Maukse

I might update it with less fuel to get the 5th rank (and get the decoupler on the ship). Hardest part is landing (as I want to land it at KSP, without any autopilot). The ship is nice and has everything a spaceplane should have to lift sats to LKO. But for a cargo bay of this size (mkII small + long), hard to find 7.2 tons payload EDIT : please, better take this one as my entry - here the decoupler is on the ship, not on the payload. 27.45 / 7.16 and a difficult landing (too much weight on the tail !!!)

Ok, here is my attempt : - 28.98 total weight - 7.18 payload weight (mea culpa, including a small diameter decoupler) - 24.78% fraction Single Stage Spaceplane, stock parts, 34 parts (without payload). Made it to a 75x75 LKO, and safely landed at KSP with 300+ fuel units still in the tanks (so with less safety margin, could go for a 26.5% fraction). Can fly without auto-pilot, but SAS is still pretty much needed.

Ok great news here ! I got my first SSS to Minmus LO on orbit / crew transfer to orbital station today ! Mk II, 29 tons, mkIIcrew cabine + 1900 m/s left once in LKO. More to follow this evening. As many already said, the trick is in the ascent profile.

Hello ! A quick feedback from my first 1.02 Münar mission : 1.02 / MechJeb / RPM / ScanSat During IVA, orbiting Mün, unable to target Kerbin via target managment menu. Still, I was able to target Minmus.

So LV-n is totaly worthless now ?

So 1 Elevon per wing for both roll/pitch control ?

So, just tried : -24.4 tons at take-off -2 RAPIER engines -3.5 lift from wings, 2.4 from the body (I counted only 50% of my tail part mkII-to-1.25, as it's "face-forward", does it generate full lift ?) for the static lift => total 5.9 -1 Elevon 1 (0.25) for roll control, and 1 Elevon 4 (0.18) for pitch control, per wing -1 Advanced canard (0.4) for pitch, per side -1 AV-R8 Winglet (0.5) for yaw control -1 ram air & 1 air pre-cooler per RAPIER (pre cooler might be totaly useless, must try without it). -2 basic solar panels, 1 XL drag chute (just in case, was the same weight as a tail, and I tought it might be more usefull) and 8 vernor engines. At first try, I was 450 m.s short to make it on a 75x75 LKO ! 2nd try => 70x80 LKO with 200m/s deltaV left. So, guidance for design is a good thing, but ascent profile is the key parameter for performance !!! I managed to reach 12 000 - 13 000m heading 30-40°, then I aimed for a 5-10° angle, and let speed & thrust build up, until it became obvious that "everything is going to BBQheat soon" => aimed for 20-25°. My next try will be without the "engine pre-cooler", I'm dubious about them (if you use them, don't forget that they have air intakes => assign them in your "toggle RAPIER mode / Toggle intakes " action group !!! I noticed that RAPIER burns a lot of liquid fuel, the take-off to 12 000 meters part probably need to be optimized as well.

Just tested my SSS (Single Stage Spaceplane, as writting SSTO create too many problems :-) ) in 1.02 Made it to LKO, but with 200-250 m/s left (was 400-450 in 1.0) Roughly the same engine-to-weight ratio, but twice the wing-to-weight. Might try with a quarter in hope to get a bit more deltaV for orbital rendez-vous on LKO + vernor LFO docking (in my mind, it's at least 200m/s) So SSTA (single stage to anywhere) are dead and it's a good thing. Now we have SSS to LKO, and I will live with it, just need an orbital station around Kerbin, and one around Mun/Minmus, where I will plan my ISRU. But the huge nerf of the LVN is just sooo painfull : / Won't go off-topic as soon as I try with a 1/4 wing ratio, I'll give a feedback here.

There id truth in your statement. But I think the reward for a game model change is much greater than flying the same crafts again and again.

So you can get full power out of a turbojet on sealevel due to less drag. That's ok. But with new aero, what about intake air @20 000m ?

Mmm we'll see. Maybe we will still be able to make sst(lk)o for crew transfer to orbital station - at least, I hope so. Better would be crew transfer/refueling on Munar/Minmus orbit, with ISRU. Wait & see. I have a question about isru refueling on Munar orbit &interplanetory travel, but with 1.0 coming soon (so soon !), I'm a bit shy about creating a new thread for it.

How sad... I just begun making efficient turbo-lvn ssto.... Based on real turbojet, we still could possibly reach 900m/s @20 000m altitude ?

Refueling lander with several tanks looked like a pain in the a** until I found a "better" way (maybe not the best ?) Alt-click on every tank of the lander, alt-click on your main refueling tank, and on the refueling tank, select "OUT" for both oxy and fuel. It will refuel all of your other select tanks, no matter which size they are, no matter how much fuel is left inside. It will only stop once all the tanks are full, or once your refueling tank is empty.

