AeroGav

Alright, I'm only a recent convert to the ways of Mechjeb, but was able to use it on my space plane like an autopilot, able to precisely command AoA , sideslip and roll angle in single degree increments. You can see from this launch video how well it works. On my newest design however, Mechjeb simply makes insane control inputs. Sometimes it applies full aileron and rolls us over and over till we crash. In this example it puts in a bootfull of rudder and has us constantly sideslipping, but appears to command pitch very loosely. Tried removing then reattaching the mechjeb module, orientating it differently. What's going on?

It's a function of weight and landing speed, as to whether your low tier landing gear will survive a wilderness landing. My "simple bird" I linked earlier in the thread has a stalling speed under 30m/s so can land anywhere. The main problem i find with surface report type missions is being able to get back into the plane afterward. I've tried offsetting the canards downward and setting some pitch trim before going EVA - that way you can make a "wheelchair ramp" for the pilot - with varying success. It's like a breath of fresh air when you finally get the retractable gear though -that way your plane can "kneel" to let the crew back in. I'd definitely rehearse this kind of "embark/disembark" operation on the runway before flying half a world away. ps. don't forget your parking brake.

Stock Aero planes don't do well in FAR, I fear the performance won't be anything like as good ! I'm planning to release this on KerbalX as a 1 man SSTO once I've finished tweaking - need to check how well it handles re-entry with cockpit, how well it can land on duna (vernier lift engines, stronger gear?) and if a return journey from Duna is possible with the thing.

Tailcone A is no longer the lowest drag part you can start and end a stack with. Did some tests at 250 m/s and 500m, the http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Advanced_Nose_Cone_-_Type_A shows lower drag numbers in the right click menu with debug turned on. It is also lighter and more compact than the Tail cone, justifying its higher position in the tech tree. BTW the slanted version of the above part performs just as well, it's a purely cosmetic thing. I could not detect any difference in drag between the Shock Cone and the Pre Cooler however, so unless his engine is surging from lack of air i don't see this affecting him. One thing Bewing, you mentioned you like to lock Stability Assist on after takeoff and let that control your launch profile - the tail connector part generates significant amounts of lift and it's right at the front, so it's possible it might alter your flight profile to something less efficient? I find other factors determining my shock cone/pre-cooler choice. The pre cooler is quite a long but not very heavy part and i find it useful to put just ahead of CG in the stack to shift the heavy cockpit etc. further forward, where it's got more lever arm to balance the mass of the engine.

I can only think the game considers something to be in the exhaust path of the engines, hence they make no thrust. If you press F3 to look at the flight logs is it showing the tailplane being "heated" by Juno engine? You might have to reposition it slightly.

Or add another pair underneath the tailplane to balance the two which are above the centre of mass, and balance the pitch down effect you'll get when throttling up. Honestly something that minor doesn't matter much on an atmospheric flight. Kick a set of RAPIERS over to rocket mode at 29km when your control surfaces barely work in an orgy of oxidizer consumption and you'd know about it ! Of course, them engines are also behind the centre of mass so, that will require moving the wing again. BTW is the centre of gravity just in front of the join between your two fuel tanks? If you have as much in front as behind CoM, then handling won't be afffected as fuel burns off. That's a lot of fuel btw - that thing could circumnavigate Kerbin

I haven't run a career game since 1.1 but in 1.05 the Juno would supercruise if you used enough of them. Juno engine makes max power at 1.3 mach and drag certainly used to go up over the transonic region then drop slightly around mach 1.3 before heading up again. So, build something with 12 junos and fill the mark 0 nacelles to only 30% , climb to 12km subsonic, shallow dive through sound barrier, then slowly ease into a climb again when you hit mach 1.3. I stopped accepting contracts to make observations above 19km at site X etc. Whilst it is possible to make one observation per flight in a juno/terrier plane, it takes ages to fly to the observation point, ages to reach max juno altitude and your turn rate up there is non existent. The actual zoom climb requires exquisite timing and you only get one shot. Wait till you have Panthers.

