KristopherKerblumbus

I think I've got a solution. We'll see--running through testing right now. Yeah, I know that B9/Mk2 stockalike--hell, just about any spaceplane mod can do RCS better than stock. But I wanted an "almost-full-stock" airplane (I love Procedural Wings) as much as I could--sorta a self-restriction. I have Mk2 expansion, Mk3 expansion, B9, OPT, and Mark IV spaceplanes. Plus about 100 other mods I've got no shortage of tools in my toolbox and I love it!

I won't use FAR on personal principle.

Well thanks. And crap. I like having all of those "features" for sorta a roleplay style of play--being able to exit the craft, an emergency rescue/abort system, lots of RCS control...works *really* well with B9 parts, but I was specifically trying to branch out into stock KSP sets. Ah well. Thanks for the advice guys. So I'm basically trying to punch a brick through the sound barrier with all of the crap I've got hanging off my airframe. I'll revise and try again!

Okay. Well it's not the air, because I've got a wicked surplus of intake air already, as KER shows. Also, it's not the fact that the radials can't take in enough air because if I can get far enough beyond the sound barrier I can power clear up to 11-1200m/s before things start getting crazy, which you can easily demonstrate if you strip all the greebles off (RCS, parachutes, etc) and fly it "bare". *Is* there a "Drag overlay" button like there is for temp and aero?

Okay, so maybe someone can help me out here. As you can see in this screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/1DNJ4 according to the stats I normally pull from KER, I should have an abundance of all the good things I need to get me into space (TWR, Thrust, DeltaV, etc.) But when I get to about 340m/s, everything just flatlines. I think drag may have something to do with it, but I don't remember how to pull up the drag overlay or calculate that... Here's the craft link if anyone's interested: https://kerbalx.com/KrisKolumbus/Stock-SSTO-Test

Gaiiden! Thanks for the reply This is going to be incredibly helpful. I was thinking of DLing the WASD editor cam for a while now, and you've just provided the impetus I needed to get it done. Thanks for clearing that up.

Okay, so this is something that I've only seen a handful of times, so I'm not sure if I'm even in the right section--if this is stock or mod behavior, or just clever use of photoshop/Blender/something else. If I'm a mile out in left field, someone please correct me Basically, what I'm looking for is a way to remove all the toolbars and panels from the VAB, and (possibly--this would be INCREDIBLE icing on the cake if I could do this) remove the non-selected parts going transparent if they're not part of a craft. Purely for shots/beautification of course. Is there a mod that does this? Like I said, I'm not exactly requesting a mod, so I don't think this should go in the mod request section, but if I'm wrong, please feel free to fix me!

PCanas, are you using ATM? I wonder if that's causing some issues--I'm going to tinker around with some stuff later this afternoon and find out...

Thanks! Definitely gonna cherish praise like that from the one and only Vanamode! Well I'm running 100 mods (2.5GB) on 64 bit on Windows, and my ram hits around 6 gigs (of 8), so I don't know...I try to save performance wherever I can. I'm already running -force-d3d11 to keep my RAM usage under 8, which kills my FPS I think, but not quite as bad as when I use OpenGL mode...

Never thought I'd call a SU-27 cute, but it is Thumbs-up from me.

They are? When I look at them on the full imgur album, they're plenty big--I supersize my screenshots because I only run the game at 1024x768 resolution to keep performance reasonable--and I use DoE and PS mods to make things a little brighter...

Hey there everybody, Kris Kolumbus of the KKAC here! I wanted to show off my SSTO designs here in the Spacecraft exchange, give me a chance to see what you guys think! Good? Bad? Need tweaking? Let me know what you think! I'll be updating the thread with more designs as time goes on, so stick around for more developments! But check my sig for the most up-to-date information on the KKAC over in the Rocket Builders Forum.

Glad to hear it

Hey there, Delta-Cheese--I'm certainly no SSTO expert, but I do like building them and I've gotten all kinds of designs into orbit, so maybe my 2 cents will be helpful? Anyway I'm looking at your pictures, and here's what I see. 1) You don't have nearly enough fuel (delta-v). It looks like from the posts you've got this pretty much ironed-out, but my personal rule of thumb in my spaceplanes is about 4-6 km/s dV in the jet engines or airbreathing with dual-cycle engines, and somewhere between 1-3 km/s dV for rockets or closed-cycle mode. KER is a little janky right now, but still pretty good at predicting how things will work. What you want to do is first, set your engines to atmo mode and get enough fuel to hit those numbers. Then, switch your engines over so KER reads them as rockets and add enough fuel to hit the numbers for closed-cycle mode. 2) You have a TWR >1. Not a problem, especially if you're bringing up big cargo SSTOs, but ever since 1.0 and the aero model actually starting to make some sense, you really only need a TWR of around .4-.6. I think my super-heavy cargo SSTO I'm working on has a launch SSTO of about .47. Basically what I'm saying here is you can pack in the fuel without consequence. 3) Like other posters have said, I'm not quite sure how the medium and large landing gear really rate on SSTOs...they're really over-massed for their size, IMO. I'd recommend getting B9 Aerospace--even if it's just for the landing gear, because it really works well in just about any situation, with lots of variance for any kind of craft. 4) You're using the wrong intakes--those radial intakes are great for basic planes and jets, but when you have high-speed, high performance jet engines and SSTOs, you're going to want to use the Structural Intakes, Ram Air Intakes, and Shock Cone Intakes to maximize performance. 5) Question: Are you closing intakes when you switch to rocket mode? That will seriously cut down on atmospheric drag higher up.

Oh! Erm... Oops. It's not. Sorry. NVM