Evanitis

Ahh, indeed, an important observation. It's a bad habit to read 'SSTO' when someone says 'spaceplane'. The OP got me. What I wrote above is true for Single Stage to Orbit planes. That needs Panther jet engines the very least, but Whiplash turboramjets are preferred. Though nothing stops you from getting planes to orbit before these are available, you'll just need to detach parts, or shoot the whole stuff as payload of a rocket. A very basic spaceplane without any engines. It can easily deorbit and land, almost as efficient as the classic heatshield + parachute combination.

The image linked above is an excellent start for planes. Getting to space doesn't take much more than that. Two things in addition you need to keep in mind. You need to get as fast and as high as possible with only using jet-engines (or the air-breathing mode of the rapier). That's with shock-cones is about 1200 m/s on like 18000 meters. Too few boosters and you won't reach that, too many and you'll burn up. One possible ascent profile that works for a balanced configuration is to pitch up enough to constantly climb but not accelerate above ~320 m/s until you reach 8-9000 meters. Than you can level the flight (adjust Angle of Attack, AoA to 5-10°) to gain speed. Once you stop accelerating, fire the rocket engine(s), and pitch up carefully. The second thing to keep in mind (in addition what's in the above post) is that when you burn all the fuel, the CoM will shift - most likely back, as that's where one generally likes to put engines. You need to build the plane so that the CoM doesn't move when switching full and empty tanks in the VAB. Or if it moves, it shouldn't crawl behind the CoL, or you'll have trouble in re-entry. It also helps to give the wings a tiny bit of incidence once you finished the balancing. There's an excellent guide on why that matters, though it's an intermediate SSTO course, so it takes some ingesting. EDIT: If you fail, make sure to include pics of the plane (preferably in the VAB with visible wet-dry CoM-CoL), or even the .craft file with the details of how far you got. It's much easier to spot problems that way. And this forum is full of plane enthusiasts who can't wait to help.

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8/10 Lovely craft, nice typography. Though I'd remove that border - it's not the same white as the forum.

Indeed... but if I decided to do an AFK burn of 2-4 hours, I'd most definately pick MJ's SmartASS over the stock SAS to hold the heading. I had bad experiences with the former in the past.

for a gravity assist to get PE beyond Minmus and circularize there. It's kinda' the most useless place for a fuel-tank, but that mission in the STS challenge is scored by the height of orbit. Though I took the payload home (it was an optional objective), so it makes more sense. The craft can reach orbit in SSTO style too with a comfortable chunk of extra fuel (besides the same payload ofc) - though it's really not balanced for that. I'm also yet to thoroughly test if it's impossible to land it without staging the useless bits, or just very very hard.

Sure, I didn't mean more detachable boosters. You forgot to add fuel - possibly to counterbalance the engines (while keeping in mind that the CoM shouldn't move much or at all when the tanks run dry). Payload stays the same, and the trinity of wings-engines-fuel eventually reaches the required amount and ratio. Than one can start the fun-part: balancing. Though, as I said earlier, the limiting factor for me is hardware. My heavy lifter in SSTO mode is tested for 42t, probably could do more, and has a ~300t total weight. It causes... bearable lag on my system, but I definitely don't want to fly anything that produces an even lower performance than that. If your post refers to a considerably larger construction than that, disregard my comment. Maybe runway length is indeed the final frontier. Well, unless we start using the huge green field besides that.

Fret not, manly kerbals need no 'chutes.

Meanwhile: Tested the above in practice with a smaller SSTO-plane. Got like ~100 m/s of extra dV on orbit, increased manuverability, no noticable loss of stability. Maybe it stalls a tiny bit sooner than I was used to, but it's kinda' negligible - even on water. Can't wait to see what it does with the big guy. I'm expecting more as it has a huge S that it keeps in the airflow with straight wings. Believing you about AoI would have made the 1.0.2 days easier. But it feels better to understand have a vague concept about why this actually happens.

Nonsense! Just add moar boosters. And more wings. And even moar boosters. I might sound like joking, but I'm not.

Oooow, giving me the excuse to repost my beauty - I love you already. It's currently only eligible for the 'normal' difficulty, but adjusting it for a 'hard' run will be a fun challenge. And the flawless version of that botched landing in the above album.

Rules: You post a picture of a craft you built, and the following user should tell what's wrong with it. Than he needs to posts his own flawed design, so the circle continues. If you never make mistakes, you can't play - sorry. We aren't looking for minor inconveniences like a too heavy engine or Sub-optimal TWR. We need flaws that possibly results in a failed mission. Let me start with an easy one - a classy VTOL I made this morning. It's intended to lift a certain bulky ~150t object.

Stimpy, my class-C pet-rock earned a place in my favorite thread. I'm proud of him.