I'm having the opposite problem, Apoapsis continues to go UP after engine cutoff These days I start to cut power a few km early knowing i'll make gains from wing lift

No , the heat shield is not going to create extra drag on the ascent because there will be a nose cone in front of it. Only if the nose cone explodes from re-entry heat will the heat shield be exposed. You'll have the drag penalty but as the mission is over it's no big deal. I've used this heatshield behind nosecone trick before on rockets, just before the nose cone goes boom, the mk1 sections behind it are also glowing red, but after it goes boom temperature bars on stuff mounted further back on the stack disappear almost immediately. This is only true if i stay close to prograde however, and i doubt a spaceplane's wings get much protection.

Glad it's working. The gear are actually attached to the rearmost of the 2 size 0 fuel tanks that form the engine nacelle. I had to use rotate tool with angle snap turned on and "Absolute" mode set (F key) rather than "Local" to get them straight. Those basic gear never attach straight without tweaking no matter what you put them on. There are only two pieces the fuselage, the cockpit and the tailcone, both of which are conical. The wings are attached to the tailcone and acquire a sweep back as a result. The engine nacelles attach to the wing so also end up not straight by default - they end up toeing outwards . Used the rotate in absolute with angle snap to fix it. Something you might need to know if you want to double up on the engines. I've had a juno plane cruise at 15km and mach 1.3 but it did have 14 engines and twice that wing span, and it was near the end of a polar survey mission so not much fuel left ! Those canards are massive for a plane that size so they can force the nose up despite the CG. Also I left the rear of the two fuel tanks empty because they are behind the cg. The plane is sufficiently nose heavy to not be unstable with them full, but you would get a slight shift as their fuel burned off .

Built this in under 10 minutes. It takes off and lands. Could do with some ailerons but it's past my bedtime already. https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/simple-bird edit - it's very nose heavy, like i said could do with some optimising. Press the Space Bar to start both engines, Z to throttle to 100% and hold down the up arrow key to lift off - about 30m/s. Cannot stall, max pitch it will give you is about 12 deg. You can see how much nose up pitch trim i had set so it would hold level filght hands off. edit 2 - if you can't make this fly, then you have a mod like FAR raising takeoff/landing speeds beyond what the weakest landing gear can support. I suspect if your own creations aren't controllable you might be getting part misalignment in vehicle editor - you know that when attaching critical items like gear, you should always go into angle snap mode and then press F to get Absolute rotation mode rahter then relative, then move the part 1 notch in each rotation axis then back to original position again - this ensures the gear are pointing dead straight ahead.

From now on I'm building with shuttle wings again, if I can keep AoA lower the inline cockpit gets less heat and even if it does have a problem then the old trick of putting a heatshield behind a a nosecone on a decoupler should do the trick. I can use two pairs of shuttle wings in a double delta and get the same quantity of fuel storage and lift rating, but i would need twice as many fuel ducts which are very draggy. The entire design concept of that ship was something that could fly to orbit without requiring the pilot to do any fuel management at all, and without the CG changing, nor require any mods. It was very easy to use but re-entry issues could threaten that status. I could try a heatshield behind its nose cone..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf3qqAStsFU&list=PLF64Jfn9iJDGPpBfLk01SZDmFCeaA0DB_&index=9 this seem familiar? the save scumming that appears partway into video is because on my previous re-entry, i increased pitch more steadily and later in the descent, and ended up overshooting KSC so much i didn't have the fuel to get back. Pitching up like that was done to slow down, but if anything made heating on the crew sections worse. Notice how the cockpit glows red, the first passenger cabin is yellow (about to blow!) but the one behind isn't glowing at all.

