Jakalth

You know that in the new system, you only need 1 intake for every two air breathing engines. More or less. Going with a 1.5/1 ratio would be safer, so you could probably drop 10 of the intakes right there. Not much of a part drop though... probably not enough to make a difference.

I knew posting my heavy lifter(even though it was basicly useless... :\ ) would spur these things into being! Nice lifter btw. Might have to finally take a deeper look at how YOU make ssto to figure out where I keep going wrong in my designs. Other then the ramjets of course.

Ok, pretty much finalized the ssto. It didn't quite reach the potential I was hoping it would reach, but it is still orbital and is a good learning tool. The SSTO can still carry an orange tank into orbit, but for now, it burns the fuel out of it to help with orbital ascent. Without the orange tank, it still reaches orbit with basically the same amount of fuel left. I had to change a few things around on it again to fix a problem I didn't notice at first due to it only happening during re-entry. The changes have altered its flight profile a little, reducing it's pitch authority, but not enough to alter its ability to go orbital. The Jak-102 "TopKnot", is a heavy ssto with a decent sized cargo bay for orbital activities. I couldn't think of a better name for the ssto, sorry... It might be possible to keep the orange tank full once in orbit, if you drop the LV-N's and engine necells they are attached to, but this might also leave it stranded in orbit with no oxidizer to deorbit and you'll need to add more air intakes to make up for the loss of the 8 on the LV-N necells. This is the new look of the Jak-102. The LV-N's were moved forwards to help keep the center of mass from shifting so far backwards as the fuel is burned off. It has 24 airbrakes that are deployed only when the normal brakes are applied, or when the parking brake is turned on. This is to prevent them from slowing the craft down while maneuvering(if they even do that), and because that is simply how I wanted them to work. How it looks fully deployed can be seen below. I know, the cargo bay doors clip through several parts, but that is simply how I had to do it with how this craft is built... Flight profile: Take off: Set the throttle to about 75% on the runway and let the craft run the length of the runway to build up speed. At the end of the runway, pull up lightly to get it flying, then pull up some more(more aggressively) until it is nosed up 20 deg from horizontal. Climbing: Continue to fly at a 20 deg nose up. adjust the throttle to maintain speed under 300m/s as you climb for efficiency sake. At about 8000m, go to full throttle and nose down to between 5 and 10 deg, or until it's climb rate nearly stops. Let the craft build up speed. This can take some time due to it being a large and heavy craft, but it will eventually accelerate up to supersonic speeds. Let the craft accelerate up to about 1000m/s and watch the heat on the middle wings and ram air intakes, they are the first to overheat if it starts going too fast. At this speed, reduce thrust until it's acceleration pretty much stops. The craft at this point should be over 9000m, probably just shy of 11Km and climbing. Keeping a close eye on the heat of the middle wings, let the craft accelerate slowly to about 1100m/s as it continues to climb to 19Km. At this point, or a little sooner, it has probably switched to closed cycle on the rapiers. Throttle up enough to maintain speed on the rapiers and, as it continues to climb, little by little bring down the throttle when it starts accelerating again. Using minimal throttle to get to orbit should save you a little fuel for orbital burns later on. Orbit: In orbit, swith to the LV-N's for orbital corrections. They are a lot more efficient, but take a lot longer to make corrections. In space, it changes direction slowly, using only reaction wheels to turn. RCS thrusters could be added to improve orbital maneuvering if you wish to do so. Deploy the 2 large solar panels, which are behind the middle wings, to generate power. Be sure to retract them before re-entry. Re-entry: Set a re-entry orbit to graze the atmosphere at an altitude of 50,000m, but try not to go much deeper into the atmosphere then this. A shallow descent is needed to bleed off the orbital speed before the craft overheats. Once it has descended to 60Km, deploy the airbrakes by applying the parking brakes like you would on the ground. You can deploy them sooner, but they don't really help this early. Deploying them any later and you loose out on some of the initial drag they give that reduces how much the craft accelerates as gravity pulls it in. Keep the craft pointed prograde during the descent to reduce heating on some of the more sensitive parts of the craft and to help keep it stable. It is not recommended to go off prograde until the craft has slowed down to below 1000m/s. Once below 1000m/s you should be able to turn the rapiers back on and run them at low thrust to fly the craft around a bit. Just be careful flying the craft after re-entry, it is going to be rather nose light and will pitch up a bit easier then it should. Waiting until the speed is dropped to below 400m/s is recommended. Landing: The craft is going to be a handful after burning off nearly all its fuel. It will want to pitch up most of the time but should be able to turn much tighter. Landing is best done at a very shallow descent, keeping the nose down so the landing gear can all touch fairly close to the same time. It will probably take a few tries to get it to land nicely, or you might be able to land it on your first try. Do have fun playing around with this craft and I hope you learn a few things that help you with your ssto's, and atmospheric craft in general. Action groups: 1: Rapiers turned on, LV-N's turned off 2: Rapiers turned off, LV-N's turned on 9: release the cargo from the docking port(in the cargo hold) 10: open/close the cargo bay doors("I can't do that Dave.") Download: Jak-102 TopKnot

