Wanderfound

Nice work; thanks. Despite the slight crossover in the high supersonic, it still looks like a clear win to the turbojet to me, especially once you consider the drag advantage. And they sound much nicer. (note for the peanut gallery: those shots are displaying the effect of speed, not altitude. With sufficient intakes, you can keep jets running well over 30,000m)

I like the concept, but unless you've got pics of driving it home to KSC you're going to have to add the recovery loss to your costs...

Choose two pairs of control surfaces, preferably near to CoM. Use the right-click menu to set both pair as spoilers. Change the max flap/spoiler deflection on one to 85; on the other set it to -85. Set up an action group to toggle the spoilers on and off. By default, they'll be linked to the brakes.

You'd actually be better off with a turbojet instead of a RAPIER as the third engine; you've got enough TWR that the turbojet should still be producing high-efficiency thrust when it comes time to shut down and coast to apoapsis. The RAPIER is lower power, less fuel efficient in jet mode, and you don't need a third rocket.

Kerbodyne Ultralander. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/td1azawj354if3k/Kerbodyne%20Ultralander.craft?dl=0

It's more design than piloting, so go for it. I habitually use Mechjeb for simple things like circularisation myself, anyway. - - - Updated - - - Stylish. Try a ten-Kerbal version; that seems to be the sweet spot.

The trick with high-power ships is to climb steeply enough that you're out of the soup before you get too fast, and be sensible with the throttle if cruising at low altitude. Drag chutes can work, but they're really not necessary except in very rare circumstances. S-turns and airbrakes do just fine (as does getting down low with engines off early enough for drag to do the job). And when you do want extra after-landing brakes (Duna etc), a couple of tiny radial engines aimed forwards do nicely. I'd change the Mk2 monoprop for a Mk2 LF tank, change the nacelles to LF/O tanks, move the drone core, docking port and passenger bay to the front and put the cargo bay over CoM (so that cargo doesn't unbalance the ship). If not using a third engine, consider replacing the drag chute with a shielded docking port and changing the inline port to more tank or cargo space. If you must have drag chutes, radials work as well as inline. I'd also add some structural intakes at the bases of the tailfins, slid back so as to make them look more supported. One SAS unit is plenty, and rotate the PB-NUK so as to not obstruct the bay. The placement of the RCS doesn't appear to give any lateral thrust; pairs midway angled 45° above and below the wing on the lateral tanks, in line with CoM, would work. To sort out engine torque, shift the lateral tanks microscopically up and down until it reduces.

Nicely done. A turbojet on the tail would give it a lot more atmospheric performance, as well as saving quite a bit of fuel during the early phase of the rocket ascent. Alternately, a central LV-909 would give a high-efficiency orbital manoeuvring option. You've got at least one more SAS unit than you need, and why so much monoprop? The docking port alone has more than enough for docking use, and a couple of spherical tanks stuck in the cargo bay would do if you needed extra for some reason. As Hodo suggests, for landing practice you want to take off with a mostly empty ship. Do one named quicksave just after take off, and another after you've got the ship turned around and lined up for approach. Repeatedly restart the first one until you've got the hang of lining up an approach, then repeat the second one until you're comfortable landing. Kerbal Flight Indicators makes landing much, much easier.

As others have been saying: * Straighten your landing gear. * Put the rear gear just in front of CoM. * If you have tailstrike problems, raise the gear on hardpoints. See the first few posts of the Kerbodyne thread and my build videos (both linked below) for tips.

It could probably get away with the wing area it has now, especially if they've had their mass shaved down a bit. One of the joys of overpowered planes is that the excessive TWR allows you to push through draggy high AoA flight while you get up to speed. But if it was me, I probably would add the canards, and maybe some strakes on the central fuselage in front of the intakes. Deal with the pitch-up problem by lengthening the fuselage to shift CoM forwards. Apart from anything else, he could use some dedicated LF tankage for jet fuel. Swapping the central two RAPIERs for a single central turbojet would also provide some room for more elevators and wing (as in the above pic).

It has more engines than the minimum required; whether that is "too much" depends entirely on the intentions of the builder. The difference between a just-flying economy cruiser and an overpowered sportster can be a fifteen minute saving in time to orbit. It's also quite fun to be able to climb vertically if desired. That airframe could provide sufficient pitch authority, but you'd need to crank up the max deflection on the elevons close to maximum. Control authority is basically max deflection x control surface area x distance from CoM. The rearward engine and wing placement of a delta tends to give them rear-biased CoM, reducing the last factor in that equation. Adding canards would ease the pitch authority issue, but it could also induce involuntary pitch-up instability problems at altitude. The take off problems are just a matter of having the gear too far back; shift them forwards to just behind CoM, and raise them on hardpoints if necessary to avoid tailstrike. The main problem with tail-less deltas is related to that rearwards CoM. The horizontal and vertical stabilisers just don't have enough leverage. So, get the CoM as far forwards as you can, and make sure that the vertical stabiliser/s are decently sized and that there's a fair bit of wingspan right up the back. Compound sweep wings (i.e. reducing sweep and increasing span towards the rear; stick some strakes on the front of your wings) often work nicely on deltas. Re: canard instability. Think about what happens when the nose of a plane starts to pitch up out of control. Wing area at the rear of the plane will tend to pull it back to level flight; wing area at the front will pull it further over. Hence canards promoting instability. But this is also why they're good for manouevrability; you get heaps of pitch authority for just a relatively small surface. They're good when used appropriately.

