goduranus

damn how did you make that!

KSP dos simulate the effect Knizzle had described, I think, as it occurres due to wing lift being proportional to speed. Controlling the cyclic in KSP is pretty easy though, but correcting it through a 4 hour climb from the depths of Jool is tedious. When I get home today I will try adding some drag sources(intakes or vertically placed) above the rotor disk, perhaps that'll drag the axis of rotating back to vertical when the thing starts sliding to the side?

For my Eve ocean/Jool cloudtops sampling mission, I'm trying to build a craft that uses only reaction wheels and sloped wings for lift by spinning it like a helicopter. So far I've achieved around 7m/s rate of climb. However, the craft tends to drift its heading, requiring constant attention to keep it on course. I've tried changing the wing's dihedral, different placement of center of lift vs center of mass, and turning SAS on or off, but no luck. Is there a way I can make this thing never drift off the vertical, so that I can just weight down the Q key and have this thing fly up by itself?

I would imagine for stock you'll need something that uses angled wings, torque wheels, and RTGs for power. After some testing I found that two bladed ones work better, but doesn't look as awesome for screenshot. If you build something like this and it drifts all over the place, consider adding a dihedral to improve stability, though I haven't tested this on rotating wings in KSP.

My entry: Mission time 4:33; I am the Night Rider; Osprey Award; Ace Pilot;Harrier Award yes I did retakes at runway landing cuz I came in too fast and crashed

shouldn't mechapants get 50 more points for using stock SSTO? Also I'd like to make an entry to this challenge: SSTO: 1 Type +4 Max Kerbals: 21 +10 Stock Parts, stock physics +100 I'm using my career mode save because I am trying to setup a Jool station to collect science. There are no crafts or debris in this save other than two probes that I am using to mark the runway. (dropped there by a rover) I will attempt to launch everything with my Brunhild SSTO 21 Kerbals are launched into a 74x72 orbit with 5 hitchhiker cans and a Copula command pod Marking the runway is a good way to estimate your glide ratio Coming in for final approach Landed at KSC

This is the way to go. Go into Kerbol orbit and accelerate arbitrarily fast in space, then come around again and hit Kerbin or Laythe with jet engines turned on.

I got the numbers from memory and they were way off. I tested it again and wrote them down after I got home today. The craft is actually 47 tons, and fuel needed is 15 tons. What's odd though, to add a 20 ton payload, it seem to need to an additional 40 tons of fuel, much more than the payload to craft weight ratio seem to suggest.

I think it already includes the weight of the fuel needed to lift extra fuel for the payload though. The 60 tons of fuel needed to lift the 40 ton craft dry and empty includes the fuel needed to lift the fuel that accelerates the craft. So 30 ton extra fuel for a 20 ton load also includes the fuel that lifts the fuel which accelerates the load.

I am trying to determine how much additional fuel and oxidizers I need to put into a space plane, to make it carry a heavy inert payload. What I already done is that I tested the space plane to determine the amount of fuel and oxidizers it needs to put just itself into orbit with no fuel left. From this point, I would like to find out how much fuel and oxidizer I need to put back into the plane when the plane is now lifting a 20 ton payload. So, the space plane weights 40 tons dry, and take 60 tons of fuel and oxidizers to reach orbit. I guess that adding a mass equivalent to half of the weight of the plane would mean adding half the weight of the fuel needed by the plane itself? plus an additional component to account for the higher gravity drag due to lowering of TWR, and another bit to account for the payload's air drag. How would I go about calculating this extra bit? Is it usually significant? Here are some craft numbers: Total Rockets thrust: 1400 kN Average Rocket ISP: 360 seconds Rocket Start Altitude: 25 km Orbital speed at rocket start: 1400 m/s The target orbit: 70km x 70km

