LineOfRahl

COM is everything with aerodynamic stability. The center of mass MUST be ahead of the aerodynamic center. Moving fuel will make or break a stable entry. It's a fine line between burning up, and overshooting when aerobraking. The high velocities make it very touchy when adjusting the altitude for entry, the difference between 30km and 40 km is huge. Some of my return encounters even from Duna can be pretty fun lol Especially if I have very little dV to work with and have to rely entirely on aerobraking to kill of velocity.

If you're that close with the thrust/mass centers, I doubt that's the problem. I think you're right, it might be tail-heavy. ^^^ Re-arranging it so that small MK2 tank is directly behind the cockpit would give you that ballast capability. Could you possibly scoot the NERV engines/tanks forward a bit? it doesn't look like they're close enough to the fuselage or wings to have thrust interference issues. (Though they still can if the game so chooses lol) Moving those engines even just a couple meters can drastically change the whole weight balance, and in such a way that even when the fuel runs low it maintains a good balance. Thanks man! Definitely a gameplay issue lol

Awesome! Eve is one of my favorite bodies lol even if it is the most difficult to take off from. If it's flipping like that is it possible the engines thrust is not centered with the mass? Or you may need a couple more reaction wheels to maintain control. When you're in the upper atmosphere, things can get pretty unstable if the thrust is even a little off center with respect to the mass. The air up there provides very little aerodynamic stability, and a lot of drag if the AOA suddenly changes. Is it getting rear-heavy when the fuel starts to run closer to the 50% mark? Nuke engines are very heavy and I found that keeping some fuel in a forward tank while climbing can be very helpful. You can just "turn off" the forward most tanks to keep the mass where it should be, and re-activate them once you're clear of the atmosphere. If you're getting to orbit with 2k dV you probably don't need all the fuel tanks active.

Yes it is dependent on velocity and pressure. When you're building an SSTO the number of intakes doesn't matter as long as they provide enough to get the plane going on the runway. I have experimented with this and you can feed 6 Rapier engines with only 2 Shock Cone intakes. The forward motion provides a very powerful ram-air effect. Once you get it over the 400m/s hump, the effective drag actually starts to drop, while the air intake continues to increase, and away to orbit. Just be sure you have enough oxidizer, once the engines cut out you need to accelerate quite a bit to achieve stable orbit. Unfortunately no. You cannot increase the effective altitude that way. The effective altitude is dictated by the engine only. SSTO's are very difficult, and not very useful, without Rapier engines. They have the highest ceiling, and they benefit the most from ram-air. I ended up launching all my spaceplanes with rockets until I unlocked the rapier engines lol Something like this works well. https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPFRH8TTz4WcdN5cfWRuI7tVdeK5QFaFLbfZ9_d Make sure everything is inside of a bay to keep drag to a minimum, and keep it simple to keep the mass down. Have fun experimenting!

Took my favorite SSTO and stripped it down into a fighter jet with missiles. Converted the fighter jet to VTOL, then proceeded to mount a full assault on the space center before taking off into the distance and crashing a few minutes later lol https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPtp-VEF1cB5FqWQzTr0DpXLRilErvEw3LuER7Q https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipN8rmWjdH740sdb8ZfzSI7SUvFD5rYzIXjy9XTC https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipO1C2SxMc-kObkUD2K1MusewZjExFHsRvXb5M9_ https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipNE6LZugOtBGOQ451yGYjU1K4gqSa33SeuJ1iKR https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPBxXtYrQk4f7jXaeQ3pRiKABWjjzFHSIdsZv2A https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipOJaopxqvQpka0mZ_YUAda-ucZoaL3h5f5k7MYH

