Val

I just keep cranking them out today. Now with extra long cargo bay with room for 3 Orange tanks. Payload fraction upped slightly to 37.9%.

There's a short intro to Fairings here: If that's what you were asking for?

The Mk3 cargo bays can be used on rockets too.

I improved my SSTO spaceplane drone from 35.6% payload fraction to 37.7%

I built a stock SSTO spaceplane drone, that can carry 102 t of cargo to LKO with only 82 parts. Engine layout 8 RAPIERs, 4 Turbo Ramjets and 4 Nervas. 550+ m/s dV and 0.13 TWR in LKO. Liquid Fuel Capacity 15155. Oxidizer Capacity 7645. Dry weight 69.9 t. Full weight 184.2 t. Max take-off weight 286.4 t. 35.6 % Payload fraction. More info

In my experience so far on international keyboards, at least one of the keys is to the right of P as seen on this image. This is what it looks like on my keyboard. The Ã…-key is one of them. Haven't found the other.

Woohoo. I made one with more than 3.5 km/s that weighs less than 15 t. View full album No oxidizer. Pure Airbreating Rapier and Nuke. Tried with Turbo Ramjet, but not enough speed. No fuel line, need to manually transfer fuel from lower tank once Rapier is out of air. Not much room for science kit, though.

They're not all small. Unless you think a 100 t Mk3 based spaceplane is small? Or were you referring to cargo capacity?

I got close. View full album Complete craft with 1 Kerbal pilot and RTG for power (clipped into nose cone for aesthetics) CoL is pretty close to Dry-CoM, so you could run into unrecoverable stalls, if you go too far off prograde when low on fuel in atmosphere. I'm working on an improved design now.

I managed to make a version with a large Cargo Bay, too. Same performance. Craft file

Thanks for the inspiration. I liked the look and concept of your drone transport, especially that last picture, so I created my own. It's very similar to yours, but has a shorter cargo bay, because otherwise I couldn't get the wet and dry CoM to balance with and without cargo. The tail is also slightly different, because I have 2 side-mounted Nervas, and they'd singe the tail if I made it like yours. And I only have 2 Turbo Ramjets, a bit less wing area and some oxidizer was replaced to make more room for Liquid Fuel. Craft file

Here's a Mk3 SSTO spaceplane I built just to reply to this thread. Craft file Edit: Made a small mistake in the Action groups, so had to update the design a little. Here's a quote of a post I did in another SSTO thread where I tried to describe what guidelines I use for building SSTO's. Hope it helps. - - - Updated - - - That is a pretty cool Spaceplane/SSTO, Wanderfound!

Thank you I had 91 m/s dV left (22 m/s is in Atmosphere on the nukes) or about 15 minutes of atmospheric flight on the Rapiers (according to MechJeb), so not that dramatic. Tylo did indeed look very nice. My PE was a few 100 meters below the highest point on Tylo, so I was a little nervous. For a few seconds I actually thought, I was so low that my landing lights lit up the surface, but it was just the sun coming up over the horizon. 3.8 km/s didn't heat it that much so could probably survive a little more, maybe 4 or 4.2 km/s. But heating is proportional to the speed cubed, I think, so it's hard to guess.

Thanks But it's not like I planned to make it that way. It just happened. After trying 4 hours to get a survivable direct capture, I gave up and figured I'd try to use a random Encounter to set up a 2:1 resonance with Kerbin, like PLAD did on the out going journey, and then try capture on the next Encounter. That wasn't survivable either. So then I started looking to get an Eve encounter, to lower AP to Kerbin level. Wasn't that well timed. Even with adjustments, it took 3 idle orbits before I could get another Kerbin Encounter. All in all, I think the whole return journey took 7-8 hours.

I finished my return journey. It became a lot longer than expected. Longer than the trip to Jool took. I couldn't get a direct return to work, always ended up hitting Kerbin at 5.5 km/s. Way faster than was survivable while doing capture. So I ended up pretty much doing PLADs route in reverse. Mostly by accident, though. I had hoped to be able to do it with less. Kerbin flyby Kerbin flyby Eve flyby 3 idle orbits Kerbin capture (Image links to album) Edit: Images from Kerbin landing are uploaded and captioned.

Thanks, PLAD.I haven't had time to try the return yet, so the UT date is still Year 9, Day 229, 2h, 54m according to the load screen.

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

I'm back from vacation and had some time to explore Laythe with the Rover and Nano Jet, well mostly Nano Jet. Still considering my options for a return journey. Should I: Try a direct route and hope I can survive aerocapture at Kerbin Use one or more gravity assists, to slow down before aerocapture. 1 seems the simplest, if I can survive. For 2 I'd need to figure out a route or just try and wing it.

That is a very nice looking and capable design. I like flying wings. And you're slingshotting in Jool system looked pretty good to me.I've been wanting to use the low-temperature wings for variation in my designs, but was worried about re-entry, so I didn't. You've shown that it is possible to use them. Very good.

Placing maneuver node's can get quite buggy. Usually happens after a while. Especially in the case you've described. Sometimes you can work around it by trying other camera angles, or zooming in or out. Or you might be able to drag the node from the wrong color orbit onto the correct one, using the central circle of maneuver node. But the only workaround, that works semi-reliably for me is to return to space-center and go back to your ship again. OR restarting the game.

Thanks for making my day, by calling my feat impressive (especially because my cousin was read it over my shoulder).In my opinion, there are even more impressive feats done in this challenge. Nefrum visititing multiple moons of Jool, PLAD using the smallest ship and least dV and Red Iron Crown showing us 5+ km/s dV is possible (which is what made me interested in trying this challenge and to learn to build SSTLs/SSTOs). So there's definitely many ways to impress in this challenge. Don't be discouraged. Let it be an inspiration

As far as I can tell, wings in KSP emulate real-world wings pretty well. They only produce lift when they have an angle to the airflow. And yes they do produce downforce when that angle is negative.

How much dV did you start with in LKO and what route did you take?

Thank you, All, for the praise. The low dV route is all credit to PLAD. I'd never have the patience to discover such a route for myself. Though, it's a really slow path in real-time, at least for me. Around 3-4 hours it has taken to reach Jool, each of the 3 times I've used it. Maybe I lack the right tools or skill to do it faster. Most of the time is spent in the MJ Node Editor, trying to find those encounters, and then trying to find them again, when the first burn was too inaccurate. I'm not sure how much dV will be left after ascent from Laythe. In my previous attempt with the smaller M-5 Space Hustler, it cost 1.2 km/s of the 2.6 km/s I landed with. If it costs the same for this one, I'll have ~1.9 km/s dV left. Not sure if I can do anything with that other than heading back to Kerbin. I'll be sure to take pics when I go flying in the Nano Jet. I did circumnavigate Kerbin to test it's range before departing for Laythe. Not sure when I'll have time to continue the journey, though. Will be busy with RL stuff next few days. Edit: Added craft files to the Mission post.

Adding new pictures as they happen. Maybe I should learn to stream... Edit: I landed on Laythe, but I need to go sleep now. Edit 2: Forgot to link craft files again. Edit 3: Album updated with return journey