Vegvisir

I've literally spent days trying spaceplanes to orbit again and again....decided to dl your craft and give it a go. Well, first go and it performed best so far (no surprise really haha you know what you're doing! ) Barrage of questions time....What flight profile do you use? I used 20deg early on and about 10deg from maybe 11-12K up. What would you say is ideal vertical speed for varying altitudes? And when jet thrust starts dropping off, around what kN do you actually shut them off and close intakes? I've been doing that at 20 or so. Edit. Shoulda looked here some time ago Scott Manley. 1.0.4. Spaceplane. No rapiers. Winning.

Uh oh. Once again JR your ships are awesome I'm a bit jealous!! I still can't even get a bloody (not)space-plane into orbit by it's own power.

This, and several others, have been pretty useful threads to read through. But I'm still unable to crack it! It seems my craft doesn't get enough speed, or air, or altitude, or all of the above. Maybe some of you spaceplane aces could offer any advice? ​On a functional level... It's 20.8 tonnes. 2x jet engines, and 1x Thud (tried a Terrier, thought it was not enough). 28(?) intakes, most of which are either the Structural or Radial kind. Dunno how people get more than a couple of Rams on their planes (could use the other MK2 cockpit and +1 more intake I suppose). 880 LF (in 1x MK2 and 2x nacelles). 270 LF+230 Ox (1x MK2 tank and 2x of the little T100s). It's fair to say I haven't calculated it all out, in terms of how much fuel and everything else. I've had lots of goes and decided after some attempts if it seemed too much or not enough. Science! I was aiming for this: and (haha) tried lots of times, but had surface speed displayed. Everyone talks about orbit speed, right? Well. I changed display to that and it seemed a better go. However, like most other times I still get to that 20K point and 1000m/s or more is a struggle. Which is recognised as that tipping point between jets and rockets, right? Knowing when to turn on the rocket is tough to get right, though. I see jet thrust drop fairly early-ish, which is when people say to ignite rockets, but at what point...100?...50?...75? The rocket seems to do ok, speed will start to increase slowly. But only if I keep ascent at like 20deg. Then sooner or later I run out of fuel - and adding more fuel = more mass = no better off. It's frustrating, I really want to get it

I've never been able to really do it. It's always looked like it'll be in the kind of area I want, but then I either forget to account for planet rotation or just do something to mess it up Kerbals is teh hards. EDIT: mostly I get put off because the solutions seem to involve math and some form of calculating/figuring it out. I don't really want to be doing that.....

I like these threads, they're interesting. Spaceplane enthusiasts, unite! I have a long way to go I think....KSP can be hard :/ but very fun

I did it! A successful orbital rescue mission. Here's the thing, I'm pretty n00b at KSP, even back before Career mode in Sandbox I'd never gone beyond Mun and Minmus. Got a refuelling station up once, but never got the hang of orbital rendezvous. So something of an achievement for me So still haven't docked, but got a rendezvous and Kerbal rescue down. From maneuvers I got closest intersect to 0.5km, just a short EVA jump for Marca Ker(wo)man from her defunct Hitch-hiker over to the rescue Shuttle. I used a spaceplane so I can do more after re-entry, I'll fly back to KSC it's just west over the water. Have yet to unlock the tech I think I need to spaceplane into orbit, so I used a bunch of boosters and an extra engine and fuel tank to get up there. And here's some pictures http://s87.photobucket.com/user/Kilaeil/slideshow/KSP

So coooool. Many modded parts or are you just a crazy person when it comes to ship-building? ( p.s. I mean that in a positive way xD )

Cheers for the info about parachute deployment, I'll check that out next time. I thought about getting a Kerbal to EVA and collect the data, but I've never had any luck with a successful rendezvous. Figured raising the orbit back above the atmosphere would use most/all the remaining fuel, when I could instead use the fuel to deorbit the thing. And yah, OCD, I didn't want to leave it up there Hoped enough would be left after crash landing to a) get full science and reclaim at least some funds.

To satisfy a contract and the next logical step in my Career game, I sent a probe to visit Mun. Got there no worries, a few orbits and a few tests, sent it back to Kerbin. Very low on fuel, and still learning the "best" way to de-orbit (in terms of efficiency, and not-exploding-due-to-heat) so tried to let the atmosphere do a lot of the slowing. It worked well enough, until the heat dissipated. Then my chutes broke. Tried again, thinking it must have been too fast. Chutes broke. Again. Chutes broke. Hmm. OK, turned off heating in difficulty and tried again, trying even slower re-entry. Chutes still broke. This is odd. I then realised they were already deployed. At some point in space I must have pressed space and deployed them by mistake. Or something. Oh well. On another attempt I noticed them fly out behind for a split second before disappearing. So that explains it. I managed to get the thing down without chutes, RCSing like crazy the whole way down and used the last 13 units of fuel. Crashed down between 100-200 m/s, legs, engine and fuel tank obliterated. Section with science jr, goo pods and probe core bounced up. Tumbled. Held breath........and then they came down again and didn't explode. Yussss!!! It had no docking (not unlocked yet) and I didn't want to "send" the science. So was determined to recover....

I need to learn how to SSTO spaceplane properly. But I really like them, just as planes. Early career I spend a lot of time on Kerbin. A lot. So spaceplane unlocks are typically before the bigger/wider fuel tanks and accompanying engines for me. It irks me a little how much investment it takes to get the parts, when it can in essence delay space-exploration because you need to then re-earn that couple hundred science to get other rocket parts you might need.

This is a cool mod, nice work. Being "encouraged" to hire and make use of other Kerbals is great. I likely wouldn't, if I didn't lose 'em, otherwise. But what exactly is the Base Vacation Rate % stat about?

Those are really cool. I've been playing with Spaceplanes a bit lately, I've always kinda liked them more than the typical vertical rockets, but have never been able to really orbit with one. I always run out of fuel, so add more, which means heavier, so still no orbit.... Excuse me while I hijack with a little question In this craft, the "jet fuel" tanks are in front of the "rocket fuel" tanks. I know the typical liquid fuel works for jet engines too, but is less efficient, so I've been "turning off" the fuel use from my rocket fuel tanks until I need them. In this craft you made, did you do something special to make the Turbo Jet engines use jet fuel over the rocket fuel which they're connected to? Fuel transfer hoses or some such?

Wow. Just....wow. Y'all can do this stuff!? Man, I am bad at this game *returns to puttering around the Mun and Minmus*

Great pointers here, interesting to read. I've had troubles slowing planes down, too, but have since just tried throttling down further out so my plane is simply slower when coming to land. I think that's what real pilots do, isn't it? Haha. But making use of flaps, and emergency chutes, is what I'll do in future

This is brilliant! So far the only one I've done is the old airfield one. When the contract comes up, it shows the exact location of the anomaly? Since I've not actually found any of the others, I feel like it will spoil it a little for me with an exact location to go to.

What an awesome mod But I seem to be having trouble with the first tourism contract, Kick Off Space Tourism,in that I can't complete it. I got into an orbit with a periapsis above 75K and all was green; the only objective left was to retrieve Tito. So I lowered the orbit and landed, but it didn't complete and seemed to go back to requiring a 75K+ orbit again.