Re-entry heating is ramped up again, there was a bump from 1.04 to 1.05 and lots of people complained, but they obviously turned it up some more in 1.1.2. As a minmial modification to the Foil, how about replacing the mk2 cockpit with an inline one, then put a type 2 to 1 adapter on in front of that (might want to leave it empty if you're not comfortable building planes since fuel here will mess with the centre of gravity), then put a 1.25m heat shield on , with a little bit of ablator (does not need to be full). Finally attach an aerodynamic nose cone at the front of all that. In a normal re-entry, the nose cone covers the heat shield, and it has no effect. If things go wrong, the nose cone explodes, and the heat shield is now at the front - it will then protect the rest of your fuselage, at the price of higher drag and burning off a bit of ablator. If your wings melt ofc you're done.

This is a series of videos showing me launch a Ramjet/Nerv spaceplane. Of course it's likely to fly very different to yours. General tips - use mechjeb if you're in the experiment phase, makes things more repeatable and less effort. Adjust angle of attack to get the best lift/drag ratio you can , this minimises "gravity losses", though also bear in mind thrust/drag ratio (might be worth going supersonic at 2.5:1 lift drag ratio if it enables your engine to get in the power band, eg. having 500kn thrust and 200kn drag vs 50kn thrust with 40kn drag subsonic with 9:1 lift drag ratio) Overall though, don't fret too much about when to go supersonic. 80% of the fuel is burned after your air breathers shut down. What matters is a) getting as much speed and altitude out of the air breathers as possible, so the rockets have less of a gap to bridge to orbital velocity b) how you fly the rocket mode ascent for a), know the optimum speed for each engine, where is makes max power. There's a thread on that somewhere . Ramjet gives max power at mach 3, Rapier mach 3.75. Make sure you're at a decent alt (17km+) before hitting mach 3+ or you'll melt. Once you have hit optimum speed, you can either accelerate in level flight, but every knot faster will result in less thrust and more drag, or you can climb while maintaining same speed. The thrust starts halving every 2km above 22km so generally i accelerate mostly level here, until we're getting near mach 4.5. After that point, jet engine thrust really falls off a cliff so use any excess power to climb for b), if you have a high thrust weight ratio, it doesn't make a lot of difference how you fly and it's probably more similar to a rocket ascent. But you might be penalising yourself with excess engine mass. If thrust weight ratio is lower, then managing lift:drag, AoA and temperature is absolutely paramount. Watch the second video in that series for details.

Nice detailed reply Streetwind. It seems to have changed very recently - since 1.1 or even since 1.1.2. Previously I'd just pitch up to a high lift position - 15 or 20 degrees - and stay high as i can until the speed has bled off. Heat soak , or some other factor has possibly been introduced. I've found that minor differences in construction are making big differences in survivability, angle relative to airflow causing instantaneous heating. Re-entry in 1.05 was much harder than in 1.04, everyone complained, but i found it easy due to my craft having high lift. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJGF-RF6eIc&index=4&list=PLF64Jfn9iJDEJVIsu50IRcz6g1JAiTgfV Now it's an uncomfortable situation, though as a mark 1 craft with airliner wings, it is asking for trouble somewhat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8THkl98C-4&list=PLF64Jfn9iJDGPpBfLk01SZDmFCeaA0DB_&index=7 (embed link not working right now, shows 1st video in series for some reason but when opened in new window goes to re-entry one) Edit - What would really help if i configured kerbal engineer to show more info. At the moment it just has Critical Thermal %, is not showing core vs skin or which part (though that's easy to guess, from the temp bar and red glow). I need to do more testing, but what i've found with that Astrojet Citation design, is that there's a critical point on re-entry where temperature gets very close to the boom point , creeps up very slowly but hasn't yet exploded, gets within a few percent of doing so every time and with different re-entry techniques, I have tried pitching up at 25 degrees AoA from 70km down to the ground, fell like a brick and ended up nowhere near ksc. Then I tried pitching for best lift:drag ratio , this ended up arresting my descent a good 10km higher than what my periapse was on the re-entry burn, however when the plane finally resumed its plunge temperatures reached similar values. Instead of 35km periapse i burned for 50km. This made me skip off the amtmosphere and do another couple orbits before going down for good. But temperatures on the final plunge were identical to the first. So I hit my quicksave and tried treating it like a landing , and varied the point where i'd "flare" for max lift after an approach on L/D max. I tried flaring at the point where lift stopped my descent, increasing pitch angle every time my plane threatened to head down again, until i reached stall angle. I tried flaring higher up. I tried flaring deeper, allowing the plane to start to sink again, but increasing pitch to keep rate of descent reasonable as long as i could. TRied flaring at whatever height my plane encountered max heat last time. No difference. BTW the heat values i was getting one return from Minmus were very similar to what i was seeing when returning from a 75km orbit, i just skipped off the atmosphere a lot more times coming back from Minmus. But the final descent always began at a similar angle and velocity. What I have noticed, the problem part changes with AoA. Coming in at low AoA, the subsonic airliner wings overheat. If i pitch up, the wings cool dramatically, but the inline cockpit and mk1 crew cabin become critical.