I'll have a downloadable version available tomorrow when I get home from work. It has a bunch of airbrakes added to help it slow down during re-entry(16 of them, 8 wasn't quite enough, might not be enough yet). The cargo bay holds a single orange fuel tank, which gets used up during the ascent so it is kind of pointless... It does have some issues with going orbital though, mostly with the 2 FAT-455 wings having such low heat limits(only 1200 while most other wings can handle 2000) so over heating of those parts is a bit of an issue. But, once you spool up the rapiers, at 8000m, it'll push its self up to over 1000m/s while still in air breathing mode. I'll add a suggested ascent plan with the link to the craft tomorrow.

@Kagame That is some good advice, I've added it to the list of tips. As for the thrust part, the 26 rapier engines are needed to get the TWR high enough to go supersonic. You can't see all 26 due to careful clipping of the engines to keep it from getting to big and to keep the engines from over heating each other. The 8 LV-n's are needed due to it's heavy weight, but they are only ment to be used for orbital transfers once an orbit has been achieved. Without a cargo it can already reach a minimal orbit of 76,000m and from there transfer to a higher orbit, or even make a Mun run. It's just the added weight of the cargo has reduced it's current delta-v, which I'll fix when I next load up the game. As for the FAT-455, that is what the center-ish wing already is. That's the pivot point of the front half of the craft making that a good spot to have that wing. The smaller canard on the nose is for fine adjustments and to reduce the over control it was suffering from. Also, the only mod I have installed is Kerbal Engineer, so I do not have access to the Sabre engines.

@Aanker/@noahkra disable temp gauges using the F10 key during your next try. The temp gauges are bugged a bit can cause crashes. Hopefully this helps.

I'm waiting on uploading it for download until I can get it orbital with a payload. Hopefully soon I'll have that part adjusted and ready. And yeah, it's for KSP 1.0.2. It also still needs a name.

