Lt_Duckweed

771 m/s remaining in a 72.5km x 72.2km orbit. Tilted over to 70 degrees above horizon by 110m/s then full throttle till apoapsis leaves the atmosphere, then circ at apo. Next attempt, tilted over slightly faster, 70.9km x 70.3km orbit, 781m/s left

I've noticed that this is actually an issue at high altitude on Eve since the temp drops sharply with altitude, but for the speeds an Eve ssto reaches before turning on engines, it's a pretty minor gain for a lot of pain babysitting the prop rpm, so it's easier to just let it rip.

ah, in that case, can you detail how you have the rotors and props setup in terms of torque, rpm and blade angle? I always run the props at max rpm, and adjust the prop angle such that the prop AoA is 4.5 degrees, or the highest AoA that can be used before the prop rpm starts dropping, whichever happens first. (In thick atmosphere you will have to run a lower AoA to maintain full rpm, as you are torque limited. In thinner atmosphere you can run 4.5 degrees, which gives maximum thrust, at max rpm, as you are rpm limited, not torque limited)

Adding rapiers to an Eve ssto for Kerbin takeoff is pointless dead mass and makes ssto'ing off Eve essentially impossible. Wrong. Propellers can get a craft airborne on Kerbin and Eve just fine. All sea level Eve sstos using breaking ground take off using propellers. Wrong. You need propellers to get up to the altitude where your engines will get good thrust and ISP. You don't even ignite your engines until past 15km. @king of nowhere the main problems I am seeing with your craft are this: 1. Not enough prop blades. You have 16 total, 8 per rotor. At this mass you need to be using about 32 total. You can do that via 4 rotors with 8 blades each, or if you offset the prop blade base one tick past the axis of rotation (so that the base is on the other side of the axis from the rest of the rotor) you will need substantially less torque and thus can do 16 blades per rotor, but with this setup you have to be very careful as if the blades stall they will kraken. (This setup also makes the prop compact enough to shield in a 1.25m service bay, though it looks a bit clippy so you have to decide if that is something you are ok with). 2. Too much engine mass. Margins on Eve sstos are very tight, for a craft of this size you should be looking at ~2 vectors, meaning you are carrying 7 tons of dead mass. Swapping to 2 vectors also means you can mid mount them, so that their dry mass is in line with the CoM and thus does not drag the CoM around as fuel drains. 3. Props too far forwards. Eve sstos, in order to not carry too much wing into the rocket phase of ascent (and therefore climb too rapidly) are under winged and therefore must adopt substantial angle of attack through the upper prop phase of Eve ascent or on Kerbin takeoff. This means the props are crabbing through the air at an angle, which causes all sorts of issues thanks to them being very far from the CoM. Move the props to mid mounted side pylons (or do one fore and one aft to cancel each other's stability effects). Additionally, I angle my props downwards 5 degrees on my Eve sstos, to better match the AoA in upper Eve ascent (this makes it even more important to mount them at the CoM, so the thrust axis points through the CoM) 4. CoL too far backwards. Your CoL being substantially behind the CoM means that you have to actively fight the craft to get the nose up AoA for upper Eve prop phase, and for Kerbin takeoff. You want your at rest CoL lightly ahead of your CoM, which you do by mounting your main wing slightly forward of your CoM. Doesn't have to be much, just a couple of ticks. Then to counter the resultant instability this would otherwise produce, you place your horizontal stabilizers as far aft as you can, and with 0 wing incidence. This means that when you pitch up, the horizontal stabilizers will gain lift proportionately faster than the main wing, since the main wing has angle of incidence already built in (wing lift is ~linear up to about 15-20 degrees AoA, so a pitch up from say 5 AoA to 10 AoA would have the main wing go from 5+5 AoA to 5+10 AoA for 50% more lift, but the horizontal stabilizer would go from 0+5 AoA to 0+10 AoA, for 100% more lift). This results in the CoL sliding backwards as you pitch up, providing stability, just at a non 0 pitch up AoA. This makes it much much easier to fly at a non 0 AoA as it won't fight you nearly as much, and it means the craft can adopt a substantially higher AoA on reentry since the passive stability will not be fighting nearly as hard to revert to 0 AoA.

