the air to angle our massive momentum upwards to launch us into space

at 22km high we release the jet engines

then we use a stage and a half to circularize the orbit at 72km

now we are in orbit with a large amount of fuel and ordinance!

we fly to the moon, jettisoning the 3rd stage halfway there

now we are flying the main section of the craft:

we circularize the orbit on the moon at a low 7.5km

then we jettison the ordinance!

those conspiring moon peasants don't stand a chance!

and we still have plenty of fuel to fly back to earth and land

to find the runway i must stop using mechjeb and fly manually

but this is impossible. the craft cant seem to fly well without mechjeb

it gets into a dizzy spin very easily, especially when trying to yaw

can anyone suggest an improvement to make the last stage easier to fly manually? or try it yourself! here are the files for the whole ship:

https://mega.nz/folder/rDgzWS6K#edPu1HIaQlElNwJJwctNOQ

thanks in advance guys!

My computer is shuddering from fear by just looking at that!

[computerpro]

lolol yes my computer slows down too but its still playable, i think i need a faster computer

[Vini_anonymous]

That has a useless amount of wings, you need to build one, not just spam click the same thing over and over again( or have an high TWR), also, you should store that ordinance somewhere inside the vehicle for weight balacing, you also probably should manage a way to redesign your ship, i think it's quite an exaggerated  design.

[N_Danger]

If it works, it works. 

[Gargamel]

4 hours ago, computerpro said:

lolol yes my computer slows down too but its still playable, i think i need a faster computer

@Whackjob, I think I found you a padawan. 

[computerpro]

4 hours ago, Vini_anonymous said:

That has a useless amount of wings, you need to build one, not just spam click the same thing over and over again( or have an high TWR), also, you should store that ordinance somewhere inside the vehicle for weight balacing, you also probably should manage a way to redesign your ship, i think it's quite an exaggerated  design.

the ordinance is stored inside the bomb bays, you press number 3 to open the bomb bays. load it up try it out its fun! i started with fewer wings but to carry so much fuel and so much ordinance we need a lot of lift. why don't you load it up and see if you can design it better! i am very interested in seeing if you guys can improve my concept

 

[Whackjob]

2 hours ago, Gargamel said:

@Whackjob, I think I found you a padawan. 

He seems to have an innate knowledge of the first rule;  More is more.  And that's enough.  Nicely done, @computerpro!

[computerpro]

21 minutes ago, Whackjob said:

He seems to have an innate knowledge of the first rule;  More is more.  And that's enough.  Nicely done, @computerpro!

what a nice thing to say! thank you! yes, scale seems to bring benefits like fuel efficiency, speed and ordinance capacity, doesn't it? theres also a special benefit with my concept in that we use Momentum to bring us from the atmosphere to space to escape drag. all done with fuel efficient jet engines instead of boosters

Edited April 8, 2023 by computerpro

[Rakete]

Uuhhh yeah.... that design is.... (looking for nice words....) better start from scratch. 

At first: Your vessel will be flip-happy if the center of mass is behind the center of lift. Especially the CoM shifts during flight due to the tanks getting emptier. Maybe you should learn how aerodynamics and planes in KSP work. There are a lot of tutorials out there. 

Tip: empty the fueltanks in the SPH and observe how the CoM shifts in relation to the CoL. 

 

General thing: Your design doesn't make much sense. You take off like an SSTO, but drop stages like a rocket. So you kinda combine the disadvantages of both worlds. And putting on more and more controllsurfaces doesn't make up for a bad design. That is just too much of everything. 

Maybe download a craft from kerbalX.com and analyse WHY it works. And than use what you learned on your own builds. There is nothing wrong in doing reverse engineering. But adding more and more of the same parts is a dead end road - and makes the craft visually not very pleasent.

 

Another tip: start small. Begin with a small SSTO. Building big SSTOs is much more difficult due having to use more and more big engines. 

Just start with a small ssto. Small inline cockpit, two rapiers. Maybe a nice nose cone or fairing. Maybe one nerv engine. Two shock cone intakes, 3 wheels, just a little triangular wing with controll surfaces... a small fin on the back tail... keep stuff simple until you are confident with the physical priciples. With these parts you can easily make a spaceplane with over 2 km/s remaining in orbit - and go for the mun etc.

 

 

Also: learn to fly a craft without MechJeb. MJ can partially controll unstable crafts. Relying on it, makes you build bad unstable crafts. Better build stable flying crafts, that you could control by yourself and THAN let them fly by MJ for convinience. This is like having an autonomous driving car but complaining, that you can't place it in your own garage by yourself, when one of the sensors for autonomous driving fails. Learn to drive by yourself.

Maybe go back a further step. Learn how to build stable planes at first. They don't need so many wings, controll surfaces etc. You try to take the 1000th step before you took the first.

 

After learning the ssto-principles with some minimalistic vessel (see above), you can try to build bigger vessels.... something simple like this. 

Or this.

But you can't build a cathedral, when you haven't learned how to build a little shed.

Really complex and hard to balance stuff like this is step #2000 in your learning curve : 

Start simple! Please note: Even the heavy vehicles don't use dozens of wings, control surfaces or vernier engines. They are not needed and are more aerodynamics harming than they help.