Well I found the solution. 4 nacelles is not enough to provide air to the engines. Since it "drains evenly" it chooses some engines to give 100% to and the others get what remains. I bumped it up to 5 engines and 7 nacelles and it is working fine. A little clipping later and you can barely tell there's 7 nacelles on there lol https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipNq_gZADO-GahuGjSF2O9CoVr9WDFZ3CzzbVZRQ https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipNv-M65cEoQWgCcT0jpoahQ0WsLfLN0_qgzR6DH I could have saved a lot of time if the values given for the intake air amount (5.0 "units") and the air requirements of the engine ("Intake air" 29.60/sec) made any sense whatsoever... If I plug those numbers into a calculator 5*29.60 means the engines need 148/sec intake air, while the nacelles provide 7*5 "units" for a total of 35. Based on this I can determine that 148/sec air is <= 35 "units" of air so 1 "unit" from the intake is roughly = 4.23/sec "intake air" for the engine. This is why consistency with terminology is so very helpful lol -Regards

I figured it out lol I was trying to use the "Insert image from URL" button instead of just pasting the link into the body. These are the various stages of what is happening. Not shown in images, but possibly relevant, all 4 nacelles show the same airflow/effective velocity. https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMqTugjjxlcY2511p0S27GRoC3vlY0osIKwe45J https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipNl7TU5nSwgp3_grVn82CUHgcsqmsYXGqdIXyRI https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipOC8J2GIym6JfSpQoRor0ES2J9VcholaEd7FXkl https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMOmuuZJmYpHV_L06Lvdp8L9gtan0Vjmh_ZEE5q

I "replace" vehicles sometimes when I run a mission to Duna for example. I realized my SSTO transport couldn't get back off the surface, so I went back, modified the vehicle and used hyperedit to jump the old one back to kerbin, and jump the new one to the previous location. I justify it in my mind because I did in fact run the whole mission to Duna and back. Just a little cheating lol I used hyperedit to jump an electric aircraft halfway across the surface of EVE because I messed up the encounter and landed the return rocket WAY too far away to fly at a top speed of 65m/s. I let 4 kerbals die because I was too lazy to reload the quicksave. It was way early in the mission and I would have had to re-fly a huge time consuming chunk of it. I built a tiny vehicle to accelerate a single kerbal vertically at ridiculous g-rates, it was so powerful it pushed the kerbal down from the external seat until he was behind the engines, and "blew up" lol not the vehicle, just the kerbal. I take all my old space vehicles that are obsolete, and I use control probes to crash them into a crater on Mun. There is quite a bit of debri there

Hey guys, I seem to have found a bug of some kind. I decided to add engines for VTOL capabilities on a fighter jet, and CANNOT seem to get all 4 lift engines to work. I have 4 "Wheesley" turbines, with nacelles for the static suction. 2 of them work as they should providing 100% prop requirement. 2 of them do not work the same way, and I cannot find any reason why. I have reloaded the craft, deleted and replaced the engines/nacelles. Moved them up down and around, etc. I cannot figure out why they don't work. Weird thing is, they all start off at 100% and then 2 of them start to drop as the thrust climbs. Also does the forum not allow image URL from google images? It won't let me insert any images?????? I'll upload photos as soon as I figure out why It won't let me.... https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMOmuuZJmYpHV_L06Lvdp8L9gtan0Vjmh_ZEE5q

It's simple, modify the CFG files so that the MK2 produces similar drag to the MK1. It took me a while to pinpoint why my earlier gen spaceplanes could easily SSTO but when I built the same aircraft with MK2 fusalage (Which looks so much cooler) It was completely useless and required insane amounts of engines and fuel just to get to orbit, leaving nothing for actual travel. It took a lot of trial and error to tweak the CFG files until they performed effectively as well as the MK1. Normally I would be against any tweaks or mods that make the game easier from a purist standpoint, but this isn't really making anything easier, It's simply opening up a huge number of design options for a viable spacecraft. The lift bonus you get does not in any way offset the MASSIVE amount of drag that's added to these part sets. I've experimented with larger and smaller wings, and the tiny amount of drage you save with slightly smaller wings is completely negligible compared to the drag penalty for these parts. Really in my opinion a poor decision on the part of the dev's. Can I upload files to this forum? I'm sure others would like to be able to use the MK2 parts they spent all that time grinding in science mode to unlock lol