Fearless Son

Realized I hadn't gone to Minmus yet during my current career game, so I did just that. Got a small surface base contract finished with that trip (it was just a lander with passenger capacity.) I leave my heat shield in orbit with this model of lander, and I ran out of monoprop while trying to rendezvous with it (hit it at a weird angle when trying to dock and bounced it away on the first try.) Ended up having to dock with it by carefully lining things up with the main engines and then flipping the craft around while slowly coasting into a dock. Little challenges like that keep an otherwise mundane mission interesting. Trying to get enough science and funds to start building the interplanetary ship I have in my head.

Today in KSP I added three engineers to my space program, rescued from three derelicts, in a single launch.

Whether a spaceplane is "worth it" or not depends on what "it" is, on what you want to do. One example of a thing spaceplanes are good at (to add to the examples already mentioned) is doing around-Kerbin contracts (again, if those are something you want to do.) Things like "Take X reading at Y altitude over position Z on Kerbin" can be more or less difficult to do depending on distance from KSC and altitude. For example, something above 20 KM on the far side of Kerbin would be difficult to do with low-thrust, low-altitude engines, and flying all the way around Kerbin in a plane can be a bit of a chore since you have to shepherd the plane the whole time; trying to send a rocket through there can be imprecise and might expend more funds than you are comfortable with for that contract. But a spaceplane can do a big trans-atmospheric ballistic flight that will save you time and give you the opportunity to correct and loiter long enough to take your readings before coming in to a soft landing and a strong fund recovery.

Wow, @Triop, I never thought you would be able to build all that out of... kardboard.

Congrats! You have managed to make a functional spaceplane! I find the Whiplash/Dart combo on a delta-shaped air frame is pretty effective myself, but it requires a different ascent profile than a R.A.I.P.I.E.R.-based spaceplane. It favors a more aggressive climb, close to forty-five degrees from the surface, followed by a long slow burn from it's space engines that cuts out just as it reaches it apoapsis. Some players poo-poo it for being less strictly efficient than a R.A.I.P.I.E.R.-driven model, but honestly I find it is easier to reliably get to orbit and it does it much quicker than the shallow ascent, and if I am going to actually be running missions with a spaceplane I will take quick-and-reliable over elegant-but-too-fussy.

Glad my suggestions are working. As for the heat issue, is anything actually exploding on descent? Because if it's not, then it should be okay. Heat build-up is normal, but if you judge it right the gauge ought reach a state of equilibrium where it is really hot but is shedding heat at the rate it is adding it, and so long as nothing is actually exceeding its threshold the craft should make it down in once piece. A counter-intuitive thing to suggest is that your entry angle might be too shallow. Spaceplanes almost always take longer to slow down than spaceships or landers simply because they have a very low drag (measured by a front-on cross section) relative to their mass, they have to in order to make it to orbit in the first place. Thus an angle of entry that would work for a returning crew capsule might take longer for a spaceplane. The irony is that while an aggressive descent builds up heat faster than a gentle descent, the too-cautious descent keeps the spaceplane in that band of atmosphere that is thick enough to keep building heat but not thick enough to convect that heat away effectively, and takes longer to slow down so it has more total time to build heat. This can be a... tricky balance to make. I will say that keeping the nose-up will help expose more of the surface area, increasing drag and helping the craft to slow down and thus get past the "heat barrier" faster (as well as distributing that heat across a wider area.) Those flaps you put on the back of the wings? You can set them to activate when you hold down the breaks, which will help the craft keep it's nose up even when the aerodynamic forces want to keep it prograde otherwise. Not going to lie though, while getting to orbit is the most challenging part of spaceplanes, de-orbiting to a landing is the most risky part of them.

I note that you don't have any pitch control surfaces on the back of your wings. I would recommend you add that because they can be a way of dynamically increasing your drag on the rear of the plane. You need the drag low when you are ascending to orbit, but well-positioned drag becomes an assert on reentry, and the control surfaces are a good way of getting the best of both worlds. I note the tail fins you have there too. Those tails are good for general stability, but they tend not to exert much torque when yawing. Replacing them with a fin that has a wider adjustable surface might help to keep it under control during a high-speed glide (like during reentry.)

"You've read the classified briefings about Orca and here she is."

I really like that set-up you have there, super-compact design.

Grats, @Just Jim. Tell me, are you relocating for this job or working remotely? (SQUAD wouldn't need an experienced SDET to write testing tools and scripts for you, would they?)

I frequently do! But I recommend setting them to SAS-only mode, unless you need to flip them. If you have any point of control on the rover that points up (like a little Docking Port Jr.) you can set it to point radial-out and let your reaction wheels keep the rover level even during sharp turns or rapid breaking (up to a point of course, you can overwhelm the SAS if you are too aggressive.)

