Wanderfound

Minimum tech: But while Juno/Wheesley SSTOs are possible, they aren't very practical. It gets a lot easier once you have Panthers, then easier still with Whiplashes. The more speed you can gain in air-breathing mode, the less rocket fuel you need to carry.

Notice the difference between your one and everyone else's? Nosecones, fairings. You're trying to push a barn door through the sound barrier if you fly as pictured. Make it slick and sporty:

Sometimes you do it on purpose: http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/Sabotage/storytelling

It's all about the static suction. Look at the details of the intakes: the ones with a high static airspeed (nacelles, intercooler, circular intakes) are the ones you want for a VTOL. Ram-style intakes (ramscoop, shockcone, structural, supersonic radial) don't work well for hovering, 'cos you ain't ramming them when you aren't moving.

Pretty much anything that can SSTO from Kerbin can SSTO from Laythe (it's actually a bit easier due to the lower orbital velocity). A small single RAPIER ship could manage it, but you may find it easier if you go for a two-RAPIER one-nuke build. Up to speed on air-breathing mode, a quick burst of oxidising rocketry to raise the apoapsis, then circularise on the nuke. The main difficulty for a Laythe SSTO isn't flight, it's landing. Ain't no runways there, the thinner air increases stall speed and the light gravity reduces braking force. So, a long and wide wheelbase, airbrakes, dragchutes and retrothrusters. Aim to get yourself stopped as soon as possible after touchdown.

Δ = delta = change. V = velocity. ΔV = change in velocity. Any given manoeuvre will require you to alter your velocity in some way. This is the ΔV number that appears to the right of the navball when you plan a manoeuvre. ΔV is also used to describe the manoeuvring capacity of a ship. If you have 1,000m/s worth of ΔV available, you could accelerate by 1,000m/s, or cancel out 500m/s of velocity and then accelerate to 500m/s in a different direction. Etc.

Ideal for what? For fuel efficiency, one engine will always be more efficient than two of the same engine. But trying to push a megaton mothership around on a single nuke is incredibly tedious. For usability, you want some more. But how much more is a matter of taste; basically, aim to have a ship that can accelerate a few thousand m/s within a few minutes. I'm quite fond of mixing up the propulsion on things; a low-TWR high efficiency engine (usually an LV-N) for most things, but with the option to kick in some high-TWR oxidising rocketry when necessary. It's not the most fuel efficient thanks to the engine dead weight, but much nicer to fly.

As Hebaru says: it's probably flex. The most important thing in landing gear stability is to make sure that it's mounted dead vertical and dead straight (use absolute angle snap if uncertain). But it also needs to be mounted to parts that don't flex, so that it stays vertical; you can only get away with wing mounting if your wings are very rigid and/or your ship is very light. Within those constraints, however, the wider and longer the wheelbase the better. You can sneak in some extra width while maintaining stiffness if you first mount the landing gear to the fuselage, then translate them outwards so that they appear to be wing mounted. For lengthwise placement with a tricycle setup, you want the rear gear just behind CoM and the nose gear as far forwards as aerodynamics and aesthetics can tolerate. Really chunky Mk3 monsters may also benefit from some extra gear directly under CoM, and possibly doubling up the rear gear (to prevent them from buckling during takeoff rotation).

A specialist long-haul SSTO with nukes can make it to LKO without too much trouble with around 3,000m/s ΔV in the tanks. A nuke-equipped but not range-optimised build should do it with about 1,500m/s remaining. For example: Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/gvn716m7k3rjo9p/Kerbodyne%20Solo.craft?dl=0 Or: Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7nfqat5v9vax3z/Kerbodyne%20Outfielder.craft?dl=0 (note: both ships built for FAR, performance may differ in stock. But the basic concepts illustrated should work in either) Both of those are what I'd call medium-range ships. If you replaced the cargo bay on the second one with more LF tankage, you'd be starting to get into the more seriously long-haul stuff. But that is rather missing the point of SSTO spaceplanes. Once you can build an SSTO tanker, you can lift fuel to orbit for virtually zero cost. Once you can do that, there is no reason not to refuel your spaceplanes in LKO. Do that, and pretty much anything that can reach orbit can manage at least a return trip to Minmus, and the long-range specialists can be topped up to 6,000m/s or better.