To each of their own. I totally love do design and launch stuff. I love the thrill of every kind of landings too. But I get bored on missions that requires more than a few burns. My KSP folders are littered with saves of missions that I might continue one day. When I finish one, it's usually done in multiple short sessions that are days apart. Not that I couldn't assemble big, efficient and complex interplanetary crafts by multiple SSTO launches.. I just don't. When I'm in a mood to explore, I rather just use single launch by a standard multi-staged rocket. I find SSTOs more complicated to design, thus doing so results in great and prolonged fun. And I'd love to make huuuuge spaceplanes, but my Husttle is pushing the limitations of my hardware enough.

There are such mods. Extraplanetary Launchpads adds portable (read: very heavy and extrememly bulky) parts that can build stuff from rocket parts that's smelted from a new ore resource. Fuel for that can be obtained by the stock mining rigs. One needs to build big, complex economies to make it work, but can be done on any planet, moon or on orbit too. You can move these in theory, but it's tedious enough to get these where you wanted them in the first place. Or if one is too lazy to set up such bases, there's Alien Space Programs, that instantly places KSC on Duna, Laythe or Eve.

Thanks, that clarifies the matter a bit. I was reading some more articles on the subject to wrap my head around it. It started to feel egg-shaped during the process. As far as I understood, the position of AC is independent of the AoA of the plane and it's position - it's kinda' nailed to where it is. While CoL shifts along with the control surfaces (as your gif so clearly demonstrates) producing pitch when needed. Not sure if I'm totally right on that matter, but visualizing it this way helps my eyeball engineering. And it explains why can I push the CoL into the CoM with AoI for manuverability while retaining stability. Now all that remains is field testing.

I have landed Stimpy... in a most spectacular fashion: Yup, that's how he stands 17km off from KSC. I wanted to take the heroic kerbals who brought him home to pose under it for a press photo, but somehow standing like this comes with such physics calculations that FPS in it's vicinity is down to 0.1, so I gave it up. Landing process below.

Very nice. I totally love that cockpit and the launch system.

Daaam, that's an eye opener... and a nice read. It needs some ingesting. Cargobay myths busted. Thanks, nice job. I hate when such superstitions start to circulate honest, hard working parts. Want a Mythbuster badge? Moral of the story seems to be that CoM-CoL balancing isn't enough, but one also needs to put that CoM to the middle. And when one fails because of the moar boosters on the back, it should be as close as possible. Guess that's the reason that the only Shuttle I built looks silly. Well, one of the reasons. Though I don't get that Aerodynamic Center thing. It sounds interesting. So it's an elusive vector that remains hidden from us, independent of CoL. What makes the two deviate from each other? Is that the relative size of frontal and rear lifting area? The amount of control surfaces? Can't really visualize how that happens. Wish I knew a bored modder capable of creating an AC indicator to summon. By the way... how that angle of incidence on wings work? I kinda' knew it would be better to add AoA, but somehow it didn't feel right... it reminds me of those old WW1 planes, so I always skipped that step on all my (post)modern looking planes. Does it work by reducing the drag by flying more... horizontal while still having lift? Guess I should have given it a try long ago. EDIT: Ahh, text was hiding behind the pictures too. Think I get it now. It's more comprehensive once one found the entirety of the text. So I can push the CoL onto the CoM with AoI once I tested if the balance is right. Sounds cool.

Hardware.

I like to put it into mk1 cargo bays, so it's top half is clipped outside. It makes it look aerodynamic, so I can spare a nosecone, while I can comfortably slap stuff on the enclosed underside. I learned the hard way to always check the stats of probes, so I don't make the mistake of relying on it for reaction control, or electricity storage. I use it as an aerodynamic node-closer + optional control part. It's cheap and light, sometmes these factors matter. Though I admit, usually compact size and advanced functions matter more, so the Stayputnik rarely sees the daylight.

Not bad, but I'd prefer one with those silly kerbocentric orbits shown in the simulation linked by the op. Though I wouldn't be surprized if it was beyond the power of Kopernikus.

Thought I hop in to express how surprisingly awesome that mod is. I'm usually reluctant to try mods that remove some minor inconvenience of a totally fine stock feature. I don't really know how did I get to download it - I just casually dropped it in GameData along a few other things I wanted to test. But dang, that made me -enjoy- doing burns. I seriously didn't think that a slight added accuracy and reliability will so severely impact the gameplay. That subtle Closest Approach Indicator is just icing on the cake.

I can launch an SSTO from undersea to Orbit. I can splashland my Shuttle upside down to save on the gear costs. Not to mention GAP contracts that got me to do coastal tourism and water-rescues. Dunno what more you guys need.

I'd consider gifting the game to all of my buddies who might be slightly interested. Welcome to the forum by the way! Hope you'll stick around...