Wanderfound

Have a play with this and see if it gives you any design inspiration: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/88628-Kerbodyne-D7-Heavy-X5-a-heavy-lift-SSTO-spaceplane

I've got quickload off but quicksave on. Too many crashes/glitches/time-acceleration-SNAFUs not to keep the option of restoring them. The need to go via the debug menu to reload stops me from abusing it too much.

Presenting the Kerbodyne Scattershot. If you can't get this one to orbit, you should probably stop designing spaceplanes and spend some time at flight school. https://www.dropbox.com/s/llbar6fk64yo0yo/Kerbodyne%20Scattershot%20Stock.craft As usual, check the action groups; it's not designed for staging. There's an abort system (backspace) and a substantial suite of scientific instruments (all triggered by action group 0), as well as a probe core buried in the fuselage so it can be flown as a drone (handy for landing practice and rescuing stranded Kerbals). Takeoff speed is about 120m/s. It can climb vertically to 20,000m, but once you get there you should level off and crank it up to Mach 4 before slowly climbing to 30,000m. Turn the turbojet off once you run short of air, then switch it back on (action group 1) once the RAPIERs flick to closed cycle. Do it right and you should hit an 80 x 80 orbit with the tanks still half full. (note: designed to fly under the latest version of FAR, with the 50% power nerf on the engines. Performance will be substantially sharper in stock aero) (note 2: now updated from original with enhanced yaw authority, in order to ease handling at hypersonic speeds)

- Put girders on top of the decouplers to give yourself more room. If you do the vertical thing, the trick is to lower the landing gear on the drop side before decoupling.

Any of the control surfaces set as flaps? Might shorten the takeoff and reduce the load on the front gear.

If you can crack Mach 4 and 30,000m, you should be able to reach orbit.

Emphatically seconded. KAC takes nothing away from the game except for time-acceleration-induced irritation.

Get yourself FAR. The most recent update nerfed the thrust of all the air-breathing engines by 50%. If you're using stock aero, you're swimming rather than flying. Standard atmosphere is absurdly dense.

What are the standards of proof here? I've got a few SSTOs that would qualify. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/88628-Kerbodyne-D7-Heavy-X5-a-heavy-lift-SSTO-spaceplane

Incidentally, Mechjeb (when it's working properly, which it ain't right now; gimballing roll issues) takes a lot of the drudgery out of flying spaceplanes. Use the surface mode on Smart A.S.S. to control pitch, roll and heading until you get up over 25,000m before taking the controls manually.

(obligatory ten characters required to post)

While I'm not using DR, I'm finding FAR to be almost as good for the same purpose. Reenter too fast with anything except a bare capsule and you're nearly guaranteed to see an aerodynamic failure. Careful aerobraking is becoming a major part of my game.

Short version: first, get into orbit and match inclination, and set the station as a target. Don't worry about height yet. Then, look at the target: is it in front of you or behind you? If it's in front, you need to lower your orbit to catch up (but not so low that you hit atmosphere). If it's behind, you need to raise your orbit to slow down. Don't bother about circularising, elliptical is fine. Orbit until you get a close intercept (anything <10km will do), then circularise your orbit to match the target. You'll probably still be a touch off; add a small manoeuvre node (prograde if you're in front, retrograde if you're behind) that gets you a <1,000m intercept. Wait until just before closest approach, burn target retrograde to kill your relative velocity, then point at the target and gently approach. Watch the target/prograde indicators as you approach and burn or RCS to keep them aligned. Flip and kill velocity so that you come to a stop about 40m from the target and then dock.

Aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder of course, but: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/88628-Kerbodyne-D7-Heavy-X5-a-heavy-lift-SSTO-spaceplane

If you're needing the whole runway to lift off, something's messed up unless you're flying a 150 ton monster. Rear gear forwards or more pitch-relevant control surfaces. As for veering: are you unlocking the steering on the front gear?

If you had to do underwater bypass surgery with limited tools, wouldn't you be interested in the report of someone who'd done it before? Ex-neuroscientist (medically retired) here: looking at stuff in bizarre situations is a large part of what we do. If you want to understand something, push the limits until it breaks. You don't really know what something does until you mess it up.

To find out if it's reusable after a splashdown landing, of course. And high altitude booster ignition has relevance to spaceplanes. I don't find the testing contracts to be at all unrealistic. In fact, I think they add a substantial amount of realism to the game. Putting equipment into extreme circumstances is what testing is all about.

Agreed. Thanks for writing that.

If you need to rely on power to keep you up, it's because the plane is aerodynamically flawed. You want to reduce drag as much as possible. Less intakes, not more. Fixing the aero and drag issues will allow you to reduce your angle of attack, which in turn will increase your speed and allow the intakes to function more efficiently. This in turn will allow you to get higher before you start using oxidiser.

Yes. They've been working fine for me. I suspect that they may need to be mounted directly to a tank unless you're using fuel lines for them.

It's as much in the flying as the building. You've gotta throttle down and skim across the edge of the usable atmosphere for as long as possible while you slowly gather speed.

Mechjeb will give you TWR, delta-V and burn time for each stage. Combine these values with some experimenting and you should be able to get an approximate idea. Keep TWR below 2 if you want to minimise drag losses. As others have mentioned, the variability of atmospheric drag makes it pretty much impossible to calculate an exact answer.

Check the channel; Kurt just released a .24 vid. ETA: whoops, should've looked upthread. Still, worth mentioning more than once.

You need mods. Google up "Scott Manley favourite mods" and you should find something useful.

Turbojets are slightly more powerful and slightly more fuel efficient, and if you're doing it right you can keep an air breather working right up until your apoapsis hits 70,000m. My small SSTOs usually have one turbojet and two RAPIERs. The big planes work similar ratios but more in total (e.g. my big cargo plane has two turbos and six RAPIERs). This is under FAR, where the air-breathers were nerfed from stock by 50%. Ignore the "easy mode" stuff, BTW. An SSTO with two RAPIERs and a turbo is not that different from one with two rockets and a turbo. If you've got a plane that works with RAPIERs, it'll probably also work if you set it up with turbos and rockets. The hard part is the flying and the aerodynamic design, not which brand of fireworks you strap on the back.