I'd recommend you stay away from Mechjeb until you've learnt how to do it yourself; MJ isn't that great at rendezvous anyway. The first thing you need to do is make sure that your orbits are matched in inclination (i.e., both on an equatorial orbit, or both on the same polar orbit, etc.). For a rescue mission, this is easy; the target is probably in a routine equatorial orbit, just launch east as usual. Once your orbital inclinations are matched, you need to either speed up or slow down in order to catch up to the target or let it catch up to you. This is where it gets weird: lower orbits move faster than higher ones. If your orbit is the same height as the target, you'll hold position with it; if your orbit is higher, it will get farther ahead of you; if your orbit is lower, you'll catch up on it. So, if you need to catch up with the target, you actually need to lower your orbit by burning retrograde. Conversely, if you need to slow down, burn prograde to raise your orbit. In terms or reading the map screen: first, set the rescuee as a target. After you've done that, the ascending and descending nodes are where the plane of your orbit crosses the plane of the target orbit on the way north (ascending) and south (descending). So long as your orbital plane is close to that of the target, these don't matter. If you do need to correct your orbital plane, the AN or DN is where you'd make the normal/antinormal burn. The intercept points show your closest approaches to the target in each orbit. Fiddle about with the height of your orbit until you get these down to docking range (the closer the better, but anything under a kilometre will do), then time accelerate to the rendezvous and dock (or just get close, match speeds and spacewalk if it's a rescue mission). If you're starting a long distance from the target, it may require several orbits for you to achieve a close enough intercept. However, for a rescue mission, there's no need to start a long distance away; just wait until the rescue target is a little bit short of passing over KSC, then launch direct to an orbit of the same altitude and inclination as it. That should start you off fairly close together, but you'll likely need a bit of fine tuning. So, if the target is ahead of you, burn retrograde a bit to lower and compress your orbit; if the target is behind you, burn prograde a bit to raise and expand your orbit. The last complication is that you need to be matching the targets altitude when you meet up. This gets problematic when you're using the raising and lowering of your orbit to control your speed. So, what you do is make use of elliptical orbits; have one side of the orbit at the same altitude as the target, while the other side is higher or lower depending upon what is required. Careful tweaking of the orbit height allows you to arrange it so that the rendezvous happens on the equal-altitude side. Like a lot of Kerbal, it's really simple once you're used to it and really difficult when you're not. But just try to keep in mind this basic point: big orbits are slower than little orbits. And for the obligatory Manley: The version of the game in that vid is outdated, but nothing has changed in the basic methodology of rendezvous.

A few more things to do with rovers: 1) Make use of those nifty cargo ramps. Expect it to require creativity in figuring out how to dock and undock: 2) Instead of having your spacecraft deploy rovers, have your spacecraft be a rover. And you don't need to think small:

Yes, just fly a bit north/south of east during the initial atmospheric takeoff, and keep that orientation as you burn into space. There's probably some clever mathematical way to figure out exactly what time to launch to put your initial orbit trajectory in line with your target planet, but personally I just eyeball it. Minor corrections are cheap if you've got nukes. Oh, yes it is. As well as all the usual tricks, there's one important thing to remember: if you're in LKO with an ISRU rig, you probably also have ore tanks. Pause after the initial boost to LKO, switch on the ISRU and turn the contents of your ore tanks into pure LF to power your nukes. That should give you enough for the boost to Minmus. In some ways, ore is better than normal fuel, as you can convert it to LF and O in whichever proportions you please. Only lift off with empty ore tanks if you have to.

Hmmn, guidelines... FAR assumed, but most of these will apply to stock as well: * Roughly 400 units of LF (i.e. one Mk1 or short Mk2 LF tank) per jet to get up to light-the-rockets speed. Don't forget to pack extra if you're carrying nukes. * If it has enough thrust to take off, it has enough thrust to go to space (assuming Whiplash/RAPIER). * Low-tech Juno/Wheesley SSTOs are possible, but rarely practical. * You need a bigger vertical stabiliser than you think, especially if you're headed for thin air. * On the first takeoff, pull up hard shortly after you get into the air. You want the plane to almost-but-not-quite stall. Tweak your control authority up or down as required. * Forward control surfaces stall much more readily than rear ones. Keep the canard deflection low unless you've already hit max deflection on the rear surfaces. * AoA-responsive deflection can reduce stalling tendency: negative for canards, positive for elevators/elevons. Too much of it may aggravate SAS wobble. * Speaking of SAS wobble: stiffen your airframe. Even a perfectly-tuned SAS will freak out when presented with a flexing airframe. * Speaking of SAS tuning: PID tuners. Use 'em, they work. Set it up right and your SAS will be rock-steady. Kerbal Pilot Assistant has one. * Speaking of mods, Dynamic Deflection can be used in a sneaky way to tune high-g aerobatic planes. Set the control surface deflections to maximum, then make use of the correlation between airspeed and dynamic pressure. Set up Dynamic Deflection to reduce deflection at low pressure but increase it at high. With enough fine tuning, you can get it so that full stick always holds your plane right at the edge of a stall, regardless of the airspeed. Great for supersonic dogfighters. * The time acceleration trick mentioned above is worthwhile. Get into the air, carefully crank up the time acceleration and observe the plane. Reinforce anything that flexes. Big Mk3 monsters are especially susceptible to time acceleration induced detonation, * If carrying nukes, light 'em at 20km and shut down the oxidising rocketry as soon as your apoapsis approaches 70km. Circularise on the nuke alone. * Airbrakes make reentry much safer, much faster, and much more likely to reach KSC. With well-set airbrakes, you can (if you choose) come ripping in over the KSC mountains at high Mach, slam on the brakes and drop Stuka-style into a landing approach. * However, airbrakes are not necessary. Cobra reentries and S-turns; they work.