Edited April 8, 2023 by Rakete

[computerpro]

7 hours ago, Rakete said:

Uuhhh yeah.... that design is.... (looking for nice words....) better start from scratch. 

At first: Your vessel will be flip-happy if the center of mass is behind the center of lift. Especially the CoM shifts during flight due to the tanks getting emptier. Maybe you should learn how aerodynamics and planes in KSP work. There are a lot of tutorials out there. 

Tip: empty the fueltanks in the SPH and observe how the CoM shifts in relation to the CoL. 

 

General thing: Your design doesn't make much sense. You take off like an SSTO, but drop stages like a rocket. So you kinda combine the disadvantages of both worlds. And putting on more and more controllsurfaces doesn't make up for a bad design. That is just too much of everything. 

Maybe download a craft from kerbalX.com and analyse WHY it works. And than use what you learned on your own builds. There is nothing wrong in doing reverse engineering. But adding more and more of the same parts is a dead end road - and makes the craft visually not very pleasent.

 

Another tip: start small. Begin with a small SSTO. Building big SSTOs is much more difficult due having to use more and more big engines. 

Just start with a small ssto. Small inline cockpit, two rapiers. Maybe a nice nose cone or fairing. Maybe one nerv engine. Two shock cone intakes, 3 wheels, just a little triangular wing with controll surfaces... a small fin on the back tail... keep stuff simple until you are confident with the physical priciples. With these parts you can easily make a spaceplane with over 2 km/s remaining in orbit - and go for the mun etc.

 

 

Also: learn to fly a craft without MechJeb. MJ can partially controll unstable crafts. Relying on it, makes you build bad unstable crafts. Better build stable flying crafts, that you could control by yourself and THAN let them fly by MJ for convinience. This is like having an autonomous driving car but complaining, that you can't place it in your own garage by yourself, when one of the sensors for autonomous driving fails. Learn to drive by yourself.

Maybe go back a further step. Learn how to build stable planes at first. They don't need so many wings, controll surfaces etc. You try to take the 1000th step before you took the first.

 

After learning the ssto-principles with some minimalistic vessel (see above), you can try to build bigger vessels.... something simple like this. 

Or this.

But you can't build a cathedral, when you haven't learned how to build a little shed.

Really complex and hard to balance stuff like this is step #2000 in your learning curve : 

Start simple! Please note: Even the heavy vehicles don't use dozens of wings, control surfaces or vernier engines. They are not needed and are more aerodynamics harming than they help.

a few of you are making comments about my craft that shows you didn't read very far into the post. the center of lift is behind the center of mass as you can see in the first picture i posted. i did move it further back and it flys great now. can you fly to the moon without rocket boosters, drop 48 missiles on it, fly back to earth with plenty of fuel and land on the runway? i don't think anyone here can master fuel efficiency the way i have tbh but if anyone wants to read the whole post and meet my challenge i would be interested in seeing your design.

Edited April 8, 2023 by computerpro

[Whackjob]

21 hours ago, computerpro said:

what a nice thing to say! thank you! yes, scale seems to bring benefits like fuel efficiency, speed and ordinance capacity, doesn't it? theres also a special benefit with my concept in that we use Momentum to bring us from the atmosphere to space to escape drag. all done with fuel efficient jet engines instead of boosters

Then you're one up on me.  Efficiency is something I never found.  Take my old munar lander in example.

And that wasn't the largest lander I had.

[Little 908]

Ive never seen someones first spaceship be a ssto (by the looks of it)

[Rakete]

On 4/8/2023 at 4:06 PM, computerpro said:

i don't think anyone here can master fuel efficiency the way i have

[snip]

Sorry to say so, but most people have SSTOs in their fleet, that can deliver big heavy full fueltanks (many tons, not just lightweight SRBs) to the mun and fly back and land safely without dropping any hardware. So do I. yeah... and there are many SSTO-artists out there, that are way (!) better in designing efficient SSTOs than me.

And your "fuel efficiency" isn't a big thing, since you shed stages. Any proper rocket can do stuff like that. Every lifter does... most people have lifters in ther library, that lift several hundrets of tons to LKO, Minmus, Duna, etc. Not a big thing. When I look at your design I see huge amounts of dead weight, eg. The three back fins. Hundreds of wings and control surfaces. Fuel efficiency is not a big thing in your design.

 

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

Truly, what SpaceX wants to achieve: The most Efficient thing ever.

[Snark]

Some content has been redacted and/or removed.  Folks, please confine your remarks to the topic at hand, which is about the mission and the ship.  Commentary about posters themselves (such as their attitude, their way of expressing themselves, etc.) is both off-topic and inappropriate.  Thank you for your understanding.

[AtomicTech]

On 4/8/2023 at 10:19 PM, Whackjob said:

Then you're one up on me.  Efficiency is something I never found.  Take my old munar lander in example.

And that wasn't the largest lander I had.

Where can we find these spacecraft?

[Starhawk]

1 hour ago, AtomicTech said:

Where can we find these spacecraft?

In wonderful old forum threads.

Try this.
https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/profile/71402-whackjob/content/

Happy landings!

Edited April 20, 2023 by Starhawk
Added link