Cue "Also sprach Zarathustra".

Incidentally, this is something I like to do when they have a "Bring tourists to the Mun and back" and "Land a surface outpost on the Mun" contracts. They both tend to have a lot of similar mission requirements (power generators, docking ports, antenna, and capacity for an arbitrarily number of Kerbals) so why not do it in one go. Return the "base" (which is more of a lander) to Kerbin to refund its parts. Easy money.

Everything @Snark said is good advice. One thing I would add when doing contracts is to see how many of those contracts can be "grouped" together. For example, if you have a contract that involves landing a tourist on the Mun, and there is an available contract to plant a flag on the Mun, then go ahead and take booth contracts and do them in the same go. If you have a contract to "Retrieve science data from space around Kerbin" you can nab that on the way easy. None of those contracts may pay particularly well, but they don't require much expense to do and you can complete them all in a single launch, so the return for your time is pretty worthwhile. Also, if you play career at all, be sure to unlock parts. The kind of parts you don't have limits the kinds of missions you can do. For example, you can't retrieve debris to return to Kerbin without an attachment arm, you can't dock a couple vessels in an orbit without docking ports, you can't build space stations or surface bases without power generators, docking ports, and antennas, etc.

I am afraid I have bad news: The real B-2 doesn't handle well either. I think the looks on that one are not actually too bad. I assume you considered using Goliath engines? They are not the fastest or highest altitude engines around, but I figure their thrust output should solve your take off issues. You must have another reason not to use them.

Man, I remember the old SAS. I barely remember having to hold F, it was so long ago. That said, I should use that more. I can see it especially useful for rovers. I tend to equip my rovers (especially on low gravity worlds) with lots of reaction wheels set to SAS only, and turn that on so the vehicle stays level when making a sharp turn. However, it does have issues when driving over a hill at speed or shifting planes of terrain, when I need to turn the SAS off very briefly to let gravity "level" the rover again.

Rune, on that topic, how does this interact with drop tanks? Like, supplemental fuel tanks on decouples or pylons hanging from the wings or body, attached with fuel lines to the main fuselage, and dropping the dead weight of the containers after draining them. Kind of want to see what the balance is between the added drag and the added fuel, at least in the early part of the flight.

The payload in question attached to a spent booster from a previous mission, preparing to burn to a sub-orbital trajectory: The probe burned to deorbit the booster, then it turned out to have enough delta-v left over to do another mission, this booster in a much higher elliptical orbit. Ran out of LF/O, but had enough monoprop to do the job anyway:

First spaceplane in this campaign returned from its first successful mission: Still unlocking the tech tree, so my part options were limited. Four Whiplash ramjet engines pushed this thing to a high acceleration during a steep ascent through the lower atmosphere, then when the air is too thin for them to operate a single Dart toroidal aerospike engine begins a low slow burn until the craft is in Low Kerbin Orbit. Once there, it dropped off it's payload (a small probe with an attachment arm meant to deorbit debris) and deorbited after one orbit. It had sufficient fuel to cruise back to the airfield on its Whiplashes, and because airbrakes are not yet unlocked it had to make due with drogue chutes to stabilize and slow down breaking on the runway.

Playing around in this nimble little twin turboprop:

Took a quick jaunt to the Mun's Farside Crater to gather some science and crew experience: Enjoying the Making History parts so far. The capsule redesign means I need fewer total parts to get the same effect (built-in batteries, monoprop, RCS, and reaction wheels make it great for small craft like this.) The Cub engines are ideal for this: they are stronger than the Spiders, less fuel-hungry than the Thuds, and since they are radial I can put them close to the center of mass and get something that torques well under thrust and has excellent balance when executing a landing burn. The payload container on the bottom of the craft mounts the landing legs and carries the scientific equipment, with some spare space devoted to small fuel tanks which are drained into the upper tank after landing to top it off. Once it is ready for takeoff, the payload bay remains behind, Apollo-style, and thanks to some solar panels, an antenna, and a cheap probe core, it can serve as a little science-station for transmitting data back (if I get a contract to gather science data from the Mun's surface.)

I was about to say, that was one White Base-looking SSTO you built there.

For when what you need to land is a tank.

I suppose it would work if you left the doors open and sat the Kerbals butt-to-butt with their heads sticking out either end. But if you are doing that then why even use a stowage bay instead of just sticking the seats elsewhere?

Depends on how you orient the seats. @Cupcake... does a lot of things with EVA seats in service bays to save weight, you should check out some of their designs for inspiration.