hurdurdur

Decided to make a space ship, word for word. Nukes are efficient enough to take this bad girl to mun. A few more screenshots at https://imgur.com/a/CcIzlbc

So i doodled around with low tech ssto-s and the inefficiency at low tech just ate my heart out. So i made this, hope it inspires someone

So, i wanted to launch stuff into space but not use the mk2 or mk3 cargo bays. Also only run on only liquid fuel alone, panthers and nukes. How shall i do it ? With this lovely twin-fuselage monster. The rest of the gallery visible on imgur: https://imgur.com/a/efCeD Now thinking of it i would change the design a little bit for stability, but overall the design was a success. COM doesn't almost move at all, nukes activated after 6km altitude to get the maximum amount of speed available (since it actually doesn't have all that much thrust after panthers go out). Upon landing you want probably to run the nukes after atmo entry one more time to regenerate some electricity, otherwise control is hard to maintain. Landing was surprisingly easy, i intentionally put it down in a slightly hilly place to test the ruggedness.

Here is my latest low tech SSTO with juno jet engines and a swivel rocket engine. Can carry a pilot into the orbit, that pretty much it. Launch profile was sea level until it hit 200m/s, then nose up to 20 degrees, running on jets until speed fell to 180m/s (around 6km or so) then engaging the swivel and up to the orbit in pretty standard fashion, lowering the nose past 25km altitude gradually. Orbit was around 72x71km. Full gallery on imgur: https://imgur.com/a/O1PtJ

A friend asked me how soon can you make an easy to fly ssto. So today's blind attempt - as soon as you have panthers and terriers. "The whole gallery" at https://imgur.com/a/K1ZAD The gimbal is disabled on the panthers since the plane needs no help turning. Wet mode from launch, engaging terriers at around 14km when the panthers start to bleed speed instead of adding, maintained 20 degree ascent up to 32km , then gradually brought the nose down. Nose gets a little heavy once you are up in space, pump all the fuel to the rearmost tanks when deorbiting.

So my 160 science space shuttle has been waiting a long time to get on video, now it is. Nice little symmetrical space shuttle, not like the weird megatankered ones that NASA built.

Here's one more tiny guy, powered by a juno only.

And who needs cargobays if you can just attach the payload to your tail. 4x panther, 2x swivel. Taking little probes to orbit no problemo Attached the whole gallery here:

And here is one more for the single panther ssto idea with 2 sparks on the side : Had to play around with the balance a bit before it got stable enough to make flight. Flying straight at sea level to over 400m/s, then nose up to 35 degrees and aiming for the skies, at 7-8km into ascent engaging the sparks (in order not to run out of speed too early), continue keeping the apoapsis at 35s or further ahead. If it's nearing you go nose up, if it's moving too far bring the nose down once it's at 72km or so you should be going around 2000m/s already and just need a little push (8 seconds at apoapsis for me) to get the periapsis over 70km as well. Before landing get all the fuel into the back so you could be comfortably unstable in the atmosphere and once you have tumbled yourself around 20km bring the fuel back to the front to restore balance. Without this overheating is quite likely.

single panther, this

Challenged myself once more on terrier + panthers ... yes it worked and the flight pattern wasn't ideal either. Pitched up very sharply at the end of jets to get more time for the terrier to burn on it's low but efficient thrust.

Built a replica of SubSonex tiny jet plane.

Had to refuel my science station so i built the thing on the left here from the attached docking port

Here is my latest pretty boy, going up-up-up in one launch Features a bunch of docking ports, different kind of engines for maneuvers, plenty of space for kerbals and science. Nukes give it so much delta-v it should be able to go pretty much anywhere once refuelled. Also carries extra fuel for different kind of probes that may use this as a tanker.

Well here it goes, my totally original idea that the united states never tried, launch a space vehicle off from a plane like structure in the air! Actually makes a lot of sense since jets are supereffective but dragging them and wings to space is ridiculous, only the rocket parts need to go up there. Here's the posing on the runway: And here is the rest of it on imgur along with the prototype that i built at first. Although kerbal has the "feature" that multiple objects within atmosphere can not be tracked, the plane part is actually flying happily on it's own since it's separated and in theory can return to ksp. I wish i could split the flight there at separation, land the plane part back and then resume with the rocket flight. Rest of the gallery on imgur: Ps kerbal developers - come on, make this kind of flight separation possible, only the game engine is keeping me from doing the separate orbit and return flight without a quicksave-resume