Why a Mk3? Are you planning on carrying something bulky? And why not refuel it in orbit? Just send up an SSTO tanker in advance; the cost after recovery is trivial. It can be done without refuelling if necessary, although it's easier in a Mk1 or 2 than a 3. Either way, you're going to want nukes. For inspiration: Long range Mk3 Long range Mk2

To demonstrate: If you're just building a space station, it can be as wobbly as you like (although not if you plan on realigning it regularly). If you're building an interplanetary wagon train, it needs to be rigid. So: 1) Pull, don't push. Or, even better, pull and push, but keep 50%+ of the thrust in the pull section. 2) Keep things in line and in balance. Laterally attached parts should be kept to a minimum, and they need to be symmetrically balanced and firmly mounted. 3) Senior docking ports are your friend. They are vastly more rigid than the standard size ones. Mechjeb is horrible at docking; even when it manages to do it, it wastes a huge amount of fuel. You need to learn how to do it manually. Once you have the knack of it, docking is trivially simple. However, until you get that knack, it will seem almost impossibly complicated. I strongly recommend that you build a pair of small, highly maneuverable docking practice ships, and learn to rendezvous and dock with those instead of trying to fight with a huge ungainly ship. Even big things can be docked easily once you know what you're doing, but it is much much easier to learn on a small and light ship that allows for rapid correction of mistakes. The bigger and more unbalanced the ship, the more control authority it requires. Gimbal is your friend; lots and lots of gimbal. Radial engines are a handy way to quickly increase the gimbal authority of a lifter. You also need to make sure that your lifter is rigid enough that the engines don't overly flex during launch. With particularly ungainly payloads, it can also help to use a slow and steeper ascent trajectory; keep the speed right down until you're well out of the thickest parts of the atmosphere. It's less fuel efficient but safer. Again, see the album at the top for some heavy-lift demonstrations. Or see this:

Still not dead. Pusher design, just waiting on an engine and prop:

The latest from Kerbodyne:

Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7nfqat5v9vax3z/Kerbodyne%20Outfielder.craft?dl=0

Most of the time when I'm putting Vernors on things it's for low-g VTOL rather than any atmospheric use. But, yes, a little bit of directed thrust can cover for a multitude of aerodynamic sins, particularly in thin air. One each side of the nose if you have yaw problems, a couple under the cockpit if you're having trouble keeping the nose up, a pair under the wingtips for roll issues. They shouldn't be necessary on a well designed aircraft, although it's a handy trick to keep in mind if you're trying to fly something with minimal control surfaces (gliding reentry pods, VTOLs, etc).

Some minor issues during the practice run...

Ooh, that makes it a lot easier. The turn around the tower will be into the landing approach instead of opposed to it, and there's three times the runway length on landing. I was trying to do it clockwise around the tower in a FAR plane, and it's pretty much impossible if you're flying on wings; I was having to resort to tricks like these... Getting a high-speed VTOL landing on video was a nightmare, so I gave up. I'll have another go at the anticlockwise version, though.

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Aerobatic demonstrator: Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/gayfy6bzd9tvcwa/Kerbodyne%20Dancer.craft?dl=0

Aerobatic demonstrator: Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/gayfy6bzd9tvcwa/Kerbodyne%20Dancer.craft?dl=0 You can get quite a lot of fuel in those tanks; the small LF and LFO tanks have the same mass ratios as the bigger tanks these days. Four Mk0 LF tanks equal one Mk1 LF tank. They can increase drag, although careful placement will minimise that, but the increased fuel consumption is outweighed by the increased fuel capacity, especially once you get up above 20,000m.