It works with the LVN, it sounds like you didn't offset far enough. I use this trick on most of my spaceplanes (though it should be noted that this effect is not as large for the nerv as it is for some engines, like the rapier (rapier has an extremely blunt end so has high backface drag)

The aerospike is a fairly aerodynamic engine when node attached, and shouldn't be creating large amounts of drag. Are you sure it's actually node attached and not surface attached? Hold alt while placing the aerospike to disable surface attachment.

Oh, one more question, is the cargo bay the root part? That sometimes causes issues, and the solution is just to make one of the other fuselage parts (either the fuel tank or the cockpit) the root part.

Everything has a drag vector with aero forces turned on, it will just be extremely short for things producing no drag, like the wheels appear to be. The aero forces view is a bad way to tell what is producing the drag anyways, since the vectors don't have a consistent scale. If you want to actually tell exactly how much drag a part is producing, do this: Alt-F12 -> Physics -> Aero -> Show aero data in part action windows. It's hard to tell from the screenshot, but it looks as if most of the drag is coming from your fuselage itself, and not what is in the fuselage.

Class I comets are the largest comets, and always spawn on hyperbolic escape orbits from Kerbol. So they swing by periapsis one time, then sail off into the distance, never to be seen again.

That's is because it is a basic advanced spaceplane tutorial. It's intended to be as simple as possible. But the craft in the tutorial could be even more efficient if it used nerv engines and didn't have oxidizer. All of the following SSTOs use no oxidizer at all: This one does use ox, but only on a technicality (it has to use a small amount to power the fuel cell)

This is incredibly false. Like, bafflingly so. The most efficient spaceplanes for LKO all use only liquid fuel, swapping directly from airbreathing rapier to nerv powered flight. While that is a bit beyond the current skill level of OP, having a few nerv engines to help reduce the amount of oxidizer they use on ascent and circularization, and more importantly, for the burn to the Mun, and as much of the Mun landing, and later ascent from the Mun and return to Kerbin, will vastly reduce the amount of fuel they need to carry. The number of nervs they have right now is overkill, but so is the number of Rapiers. @OP, I highly recommend watching this video to get a decent handle on how to build large planes: Once you can successfully get a large plane like this to orbit with the engine ratios mentioned in the video, then you can work on extending its range to the Mun (just think of the nervs and extra fuel needed as payload that you need to get to LKO first)

They will still produce drag. To prevent or reduce the amount of drag they produce you have two main options: 1. Put them in a cargo bay or fairing. 2. Use node attachment on any open nodes to reduce their exposed surface area, as detailed in this video:

Even aside from that setting, you can level up a Kerbal via the mobile processing lab.

To see the exact amount of drag each part is producing, and the total drag the crat is producing overall, you can enable a couple of options in the debug menu. Alt-F12 -> Physics -> Aero -> Check "Show Aero GUI" and "Aero Debug Data in Part Action Menus" Drag in KSP is calculated based on the surface area and shape of parts.... kind of. When you node attach parts, the game reduces the surface area of the face the node matches with but the surface area of the corresponding face of the attached part (so node attaching a 1.25m fuel tank on the front of a 2.5m tank reduces the front face area of the 2.5m tanks by 25%, and completely eliminates the rear face area of the 1.25m tank) If a part isn't node attached it is considered fully exposed to the airstream, unless it is in a fairing/bay. This is what is happening with the radial attachment points. This means they are creating a lot more drag than the engine plate would (since the engine plate is using node attachment) For more info on how the drag calcs work, check out this video:

With enough fine tuning, patience, and careful craft design, the answer is "all of it". In general, you are limited by the heat tolerance of your craft, the body you are capturing at, and how much drag you can generate. As long as everything is behind a good heatshield, you can usually get the capture pretty much for free. With a spaceplane, you will have to propulsively capture at Eve, Jool, and Kerbin if coming from a distance much greater than a Duna or Eve return. Once captured, you can of course do as many gentle aerobrakes as needed to do the rest of the aerobraking for free.

Currently it is not. It is under consideration for after I finish some of my other KSP projects.

It should be fine to add it to an existing save, I swap it in and out from time to time when testing. ~~Just don't put a craft in orbit around a quackpack body and then uninstall. The game will not be happy if it is trying to place a craft and the body it orbits doesn't exist anymore. Edit: I wasn't paying attention and thought this was my other mod lol. This should still work fine to swap in/out for a stock scale system, but a rescaled system will probably not work too great.