After all the min-maxing it was refreshing to spend a weekend on the less used concepts. Particularly, the much maligned Space Shuttle and all those things in the middle of the tech tree you never use. I'm talking about the techs that come after the starting items you're forced to use in career mode and all the sexy spaceplane stuff i beeline for. To start with, I had a look at the problem of Centre of Gravity management with rear mounted engines. Tried to make it as foolproof as possible with no mods. Results in a rather stubby but not uncomely aircraft. The way rocket fuel drains front to back can really mess with your spaceplane. This one has only one rocket fuel tank, the largest available in mk3 size, and it sits right on the CG of the aircraft. At the back is a tri-adapter the 3 lightweight and efficient Terrier engines. At the start of the closed cycle phase, these might not have a good margin over the drag losses , so we have a pair of thuds, on the centreline of the fuselage, one on top, one below. They are not very efficient but an action group can bring them in at times of need. As radial mount engines, they don't need any nacelles, and take their fuel direct from the big tank without ducts, all of which lowers drag. We also have 4 whiplashes, between the wings. The Thuds and Whiplash are mounted towards the front of the plane, offsetting the weight of the Terriers at the back. This keeps our CG right in the middle of the large tank, so CG does not move in either direction as it empties. One problem i was not able to solve was jet engines still taking fuel out of the rocket tank when they have a perfectly good set of fuel filled wings. Also, where to put a cargo bay? If the fuel tank is at our CG, cargo will necessarily be in front of or behind it. This could lead to handling differences loaded vs empty. Next, was a space shuttle-alike . It solves some of these problems (but needs mods) and is tricky to fly, as these things tend to be. Ended up needing 3 mods, tweakscale, GPOFuelSpeedPump and ModularFuelTanks to make it work. The original Shuttle concept was for a smaller orbiter launched off the back of a large, high speed/altitude carrier plane. This was my take on it. In my imagined Kerbal universe, it was the STS's replacement following a number of fatal accidents. As a result, safety was paramount Sticking with 70s tech, it uses Whiplash (Pratt & Whitney J58 ) for the carrier plane, and NERV on the orbiter. The cargo bay is small, so it's not really suited to construction tasks. Still, there's space for a few science instruments, and it has enough delta V to explore the Kerbin SOI somewhat. Unfortunately while the carrier plane has a probe core and is perfectly controllable with the orbiter released, the game deletes it as soon as the orbiter flies out of physics range. So the 100% re-usable nature of this system is lost. 2 Mods for this - GPOSpeedFuelPump and ModularFuelTanks. Personally i think this little orbiter is cute, and with all its safety systems, "very NASA". If you're interested in any of these aircraft, I can put them on KerbalX for download.

