Jump to content

Brofessional

Members
  • Posts

    425
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Brofessional

  1. I'm currently experimenting with making spaceplanes. The problem I'm currently having is not having enough pitch control (as well as rocking in various directions when trying to do that). My plane barely pitches when taking off and doing banking turns.

    And I actually made it into orbit once with an SSTO spaceplane today. Getting back down is the real challenge.

    edit: This is the plane (slightly modified from the one that I took into orbit)

    http://imageshack.us/a/img13/7418/mzio.png

    http://imageshack.us/a/img802/4923/br68.png

    The trick is to keep your wet CoM and dry CoM nearly identical so your CoM doesn't shift as you empty the fuel tanks. If you're using tail mounted engines this means the front of your plane needs some weight to it, as the engines are usually the heaviest part aside from the fuel tanks.

    CoL should be just a hair behind the CoM, with your main wings next to the CoM and a second pair of wings either in front or behind the CoM to stabilize it, depending on your design. With only a single pair of wings you're likely to end up flipping end over end.

    You don't necessarily need a lot of control surfaces for SSTO's as they mostly just fly in a straight line. If it's a light plane, a single pair of flaps on your main wings will usually do. The fewer control surfaces you have the less twitchy it will be.

    If you're having trouble getting into the air, try positioning your landing gear to the tail sits lower than the nose on the runway.

    I'd recommend getting the Editor Extensions mod and using clusters of the 48-7S engines instead of aerospikes, much better TWR. Also those cylindrical jet fuel tanks usually have more fuel than you need for a single engine SSTO. I recommend using a smaller tank or cruising to burn off excess fuel before switching to rockets, so the rockets have less weight to push.

  2. Did you use any part clipping or trickery on that guy? I might copy that design try to build something similar, I really like it.

    The only thing I used was the Editor Extensions mod, to attach those engine clusters.

    It carries like 30-40% more liquid fuel than it needs so it's best to cruise and burn off some of the excess weight before turning on the rockets.

  3. I keep kethane drills and fuel ferries on various low-G bodies, but I don't use orbital fuel stations.

    Chances are if I need to refuel something it's a large ship, so it's easier to just bring the fuel to the ship rather than try to dock with a station.

    In LKO it's more efficient to just send up a fuel tank from KSC specifically for that ship, then deorbit the empty tank afterwards.

    Although when the career mode economy is in, re-usable kethane ferries on the Mun/Minmus will be more cost effective than sending an entire lift vehicle from KSC.

×
×
  • Create New...