B15HOP_xmen

I tend to have them further back. It was something I look at so you're on the money there. Issue being of course, too far forward and it limits my angle of attack on take off. My guess is that is a common problem with high altitude designs. Otherwise having huge stalk legs hanging out looks a bit crazy.

So does FAR use ground effect? I notice it's stupidly hard for me to get my craft off the runway. Admittedly my designs are built primarily for near orbital altitude. Luckily for me, I always build my craft with high amount of TWR, so usually the engines get me off the runway. So long as I have RCS push the nose up, I'm fine. Once in the air, the RCS doesn't really come back into play until 15000m to 20000m altitude. Either way, I honestly feel like my craft are clamped to the runway right up until initial lift off.

I worked out very quickly that the better balance a plane design has, the less RCS or SAS needed to begin with. Now taking that into mind, making a high altitude plane stable when using FAR, that can get off the runway easy is a whole new ball game. I made huge strides in this area. Say for eg this design: If I were to go into the amount of time simply put into this one design, I could write a 3000 word essay. Even with this design there are still room for improvements... With that build, I was getting into space very fast. Pretty much would be able to carry one of those huge orange fuel tanks as a pay load. And dump it into space if need be. My biggest issue was heat from simply going so damn fast during re-entry. Flying too well it seems, has it's drawbacks. My solution was to practice slower re-entries to wash off speed. Else I would burn up. As you could imagine, that also meant that I could miss my target landing pad by whole entire continents. By this point though, I had so much reserve fuel with this design, that I could almost do a 2nd power burn back up into space with the 30% remaining fuel. As you would also know, less weight means that on re-entry, the flight dynamics would change dramatically. Wash off speed early would leave you stranded a continent away from your destination. Or not washing off speed early enough and you end up on the other side of the planet.... The reason being is that there is a conundrum where a sudden loss of weight (eg payload) and also a loss of fuel, means that it feels like you are now flying a glider instead of a hyper-craft! This makes it incredibly hard to wash off speed and means you literally need air brakes to slow you down on re-entry. Then there is the issue that high dynamic pressure with a light aircraft causes extreme amounts of G on slight adjustments at low altitude. So you effectively need to feather it all the way back. Else it rips itself apart due to the extreme stresses placed on the craft at those speeds. Oh the fun... It's a shame KSP doesn't have a meta realism mod. eg: FAR / Body and wing materials / Fuel types / Engine types / inbuilt procedural wings etc... Realism to me is what made this game so great. Mods like FAR are what made me play KSP so much.

I made a B2 clone as well. The yawing should be done with thrust vectoring. In fact mine was so stable, that I could fly at up to mach 2.5 without any dramas. The picture of it is on my profile pic. You can see I am going fast by the red glow of entry burn over the front of the plane. I can see why they are very efficient as a bomber once building one. Two things, the lack of a tail and focus on epic amounts of lift, makes them have an amazing glide angle with crap loads of lift. The second thing is that all that lift means they can carry a huge payload. Which is why they are very suitable as a bomber. I wonder if anyone on here managed to make a B2 style plane get into space and successfully re enter and land on the runway.

Really like your designs. Do you use FAR? I've been experimenting with high altitude flight and stability. With FAR, It's not surprisingly difficult to make a plane fly at say 30km without needing RCS. Let alone carrying one of those full orange containers up that high.

AJE is for KSP 0.9 only and I am already frustrated with bugs in the game. I don't want to be accused of using another broken mod so I've given KSP a break.

So many mods are only 0.9 compatible. I'm a little frustrated because I'm almost unable to enjoy the game without modding it now. And as such have stopped playing it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ribuduachcqekoe/output_log.txt?dl=0 I'm unsure why dropbox wrote over the old output.log but I guess that's just how dropbox works. Even if it's the same link, it's now a new file. I can tell because the new output log is smaller in size. From now on I will rename the output log with a date and pc name so I know where it came from otherwise it confuses everyone.

I did a fresh install and did it again but on a different PC. Not a case of lying. Sorry to confuse you.