There's three ways to control angle of attack on the way to orbit. The best is probably Mechjeb - you can see me use it here. It struggles especially with poorly designed aircraft, but on this it's steady as a rock. It helps too, that this aircraft has both a good margin of excess fuel and also significantly more thrust than drag. Just watch your temperature ! You can also use SAS. It tries to hold a constant nose angle relative to the sun. It does not take account the curvature of Kerbin, so your nose slowly rises with SAS. This effect becomes more pronounced at high speed. Sometimes, SAS can be rather derpy. I often find the nose drops when you touch ANY control, such as a heading adjustment or when picking a wing up, it can actively resist your efforts to pick the nose up too. Be ready to switch to manual if it starts displaying this behaviour. I let SAS with it's slowly rising nose fly this one, but i tap a key every so often to make the nose drop a degree or so if AoA is rising too fast for low drag flight. This plane has plenty of fuel but not enough thrust.. Finally, manual flight with pitch trim. Below 20km there's too many corrections to be made , each of which causes a nose drop and the nose drift up tendency under SAS is too slow to compensate. Above 20km however many aircraft tend to bob and weave so it's easier to turn SAS on.

Darpa falcon, mach 6 wave rider concept. Looks like they never got very far with this one , because two rather different versions on line Now that compression lift is better understood, i wonder if they actually make more use of lift in the cruise phase rather than just basiclly make a rocket and put the smallest stub wings on you can get away with for landing on a 12 mile strip of lakebed when empty. They now think you can get 10:1 l/d ratio at mach 6 with a wave rider THe Xb70 Valkyrie (above) was designed for mach 3+ at 70,000ft plus. If it was meant to do mach 3 lower in the atmosphere smaller wings would of course be optimal, because there would be more skin friction drag and simply reducing the area as much as possible helps with that. When the air is rarefied, friction drag is less and wave drag predominates. Because of careful area ruling and because the large wing area is all behind the nose's shock cone the large wing area doesn't add much drag. I've done similar in FAR and achieved low supersonic drag, though takeoff speeds were still 70 m/s. The biggest drawback, in stock KSP, to using large wings is that your plane won't want to go supersonic too low down, which can make Rapier designs very sluggish and waste a lot of their fuel on the slow subsonic climb, due to low thrust weight ratio "gravity losses". Two workarounds, drop tanks or detachable panther boosters (a small fraction of the cost of a NERV/Rapier long range spaceplane) that one had two cargo bays and could fly straight to minmus with a small ISRU setup.

We take safety very seriously on our program. All vehicles are thoroughly tested before risking an orange suit on one.

