Wilds

I really wish we had more sizes of the Launch Escape System on stock.

I have gotten into long range SSTO's on stock 1.4.5/1.5.1. So far, I give the plane enough fuel to get to Minmus by emptying most of the tanks in SPH. Landing on Minmus, I open the cargo bay and start mining. My smaller SSTO gets around 8000 dV after escaping the Kerbin system. It cannot land and takeoff from Tylo, Moho, and Eve. My larger SSTO has a similar design but holds way more oxidizer, and has 2.5x more engines.It does lose over 1000 dV though. It can land and takeoff from Tylo which was a big achievement for me... I have yet to land on Tylo without using quicksave/load as it takes a few attempts to get right. I really want to make a stock Eve SSTO, but that is a long ways off, if possible (without looking like a monstrosity). I will have to radically change the design for EVE. The larger SSTO can at least fly around EVE for around 5 minutes in between mining. I spend a long time making sure CoL and CoM are nice and center, no matter what fuel level. Landing at Duna does require some time as you cannot land at a high speed. Since these planes carry so much fuel, I loathe landing at Duna with a lot of fuel. The small design uses 2 Rapiers and 2 NERVs, while the larger design uses 4 Rapiers and 6 NERVs. I use the Puff mono-propellant engine for VTOL. Having an Engineer is essential for mining quickly. I used to thing SSTO's were not capable of long range space exploration, but I am glad I thought wrong. I originally wanted an SSTO to land on Minmus or the Mun and return without refuel. Now I have no idea where the limit is. I love seeing other people's SSTO's as I am always impressed with their performance characteristics. I do want to keep my builds stock for now, but I am getting ready to move on. I think the next major challenge is making a good SSTO for Real Scale Solar System. That will require a big redesign.