Val

I made you an SSTO, so you can try something that works. To launch it to orbit follow these steps. Full throttle, SAS on, Stage. Let it use the full length of the runway, then set the nose 5 degrees above horizon. When speed reaches 300-350 m/s lift the nose to 10 degrees above horizon. Don't touch anything until it reaches 24 km altitude. At 24 km press 1 to switch Rapier Mode At 27 km set the SAS to follow Prograde. Throttle down when AP is above 80 km. Coast to space and circularize. Plan a Rendezvouz with your station. Craft file Edit: Fuel lines are only there to help MJ see the correct dV. Edit 2: And I only just now noticed that KER and MJ don't report the same dV. I wonder which is correct? If you feel up to trying something bigger and a bit more complex then you can give this one a go: SSTO H-6 Drone Mk.3

Yes, it will improve performance. There's a few things to watch out for, though.If you have more than 1 Lift Rating per 10 t, then I'd recommend reducing wing area to that ratio. Otherwise you shouldn't angle all of your wings. At least not to the full 5 degrees, that is normally the minimum snap angle. More lift than 1 Lift rating/10 t will lift your prograde too much at high speed and just increase drag to the same or higher than what you had with un-angled wings. It is harder to balance CoL if you mix angled and un-angled wings. I don't count Mk2 Lift, nor angle it. You'll still get benefit from Mk2 lift when doing high-AoA maneuvers, landing, take-off, re-entry and attitude changes.

Other: 2560x1080p Used to play at 3440x1440p, but after rearranging my work space, my monitor is a little further away and I can't read text well enough at that resolution anymore.

This just in: RIC broke the forum search On topic: Yeah, it does seem like it doesn't work for you. At first I thought it was because you have spaces in your name, but searching for "QUOTE=Red" gives the same result. Also. You don't need to include the [ "QUOTE=Val" works just as well as "[quote=Val"

Works for me. You have to include the quotes, like this: "[quote=Val" Edit: Ninjaed

Kinda. You're half right.It is true that the Rapier is angled to thrust closer to CoM, but the wings are angled for a different reason. It is because the fuselage of a craft has much less drag if the wings have slightly higher AoA than the rest of the craft. You can see a more detailed explanation here.

The SPH assumes that your direction of movement is horizontally out of the Hangar, when calculating your Center of Lift. So if you rotate your craft in the SPH it'll recalculate your center of lift as it would be if you point your craft away from prograde. The 2nd picture seems to have the craft point down, giving you negative Angle of Attack. And therefore negative lift, or down force. It is a very handy feature, because it allows you to get a rough idea of how stable the craft is. A stable design should have the CoL stationary or moving towards the rear the more it is angled, in any orientation. That should ensure that it'll roughly point it self back towards prograde, if no control inputs are given. Likewise the VAB assumes upward movement when calculating CoL.

It started in EVE-Online (2004-ish). I created a character named Vala Draaken. Before that (Need for Speed, Counter Strike and other multiplayer games) I'd used Mr.Heat (lame, I know) Then I moved to WoW. Vala was taken so I became Valania. I kept that name, when I moved to Champions Online. I was also originally using Valania when I moved to SWTOR, but after a server merge I became Val'ania. On voice coms I was called Val, so all my alts after that were named something that starts with Val, for consistency. So that's how I ended up with Val in KSP. I like my gaming identity, Val Draaken. It's unique enough that I'm googleable and most of the first page results are actually me.

I forgot to reply to this one.In my experience the Rapier is much more efficient than Jets, to the point of being unbalanced, like Slashy also seems to suggests. I built this small (and mostly useless SSTL) for a thread about Is it even possible to make a <15t laythe roundtrip SSTO? Before reaching the final design I'd first tried Jet+Nuke and Rapier w/Oxidizer+Nuke. But the final design ended up using Rapier only in Air-breathing mode + Nuke. My guess is that, even though the Rapier has lower ISP than the Jet, it's higher thrust and top speed makes up for it. At least, when using a nuke as vacuum propulsion.

On a winged craft with a bit of control authority, it really isn't a problem to have your Jet Engines thrusting off-center. It can even be an advantage, if your your nose is heavy, because of far back CoL for stability reasons, then thrusting below CoM can be used to counter act that. Even better if it can be combined with a CoM that moves forward as fuel is used, while the engine thrust increases, keeping the craft nice and balanced during the whole airbreathing ascent. (Not that I've managed that level of synergy yet)It can also be done with Rapiers, if they are only used to give a short closed-cycle boost, low enough in the atmosphere that control authority can still keep them in check. Here is an example of off-center air breathing thrust, I built for the Single Stage to Laythe challenge [KSP 1.0.4] SSTL U-5 Dart Mk.6 [stock] Take-off weight 24.935 t. In my experience, Rapiers and Jets usually also need slightly different ascent profiles. Jets can usually start climbing for 10 km straight off the runway, while Rapiers need to build speed up to 400-450 m/s at sea-level, before starting the climb to 10 km. At least with the loading I put on my designs, ~25 t per Rapier/Jet.