Download and info about the craft can be found: HERE, in the 10th post. Well, I've been working on two different heavy lift SSTO's in the new aerodynamic system and I can say I am getting very close. I am slowly teasing secrets out of this new aero model that are making it easier to get heavy craft into space, and back again. Right now, I feel confident enough in this design to give you guys a sneak peak at what I've been able to make so far. I present to you all, the -------. Well, it doesn't really have a name yet, it's still simply designated as Jak-102. It is, a 305 ton, 34 engine equipped(26 rapiers, 8 lv-n's), 45 ton payload hauling SSTO. I've been able to get it orbital already with an empty cargo hold and i'm currently tweaking the design a bit to get it orbital with a 45 ton refueling pod in it's cargo hold. It can already break atmosphere with it's full payload and still re-enter atmosphere intact. The flight profile for getting it orbital is a bit strange, coming from KSP 0.90 and earlier, but from what I've read, it's quite similar to it's smaller brethren. The design it's self is meant to act as an orbital mothership once orbit is reached, hence the LV-N rockets. And with a full refueling, it's got 19K Delta-V for the LV-N's. A bit of the info I have been able to tease out(and some of this may already be known): 1: The wings only need a total lift rating of 10% of the crafts weight to fly, not really well though. But a total lift rating of at least 25% is needed to give it a manageable glide profile. 50% allows it to fly completely level/horizontal. Anything more then 50% lift rating per ton is just extra drag. 2: In order to go supersonic, a thrust to weight ratio of 1.25 seems to be the absolute minimum needed. Even at this amount, it requires going into a shallow dive to gain enough extra speed to break the sound barrier before the engines can spool up to full thrust. This is true for both the Turbo Ramjet and the Rapier engines. A thrust to weight ratio of 1.40 will allow the craft to break the speed of sound and go supersonic in a shallow climb. And in level flight, a TWR of 1.40 allows it to go supersonic at low altitudes. Once the craft breaks the speed of sound, even with the minimim 1.25 TWR, the craft can still maintain supersonic flight while going into a much steeper climb, or even keep accelerating if you let it. 3: The medium sized MK3 cargo bay has a fairly weak connection strength to the rear fuel tank, making it a primary failure point. Trying to reinforce this connection using struts that go from the fuel tank to the cargo bay cause instant structural failure the moment it is launched. BUT, connecting struts from the fuel tank, to a separate part, and then connecting struts from this separate part to the cargo bay, does allow the connection to be reinforced successfully. 4: The gimbaling on the Rapiers is a bit silly. Sometimes it is too strong, other times it is not enough. KSP, your drunk... 5: With large aircraft like this, a gentle stick is very important. Pulling up to hard causes an aerodynamic hit on the wing surfaces that can tear them apart. Turning on the other hand, they don't seem to mind so much. 6: speed.... yeah... Over speed is a very dangerous drug. For this craft, the top safe speed is 1100m/s @ 9000m. It's actual top speed @ 9000m is somewhere above 1300m/s, moments before it's wings start melting off and it eats its own air intakes. heh heh 7: Brakes, air brakes are important. When you've got enough thrust to go supersonic, it's even harder to slow down... I still need to find the right spot to add them to my SSTO, but they are very important for re-entry. Every little bit of speed you can bleed off early in the re-entry, saves your wings from being burned off, and air brakes work very well at giving you that little extra drag you need. And yeah, they have that nice sci-fi feel to them as well. 8: Reaction Wheels. Yeah, they only help once you breach the 20K altitude mark, otherwise your wings and tail fins should suffice. But when your craft weighs over 300 tons, you're going to need quite a few of them... 9: Last of all, intakes. For the Rapiers at least, having 2 rapiers per ram air intake seems to be the ideal amount when your craft can go supersonic. I always end up having plenty of air intake left(ok, maybe not plenty, but some...) once the craft pierces the 20K altitude mark and switches too closed cycle. The Turbo Ramjets seem to have similar properties but I haven't tested them as much due to this design needing the Rapiers for their duel modes. Tip from Kagame: 10: when attaching cargo to your cargo bay be careful of the slightly buggy attachment point snap. if attaching the cargo to the front or back of the cargo bay, it can sometimes attach to the fuselage part in front/back of the cargo bay instead of the cargo bay it's self. This can cause the cargo bay to detach on launch, breaking you craft. If this happens, try re attaching your decoupler/docking port to its mounting point and see if it connects to the cargo bay correctly this time. (I can confirm this issue, I've had the same problem when adding large reaction wheels to the JAK-102. It effects more parts then just the cargo hold it seems)

Does this mean I have to bring out my old Kermite bomber for this challenge? It flies surprisingly well in the new aerodynamics and only needs a few small tweaks to get it back into fighting shape again.

Yeah, long range SSTO's are not impossible in 1.0.x KSP. they are just a lot different then they used to be. Nicely done on this craft dfg26. Paving the way for the new generation of SSTO's. I like the combo of Rapiers and LV-N's on the craft. Keeps it from needing more then one type of fuel. Nicely done there.

That's a nice looking Ultra Light Power Glider.(powered Hang Glider) Bet it is a nice little craft to fly about. The turbo ramjet engine is probably a bit overkill, nothing wrong with that though. How does it handle with the basic jet engine in place instead of the ramjet?

