Ion Man

Oo that is some monster plane. Nice! I failed horribly trying to build a "center loader" like this design. You need to transfer the remainig fuel into the front tanks, then it's stable, depending on payload and length, you should check it before you launch and remember how much fuel you need to place where, or if you need a set of small wings somewhere. The wings are "clipped" within what you can adjust inside the SPH without using the relocate feature. They're not stacked. I also used some struts inside the wings, but all with regular stock zooming etc. 100% stock, no fancy stuff. The plane tends to roll a little, so you're better off being gentle to any inputs

MK III parts are no different to MK II. You also just need to apply the old rule of thumb that one Rapier/ Ramjet can lift around 10 tons, depending on your design even more. You can get up to a 30% payload fraction with an SSTO spaceplane and also haul big landers or mining rigs into LKO. I wouldn't build an MK III plane to go far beyond LKO, because you could easily build a smaller vessel with an LV-N or Ions to go further and carry it inside the cargo bay. Try not to use the big airplane wings that can only stand 1200° heat, they will always be at the edge of collaps going in or out of the atmosphere. The Rapiers have a weak spot right around 320 to 360 m/s, where you seem to be stuck and reached a point where you cannot go higher and faster at the same time. You need to level or dive at 12 to 15 km height and get over 400 m/s, pull up to 10 to 15° and let the rapiers "load up" to 350- 400 kN of thrust. The plane can take around 1350 m/s without falling apart at 15 km if you get out of the dead zone in a timely manner. Then, as soon as they fall beyond 20 kN at aroud 25k, switch mode, close all intakes and off you go. Here's my most recent 1.0.2 design: Red tank/ 35+ ton lifting capability to LKO, if you don't make any mistakes or waste fuel when ascending. Orbit 75x75 Craft File: Hit "1", once your thust is below 30 kN http://pastebin.com/ckkDTzqx

Yes, your design is unstable in itself. You want to control the aircraft at the back with vertical and horizontal surfaces. Your plane looks like a lifting body, where the control surface is spanning from in front of the COM to Behind of the COM. This results in inconclusive unstable flight. The contol surfaces can't be adjusted individually to the point that makes the plane stable in KSP. In real life, the B2 bomber is fully automatic, fly by wire, algorythm controllend to stay in the air.

It's actually not thrust, it's heat and altitude/ angle you have to face and work into your concept. I have a spaceplane SSTO (red tank lifting) with a 29% payload ratio, that stalls at 9k and 280 m/s, if I mess up. On the other hand I'm able to load the 10 Rapiers to 450 kN of thrust each, making me burn up in the atmo. When I do everything right, I get up to 350 kN thrust, 1275 m/s at 20k alt max and a nice 80 km orbit, with a full red tank in the cargo bay and enough fuel to land at KSC. It's more technical and physical now, than it was in 0.9.

How many runs do you perform per dragster? Is there a failure rate you accept, or does it have to be one single run, getting to 3xx m/s and you're done?

Hi, here's my 98 ton "Guppy" SSTO spaceplane with over 30 ton payload capacity. It will get a red tank into LEO if you manage to have a perfect ascend profile. 30 tons, no problem. You may need to shift your payload around or adjust a winglet here and there, but it's stable and easy to fly. The advantage is the long payload bay for all sorts of crazy contraptions. Pictures are from 1.0.2 O/

By no means refined, just slapped it together. Had a very similar stock design in 0.9 and it was way harder to get to LKO, that's what I meant. I understand the OP, but the game got more realistic and we don't have infiniglide and ridiculous engines anymore. You can always edit your engines in the files and make them stronger if you want, though. Give ti more thrust or less fuel consumption etc...

Strange. I find it easier to get heavy stuff or spaceplanes in general into LKO (150+ km) with the 1.0 or 1.02 aero. These two pictures are from a 30 minute build SSTO spaceplane with a full red tank + some space in orbit. It's 1.02, 1.0 was ridiculous, the jets and rapiers were op. Climb to 15k accelerate to 1000 m/s with a 5° angle and then fire the the main engine as soon as the plane loses speed at around 20k. So easy, sorry.

I have problems with drill and ISRU overheating. The drill overheats within 15 seconds and the ISRU does too. I can get rockets and spaceplanes up in the air, but I don't understand the heatsink problems with resource mining. Is there any guide or "how to", that explains the inner workings of these parts? I want to establish a probe controlled ground refuel station with transfer rover tankers. Edit: Solutions from comments: -Use a big mass (fuel tank) as heat sink and light wing segments as radiator (all attached at the heated tank). -Engineer Kerbal does help with temp problems, but is no option for a fully automated drone plant This is my test rig. It's still not fully stable. Only one drill, which seems to be the limiting factor. Stable with an engineer in a capsule attached. p.s. thanks so far

The module where the SAS is located needs to be very stiffly connected or strutted to the "rest" of the rocket. The more fragile the rocket is, the more wobble you'll get. If you have a high TWR just launch with less thrust or throw off some engines. A regular 5 skipper engine, red tank asperagus rocket, can lift 10+ tons easily into LKO with a rock solid ascend profile and steerability. If you have overheating problems of any sort you can turn on temperature in the F12 menu and look at parts individually. Ireally like the overhaul, both for spaceplanes and rockets. Especially the rocket ascent path is way more realistic now. 2ct

Simple sailglider design. Not much to add. Time: 8:55 Speed: 68.7 m/s Landing wasn't glorious, first try. Did this whole thing in 30 mins No reaction wheels Taildragger, only two landing gears Weight: 2.7 tons

Drop tanks?

It's certainly possible, but the scalability is bad for big and heavy parts to be lifted with an SSTO Spaceplane. It gets laggy and fragile.

The intake build aid, as mentioned above, is very nice. Just let's you assign everything very nicely. You just need to do every engine and intake piece by piece. I assign two shock cones to each engine and after I either stage to rocket engines, or switch the mode on the rapiers with action groups assignment, I have the intakes assigned to another action group to close them, reducing drag between 32 and 60k km. If you use FAR, your engines will run out smoothly and you won't need much micro management. Closing the intakes is always a good idea, though.

This a very simple method to attach landing gears to an mk3 body. You can also use "wing parts" on the wings, strengthen them with struts, one left, one right and mount a gear on then. They're lighter and have an aerodynamic function. With the offset function, you can place mostly everything where you want it. Too much weight on a gear makes it move and wobble, which will result in a nice fireball.

You can do it with Ion engines, which I consider as not being 'rocket' engines. You don't use oxygen and just eject mass at a very high speed. So with a Jet/Ion craft, you can easily get to orbit.

You can launch or land anything with the regular gear. It may not look good or is very aerodynamic, but it works. Design wise: It's up to your imagination and until 1.0 and the new aerodynamics model is implemented, you can fly a lot of crazy stuff. Most of the time the slick, regular designs work very well.

Hi, my first post here. Built an ion powered SSTO, that is able to fly by Rapier and Ion engine. Ion works in Atmo too, but only for emergency, or if you miss the strip by a few miles. This plane can do absolutely nothing except reach Kerbin orbit or fly around in atmo. Didn't test farther flight. Batteries are for buffer performance, but it can run on solar only if you get perfect sun.