I'm afraid I can't do that for 25 tons, so I did it for 18.6 tons, mk2 cockpit, mk2 crew and a docking port. Around 1700 m.s in the tanks after reaching a 75 x 75 Kerbin Orbit (and I forgot to empty the cockpit RCS, damn !) 2 Turbojet (a bit overkill), 1 LV-N and 2 48s. all parts are stock ....ty piloting - mechjeb helps avoiding turbojet flame-out. I am confident such a plane could be used even without 48-s (only LVN) with a better pilot. I usually go for 300 m/s speed at 10km, then I go for a lower climb rate and let the speed improve till' 1000m/s circa 20km altitude. The turbojet can reach 1400-1450m/s, and then we have to cut some power due to lack of intake air => time to start the LV-N, with already 800 ISP, it helps. Keep the turbojet running - they still give thrust. Once the jet thrust fall circa 30kN, I shut them down, close the intakes, and start the 48-s for a bit, with an non-optimized mechjeb ascent program. 60 jet fuel left once in orbit, enough to safely land at KSC with a good reentry. Keep in mind that the whole design might be totally BS with KSP 1.0 (reentry, and change in aerodynamic model). This shuttle is my design for crew transfer to my munar orbital station. I still have to improve it, like, doing all the transfer / return with no mechjeb helps, and then try to do it with no 48-s engines. But no time for that yet) *EDIT : 85-90 m/s take-off speed, not very efficient, but getting the gears closer to the center of mass is likely to create troubles with the LVN engine. I have to optimize that too (maybe a higher ground clearance ?), and then I might have a Laythe-transfer able SSTO that can land & take off from these islands !

2 turbojet, 1 nuke and 2 48s are what you need. I'll show you my design later

Yeah, a bit hard with jet engines, but if you tweak your twr to be around 1.3 - 1.4, then you can manually hover, using the throttle (at least, I managed to hover this way) Now I'll design a "rescue pod" that I plan to "winch-drop" on any place (mountains included), to rescue kerbals. Might me manned. The trick is, I'll have then to land with my VTOL, set an electromagnet on the winch, and go back to "drag" the rescue pod.

Ok, just found the "kill vertical speed" option in mechjeb - but I still have to figure out how to use it with jets engine (it's not regulating yet). Work in progress ! EDIT : tweaking engine power and manually regulation vertical speed - I can hover (more or less) +/-10 meters around a given altitude. Enough for KAS-based rescue system (to be designed).

thanks for the advices ! I think I will try again with RCS build aid. About hovering - is there a function in mechjeb to do so ? Maybe in docking mode ? (like, zero vertical speed / zero horizontal speed)

Hello everyone ! Since now one year I'm Kerbaling with various success. Now I'm pretty happy with my spaceplanes / rockets / station designs. But designing an VTOL that can hover is still a very, very difficult task for me. Do you have any suggestions ? I would like to create a kind of "rescue craft" (on kerbin). Using KAS I would like to drag/drop things from/to the vessel (I would like to design it with stock parts only). Another solution for my rescue missions would be to paradrop help from the sky. What is the usefull mod to "drop" an item with chute and leave the zone ? Thanks in advance !

Well, 1.3 twr allows a 55degree angle, so with cos(55), I get something like 57% of my acceleration on the horizontal plan (so it's like a 43% loss to gravity drag) I I add a 48-7s for each lvn, my twr goes to 1.85 (+50%) Then, I can use a 33degree angle, with cos(33), I can get almost 84% of my acceleration on the horizontal plan. so it's 0,57 vs (1,5)x0,84 ... => 0,57 vs 1,26 => 2,2 time more usefull thrust with the additionnals 48-7s the joke is fuel consumption : 100% vs 214% no clear winner here, especially if we consider the dead weight added on the return trip (mostly empty)

For me, Vall of course. Remember, 1000 m/s dV on an empty lander, it's not that much fuel ! I do have an orbital station on Laythe with a lander, and a refueling tanker making roud trips from Vall surface to laythe orbit. The most important is to manage efficiently your fully loaded tanker. My design is not satisfiying yet (lv-n based, high isp as vall has no atmospere, but yet inefficient low take off twr) but once you have the right manoeuvre for transfert (hello aerobraking !) you can ship some fuel ! A question : with a twr of 1.3 at take-off, is it worthy to add 48-s engines for a small twr boost ? Or it won't make up for the low isp ? Edit: just saw that Slashy summed-up interesting works about landing/take-off Twr. No point trying to pump my 1.3 twr so my design might be not too bad.))

Working fine ! Many thanks !

Working as 6.1 ! Thanks ! But not supporting Karbonite (?) :-(

Hello everyone, So far I have used SCANSat v5, and I've just today installed Karbonite [24.2]. SCANSat v5 doesn't seem to work with it, so I tried to install v6.1 but it's a total mess. Folder organization is totally different, I've "deleted" (with backup) my v5 folder in GameData, and put the new one. It just doesn't work (and I've lost all vessels with scan part, so I used my backup). How can I make it work ?