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Oh, mcirish3 you want an ssto to eve, i have sent tonnes of them, if you want i will make you one. just name the people it needs to carry, how big of a payload it needs and i will give you one i have literally made SSTO's for so long it is subconscious thought now. oh taking off from eve may be a problem, i remember a thread asking for that, the only one was a plane that could barley make it, but i can still make a damn fine SSTO that will land and take off everywhere else

right it am here now, time to fish out all my old pictures. i have SSTOs that can escape the sun, have more than 4000m/s delta-v once in orbit,land on minus and return with less than 2000 fuel. i can post all of the picture soon so be ready. Pics: i can get more pictures if you want the only reason the rocket blew up was that it was molded into another one, not that it hit the ground too hard. this has 1440 fuel so not much and i think i could make it a bit smaller as this thing can get to minmus and back.

Hey guys, sorry this post is so late, I've been dead for a while but I HAVE FINALLY DONE IT! a SSTO rocket that has well over 4000m/s in fact with good piloting i have n doubt it could get close to 5000m/s! It was one of many variants from my best base design and has around the same fuel as my first 3000m/s one. it was actually quite easy and took around 3 hours from start to get here, it seems as it is getting easier and easier I only have this one pic but will upload more tomorrow of the actual ship. this is a picture of the ship breaching the 4000m/s mark, as you can see i am going towards the sun as it is much harder to test past 2700m/s on a sun escape trajectory but going inwards i know that 4000m/s will get you between 900,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 meters with a perfect burn and the periapsis of my ship is 700,000,000 so well under the limit. I have named it landmark 3 as it is my third notable SSTO achievement, first being smallest to escape kerbol, second being smallest to 3000m/s and third being this. Edit: managed to sneek a few more before sleep: the rocket talking off, i fired two of those boosters when i did not need to and wasted a tonne of fuel but i needed an orbit fast before bed. Glamor shots:

it was much the same as the one i just used, i've been probing around the kind of design path i took and have found some favorable results (over 3000m/s) but not the one i had, i will find it though and when i do, SSTOs will pretty much be over, i will try and go to 5000 but after that it gets pretty pointless. SSTOs are still my favorite though and once I've peaked there distance i will start to form bases and networks and once reasorces come in i will have a complete network.

Nao, when i said 5100m/s that was final velocity at engine cut off not delta-V, my delta-V was 3100m/s and with 4000L of fuel it's pretty dam good ( especially when i see your giant orange rocket achieve much the same). I am racking my brains trying to remember the rocket i built with 4000m/s that i scrapped due to one bad run. i've looked at tavarts equation and i understand mostly what to enter but what is is actually for, i do not usually use many equations, just one for efficiency which i compare on a graph to get delta-V and a few others to get expected fuel needed for the rest of the burn compared to the fuel i have.

they were pretty useful as of now but i think i can do it without them tomorrow as i only added them while my equation problem was happening, now i understand my ships were working i can get smaller and better designs, but i may do a mun trip, maybe. about the areospikes i usually get no actual agin from them other than a reduce in the used fuel which is pretty good but is usuallynot worth the instability of them.

ok guys, i have halved the fuel in my 3000 m/s SSTO from using a rule (that i might make a thread about due to it's potency) that can create some awesome SSTOs. I actually made some smaller ones than her but was having a problem that meant i lost between 500 and 1000 m/s of my final speed and so even though my calculations said it should have 3000m/s delta-Vin orbit easily no matter what i tried i could not match that, i eventually decided to go round for another pass after burning roughly 800m/s up to a minmus orbit as i knew this can help slow ships, well boy did it help, i got all the way up to the 3100m/s delta-V mark. Pics: on this test i was checking the fuel every 200 to sea if i was on track, at this point it was evident i was gonna make it this is quite a bad shot of the rocket but you can get a rough outline of what it looks like breaching the 5000m/s mark my final velocity was 5100m/s bye bye kerbin Your move Nao

double post

yeah, even changes with likes of a tonne can render my smallest SSTOs useless, i agree with your points entirely, how i usually get a SSTO to function better though is essentially make flying fuel tanks, if my SSTO can lift, say 6 extra tonnes i put 2 extra fuel tanks at 36 combined tonnes with an engine to lift their weight, essentially flying fuel tanks, i also find fuel lines to be useless unless you're pumping fuel to a more efficient engine. the reason my SSTO can go closer to 45 degrees in the launch angle is because it has 5 nuclear engines, on this version it was worth the extra weight as i could start much earlier, I've learnt a lot in rocket building since starting to build SSTOs, it's so great when a SSTO design works

