Goddess Bhavani

=== TOP SECRET === FOR X-COM EYES ONLY From: Council of Nations To: LethalShade (LethalShade provided the basic planform and hull design for this craft, which I redeveloped to provide original-content-accurate high supersonic dash and vertical landing capability) Greetings Commander. In view of increased extra-terrestrial threats requiring rapid transglobal deployment of special forces, the Council of Nations has seen fit to integrate your "Vulcan Mk2" concept into the Skyranger Project. In this secure folder you will find up to date flight development photographs of the "X-4 Enforcer" assault transport. Thanks to the latest turboramjet technology it is capable of Mach 3.5 in the stratosphere while retaining a Mach 2+ dash speed at low altitude; allowing an emergency escape sprint unmatched even by alien-augmented fighters at low level. Troop deployment is by infantry fast-rope or ballistic drop of Mechanized Exoskeletal Cybersuits. We believe Dr. Shen's team can fabricate parachute-retarded pallets for deployment of SHIVs and other ground vehicles. Should you wish to evaluate the craft for your own purpose you may find blueprints for flight simulation attached below. http://kerbalx.com/pandoraskitten/X-4A-Enforcer-Assault-Transport Good luck Commander. === TOP SECRET === FOR X-COM EYES ONLY

There are certain complex craft designs where 2-way ducting magically fixes fuel feed problems. Usually the type of craft you spend 3 weeks assembling and end up with phantom fuel flow issues like spaceplanes that decide to feed fuel from one side only right when it can cause total vehicle loss from spontaneous hypersonic disassembly. I simply add a reverse fuel flow duct at the problem tank and viola.

That's actually brilliant. I've been waiting for a mod for ages that simulates the torque output of an internal combustion engine, that needs to 'crossfeed' into a drivetrain, lose x efficiency when converting to 'horsepower' that feeds to the drive wheels. The same simulation could be used to simulate turboshaft helicopters or other machinery realistically.

OMG That does look brilliant. I'll see about making some small changes to the wings to see if I can damp out the pitch up moment - alternatively, in the original craft I had the very large control surface under the engines to act as flaps, damping out the initial pitch control issue right after takeoff. (that part that looks like a Space Shuttle engine heatshield). This flap is then retracted to its normal position for the rest of the way. As for SSTO capability - well the craft did reach space with the B9 wings, but it wasn't actually intended to (Airplane disaster movie depicting a suborbital airliner stuck in orbit, anyone?) I do kind of like to expand the flight envelope incrementally, and thus intended to defer further flight testing once I got to the point where I had a 140km apoapsis and enough fuel to circularize. Thanks for taking the time to model this in stock again. I do note the ridiculously complex curvature of the upper airfoils require a lot of fudging around to get right!

Circular Wing Hypersonic Transport project flag.

I went for a job interview nearby. I didn't manage to find the KSC though.

That's the X-COM Skyranger isn't it!? Give me some Romulan Ale and I'll make her fly from Paris to New York in half an hour as shown in the game If I'm in a good mood I might even make it VTOL or something lol. Feel free to pm the link to the craft file. (Probably I will fail, that thing looks far too draggy to pull off spaceplane sheninigans but you know, it will be fun testing the airframe) Today, I did not play KSP. I found out where Jeb lives in person

I currently have a contract pack that makes all rescue contracts spawn 100% boys in distress and no damsels. I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.

I voted Avera9eJoe in the recent Oscar-B Awards Also, OMG!

Oh I just remembered this one from sometime earlier this year. My first time building an SSTO spaceplane was a STOVL, variable geometry monster with something like 24 engines. Engines for every occasion including a dozen BJE lift jets to shorten the takeoff roll. Even so it lacked the wing area to rotate and takeoff properly, nearly descending into the sea even with all engines at max power. The reason why there were so many engines? I used 0.625m jet engines. 10 for forward thrust, 12 for lift jets. Ditto for the STOVL requirement adding no small amount of deadweight that could have been used for payload and fuel space. The benefits of the variable geometry wing are neutered by simply constructing larger conventional wings or sci fi wing design with double the wing area. It took 3 weeks to make it work and in the end it was an expensive and quite useless affair - even the most basic rocket can exceed its puny payload to orbit at 1% of the man-hours spent to make it work long enough to create one flight recording for youtube. Moral of the story then, is keep things simple and practical.