Since the thread has already drifted I hope you don't mind if I throw this in there. My five year old son (ok it was me) drew this wonderful diagram showing how to combine NERV with SABRE tech The first diagram shows a conventional jet engine, without afterburner. Eg. Wheesley, Juno, Goliath. Intake, Compression, Combustion, Turbine stage to drive the compressor, nozzle. Fuel economy is great but power is bottlenecked by the first stage of the turbine blades, which can only withstand a certain temperature without melting. The world record, I believe , is 1600K and that's in a gas turbine power station with ceramic blades, airplane engines use metals to better survive in case of FOD. Because of this, you can only inject enough fuel into the combustor to utilise about half the available oxygen, any more than that , things get too hot. Note you can replace the combustor with a nuclear reactor and this makes a nuclear turbojet. The second picture indicates a jet engine with Reheat. Eg. Panther. Once we're past the turbine stage there is no temperature limitation, so we can inject fuel to use up the available oxygen. However because the gases have already expanded some, combustion is taking place at a lower pressure and this means less of the heat is converted to mechanical energy. Note you could do something similar with a nuclear turbojet. At low altitude, there is likely more air available than the reactor will be capable of heating. Higher up however, we can start to run into temperature limitations on the turbine (1600K) before we hit those of the reactor (3000k on modern pebble bed), also the air will have cooled some after expanding through the turbine section, that is after all how power is extracted to drive the compressor. So, we can have a reheat stage in our nuclear turbojet analgous to the jet engine "afterburner". The third picture indicates compressor bypass like we have on the Pratt & Whitney J58. As we get very high up, ambient air temps start to rise again. Since we'll be doing mach 3+ at these altitudes, we'll be getting substantial ram air effect compressing the air in the intake before it even gets to the engine. In a lot of ways that's a good thing, it helps to offset the very rarefied air at such altitudes. But , when you compress a gas its temperature goes up, which can drive our turbomachinery over its thermal limits. In such situations the J58 bypasses some of the compression stages to keep temperatures in check. The "Whiplash" emulates this in game, but i see no reason why a nuclear turbojet couldn't also do this. The SABRE (Rapier) engine takes a different approach, it uses the incoming LH2 fuel stream to cool the intake air allowing continued operation up to mach 5. So, surely our nuclear turbojet could use increasing amounts of LH2 as a final measure to extend its operating envelope. After cooling the intake stream, the LH2 could be fed into the tailpipe to combust with the superheated air stream as an "after burner", increasing the exhaust temperature beyond the 3000k limit of the reactor core materials. I forgot to indicate that you should probably heat the LH2 to 3000k with the reactor first before feeding it into the afterburner. Now , I think there's an upper limit to combustion temperature - breaking O2 and H2 molecules apart takes energy, it's actually the formation of H20 from these radicals that releases it. And there is a temperature at which H20 cannot form , dissociating into free radicals. But, I understand this is actually a goal of NTR designers, meaning they can get a lot more ISP from water propellant, since the molecular mass of all these radicals is much lower than molecular water. As the spaceplane continues to climb more an more of the reactor heat is just going into the hydrogen stream , till eventually it's operating as a conventional nuclear thermal rocket. Downsides - With reactors , you got two choices. You can shield it on all sides, like a conventional ground based or naval power plant. This is extremely heavy. Or you can just use a "shadow shield", and only shield the side of the reactor that faces the crew compartment. Anyone directly under it's flight path will get a nasty dose of gamma rays when the engine is in operation, since they're not protected by the shield. Not sure the range on those - a mile or two? Second, re-usable spacecraft are extraordinarly maintenance intensive. After landing, the technicians are going to need to crawl over every component with a fine toothcomb, they're going to end up glowing green, which is only OK if you're a Kerbal. Maybe some automated piece of equipment could come up to the plane and lower lead plates around the reactor core before sending the techs in, but i' m reaching a bit here.

I'm a little confused about the rules, but i have a payload plane that I am pretty sure will reach Laythe and can return to Kerbin. It's a man rated version of the Astrojet Sapphire I used in the Economy challenge , with two massive underwing drop tanks The launcher unfortunately was not my finest hour. Sorry. I didn't read the bit in the rules about not using any engines on the upper stage aircraft. The upper stage has no oxidizer, so once we get above 29km only the lower engines work, causing a massive pitch up tendency which the thin air is unable to stop. I managed to get to orbit by running only the middle engine closed cycle, wasn't fun though. With a 90 km apoapsis, i separate and start circularizing on the upper stage plane. At this point I discover the massive drop tanks are also causing our CG to be well underneath the engine, causing a pitch moment if i run the nuke at more than 30% throttle. One nuke on 30Tons of plane and drop tank, it was hardly a muscle car to begin with. We eventually circularize , but in the meantime the launcher has fallen to 40km and gets its nose cone burnt off before i can pull out. Fortunately, the service bay behind it survives and we are able to make an easy offroad landing. Next week i'll try taking this to Jool. Tons of fuel onboard that upper stage plane, should be easy, but lets not be careless. A fool and his delta V are soon parted.

