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#DammitTseitsei That is an impressively light craft. I did not know you could make RAPIER builds that efficient. It must be the good TWR. I've noticed in my own designs that high TWR is just as important as overall mass per engine. Which, among other things, is why my designs with >32 t per RAPIER, like the Chibi Skylon, have smaller payload fractions. Must beat this new record. I will not sleep until I do...

Two important lessons I learned while developing these is: Have your command pod and vacuum engine aligned in same direction. - Otherwise it gets real annoying when doing burns in space. The U-1 taught me that. It's no problem at all to have the air-breathing engine not thrusting directly towards CoM. - As long as control authority and gimbaling can compensate, it works beautifully that the jet engine loses power at the same rate as control authority, while you ascend. - It can even be used for advantage to help the nose up on a nose heavy craft.

If the Science Lab had a consumable resource that need refilling constantly, is one way it could be balanced. But that also has the consequence of potentially requiring grindy/repetitive "refuel" missions to keep it going. Not sure what I would prefer. Any other suggestions?

Maybe it is...or was... It was developed from this one...

Needs a bigger vertical stabilizer then. Maybe less dihedral. Maybe both.Edit: Pumping some fuel forward may also help damp it.

Wow. So classic.

Your concept looks very cool! A new take on the X-wing My idea looks like this. Craft file The RAPIER can be replaced with a Turbo-Ramjet, as the RAPIER is only used air-breathing. With the Jet being slightly weaker at high speed. The ascent above 10 km should probably be 10 degrees, not 15 as the instructions in the Imgur Album explains. And possibly engage nuke already at 18-20 km. You'll want pass 20 km with atleast 1200 m/s, preferably closer to 1350 m/s.

That doesn't make sense.As far as I understand, KSP would look exactly the same in that engine as it does in the current, unless they updated the parts and environments with new different looking textures. The engine should not dictate how the graphics look. It only dictates what performance you can have with the look/style/detail level you have chosen for your graphics (as a developer).

In a career save the furthest I ever got was a 4 Kerbal lander on Duna and returned to Kerbin. Eve probe lander. In a sandbox save my greatest achievement is Laythe Single Stage with Rover and Jet as noted in my Signature.

You're very welcome Actually, I agree. It may be connected to the changed appearance. And an argument could be made against adding a tail cone to an LV-N. In my experience, thrust is blocked on the LV-N unless you offset the cone. On the RAPIER thrust is not blocked if you leave the Small Nose Cone where it attaches to the node. On the other hand the shroud/auto-fairing that appears on the LV-N supposedly has mass, like regular fairings, once you launch (haven't verified for sure. Not at a KSP computer either). On an entirely different subject, even though it is allowed in the challenge rules, you will not see me making entries with command pods as part of the payload. I'm pretty sure I could get better fractions, if I did.

The Small Nose Cone is only offset into the engine. Flipping it does not improve a tail mounted cone's drag, because it would be treated as being in front of a stack. The flipping exploit only benefits nose cones that are at the front of the stack, so it is treated as being behind. Yakuzi showed that indirectly in his investigation. I'll make a new attempt with no cone on the LV-N, just to ease your mind. I wouldn't mind this split. But I'd much prefer splitting Air-Breathing in Single and Multi-Stage. Tomorrow (won't have time tonight), I'll make mine returnable/recoverable and bump the fraction up a little. I'm confident that the design is not fully optimized, yet.

Try accelerating to 3-400 m/s at sea level, before pitching up. And don't pitch up more than 25 degrees.

I got really close to a 50% payload fraction, with a non-recoverable SSTO Spaceplane. Take-off weight: 50.75 t. Cargo to orbit: 25.00 t. Payload fraction: 49.26 %

Beautiful crafts. I really like the looks of them.

Oh. Yeah. New record! Take-off weight: 50.75 t. Cargo to orbit: 25.00 t. Payload fraction: 49.26 % Craft file: SSTO C-5 Modular Mk.2

I agree. Doing a Shuttle replica should only be done for the challenge.

He's not building a SSTO spaceplane. It's a Shuttle type spaceplane.

Well done!Looks like I have my work cut out for me. I had already started on a similar concept. Both parts are self sufficient and can launch/land individually or together. I'll need to trim it down to make it able to contend here, though.

I like all of them. But the original trilogy are my favorites. I was too young to see ANH and ESB in theaters, so my first exposure to Star Wars was when I saw RotJ in theaters twice, when I was 11. Of the new trilogy, AotC is my favorite. Has the best lightsaber action in my opinion.

Agreed. It certainly depends on the craft and ascent profile. Btw, it is a very elegant craft, both in form and function. Thanks! And yeah, will have to RP that the intake air is somehow routed around the cabin and not through it.

In my experience, fuel lines, in stock aerodynamics, create more drag than they're worth. If you're worried about needless wing mass, then you shouldn't be using fuel lines either. They eat a lot of fuel during ascent on account of their drag.

Yes, but only if they can be removed from the default, like you can with Landing Gear, Lights and Brakes. Sometimes I use Cargo Bays just as hollow fuselage, that I don't want to open. Either for aesthetics or because the bay doors will clip into other parts and maybe call forth the Kraken.

I agree with most of this list.But I'd like to add a few I consider essential, because they are such good quality of life improvements. Menu Stabilizer - Make any part right-click menu freeze its position on the screen in flight when the mouse is above any part of it. NoOffsetLimits - Fixes the annoyances of trying to offset something attached to service/cargo bays. S.A.V.E - Automatic backup of your saves games, so you never lose a career game to a bug. At least not all of it. QuickScroll - Use the mousewheel to page through part lists. This feature is getting implemented in stock 1.1, I heard. Other Mods I recommend. NavHud - Very helpful for lining up to the runway and getting glidepath right during final approach, when landing Spaceplanes and Aircraft manually. NavBall Up Default - Sets the Map view Navball up by default. - - - Updated - - - Agree 100 %. The game's so lifeless without it.

Really outstanding work, Yakuzi. Much deserved +rep. Thank you, for all the hard work. I explained something perfectly on the internet? That's quite the compliment. Thanks, again.

It is very hard to make a good piggy-back shuttle launcher, because of thrust alignment and moving Center of Mass.Although it's from an older KSP version, there's a very good video from Scott Manley . The trick to parachutes on planes is making sure they are above where the CoM will be when you expect to deploy them. As always, CoM can move depending on your fuel load. You can either move fuel around to balance once you've deployed the parachutes, or do the much harder task of designing a craft that has CoM in the same place, both full and empty (Wet/Dry).To help with that I can recommend RCS Build Aid. It's a plug-in for use in SPH and VAB, which among other things, can show both Wet and Dry CoM simultaneously, so you don't have to empty and fill all the tanks while building to see where Wet/Dry CoM is.