Speed_Kerman

Was this an end product of that massive 7 hour live stream last night? It looks awesome!!

Oh Cupcake... I don't doubt that's doable, but 1800 m/s is a tight margin even in my books. Maybe we just use different ascent profiles when flying our respective space planes. I tend to start at 5 or 10 degrees until 500 m/s then I pitch up to 20 usually.

I don't mean to sound like a "Doubting Debbie", but how do we know (without having the craft file ourselves) that this craft that's powered by the horribly inefficient Rapier engine that chugs on oxidizer like a frat boy at a university keggar has the delta-V requirements for Minmus? I've tried replicating this craft myself and I have some doubts about legitimacy.

I only have one thing to say... LOL.

I agree, the added mass would make a water take off or landing difficult on full tanks. However, that being said, I did design something that can get in to space. Water take off on full tanks is untested, as full of fuel it does weigh over 100 tons... That's quite a weight gain from the 48 tons that it used to weigh. In a stable 80 km orbit, it had just under 900 m/s Delta-V to play around with. I angled a couple of the Rapier engines I was using downwards to help with getting quick lift from the surface of the runway. I present, The Conwing L16-S!! If interest warrants, I'll post a craft file later.

Maybe... I'll work on it this week whenever I fire up the gumption to do it.

Only because I haven't seen a decent one done in a while, I've been working on a Conwing L-16 cargo seaplane. It's not an SSTO, yet... that could be in the works for the future but it'd require quite a bit of redesigning. It's still a work in progress.

Nice plane!! You should try for a version that can reach orbit.

So I set myself out a challenge of making a purely liquid fuel SSTO without using Rapier engines, just the Turbo Ram Jets and a pair of LV-N Atomics, and this is what I came out with after much testing... The CF-106 Delta Dart Mk. 6. Purely liquid fuel, no oxidizer whatsoever. It'll have about 3.9 km/s left of delta-v in the tanks once it hits a stable orbit. She's a little hard to fly due to the center of mass being so close to the center of lift, but she can handle missions to the Mun or Minmus with ease. She seats one kerbal, and has no payload capacity, but with those beautiful lines, who'd complain? Now, for the all important eye candy!! Ain't she pretty?? I'm absolutely in love with her gorgeous, sleek, and sexy lines!! It's up on KerbalX if anyone wants to take her for a spin. More information and action groups can be found there. CF-106 Delta Dart SSTO Mk. 6 -- DOWNLOAD HERE!!

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Put a fuel pod in Laythe orbit, you could refuel and bring her home too.

Ooo... pretty. Stick a nuke on there and I bet (with a little tweaking) it could be a Mun or Minmus Fly-by.

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@Jett_Quasar IO-U1, great droid name man!! I really like your designs, and your Corellian Corvette there takes the cake. Looks like it makes orbit with barely any fuel to spare!!

Mk. 99 Rune? Aye Carumba dude!!

Where are you hiding the oxidizer on there? I sense some trademark "Cupcake Clip-Fu" here...

When the boys at R&D say to slap a pair of Ion Engines on an already proven design, the folks at engineering jumped at the chance (even if they are slow as molasses and weigh a ton)!! It was completely pointless, and only served to make their cheap, reliable, one Kerbal SSTO that much more expensive. Oxidizer had to be drained to compensate for the weight, and a much different ascent path is needed for this model. Word of Caution, do not use the staging controls past the first stage to activate Rapiers. Stage 0 is set to the hardpoints holding the ion engines to the craft. Activating this stage will detach the engines. Ion engines are only to be detached in emergency circumstances. Action Groups: 1: Toggles Rapiers and Intakes 2: Toggles Rapiers (used to deactivate the engines once in space). 4: Toggles Docking Light 5: Toggles Ladder 6: Toggles Solar Panels and Ion Engines. 0: Toggles Antenna Abort: Detaches Ion Engines. Download Link is here for this interested in taking this puppy for a spin: Wholfine Hybrid SSTO - Ion Edition Mk 2. - Stock

Why are your designs so God darn cute?! I want one!! ::EDIT:: Now a days, only thing I tend to do with Ion Engines is stick them on to space planes that are way too big for them to have any practical use... At least they look cool (in my humble opinion).

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Yes Firemetal, I did watch it. If you didn't see, I changed my reply.

Great job on the mission. The mini rover is quite cute and functional!! I tried to mount an Eeloo mission last night in a long range Ion powered dropship I'd put together, kinda based off of Cupcake's Siren design, but I didn't make it, considering I had designed it for Bop in the Jool system to begin with (It's initial mission was to visit the dead Space Kraken so Val could pay it respects.)... Anyways, I may have to take this for a test flight of my own so I can visit Eeloo, or maybe even take it to Vall to see the stone henge formation.

Greetings Cupcake... I'm having an issue with the service bay cockpit design and I was wondering if you might be able to help me out, as I am trying a design similar to your Catalyst SSTO Namely, whenever I'm about to escape the atmosphere, when the ship is experiencing maximum atmospheric drag when I engage closed cycle mode on my Rapier, I have an extremely hard time trying to keep poor Jeb from overheating and exploding in the cockpit. Have you faced a similar issue? How did you overcome it? Any help would be appreciated.

Well, there's your problem right there... Get a PC, Macs suck.

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