Jeb? What you doing up there? Stalling speed when empty is 15 m/s. Put some fuel in it however, it can go faster Slowest plane on Duna ? These have already been beaten , i'm sure. They also require a mod, or someone else to work the fuel transfers for you , in order to go to space - the nuke engines are attached to tanks that only hold 40 fuel, so need constant transferring in from the wings. Eg GPOSpeedFuelPump or TacFuelBalancer https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/K211-Tundra-Goose https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/PENTA-STAR

Jovus, grats on making the 125km orbit SSTO. I could do it easily but only by discarding the jet engine. I tried a 3 core layout like you appeared to have pictured - a central jet, and two terrier pods, but it didn't want to fly much above 4km without going afterburner and wouldn't go much above 10km subsonic. I got up to 11km, shallow dive, made it through the sound barrier, barely, but by then i'd used up all the jet fuel and was digging into the rocket tanks. Thrust was only slightly above drag. I'd tried clipping nose cones onto the back of the terriers too (then offsetting them inside the engine so as not to block the thrust path) to lower drag, but no go. What I could try next is more clipping abuse, a single core design with a terrier and then a panther clipped inside of it. Less drag than a 3 core design, and if the jet engine robs fuel from the rocket tanks they at least can return the favour when the time comes. Still, it's at least 15% increase in dry weight to be pulled to 125km if we bring the engine, you could add more fuel, but if the weight starts creeping up to 20t then that's too much for one terrier. Stock has so many deviations from real world physics, but if you look at real world aircraft, those that go fast high up do have a lot of wing area, just like planes that go slow and low. However the shape is very different for shock and wave drag, and not so efficient at low speed. Think Concorde, XB-70 Valkyrie. Of course if you want to go fast at low level, just put on the tiniest stub wings you can get, minimise frontal area. Even the Skylon has a reasonable wing loading, bearing in mind the whole fuselage is a lifting body, and that all the LH2 it is stuffed with is at least 11 times less dense than jet fuel.

Well to an extent you're being pulled in different directions here because Bewing believes that oversized control surfaces cause excess drag , whereas i prefer to err on the side of caution, also i think the drag is dependent on deflection angle so a large surface with the authority turned down in context menu is better than a tiny one that's maxed out. Piloting style comes in there - Bewing likes to lock a pitch angle with SAS, I use pitch trim or Mechjeb, both methods limit violent G pulls, AoA and control deflection angle spikes that come when flying on keyboard (or with the game's horrible joystick support). Wings, I prefer large ones. I've dabbled with FAR myself , I know that in FAR, wing lift starts off lower (so higher takeoff/landing speeds) but declines less at supersonic speed than in stock (so easier to get a fast jet with small wings to high altitude). Also, in FAR, optimum lift drag ratio at mach 5 is something like 20 degrees. In stock game, it's only 6 degrees. So , in this example we're making a lift:drag ratio of 3 (it's carrying fuel tank dorsally as part of a payload challenge), AoA is 5, we're getting a lift/drag ratio of 3 and experiencing a total drag of 13.549kn, versus total thrust of 59.870 kn. This leaves us 46kn to accelerate/climb with. If the wings were much smaller, we might have AoA of 15, and only be getting a lift drag ratio of 1.5, meaning twice as much drag and so there will only be 32.772kn surplus. On the other hand, as you point out, wings have mass, so it's a balance you have to strike. The largest of the modular wing pieces weigh 0.2 tons each, which isn't much though , compared to engines etc. You can access that aero data gui by pressing alt f12 and going to the physics tab, aero subtab, and checking the box to display that data. Edit - taking the above example, if you did have small wings, your options are a) increase their size so you can get lift at the same altitude and airspeed without flying an inefficient AoA b) stick to the optimum AoA, but be at a lower altitude for each mach number milestone on the way to orbit due to less lift. This can cause parts to overheat c) brute force it with more powerful engines. drag going up from 15 to 30kn is less important if you got 120kn instead of 60kn thrust because of having two terriers. And tbh this is easy to do, Terrier's are only half a ton each so it weighs about the same as doubling your wing area.