eempc

My favourite SSTO aerospace plane is probably this, it only has a designation at the moment: 27-SKV. Fully capable of CTOL with its turbojets and RAPIERS. Also capable of VTOL in Kerbin or Laythe with its 3 vertically mounted basic jet engines. Can drop in and swim in the waters of Laythe and Kerbin at <6 m/s (crash tolerance speed basically). It can be equipped with with its own integrated kethane accessories (detector, drill, refiner, storage, solar power for a total of ~2 tonnes) for those days when I don't feel like waiting and calculating the most fuel efficient trajectories. Can also be equipped with 4 dumbfire missiles, and when I say missile, I mean an I-Beam with sepatron rockets attached to it. Take off weight is around 40 tonnes, and getting it into LKO leaves around 2000-2300 DV, which is enough to reach Minmus for refuelling. 11 intakes and 7 air-breathing engines. The airhogging version (not shown) is way too easy to get into orbit. Most of all, it looks like a plane using stock parts only!

Using only stock parts, I can sympathise. It's either make a monstrosity I would be embarrassed to have Jeb die in or sacrifice performance to maintain plane aesthetics.

Most people don't read anything except your title though. It seems every thread with ambiguous SSTO in the title has some smartie pants talking about SSTO rockets (which I found unchallenging to get into orbit and therefore not really ambitious). You really need to specify "SSTO space plane with an air breathing phase" or "SSTO rockets-only" in your title. I think that would clarify the difference.

I usually make self-refuelling SSTOs equipped with a kethane drill, converter and storage tank but I decided to try to make a completely stock SSTO, that still looked somewhat like an aeroplane, to get to Laythe and back without refuelling and using only 3 intakes per engine, i.e. no ridiculous airhogging. It was pretty close as I had only 240 m/s DV left when I got back to Kerbin. The worst part was having to wait a long time for the perfect alignment, which allowed me to eject from Laythe orbit directly into an intercept course for Kerbin using only ~1100 m/s.

Unfortunately the plugin doesn't work at all for me. I must be the only one. Having the MagicSmokeIndustries folder present is actually the problem, not the toolbar. Even if I build a spacecraft using stock parts only, the presence of this mod's folder causes the kraken to arise when trying to do a manoeuvre or warping.

Very useful information, thanks for sharing this!

Guess I'll have to make do without the hinges then...

Hi, can anyone help me? Before you answer the following question, bear in mind that I had to delete the 000_Toolbar folder because it was causing a kraken to rip apart my spacecraft for no apparent reason when using a MechJeb manoeuvre node. How do I remove these Servo Control windows? They appeared after I deleted the Toolbar folder. I don't need them since I only use the hinges for up/down and they are already mapped to the 0-9 buttons.

I just had a similar phenomenon happen to what you described with my two fuel tanks and an LV-N. The LV-N could only access fuel from the immediately-attached tank and not both even though they are all in a simple, single column. I had to manually pump the fuel round. Weird bug.

After realising horizontal landings on Laythe was not the same as landing on Kerbin, I decided to tweak the SSTO with 3 vertical engines. Here's a picture of Bill living life on the edge.

Okay, I did test it and you are right about the turbojet, but not the basic jet engine which I had incorrectly based my initial statement on. My two turbojets are capped at 105.7 kN with the brakes on. The 3 basic jet engines here are outputting the full 150 kN thrust though. Looks like my dreams of a RAPIER VTOL have been shattered.

Yesterday I tried to land horizontally near the easter egg on Duna but after the 20th attempt, I gave up and just did a vertical landing and belly flopped onto the landing gear at 20m altitude. Very few planes in real life can land on rough terrain and Duna is full of bumpy surfaces. I'm certain it is possible in KSP but you would probably need to build a plane specifically for that. Correct me if I'm wrong but unless you have airbrakes from the B9 pack, engaging the brake while in midair won't do anything. It will be one less thing to worry about it when you touch down. RCS thrusters are so far the closest thing to airbrakes using stock parts. Depending on what your plane looks like, more gears might help. My planes used to have 3 gears and would tip over forward onto its left or right "shoulders". Adding 2 more gears stopped that from happening.

Why can't my RAPIER engines provide more than 95 thrust when they are rated at 175? The other air breathing engines provide their correct thrust at sea level so why not RAPIERS?

Isn't the Hohmann's transfer covered in the Training mission: Orbiting 101? Or was that a different manoeuvre?

I wouldn't have minded setting up a station at a solar Lagrangian point but I hear Lagrangian points don't exist (yet).

Thanks, I see it now.

I installed MechJeb and I only see one part: the cockpit. Is there another piece that should have been installed? If so, any ideas on why the cockpit would install but not anything else?

Just some suggestions: you can try draining some excess oxidiser for reduced weight, and instead of using the NERVA to get into the final phase of orbit you could try those little orange radial 24-77 engines. Also that in line docking port is stupidly heavy compared to a regular open port stuck to the top.

I'm wondering about the zero-bypass turbine, does it not work at high altitudes? I lost KintakeAir at a point, maybe around 10000 m. Is it not supposed to be used to get into orbit? Also, I haven't tried yet but does it work in vacuum?

Recently got the hang of rendezvousing and docking. Sent a small refuelling station into orbit and docked four unmanned SSTOs.

Thanks. I embedded the scanner into the fuselage for aerodynamics so it was hard to click it.

How do I turn off the beeping on the detector? The detector's beep overrides the game's audio settings, which I've set to silent.