Ok, now that is a NICE way to abuse the aerodynamics. Heh. Would make an interesting blockade breaker.

What I've been reading is you do NOT want to have LV-N's connected directly to a quad coupler. Having LV-T400, or better yet, LV-T800 fuel tanks connecting each LV-N to the coupler seems to be the way to fix the over heating issue. The long fuel tanks dissipate the heat from the engines at a better rate and keep them cooler during long burns. The quad coupler on the other hand causes the engines to rapidly over heat when they are all connected directly to it. Otherwise, beautiful lifter you've got there. And a nice transfer vehicle.

That ssto does look good though. Even with the simple "sausage" design, as you call it. I'm sure you'll crack the system soon enough and be back to making the complex and unique craft you like to make.

This does make me a little sad in 1 way... I've been unable to get a MK3 craft to fly at speeds over 500m/s @ altitudes over 10km... My big bomber can only hold 270m/s @ 12,200m. How? Why? Can I "borrow" some of your technology? Nice job on the transport plane though. Looks pretty smooth.

I can say for sure, going bigger gets even worse. Using MK3 parts, I've been unable to get a craft, big enough to haul any sizable payload, to travel at high enough speeds at altitude to reach orbit with any form of effectiveness. Even with a 2.5 TWR, which gives it enough thrust to top 1000m/s @ 5000m, by the time it reaches 10km, it can't even hold a speed of over 500m/s... Mk3 parts and the current engine scaling are a bit mean. To even attempt high speeds at altitude, your craft can not drop below 500m/s, at altitude, or the engines loose too much thrust due to the same velocity drop. higher speed = more thrust = higher speed. lower speed = less thrust = much lower speed. Using MK2 parts it should be doable. It'll just be easier to stick with a much more stripped down craft for now. At least until the boundaries of the new aero system are probed. Then making your craft look better should be doable. I can agree with a lot of what panzer1b has said. It really does not require as much lift to fly a craft in the new aero model. In fact, less wings = less drag and more speed/efficiency at high altitudes. But I'd suggest a little more wing then just a few delta deluxe wings, just for the sake of giving at least some looks to your craft. Also, the downfall of the Turbo ramjet is its thrust drops off at lower speeds and altitudes then the rapier. But, it is doable to get to 30,000m with just the ramjets, if you can keep your speed up high enough. Rapiers on the other hand are far more sensitive to drops in speed. They like to stall out and/or loose all usable thrust if the crafts speed drops, much faster then the ramjets.

F12 is a fairly obvious choice for the aero model key, it is already the debug key(alt F12) so makes perfect sense. I prefer using the ~ key for steam pictures anyways, few if any things use the ~ key anymore.

Best you can do is report an issue, hope they see the issue and can fix it when they have time, and use work a rounds until it can get fixed.(F10 to disable temp guadges in this case)

Yep, this issue is quite wide spread. My poor little High speed test bed brought this on during high altitude tests. Not sure where the difference is, but I was able to slow it down enough that all the heat bars vanished from it on 3 occasions during testing, each lasting close to a minute, and were during the same flight. Even with this, the fourth test only went for 15 seconds at high altitude before the game froze. Doesn't seem to be completely consistent in when it crashes or how quickly it eats memory.

