Mens rea

Thanks a billion! Can't wait to go home and give this another shot tonight! After that, I'll probably actually go and build proper infrastructure with refueling depots

Thanks a lot for the help! I really appreciate it. I'll definitely get some orbital refueling up. I had the game crash my pc and corrupt my longtime career save not too long ago so I've been moping and messing around in sandbox lately. Just a couple follow-up questions: - What is the mass of your Mk 2 ship? Also how much LF/Oxidizer is on the Mk 2 and Mk 3 ships? (I can never figure out the right balance) - Actually on that note, any good rules of thumb about balancing mass vs fuel vs # of engines? - How many vernors would I need for VTOL on an airless world? Is there a good rule of thumb (like 1 per X amount of mass?) - Regarding my ascent profile, I'm guessing I didn't build enough speed before rising past 20k? I've been struggling to keep my ships level enough to do that. I either drop back down or rise past too quickly. - I'm guessing you're just using the radial tanks for ore and that's the converter under the radiator to save weight over the small inline tank (which I'm using)? Would I still be able to keep my large drill setup (so I don't have to worry about landing in a zone with >2.5% ore concentration) or would that be too much mass? - Regarding the nukes, how are you circularizing that Mk 3 ship on just one? It never seems to be able to do it for me even for lighter ships. Is that again because of my ascent profile? (not enough speed early on so I need more burn later?). Also, even when I do circularize a 100-ton ship on a nuke with 4-5k LF remaining, it says that's only about 500 dV. Is the kerbal engineer dV calculation incorrect for nukes? (Now that I think about it, does it show dV for all stage engines, not just the active one?) - Somewhat unrelated, but how do you get the blasted elevons onto the large Mk 3 wing? The sweep on that makes it near-impossible for me. - Also, not a huge deal but I noticed my spaceplane rocking (like back and forth) along its x-axis, in vacuum, with no RCS/SAS and no input on the controls. I am at a loss as to anything reasonable that could be causing that torque. Also, my orbital distance is actually INCREASING, again without any thrust. I'm sure it's just...erm...solar wind or something Also, just have to say I love all your designs. They're really awesome to look at and read about, and an inspiration to go out there and build something cool.

Hey Wanderfound, I've been looking at your designs and trying to build an SSTO that can go anywhere without orbital refueling (via mining). However, after several days I still can't seem to be able to get it with significantly over 1000 m/s delta-V by the time I circularize. I tried more rapiers and aerospikes but that just made it heavier and ended up with even less dV. Nukes have turned out to be even more useless (<400 dV, probably because the damn thing is so massive). I feel like I've got my ascent decent enough that my design is now the limiting factor. Ideally, I'd like around 2000 m/s dV left over even with a sub-optimal ascent profile so I have some room for error. Forgot to take a screenshot of it but all my stability derivatives are green across the range of altitude and mach numbers I encounter. I've got some roll/yaw instability past the 20k mark, but nothing the vernors can't fix. I've got a little more wave drag at the tail than I'd like so that could be the problem. I've added pictures of the design as well as screenshots along my ascent in case I'm doing something obviously wrong. Only non-stock part is an IR hinge for the drill. All the surfaces have mass/strength at 0.5.