McRoll

An update from me, I played around with various designs and decided to try a new approach and to implement some of the stuff you guys mentioned, I came up with this one:http://imgur.com/a/03O This is an improvement over the old one in the way that it features an ISRU converter with a drill and full science suite in the lower cargo bay and carries a small ore survey probe in the frontal bay which can decouple, make a survey and be stored again. It also can dock with space stations now via frontal docking port - and can get faster in the atmosphere without burning up. All this while still maintaining over 4k dv after orbit circularization. It is also lighter, which makes it easier to land. As far as I can say drag is also not much of a problem since it has only a 0.68 TWR but accelerates quite decently. However, I still have problems with wings, a delta wing brakes up if I pitch too hard at high speeds - these wings are enough for Kerbin but I wouldnt be able to land on Duna with these, so there is still some work to be done. Those vertical wing parts are needed to make it somewhat stable but it still spins out if you dont fly perfectly. Has a little bit drag to the side, but I think it comes from the ore probe in the bay not being perfectly symmetrical or something like that. Also, I'd like to get still more dv out of it - I tried a mission to Gilly and it nearly worked out, however I missed like 500 dv in the end to land on Gilly. My flightpath was awful however, bad launch window and less than optimal maneuvering. I think it can be done with this design. But I'd like to have some safety room if i screw up a maneuver. Overall I'm quite pleased with this one, just needs some tweaks. Once it reaches 5k dv and some more stability then I will have what I wanted. I can already do that with detachable fuel tanks - but for aesthetical reasons I wanna stay 100% reusable.

Wow, didnt know some of the stuff, thanks so far. I guess I will try to improve the existing design, particularly with the inline cockpit idea and more lift area and will try another variant where I will try to make it as small as possible. Basically I want to have a nice allround SSTO which is able to reach and land on most bodies by itself and come back - will probably try a version with and without ISRU. Will post updates if I reach a significant improvement, of course more ideas are always welcome. Just dont want to copy existing designs, for me its important that I come up with something myself but nothing wrong with getting an idea here and there

Edited OP with craft file.

Hello, finally decided to register and ask for help because I'm not getting any progress on my design anymore and am in need for some advanced tipps. This is the object: http://imgur.com/a/kYvri the goal is to create an efficient SSTO with following requirements: - 2 crew members - full science equipment storage (except science lab) - Have some basic utility, like a bit of monopropellant to help with landing on moons and maybe docking ( dont know where to put docking port yet). Would be excellent if it could take some payload like a small probe, though probably not possible. - only very minimal part clipping or other cheaty stuff (want it to look good and like it could actually fly) Craft file:https://dropfile.to/93YGtGE Stats: 8 Rapiers and 2 Nervs | 24K DeltaV on runway | just under 170 tons Why does it look that way? I started building around a large liquid fuel tank since I wanted to have a 2 man crew and a bit of cargo load, so going the minimal approach was probably not the best way (?). The first obvious steps were to use as few parts as possible to reduce weight and probably drag, then adding just enough engines to propel it outta the atmosphere. I had to experiment around a lot with various wing forms so it would be able to recover from a stall and reduce some oscillation/wobbling during flight (large delta wings as canards in front didnt work out very well). Had to use struts on the main wings because they would break under load otherwise. Moving wings around results in instability once the fuel is depleted, I built this one with a balanced out center of mass on zero fuel. It now flies kinda well for me, though there is surely room for improvement. Right now it has around 5,1k dv after orbit circularization, with around 1k oxidizer left for help with starts and possible vernor engines. I'd like to impove that maybe to 6K or even more if possible, so I can comfortably get a Duna landing and make it back and stuff like that. What would be the optimal ascend profile? Right now I'm accelerating in a very slight angle to about 10 km height, get some speed there and start pulling up in a 20° angle once im at around 1200m/s speed and around 18 km height. Still havent figured out the most optimal way. Things I tried: -More fuel adds more mass and the TWR is not enough to accelerate quickly enough from the runway -More engines mean more mass to drag around in space and delta v goes down. I think I found a pretty good spot between engine count, TWR and mass. Anything I should know for maximizing efficiency bar the obvious stuff? Like some hidden values, musthave parts? Should I go big or rather as small as possible? Can this design be improved further or should I try a different approach? Also, a rough estimate what I could actually do with 5k dv? I guess its not enough to make it to Duna/Ike and back, right?