Cyk0

No special tiles or anything, but some wings do survive heat better than others

No rapiers should not be any hindrance this was my first attempt at a spaceplane and it was very far from optimized... Returning the the space center from an orbit of somewhere around a 100 with plenty of liquid fuel left to fly around with the efficient Nervas if need be. The trick is just to build a plane that is low drag and avoid parts that burn up (Canards, regular air intakes, some of the cockpits, use heatsinking if needed) and putting vulnerable stuff in cargobays. Accent is more simple than ever, just point skyward at something like 45 degrees from the runway and ram the throttle home (I have not really tested the most fuel efficient way to do it) and shoot out of the thick atmo below 20km at over 1200 m/s and getting an orbit should be a breeze. It makes reentry very simple to, you will actually be going hotter on the way up than down, turbojets give stupid amounts of thrust in high speed down low, they peak out at over 500 thrust. I had air breaks to give it a changed aerodynamic profile for reentry but it was not needed.

Got to orbit easily with the first craft I built (After just plain overheating it in low atmo) Lost some peices during reentry. But overall I thought it was still easy but more interesting then previously. I did some testing that might be useful for some of you, seems like ram air intakes are no longer preferable since they are lost a bit to easy during reentry, shock cones seems to take a bit more heat or better still just pure engine nacelles are way more heat sturdy. (I haven't tested the inline intakes yet, they might be sturdy to) Rapier is easy but limited if you want good ISP in orbit. Turbojets and Nerva is now even more handy with the ditching of oxidizer, sometimes (might be related to the preecolers the turbojets really push me hard) I have been using a totally different assent profile, no more high speed high altitude dash before shooting for orbit. I have had some very simple launches just building spaceplanes that are low drag and avoiding parts that burn of, and then just shooting out of the thick ~20 atmo at serious speed in 45% angle, just doing that can almost give you a 80 apoapsis and then you just circularize with the nervas. Air-brakes seem too good... Is that really just pure drag calculation? (Might be, my only fat plane so far did not do nearly the same speed as my thin ones) or it might just be me focusing on building heat resistant planes that think they make it to easy :/ A well, when I get home today I'l try to build a Nerva spaceplane miner that can go to minmus in a single stage (I hope it has deposits) After that most stuff should be within reach. Or maybe I'l just polish my simple design to showcase how crazy easy it can be to launch an SSTO spaceplane now.

Nice, this mod is definitely on my watch-list!

Thanks for the answer, il at least check them out.

Does there exist a less ambitious version of this mod (or something like it), specifically im just after a simplified version of the reactor gameplay. (no need to even bother with fueling the reactor) Basically a separate reasonably heavy fission reactor (end balance along the lines of a nerva) that can be used to drive a generator or a thermal rocket nozzle (A nozzle that can go on LFO, liquid or atmo) Ability to scoop up atmo and store it in tanks as reaction mass would be nice for extended flights to other bodies as well but I don't even think that is possible in interstellar atm? Soo... any Ideas?