Evanitis

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I'd say it's not easy to do in a timely manner. But once you know that KEK or KKE* -will- get you to Jool mostly by gravity assists, you can get your first slingshot, and wait a few (interplanetary) orbits until you can get an intercept with the next planet, and so on. It might take a century or two, but not considerably more dV than an 'ideal' route. It appears finding those ideal constellations requires digging into scary-looking apps. In the meanwhile, I'll just practice my Mun-Mun-Eve launch to be able to do it from 700 m/s. *I love those abbreviations. But I has no clue how one starts slinging with Kerbin. Guess I should study that SSTO thread.

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My impression is that you pitch up too quickly and too much once you need to switch to rocket mode. ~1100 m/s on 18km sounds all right. It could be higher, but I often can't reach any higher on Whiplashes. It might just originates from the plane's TWR. Rapiers feel better in this regard, though I don't think it will be needed for your craft. The ascent profile stays important in rocket mode too. If you have a high TWR at that point, it's good to pitch up to escape the remaining atmo, but it doesn't worth it if your TWR is lower than ~1. In this case, the speed you lose by raising your AoA thus accelerating slower and presenting that huge wide profile to the airflow is a lot more than you save by leaving the atmo faster. Nuke planes leave to orbit by a 10-15° AoA. I'd aim 20-25 maximum 30° in rocket mode with your plane. I wouldn't shoot for more than 40°, even with a very high TWR plane. Keep in mind, you don't have to fully reach an AP of 70km on the first go. It's no problem if you only manage to get it to ~60km, but you can raise PE to ~71km (so it becomes the new AP), it won't decrease much. Than it just takes a tiny burn on the other side to circularize.

Same here. Guess KSP leaves the same impression in many of us.

Hmm... I'm also interested in how people are doing it. I knew about the Eve+Kerbin+Kerbin-Tylo>Laythe route, first spotted in the SSTO to Laythe thread. Though for some it took 100 years, others did it in 14. Guess you need a constellation of the three planets. But how to find the launch window to minimize travel time for the encounters? I faintly remember an app that could do it... Lemme Goggle... Yup: KSP Trajectory Optimization Tool. I must admit I never tried that. Oh my god it's full of numbers! And red warning signs too! It looks very intimidating for a layman who struggles with math. But it looks like this is the solution. Hope others will confirm how useful that is. I kinda' swept it to the back of my mind when I saw that, waiting for better times when I'll really need to get very far from very low dV. Until than I just stick to Mun+Mun-Gilly>Duna. I can just eyeball that one.

I believe you won KSP.

It can de done with the Steam version too.

I was careful, nothing bad happened. Ships are in my starter career, the fun can begin. Though I wouldn't have done that with an established save (well, not without backup at least). Thanks everyone!

Now that I looked into an .sfs... it's actually simpler than I thought. It's still intimidating, but I guess I'll figure it out after a bit of ctrl+f/c/v and some crashes. Thanks for the hints.

Never got into the depths of that menu. But doing so would also require temporarily unlocking the tech tree, doing entry purchases and upgrading facilities. I don't know if I could undo all those with the debugger.

I don't mind a crash or two, or even a broken savegame. Wanna' start a career with abysmal fund and sci gain, but with a reusable, high-tech plane and a clawed refuel-repair vessel. So the problem isn't placing the crafts, but spawning them at KSC.

Anyone knows a way to place a craft in an existing savegame? Not as in a plan in the VAB, but like standing on the launchpad. Didn't find a relevant mod or such to do so.

Me neither, yet I aspire to be one one day. Though I like to offer basic advice too in such threads*. Though sometimes I don't realize that my advice isn't basic enough. I usually jump into ascent profiles and wet-dry CoM-CoL balance without noting such nuances as TWR and the need of jet and rocket engines. *well, that ones isn't a good example, as it turned out it was about an atmospheric craft. Guess the 'SPH' acronym can be misleading first.

Lovely idea. Looking into a .craft file reveals how simple their structure, so I don't think it would be too hard for a third party to code another tool to make them. Though all those nodes, camera controls, rotation and offset gizmos looks challenging.

@Geschosskopf Whoa, I think I never read such a comprehensive wall of text about SSTO planes and the engineering basics needed to build one. I guess I'll save the link and quote bits and pieces here and there.

Not that the op specified that the submissions should be stock, yet the participants up to this point only used such vessels. Besides, if there's a mod that doesn't fit the spirit of this challenge it's SR. It instantly makes everything fully reusable once you slap a 'chute or two on it. It's just more fun to find a solution. I'm still marvelled by some of the above concepts.

Sure thing, feel free to use, reuse, upgrade or otherwise modify parts or the whole of anything I posted. These are no way perfect, even by my standards, not to mention a standard that includes an acceptable survival rate of pilots.

There are so many ways, each the best their own way... These days I'm pushing their pods down to Kerbin while testing the required PE for an EVA kerbal to survive re-entry on different velocities. Before that I loved to have one of these on orbit until one got filled. Though a fully reusable shuttle / rocket / spaceplane would be the most cost-efficient, those need pretty late technologies. In the early career conventional rockers with pod-'chute packs are perfectly satisfactory.

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