I'm not sure what the JSA mod is. But here is another output log from my other machine which has a fresh install of KSP with just Redux and Ferram. Same bug. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ribuduachcqekoe/output_log.txt?dl=0 And a pic of the Gamedata folder: Fresh career mode, normal difficulty, built a basic rocket that got me above 70km and then re-entry fails to allow drag. By JSA do you mean this MOD: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/117471-1-0-RasterPropMonitor-still-putting-the-A-in-IVA Because that mod was broken so I thought I had removed it. :/

KSP: 1.02 Windows 32bit (Win7 OS is x64 bit) Problem: Re-entry has no drag on craft, eventually crashing into kerbin at crazy speeds. Mods installed: Ferram Aerospace Research "Ferri" Kerbal Engineer Redux 1.0.16.6 Reproduction steps: All I did was start career mode on normal difficulty. After about a few hours into playing and going back to the launch a couple of times as well as reverting back to construction a few times as well. Once I got into space at about 80km, I got up to about 1300 m/s and then started coming back down. But the problem was that I kept going faster and faster as if there was no drag. Eventaully crashing at 1612m/s (surface speed) into Kerbin. Log: Here is a file from dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ribuduachcqekoe/output_log.txt?dl=0 But first I want to verify that I reproduced this with Far and here is another screenshot. I only use 32bit and on win7 and win8.2 - (Both OS are x64 bit) Shame because both of my machines have 16GB of ram. Hope this helps. EDIT: HEh While in KSP I tried it one more time and then the game crashed.

There is definitely bugs in the drag model. My craft kept accelerating faster and faster until eventually I crashed into kerbin. This is with stock parts... This is with Far "ferri". Is this the log you need?

I use nuFAR (Ferri) for 1.02, engineer redux and I just downloaded the git-hub version. Lets see what happens.

When using the latest FAR, I have specific parts that overheat. Engines, The nose of the plane, and air intakes.

@ferram4 I realise you are epic busy. I have absolute gratitude for your mod. etc... I'm curious if ferram includes shock wave drag in combination with the area rule. Eg in this video: I recommend anyone using nuFAR watch this video. It blows my mind how much we don't see with regards to real plane designs.

What about people like me who build huge 200 tonn craft.

Best I've done is 20km. But at that height I think I just didn't have enough thrust to go any faster or any higher...

I still love the B9 parts. There are some larger fuselages that I use as well. I love those new fuselages but I don't see a need for them as of yet. I might use them once I've worked out a couple of other things... You wait till I try to make another ion powered plane. LoL

The engines still work but some of the cargo components are broken. I am eagerly waiting updates to B9!

I have a nice heavy mother of an SSTO using B9 sabre engines and part joining mod. (mostly for intakes) As you can see it has a nice curvature cross sectional area drag profile: I think I was reaching about 30km in altitude before I fired up the rocket engines. And about mach 5.5 usually... My goal of this craft was to bring fuel or cargo into space and then land back at the base. In that shot I was already on my way back to Kerbin and had still half of my fuel left. I felt great considering that I had so much fuel to spare and had such a huge weight on board. I had the idea of slowing down with a parachute. I landed on the runway and pretty much stopped faster than I thought I would... I haven't yet tried new chutes since nuFAR... But this plane was amazing with the old FAR ... I'll make a version two of this when I get a proc wing mod working with nuFAR. By the way, this planes cargo was a Rockomax 64 jumbo fuel tank that weighs about 34 ton. Most peoples SSTO's are about that. I could probably carry the average SSTO with this beast.

Well just put those rocket powered RCS units on the tips of the wings. It gives pitch and roll ability. Then put some on the nose and tail to give more pitch and a little bit of yaw.

That X-15 was very experimental to me. I also have quite a lot of reaction control. Once I hit 15km I usually switch RCS on. Some planes are naturally stable even up around 20km altitude in kerbal. I realise Kerbal has a different atmosphere to reality so the air drops off sooner but it is just a game. Otherwise we would have to launch from an earth sized planet with earth sized atmosphere.

For future reference, where is the output log. No bugs but I play KSP enough to possibly find them. I might do a fresh KSP steam install soon with just KSP + Ferram + Engineer redux and proc parts.

Will a 20hz sub be enough? I won't try it just yet until FAR gets a few more updates.

Regarding mach number: I mostly run into issues at mach 3+ . A general rule of thumb, is to make the plane stable at any altitude and any speed. In the design I posted earlier, you know I don't have thrust facing rear? I actually face 10 to 20 degrees downward. Thrust is still mostly behind centre of mass. I also don't have my centre of lift matching my centre of mass. Why? Because with larger plane designs, it's better to have the mass below centre of pressure. As a result my SSTO's tend to be far more stable. Gravity simple balances out the plane. My largest issue is that with a very good glide angle, my planes don't want to stop. Though that was pretty much fixed with air brakes. And I have managed to land my 200 tonn plane using a parachute. It stops very quickly though. My 200 tonn SSTO actually has slightly anhedral wings. I only did this as an experiment because my wings are not procedural. The physics tries to bend them upward anyway so under lift, they flex up. It seems to work well, even though I have structural reinforcements.