Typo in the title, v1.0.2 is the newest version

Support for parallax is being considered, and may come in a future update!

QuackPack QuackPack is intended to fill out an often neglected portion of the Kerbolar system: the deep inner system, far below the orbit of Moho. Oftentimes, when a player has conquered the stock system, it may feel like the only way to access more challenging destinations is to install full system replacers, or interstellar mods. System expansions such as Outer Planets Mod are a very popular first step, bridging the challenge gap between the stock system and full blown interstellar packs. QuackPack is designed to add an additional level of challenge to a stock + OPM install. Instead of looking outwards towards other stars, it is time to look inwards towards our own. These planets are not for the faint of heart. Transfer requirements are extreme, and their gravity wells are deep. Gravity assists are a near requirement. Failure lurks around every corner, as the unique thermal environments can cause unexpected problems, or outright destroy craft. Aerodynamics will work in unusual ways, as the superheated atmospheres are very different from anything else in the Kerbolar system. However, with smart design, clever planning, and skill, these bodies can be conquered, even fully reusable, or, theoretically, with single stage craft. Bodies Blas, a metal poor, scorching hot desert Superkerbin with a large ring system and one small moonlet. Geet, the lone moon of Blas, and a shepherd to the ring system. Jot, an inflated hot Jool with an extremely large atmosphere. Subon, a captured metallic asteroid in a close retrograde orbit of Jot. Cind, a Kerbin sized tidally locked hellworld, with an atmosphere made of sulfur and boiling metal. Features 5 challenging new bodies to explore. Science and career mode ready, with full biome and experiment definitions. Full scatterer integration. Full EVE integration, with clouds, sandstorms, lightning, aurorae, and thermal glow. Planetshine and Distant Object Enhancement integration. Notes This is my first planet mod, pls be gentle. Delta V map and grid Classic subway style delta v map. A janky delta v grid packed with information https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t5JHSCVPWrMVtEfGHV__7xCjVrZGaRFoe4HQmvdFZwI Gallery Download Github SpaceDock CKAN Installation Remove any prexisting QuackPack installations (QuackPack folder within GameData folder in KSP directory) Install ALL listed dependencies, following the links bellow Download and extract the QuackPack zip file Place the GameData folder into your KSP directory Highly recommended to download and install Scatterer, EVE REDUX, and BetterKerbol as they provide massive visual improvement, and QuackPack is intended to be played with all three installed. Dependencies ModuleManager Kopernicus Community Terrain Texture Pack Bundled Dependencies Niako's Kopernicus Utilities Sigma Heat Shifter Provided Compatibility Scatterer EVE Redux Distant Object Enancement Planetshine Recommended Mods BetterKerbol Outer Planets Mod FAQ Q. Does QuackPack support Parallax 2? A. QuackPack does not currently provide configs for Parallax 2, but it will run alongside Parallax 2 enabled planets from the stock system or other planet mods Q. Will QuackPack ever support Parallax 2? A. QuackPack is intended to support Parallax 2 at some point, when I have the time to sit down and learn it. Q. Does QuackPack support EVE True Volumetrics? A. EVE True Volumetrics support will come in a future update. Q. Does QuackPack support rescaling either natively or via Sigma Dimensions? A. QuackPack does not have native rescale support, but will function with rescales done via Sigma Dimensions. This means you can install QuackPack alongside other 1x scale mods, then rescale the whole thing with Sigma Dimensions, but QuackPack will not function correctly with mods like JNSQ, which have a native scale difference. Licensing QuackPack is licensed by Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Rapier actually takes the win here, the higher top speed means a better ratio of Nerv dry mass to overall wet mass (due to higher airbreathing speed meaning less nerv twr needed) and the fuel savings from shorter Nerv burn for the most part offset the lower isp of the Rapier vs the Whiplash in airbreathing mode.

Have you hit z to throttle up? Did you make sure the tanks you added contain both liquid fuel and oxidizer? If you tried a jet engine, did you make sure you added air intakes as well?

zgqh ladder, zg alpaca, and Alpaca Z are infact, all the same person

Thanks for pointing it out, I forgot to update the github link in the OP. Should point to the correct release now.

I can take a look at JNSQ compatibility when I get some time!