SSTOs were not mentioned in OP. He said space planes. And both the options he mentioned are space planes, but not SSTOs. As others have already mentioned there's a 3rd option in KSP. The Single Stage (to Orbit) Space Plane.I've never tried the White Knight approach, and only tried the Shuttle approach before KSP 1.0. Since KSP 1.0.4 I've pretty much exclusively done space planes. All but one was Single Stage. I also prefer a different Ascent Profile, than the posters above me. I build up speed to 1000-1100 m/s between 9 and 10 km, and pitch up 20 degrees from there, while there's still lots of Air breathing thrust. This allows me to gain lots of vertical speed and push the AP above 30 km, before engaging closed cycle engines/mode at around 20 km. This Ascent Profile requires a very low drag builds, but is very efficient. (My entry is the top Single stage in the Air-breathing category of Stock Payload Fraction Challenge: 1.0.4 Edition)

It looks awesome. Totally awesome. I shudder when I think of the drag, but sometimes looking good is more important than being efficient. Well done!

NVidia GTX 980, because good performance and shadows with -force-opengl (Replaced my AMD R9 290X for that reason)

And Backspace will focus your active ship.

It is also called AOA for the fuselage. Angle of Incidence is the angle between airfoil cord and the fuselage. And that doesn't change intentionally in flight (except for the above mentioned Crusader or if your wings are very elastic and you abuse the aircraft)Source: General Aviation Aircraft Design: Applied Methods and Procedures, Page.327 (Edit2: fixed link) But how to calculate AOA on a flying wing with geometric wash-out, as you describe. I don't know. It's easy enough for a wing with aerodynamic wash-out, since there's no difference from root to tip there. My guess is you'd use the wing root as reference, like you do for Angle of Incidence. Edit: Actually, since you (or the aircraft's designer) know what the difference between root and tip AOI is, then it should be easy to calculate the AOA on an arbitrary point of the wing, if you know the AOA at either the root or the tip.

Not always. My system runs better with -force-opengl Zotac GeForce GTX 980 AMP! Omega Edition Intel i7-4790K CPU 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 And by "running better", I mean, no fps drop and it takes many more reverts, higher parts counts and longer play times before hitching and crashes occur. I used to have an AMD R9 290X before. And with that there was a definite fps drop and no shadows with -force-opengl.

That doesn't make sense. Angle of Incidence doesn't change during flight (unless it's a F-8 Crusader). Only Angle of Attack changes.EDIT1: Doesn't mention Angle of Incidence, though.

I'd say, in KSP, yes. In RL, not sure.Edit: Personally, I build my Mk2s with just the wings angled. So I only get benefit of the lifting body effect at low speed/high AoA. Take-off, landing, attitude changes, and re-entry. True, but barring a few aerobatics airplanes with symmetric airfoils, I've never seen a RL aircraft that did not have AoI.And modern supersonic airfoils have very subtle camber compared to subsonic, in my experience. I could be wrong, though, wasn't able to find much info either way. Anecdotal evidence, I know.

My solution is simple. Less gravity = more wheels. Less mass = better traction, for the same number of wheels. (KSP wheels and surfaces seem like inflexible structures, where you don't get better traction with more mass, like you do, to a degree, in real-life) If a design drives well on Kerbin with 4 wheels, then it need proportionally more wheels to drive equally on a lower gravity body. Half the gravity = double the number of wheels. Edit: Those are my design guides, for successful rover designs.

The reason "angled wings" help, is because wings need AoA to provide lift. It's not because of some magic, low drag property angled wings. Wings are always angled to the airstream (AoA), because that is how wings create lift. What actually happens, when you angle the wings relative to the fuselage, is that now only the wings are at a high angle in the airstream. That is why it reduces drag. Because the rest of the aircraft no longer has AoA. And therefore less drag. And that is why real airplanes do exactly the same thing.

It does get hot. Usually when I pull up after building up speed, it's a very fine balance between ripping the wings off and parts exploding from overheating...

Did you mean turn them off? I build up speed below 10 km. Usually between 8 and 9 km I build up speed to 1000-1100 m/s depending on how heat resistant the particular spaceplane is.Then I nose up slowly, so I reach a 20 degree nose up by the time I pass 15 km. Then depending on spaceplane: If it has Nukes I engage them at 18-20 km. If it has Jets and LFO Rockets, I engage the Rockets at 18-20 km, also. If it has Rapiers. And Nukes, I engage the Closed Cycle at 25-29 km. And no Nukes, I engage Closed Cycle at 22 km. At ~25 km I begin to nose down a little, so I'm at 15 degree nose up at 30 km. And I stay at 15 degree nose up, until AP is above 70 km. For a Rapier/Nuke spaceplane with ~330 Oxidizer per Rapier, then this ascent profile will get even a craft with 0.25 TWR (after Rapiers shutdown) to orbit, if you're above ~250 m/s vertical speed at 30 km. Surface speed ~1250 at 20 km and ~1350 m/s at 30 km. Edit: Fixed some errors.

Shallow re-entry with high drag. I usually take about one third orbit and have nose ~30 degrees above horizon. For more detailed info, you can check the Descent Profile section on the 2 SSTOs I posted on KerbalX.

That was not how I experienced it. I had no problem getting all the flybys to work, even when I was days late for the initial Eve flyby. What became a problem for me, was that the Jool encounter got harder and harder. Either arriving 100s of days later than PLADs schedule and/or at such high speed that even with a Tylo gravity assist, I needed to burn to capture in Jool SOI.