I usually switch on the oxidiser somewhere between 28,000 and 32,000m, depending on the design. The usual pattern is a climb steep enough to almost but not entirely stop me from accelerating, up to about 20,000m (where the air pressure starts to drop sharply). Then I'll flatten off and take it up to Mach 4, then try to climb to the jet's oxygen ceiling while losing as little speed as possible. Minimising your AoA and maximising your speed will both extend your maximum altitude via improved intake efficiency. Shutting down engines gradually as you ascend allows you to keep the throttle cranked up in safety, and a jet on the centreline of the craft can be left burning all the way to space with no risk of asymmetric thrust.

Tailfins can be both over- and under-done, although there is a general tendency to underdo 'em. But CoM has quite a large influence as well, as does dihedral/anhedral, especially if that -hedral is placed where it has a good bit of leverage on CoM. As a general rule, the shorter the fuselage, and the more rear-biased the weight distribution, the bigger a fin you're going to need.

Moar tailfin, and/or pull CoM forwards. If all else fails, a Vernor either side of the nose (activated only when necessary, to save fuel).

Bad Xw means that your plane is starting to accelerate down more than forwards; not enough lift. The reason it's showing up is because Mach 3.3 is too slow for that altitude unless you've got wings like a U-2 (or a light, aerodynamically tidy small ship). On a streamlined spaceplane ascent, you should be getting to about Mach 4 by that height. The thin split lines in AoA sweeps represent the effect of a stall; after the stall, lift decreases, drag increases, and stability (the yellow line) does all sortsa weird stuff.

Kerbodyne Starhook. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/b7e23rz8v3ixv5t/Kerbodyne%20Starhook.craft?dl=0

Make the bottom of the rudder parallel to the top and it'll look fine. Make sure the rudder is set to yaw only. Set the outer wing surfaces to influence roll only; set the inner wing surfaces to be flaps only. Increase the flap deflection a bit. Probably crank up the pitch influence of the stabilator, too. Next up is to tune the control surfaces; take it up at a few different speeds and test the control surfaces all the way to full stick. If it struggles to obey your inputs, increase max deflection on the relevant control surfaces. If it flips out of control, reduce max deflection. You'll often need a bit of excess low altitude authority in order to have enough in thin air, so test high as well as low. While you're doing that, check your tanks to be sure they're draining evenly and in the order you want. RAPIERs are just prone to overheating, especially when grouped. The easiest solution is often to just cut throttle to 85% or so when they switch mode.

Kerbodyne Scythe. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/tf9422f0cin6uq8/Kerbodyne%20Scythe.craft?dl=0

It all comes down to what you want the base to do. Refuelling stop? Laboratory? Holiday resort? Why do you want it on the ground instead of in orbit? But as others have said: Minmus for easy, Duna for easiest interplanetary, Laythe for scenic. Laythe is easy to get up and down on if you're comfortable using air-breathing spaceplanes.

Much less than that. Capsule, tank, nuke, battery, solar panels, four decouplers plus four large SRBs. Add another decoupler and a parachute if you want the pilot back alive. The vast majority of KSP ships are massively overengineered.

Forget about the extreme AoA on reentry; at that angle, your vertical stabiliser is virtually useless. The body of the ship is shielding it from the airstream. The shuttle used its OMS to maintain stability while it was doing that. You can recreate the OMS stability with Vernors, but you'd be better off just using a less aggressive reentry. My normal reentry profile generally uses a roughly 5° AoA until I get it back to level flight. If you're having trouble slowing, use S-turns and airbrakes. Airbrakes in FAR are easy to create; just set pairs of control surfaces as maxed-out spoilers in opposite directions. As for general FAR design tutorials...see the first few posts in the Kerbodyne thread and my build videos; both are linked below.

You should be able to get that torque figure down to <10kN just by shifting the lateral tanks and engines up or down a whisker. Expect it to take a bit of fiddling, though. Tweaking tailfin mass is also useful for fine-tuning thrust torque. As for the rest...yeah, basically. CoM as far forwards as you can get it, make it look like a "normal" aircraft. Yes, the Mig-21 was a tailed delta, but it's a very uncommon planform. You should be able to get it flying okay with sufficient fiddling, but a more common wing design would make it easier. You can make unusual aircraft work in FAR, but it's a lot harder than doing things more conventionally. Start by getting the basics locked down, then get fancy. As the cliche goes, learn to walk before you try to run. I wouldn't be pushing the CoL any further forwards than it already is, however. Unlike in stock, you really don't need to have your CoL right on top of CoM, and there are often good reasons not to. So long as you have sufficient pitch authority to lift the nose when you want to, rear-biased CoL isn't a problem.

Kerbal Flight Data, for similar reasons.

A slightly tidier attempt... Ten Kerbals onboard and the fuel bill was: LF: 1000 at √0.8/unit equals √800 O: 1059.28 at √0.18/unit equals √190.6704 MP: 0 at √1.2/unit equals √0 Total fuel bill equals √990.6704, for a ticket price of √99.06704 per Kerbal. Apart from a few radial intakes, this is identical to my previous attempt, but substantially cheaper. Flying a maximally-efficient profile makes a large difference.

OTOH, there's nothing stopping you from landing nearby to KSC and then taxiing onto the runway before ending the voyage. Does require wheels, though.