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Kerbodyne SSTO Division: Omnibus Thread


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even in FAR with intake ducting?

It'd vary ship to ship; you'd need to try it and see.

Cones do have better heat tolerance, but they're also unfortunately just a little bit less than you need for one engine at altitude. One ramscoop per engine is fine; shock cones may need to be supplemented with a few structural intakes or similar.

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Reminding me a little of a Eurofighter with twin tails... and suddenly I'm thinking about how the drag on that must be an ever-changing beast as you fire off missiles.

Random question, but how are you finding FAR these days? I've kind of not touched it since 1.0.4, though I do still love using spaceplanes where I can. Having a hard time weaning myself off the forgiving stock aero and easy landings though... need someone to evangelise FAR and get me hooked again ^^;

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Heh, in 0.25-1.0.2 I would totally agree that FAR was essential. The latest revision of stock aero though is... kinder. It doesn't penalise you with drag so much when you need to lift the nose of your plane, and I feel like you get more reasonable weight per engine.

FAR's a lot of extra work to get something that flies - but it would be worth it if it was also giving better speeds/altitudes on-air and delivering things to orbit more efficiently. I miss the days of reaching LKO with 4.5km/s in the tank ^^;

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  • 2 months later...
[quote name='Wanderfound']"Big red"?[/QUOTE]

Sorry, semi-common parlance for a 2.5m orange tank. A big red lifter is an SSTO that can carry such a thing to orbit for use as a fuel depot. Seems to be the benchmark for all mk3 designs in the SSTO thread :)

Personally I 'cheat' and use tweakscale to make mk2 wings and engines suitable for an mk3 fuselage, but there's definitely a lot of interest in pure-stock mk3s that can carry such a load.
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[quote name='eddiew']Sorry, semi-common parlance for a 2.5m orange tank. A big red lifter is an SSTO that can carry such a thing to orbit for use as a fuel depot. Seems to be the benchmark for all mk3 designs in the SSTO thread :)

Personally I 'cheat' and use tweakscale to make mk2 wings and engines suitable for an mk3 fuselage, but there's definitely a lot of interest in pure-stock mk3s that can carry such a load.[/QUOTE]

Always called 'em orange, myself.

I'll see what I can work up. Heavy cargo lifters aren't too tricky.
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BTW, non-obvious design trick:  see those little radiators on the top of the lateral tanks?

Completely removes overheating problems on the usually-vulnerable 747-style wings. You can crank that thing up to Mach 5 on the jets if you've got the patience.

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2 hours ago, Wanderfound said:

BTW, non-obvious design trick:  see those little radiators on the top of the lateral tanks?

Completely removes overheating problems on the usually-vulnerable 747-style wings. You can crank that thing up to Mach 5 on the jets if you've got the patience.

How strange... and buggy :P   But I will remember that :)

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