Lol I'm surprised to hear B9 wings aren't generating lift. Mine must be powered by magic or something. I kind of forgot B9 is supposed to only play nice with FAR but then it flew beyond expectations the first time and I left it as it is. The stockification is looking good! I'm surprised the big aeroplane wings can be swept back so far, and they're just the right size for this application. There's that funny right angle at the lower leading edge of the circular section though - maybe Bill needs to take a file for final fit and finish How is the takeoff speed using stock parts? With B9 (Somehow without FAR) it takes off very easily right where the control tower is. If your takeoff distance is close we can estimate roughly the same lift/drag ratio. In the original config the plane is a bit of a pig at low altitude but starts to break the sound barrier on turboramjets in a steady climb above 8,000m.

Nice weathering effects! It's worth the wait, no worries

I just have one tip. Start small. Do not, repeat, do not attempt to start off your STOVL or VTOL career with a single stage to orbit, do everything super plane with vertical takeoff and landing capability. There comes a point where insisting on VTOL for a fully loaded configuration is just absurd, when there's something like 2 miles of open runway or flat grass you can run on to takeoff. Also I spent 3 weeks making a STOVL spaceplane with variable geometry, forward swept wings, and realized in the end, it's utterly useless. I wasn't going to land something as large as a hundred ton spaceplane on a helipad anyway LOL! It's a good reminder that one should start small, and only add capability to a proposed design when it's truly needed. For Career games, I typically require a VTOL for mountain recon and I like to keep them small. Or, I might use a helicopter. Or a rotary-winged rocket (this is called, tail-sitter VTOL and is truly not recommended to try and handle if you're new to VTOLs )

I outright use the service bay doors as both spoilers and landing gear for early micro shuttle designs in Career. There is a brief period of time where you can make Mk1 spaceplanes / maneuverable re-entry vehicles but have no landing gear for them. Service bay doors to the rescue!

Currently, I only did airframe proofing for the craft, which involved expanding the flight envelope gradually from supersonic, hypersonic, sub-orbital and then aiming for space. Currently I managed to attain orbit with a few hundred units of spare oxidizer and enough rocket fuel to last for LKO insertion plus a short supersonic flight to the nearest airport after re-entry. However, I did that without carrying any RCS fuel or thrusters. As mentioned in a previous post, it would appear the wing size for this craft is absurdly large especially considering the circular wing has doubled the effective wing area - this gives a lot of room to further develop the craft into an SSTO with a useful payload. I can develop in two areas - One, I can simply make the main hull larger and add a Mk3 cargo bay, with more fuel (possibly extend the ramjet nacelles, add more 'wet' wing sections) and see how much she can bring into orbit. A larger (and possibly fatter, with conformal fuel tanks) ship of course wouldn't look as sleek but she will be more useful. Two, I can retain the present hull configuration to serve as a baseline, 32 passenger tourist craft. I have the option of replacing the passenger modules with a cargo bay, or I can develop an aeroydnamic 'mission pod' to piggyback on top of the airframe, taking hints from the historical B-58 Hustler supersonic bomber which carried fuel and ordnance in an external pod. The piggyback method is interesting as I can use the craft to loft a payload assist module into orbit or send a parasite spacecraft or two into space. Oversized payload can easily extend into the empty space within the circular airfoil. So the projected payload for this design is yet to be determined - considering in the video I managed to takeoff with a "full" 160 ton configuration with barely 1/3 of the KSC runway, I believe this design has ample room to evolve.

The recent aerodynamic and thermal simulation may be controversial at first, but I've grown to enjoy it very much in two ways. One, I have less need to install separate mods for said advanced simulation (stock seems to run them more efficiently too) and Two - it shows how the modding scene may influence the development of the stock game. KSP is less about playing a pre-packaged experience (most mainstream games are like that - they have a limited lifespan) It's about being part of a space program, both in the sense of developing a virtual space program in the game, and also by participating in a community that embraces scientific curiosity and advancement as a whole. I can see KSP being a thing for a decade or two even, because there's much to do in conquering space, and one day we might even be able to pick from multiple solar systems and tech trees in the stock game - one can already use RSS, RO, Outer Planets, 10x etc etc to completely change the field and scope of play.