Well, I've got a surprisingly nice flying, MK3 fuselage, short range VTOL capable bomber for you all too play with. It flies surprisingly well for it's size and when in hover mode, it's even more surprising how easy it is to maneuver. No, it does not like to hover completely stationary, but small adjustments to the flight controls do get it to settle where you want it to go. It has plenty of fuel to make a trip too the island airfield, slow down and make a vertical landing, then take off again and fly back too the space center. All with it's full payload of a single quad core "nuke" bomb. Once the bomb is dropped, it becomes a lot quicker and requires much less thrust to hover and fly. Things too note about this bomber 1: The hover engines are just enough to lift it off the runway with the bomb in its bomb bay and its current fuel load. 2: It has more thrust in the 4 turbo ramjet engines then it really needs, going full throttle for too long, when not hovering, is not recommended. 3: The lift and thrust engines are toggled using action groups. 3a: Action group [1] turns on just the lift engines and makes sure the thrust engines are off. 3b: Action group [2] turns on both the lift and thrust engines for making short take offs or for transitioning from hover too horizontal flight. 3c: Action group [3] turns off the lift engines and turns on the thrust engines for conventional horizontal flight. 4: Action group [0] opens the bomb bay doors 5: Action group [9] releases the bomb from the bomb bay 6: It is nearly easier to land vertically then it is to land conventionally. Odd how that works. 7: This craft has a fairly low structural speed limit of around 300m/s, pushing this limit is only for the bravest of pilots. Or those looking for a nice explosion. *Note: Picture is not up to date. Actual aircraft has proper landing gear.* Malakast VTOL Bomber.

The MK1 Lander Can seems to be ignoring heating in atmosphere during launch. My Nephew found this bug once again. He built a craft to simply see how fast he can get a rocket going before the heating destroys it. The MK1 command capsule, with the basic "Aerodynamic Nosecone" on top lasts only 10 seconds before overheating destroys the command capsule. The command capsule has a heat rating of 2400C. The MK1 Lander Can, with the same nosecone on top, lasts until the engines explode from overheating and continues upwards into space, showing no signs of heating at all. It only has a heat rating of 2000C. Confirmation is needed for this bug to prove it an actual bug with the part, and not just a problem with his instal.

Ok partly solved the problem with the MK3 parts. Was tied to 3 different things which made it difficult to spot initially. 1: Landing gear: Old craft files used small landing gear bay as their landing gear. Only they used a lot of them. This was the cause of one of my craft disassembling on the runway. 2: Engine thrust: The changes too the Turbo Ramjet engine have made it far more powerful then it used to be. At full throttle, which was needed just to get the aircraft off the ground in 0.90, was causing the airframe and wings to Overspeed. Instant disassemble was a result of too much aerodynamic forces being applied to them. Taking off at reduced throttle, before reducing the number of engines used, resulted in successful flight. 3: Takeoff angle: Three of the craft I tested required inefficient landing gear placement due to bomb bays(cargo bays facing down). This placement makes it hard to get initial liftoff without pulling up hard at the end of the runway. With the increased speed due to the much more powerful engines, the aircraft pitch up quicker then they used to. If allowed to pitch up to quickly, the wings receive an aerodynamic "kick" from the high angle of attack. This kick is enough to knock loose some of the wing segments which cause a domino effect on the rest of the craft causing unexpected disassemble. Keeping tighter reigns on the stick and risking a bump and go takeoff, prevents high angle of attack on liftoff and keeps the craft intact. But that aerodynamic kick is really deadly for large multi segmented wing aircraft.... I also ended up with the game crashing when the craft was unable to make a smooth landing on the runway and was destroyed. The moment the craft flew apart, the game locked with the sound of the explosion playing in a loop and stopped responding. Had too alt tab out and force close it. There is no error report given for this crash... wish there was, would make it a bit easier... My effective bomber for a challenge, most of it is cargo bays. Was rock solid in 0.90. Harder to fly in 1.0

he very well could be... It's good to hear the bug is already being chewed on my hungry coders though.

LOL, sorry but no. He's just really good at "breaking" games. aka: he's a good accidental bug tester.

I have tested 3 different, stable, aircraft made from MK3 fuselage parts and normal wings. All 3 aircraft are unable to be launched from the runway due to the MK3 parts simply detaching themselves from each other during taxiing, and sometimes even earlier during the moment the physics are turned on before launch. All 3 craft were able to survive hard landings prior to the 1.0 release and in the SPH, and show no errors or suggestions from the new helper, meaning they should be completely fine. Any craft I have, that are made from MK1 or MK2 fuselage parts, have no issues flying in version 1.0 other then having far too much thrust now, if using the turbo ramjet engine(which they already had equipped prior to the changes), due to the new engine settings(not a bug). Not sure why this issues has arisen, unless it is due to the changes in part physics breaking the craft saves??