11matt556

I did the exact same thing with each plane, and flew them each probably 15 or 20 times now, so I doubt its my ascent. And the fuel line is connected in 4B, but from the angle its covered up. I never dropped the stage though. I only used it as a connection. Kerbal Engineer considered both of them 2 stages anyway since I put the Atomic rockets on the second stage and had the decouplers as the last stage. I'll try switching out the connectors though to see if it makes any difference. Maybe the dV is being calculated wrong somehow. EDIT: So it looks like it was a dV miscalculation. I don't know how I managed to make it to the Mun and back before, but apparently both designs ACTUALLY have about the same dV. I guess I got lucky that time, or flew it very well, because I can't seem to make it back again. Thanks for your help with my (very stupid) mistake. Any general suggestions or tips that might help with this or future designs?

I thought about the fuel line as well, but I made sure to reattach it exactly as it was in the 4B. The body lift is a good idea, but they both seem to fly exactly the same, so any loss should be negligible. AS for the changes between the 4B and 4C *Moved landing gear forwards in 4C to make takeoff easier *Moved engines further apart (main change) *Slightly adjusted wings to keep COM and COL the same as the 4B design. *Used the structural pylon (white thing) instead of the gray connector to connect engines to the main body.

I believe heat shields are aimed more at interplanetary returns, such that a heat shield is generally not required for returns within Kerbins SOI, but interplanetary missions should need one. I haven't needed one yet, but I also haven't done any interplanetary missions in 1.0 yet.

So I managed to get my first 1.0 spaceplane into orbit within an hour or so, but after that I've hit a brick wall as far as making them any better. My goal right now is to make an SSTO that can travel to anything within Kerbin's SOI, and can travel anywhere else after (such as Jol) after refueling. The plane below is my best design so far and can make it into orbit around the mun and come back. The only major problem was that the nuclear engines tended to overheat everything around them. Overheating http://imgur.com/yShR5Tw So, I made a slight modification to fix that problem. All I did was move the engines further apart so they wouldn't get as much radiated heat. http://imgur.com/w3rTEnv With the new design, I can't return from the Mun's orbit. There just isn't enough dV. Kerbal Engineer claims that the original (top image) had about 2,000 m/s dV after reaching orbit. The new design has only 1000 m/s dV, sometimes less. Even if I remove excess oxidizer and intakes, it doesn't seem to make any difference. I've tried tweaking the fuel, adding wings, removing wings, but nothing seems to matter. Anyone have any ideas about why this might be happening or a link to an advanced 1.0 spaceplane tutorial that could help? All I could find were basic tutorials for 1.0 so far. I always run into this problem with spaceplanes. I find a design that seems to almost work great, but anything I change only seems to make it worse. This is my first time posting so please go easy if I messed something up.