Currently flying with stock aero. I thought to use stock aero as a basis for all craft now, since it's not dissimilar to old FAR.

*gives a PM to the famous Mad Rocket Scientist to request stockification* I think ima need some help with stockifying this one and I'm not afraid to ask - I would actually not mind if people take apart the plane and make something better out of it. Or make a smaller Mk2 or even Mk1 version for fun. It'll be fun to render a whole fleet of closed wing designs and see how they hold up in various mission types. I think there is some design / thought lineage from earlier Kerbal aircraft replicas that led to this. It's interesting how an old STOL military observation craft would eventually lead to a futuristic 'biplane' after several months of daydreaming!

Thanks for your kind compliments This reminds me - I heard B9 has a dev version that is just about perfect for use in 1.0.4. Which means I can start to import my old craft and update them. Definitely the infamous "Rotary Rocket" will make a comeback, if only to strike terror in the hearts of test pilots -- HX-1 update It would appear I made a little engineering mistake when developing this craft. Like the real world Space Shuttle, the wing area is somewhat excessive for a craft of this size. I would have the option of making the airfoils smaller for a stock-ified build, or I could make the airframe larger and add some additional fuel and maybe even an externally-mounted payload to it. I am thinking the circular wings lends for an interesting opportunity to see if HX-1 can accomodate a dorsally mounted second stage right above its center of mass, carry that stage and payload into a sub-orbital trajectory, launch it into a higher orbit, and then recover the plane at an airbase halfway around Kerbin. It may even be possible study those very interesting piggyback concepts studied in the early days of the Shuttle program. Starting small, I will next attempt to mount one or two of my X-1 Micro Shuttles onto the HX-1 in various 'parasite' configurations. I'm thinking it's possible to attach them above the propulsion section above the main fuel tank. Since the X-1s can be configured to be 'self flying' payloads that produce their own lift, it should be quite practical once I design a streamlined 'docking station' for such payloads.

True, we need early tech access to low end fuel cells at least, if we want to go to that level of realism. That would actually be very welcome in that awkward stage of the early career where we don't even have solar panels but want to send low tech probes flying to the Mun and beyond. The crew of Apollo 13 did have to jury rig a power coupling between the damaged CSM and the LM though - I'm wondering backwards if a backup solar array on the CSM would be useful in such emergencies, allowing it to keep itself charged during the flight home.

This is an updated version of a craft I built a few months ago, the "McDuna Restaurant". Experience the wonders of modern snack cuisine with a food truck of gargantuan proportions with no less than 350 parts, about a dozen of which are actual food items! Satisfaction guaranteed or none of your kredits back! It uses Burger Mod, Infernal Robotics Rework and HullCamVDS (you know, security cameras, selfie cameras, all sorts of cameras!). Can you launch it to other planets for advertising purposes? Find out today with the 1.0.4 updated craft file! http://kerbalx.com/pandoraskitten/MacDuna-Restaurant-104 YouTuber We Can Game If We Want To recently made a hilarious spectacle of trying to launch the McDuna Restaurant into space! Changes from previous version: - Now has action groups for vehicular control - Cruise control keys 5 and 6 eliminate need to mash W and S - Removed / updated IR Docking Washer with equivalent IR Rework part - Documented all action groups in craft description

OMG, such BRRRRRT! Incredible work, welcome back and I have a fighter aircraft related render request in the pipeline - considering my craft was intended to use both NATO and Warsaw Pact munitions, could I 'borrow' the A-10's underwing ordnance for the PZL-230F Skorpion when I draft that request?

I'm not sure if this helps but it might be helpful to have a detachable pallet under it to absorb the shock of landing, or have the rover slow its own descent by the use of RCS thrusters. How large is your rover?

This gif so reminds me of a Mass Effect cutscene Full video here:

Now I have this idea to use rocket propelled nose cones as kinetic interception vehicles to hit debris/derelict stations/annoying space neighbors....