Originally designed for HOC's Youtube series, my intention was to create a craft that carries Rockomax sized payload to orbit, land, refuel and reload, without ever having to return to the space plane hanger. Didn't meet HOC's submission deadline because of center of lift problems. Having solved most of the problems today, I think it's good enough to post. Major features are: - Carries Rockomax-sized payload up to 28.5 tons to 75km orbit (orange tank 3/4 full); - Rovers can drive onto it ; - Can be reloaded in the field with a new payload up to 10 tons; - Taxis around without fuel using rover wheels(raise forward landing gear by pressing "0"); - Reusable SSTO Download http://www.curse.com/shareables/kerbal/221968-stock-flying-wing-cargo-ssto Drive a rover onto it Taxi with rover wheels to save fuel Deploying paratroops Launching an interplanetary tug(~28.5 tons) Carries a 3/4 full orange tank to orbit A crane to reload and refuel Notes: Watch out for tail strike during takeoff, take off at no more than 5 degrees to prevent this; When carrying payload over 35 tons, will not lift off until the end of the runway; Might need to shuffle fuel and oxidizer around various tanks when carrying very unbalanced loads Action Groups: 1 to toggle rapier engine modes; 2 to toggle air intakes; 3 to toggle middle landing gear to access loading ramp with ground vehicles; 4 to toggle rear landing gear for easier landing; 5 to undock payload; 0 to toggle taxi mode/solar panel

Ah thanks. It is all stock. There are a few hidden wing-pieces clipping though. Haven't tried FAR, so not sure how it'll do there. Now I got to find somewhere to upload the ship.

Flying-wing cargo lifter SSTO, designed as a contestant to HOC's next series. It can lower its cargo bay to let rovers drive inside it and dock with the docking ring. Didn't make the submission as I didn't solve its stability issue before HOC's submission deadline. Last photo has it dropping paratroops

It's definitely not family friendly or good from a game's perspective, but real space programs used these things a lot.

A follow up on this, shouldn't engine exhaust color be based on their temperature as well? So high ISP engines would have bluish exhaust, and low ISP engines should have yellow exhaust? But then the chemistry of the fuel mix could mess up this rule.

In stock KSP, most of a jet's weight is at its exhaust port. This causes problem for spaceplanes, since they will have their center of mass shift rearwards to the engines when they are empty. To improve realism, improve spaceplane balancing, and to reduce the effectiveness of intake spam, I think air intakes should be made heavier, and jet exhaust ports made correspondingly lighter. I suppose in a real jet engine, a somewhat bigger portion of the weight should be at the intake? that's where all the compressor\shockwave reflector\precooler is. More weight is probably in the middle at the combustion chamer, with the exhaust port being relatively light as it only contains the servos for the vector thrust system. So, if stock jet intakes are made heavier and stock jet exhausts made lighter, it simulate the engine's center of mass being in middle of the engine. This would make the game more realistic, improve balancing for space planes as they run empty, and weaken the intake spamming exploit.

One of the most tedious activities during the launch of a space-plane, is manually compensating for the curvature of Kerbin when the plane is accelerating at near-orbital velocities, where you have to keep nosing down to keep the plane in atmosphere as the surface of Kerbin recedes. I'd enjoy spaceplanes a great deal more if there were feature that maintains the plane's attitude with the ground. The most logically implementation would be a "SAS Surface Mode", that activates when the player chooses to display surface velocity. When a player wants to look at ground velocity, keeping attitude with the ground is generally more useful than keeping attitude with the orbit. Also, having one button switch the SAS mode and the velocity mode, would reduce interface clutter.

I don't think it would be more challenging than getting the RAPIER to switch oxidizer on and off. Kerbin> Fuel on, Oxidizer off Space> Fuel on, Oxidizer on Jool> Fuel off, Oxidizer on

How would that be the same as a rocket? It's using oxidizer from fuel tanks, reacting with hydrogen in Jool's atmosphere, and using unburnt hydrogen as reaction mass. It should be a vast improvement over rocket in terms of ISP.

They should make a part that lets you burn oxidizers to fly in Jool.

Jet engines should be useable in hydrogen or methane atmospheres, such as on Jool, by burning Oxidizer instead of Fuel. In an oxygen-rich atmosphere, jet engines bring fuel to react with oxygen in the air, and use unburnt air as reaction mass. Similarly, in a an atmosphere that's rich in "fuel"(Methane/Hydrogen atmospheres), jet engines can function by bringing it's own oxidizer to react with atmospheric hydrogen or methane, and similarly achieve higher ISPs than rockets. This works in real life. Gameplay wise, it would enable a cool jet-powered plane doing Jool/Laythe mission, that uses Fuel for the Laythe leg of the mission, and Oxidizers for Jool.