Thor Wotansen

So the king of heat resistant steel alloys, inconel might just do the trick. Can't wait to fly a F-104 in Jupiter's atmosphere.

Disallowing mods that don't change the stock science, aero, physics, or mechanics and have no effect on the function of a craft, other than reducing trial and error, is silly and not enforceable. I'm afraid I will have to decline this challenge.

If you want, I could build a LKO optimized passenger SSTO spaceplane with crew capacity to whatever you need. I do have a Mk2 crew SSTO on KerbalX that seats 6 and is quite economical.

When you say no mods, do you mean no part mods, or are you excluding every MOD, including visual and information mods? There are also a few mods that help keep track of which science experiments you've done where, which are very helpful.

Oooh this looks fun.

"Spaceship" for the bit that does spaceshipy things and "Launcher" for the bit that gets the spaceshipy bit off high G world's.

The American space shuttle is a perfect example of what happens when committees and budgets design a spacecraft. The Russian space shuttle was designed to have similar capabilities to the US shuttle, and consequently lacked the peculiar requirements of its muse.

I love the YB-35 and the YB-49! So freaking majestic and good looking. The no vertical stabilizer requirement was mainly for stealth reasons with the B-2 and B-21, as the vertical surface is a great radar reflector, but the N9M and the YB-35/49 were both incredibly stealthy aircraft, for being magnesium alloy construction and having no radar absorbent paint/fancy electronics.

As promised, here are the links to the Pup family of SSTOs. The Pup P The Pup C And The Pup XC

Put your main gear right behind your COM at the farthest back it goes. Another thing that helps is to have th front gear a little longer, so that the plane has a slight nose up attitude at rest.

This is a small Mk 2 SSTO family I've had kicking around for a while and I've never got around to posting them anywhere. They are affordable and easy to operate, perfect for crew rotations, resupply missions, or launching small satellites. Left to right, they are the Pup P, the Pup XC and the Pup C. The Pup P and Pup C are equipped with RCS and docking systems for getting freaky with stations, a feature which the Pup XC has eschewed for greater payload volume and mass. I will upload them all to KerbalX tomorrow and provide links.

I have a family of Mk 2 SSTOs I haven't posted anywhere yet. The variants are the Pup C with a small Mk 2 cargo bay and an inline docking port, the Pup P with the cargo bay replaced with a passenger cabin, and the Pup XC with no docking port and the long cargo bay. I will post pics and links when I get home.

That ungainly beast is an example of form following function. It was designed as a crop duster, and to get around the problem of corrosive (to aluminum) liquids leaking into the empenage they moved the empenage.

If it's current, use the RCS Build Aid mod. It shows you the COM of your craft both fueled and unfueld at the same time. With most SSTOs the COM will change as you burn fuel.

They have great hair, and boy can they dance.

I've been known to make SSTO spaceplanes to specifications on occasion.

After building a stock 'replica' and one with KAX, I can fully corroborate this statement.

I'm actually surprised nobody's stepping up with vehicle designs for this. The system should be capable of incredible flexibility in launching payloads to pretty much anywhere, regardless of ground level weather, and with much greater launch window flexibility. If you use solid rocket stages, you could keep the cost per launch very low and not have to be tied to a specific geographical launch area.

Have you watched the video of Elon's talk at the IAC in Sydney? He lays out the entire process pretty clear. The regular LOX and liquid methane are transferred through the fuel connectors that are the same connectors that connect the first and second stages for fuel load on the ground. The fuel is transferred by firing the RCS system, creating micro G forces and causing the fuel to flow 'down' into the other vehicle. At any point either or both vessels could easily abort to land on Earth or whatever. On paper it seems to be an elegant solution to the refuel in space problem, but will certainly need some testing.

@CrazyJebGuy don't you mean krypto kurrencies?

I like this idea, and I might try it. My KSP career has largely been in sandbox mode, and on the occasions I've fired up a save on career mode, I've gotten bogged down in the science grind that happens after I land on the Mun first time. I like variety and landing five missions on the Mun just to unlock some parts never appealed to me.

I've been working on a modular system for making a stock warship to meet any requirement. The idea is that you use the various modules to build up whatever warship you need in the moment, be that a fast attack frigate or a big support carrier. I decided to go with LFO engines for TWR reasons, and this has led to most configurations having around 3,000m/s delta V, not ideal but not bad. I have also tried to make the modules of a reasonable size to be launched by a conventional rocket with a 3.75m fairing. A few of the modules, this is the Command, Fuel, Junction, and Engine modules respectively. This puppy needed autostrut, something I was trying to avoid. Sadly the docking ports don't really provide the rigidity they probably would IRL. This ship has a TWR of 1.4ish thanks to the three engine modules. My potato computer didn't like it, modular is bad for part counts, as is stock armor plating. I suppose I could resort to part welding, but that is a less than ideal solution.

Sleep well buttercup.

I just wanted to build a cool looking thing that I could maybe do a Jool 5 with. Also, why not design everything once and play legos with the chunks to make what you need in the moment?

I have begun work on a fully modular Space Combat System that can be configured to any role required. Want a small maneuverable frigate with some light rocket pods? Sure. Want a medium escort vessel with guided torpedoes? No problem. Want a multi-hulled carrier/support ship with the supplies to support an entire fleet? You can do that too*! It does seem that I have hit a delta V wall with this design though. I'm using Poodles and aerospikes as my engines, which have pretty awesome ISP for LFO engines, but with the armor plating and structure, I can't seem to get much above 3,000m/s, and that's before I add weapons. I m trying to keep it practical, such that it could conceivably be used in a Career save as an awesome looking interplanetary ship. Will I maybe have to go with a NERV focused engine module for this, and run a hybrid system for interplanetary ejections from the Kerbin system? *We accept no responsibility for computers melted while exploding a multi-hulled ship composed of many modules. All ungodly creations of overwhelming size operated at user's risk.