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

B9, Blowfish, would it be ok if I posted my .90 copy of the B9 mod? I've still got a .90 install saved on my PC, with all the relevant attached mods--if I get your blessing I'll do it, but if you put the nix on it I won't. I don't want to step on any toes, legal or otherwise, so just let me know what's allowed and I'll go with that. Thanks

IIRC the Kerbals on the floor of the VAB/SPH are to-scale. If that helps. I just usually lower my craft until it's "landed" next to them and that kinda helps me get a sense of how big things are.

We've got procedural wings, procedural fuel tanks, procedural structural parts, and tweakable engines--is there a procedural cargo bay? E.g., you can take the doors off, either singly or in pairs to "stack" cargo bays horizontally, like a double-wide HL-size bay or something like that. There have been a couple of situations I can think of where, stylistically, it would look way better to cobble together a couple of cargo bays, but then the doors collide, and we can't have that. Any ideas, direction, discussion (even if it's "it can't be done), are awesome. Thanks!

And you just went above my paygrade. I had assumed (obviously incorrectly) that there were two drag-cube models for intakes, one for the closed and one for the open position. I simply figured the shapes were gleaned from the 3D models themselves and some game magic (well-written code) took that data and turned into something the aero model could work with. I don't know how drag cubes even work in KSP, so really, I'm just talking out of my hat and could be bringing you back rather than forwards. Sorry.

Hey blowfish. Like I said above--I know next-to-nothing about how the interior specifics of modding work. BUT, and I'm just brainstorming here--would it be possible to import the 3d models of the intakes into something like Blender, get their volume/3D shape, and generate a drag cube from something like that?

My 'workhorse' SSTO in the KKAC fleet - inspired by the BRV-8 Heinlein by B9 Aerospace. Can easily get up to a 130,000m orbit. Maneuverable and with a large fuel margin, it's a good spaceplane for amateur pilots.

I'mma hop on this before someone else does because B9 and co. seem to be getting a little testy (not without warrant.) See user "blowfish" up above? In his sig, he's got a link to a B9 Aerospace Maintenance Port which 99% works with 1.0.4 as it stands now. And since the next major update is 1.1, which is going to break EVERYTHING again anyway, I'd say B9 currently works with KSP, though there are some minor bugs. But as a testament to its functionality, I'm currently using over 60 mods and have a 2.5GB GameData folder, running 64-bit on Windows, and I don't get any crashes. In fact, the thing's more stable right now for me than it ever was using force-openGL.

You guys get so creative with designs--I would never think of using the elevons for structural uses like that. Where do you come up with such awesome inspiration?

Well, I've come to the conclusion that it may be one of two things: Either the changes in the souposphere post 1.0 haven't been properly accounted-for by KER yet (doubtful), or, it's that I'm running 64-bit. It's probably that. But I've been running it for so long without any major bugs I don't even think about it now when it loads up and spits out all those warning messages. I just click through them reflexively...

I would have felt REALLY embarrassed if I missed something that simple. :-/ Unfortunately, something else seems to be going on here: The first image is outside the KSC, showing the max TWR of the craft (bottom right) at 1.17. The second image in the SPH, I tried to show that the horizontal engines are deactivated and only the VTOL engines are registering with KER. As you can see in the image, it's showing 1.27 TWR. Not a huge difference here, but the difference scales with the size of the craft.