yeah, that's what i like healthy competition, although looking closer our craft seem to be roughly identical in terms of fuel and engines. It seems great minds think alike . Anyway to test "chomper" i sent her to ike and i clearly have enough fuel to get back, i wish macey dean saw us as he wanted a viable SSTO for other planets. Pics: ^i've stuck with the shallow launch angle as you can see, safety first(i can't say that with a straight face on ksp) i actually took this picture on a test with parachutes but i use much the same launch angle for all of the good SSTOs ^ managed to get one of the best Duna encounters I've ever had ^areo braked like ten times to get a good ike encounter, luckily ike was in a PERFECT position, literally ^second time i've landed on ike so that was fun ^we have touchdown! ^ this is the glamor shot for all of the kerbin press I still have over half my fuel left so i should be able to get home, i didn't bring parachutes as every little helps but next time i hope to land and return from Duna, it's funny actually because i think my ship has almost exactly the same amount of delta-V as Nao's, mine had 3200m/s on preliminary tests which i'm sure Nao's SSTO can beet aswell. NEXT STOP 4000m/s delta-V, we might need to team up for that one though, it aint gonna be easy at around 50 parts(which is what i and by the looks of it Nao aims for, nice and healthy number for all systems ) BTW i think my SSTO has about 47 parts which i could reduce with say, bigger fuel tanks, less struts and less octagonal struts.

Plur, i think this is a great challenge, at first i thought it was another generic SSTO rocket challenge but this is finally a good SSTO space-plane challenge, i would enter but i don't do space-planes.

People, i have finally made an SSTO with over 3000m/s delta-V once in orbit, on my preliminary tests i got 3200m/s delta-v out of it and i know i can get into orbit with more. I think once i've equipped it i will send it to duna and land before taking off again, right now she's called chomper but if you have any better suggestions please just say. this is her, at 8000 fuel she isn't my lightest ship but she is a lot smaller that some of my monstrosities she outperformed my expectations, she is my second favorite SSTO after my super small one

ok, i've stopped adapting my lifter as the part count became too high, which I'm doing now is toying with my super small SSTO by making it easier to fly.

Wow nao, that thing is gigantic, even my biggest kerbol escape SSTO is smaller (i think), and it can't escape kerbol? on another note, I'm adapting my 5 tonne SSTO/interplanetary lifter so it can be refuels and restocked, truly reusable, will post pics when finished.

the thing is i never use ion engines because they seam cheap, i could just strap then to my smallest ssto and go anywhere, i used them on a probe once and got to eve in 20 mins but a 20 tonne ship, that ain't gonna be fat.

I think of it this way, if rocket has enough thrust to do the burn at such speed they lose less than 100m/s delta-V (a 10 second burn) it is probable not worth a parking orbit, if though you are making a ship that uses LV-N engines for example, it is way more efficient to get into orbit as some of these burns can be ten minutes long, if you where going straight up that would be 6000m/s lost (if my maths holds up) now pretty much anything is more efficient than that

I do love Nao's design, it's just so unique. when i build my rockets i try to go for practicality but Nao, oh no he/she just does what they want with his/her shifting center of mass! this is what i love about ksp.

hello everyone sorry for the late reply, my keyboard is broken so i have to share with my brother Francesco, i will upload the craft file as soon as i can Limited Infinity, i am measuring in fuel as most things are some scale to that anyway, 2880 fuel is how much it has bearing in mind it is a rocket only SSTO, no jets at all.

Nao, as you can see on my ship at the bottom i used two smaller tanks rather than one big one, the LV-N is placed inbetween them and the areospike is placed normally, BTW that solid rocket LV-N cross breed is badass.

i remember your prototype with two solid rockets, i was amazed at how awesome it was ,nice to see it back again.

oh o.k., i was doing it from memory, i think i must have remembered the dry masses or something, thanks for actually taking the time to correct my brain deadness. Still though, pretty good in weight and part terms to be able to escape kerbol.

yeah it's a quite a strange little craft, the first time i used it i left it flying while i went to get a drink, came back to see i had gone past 10000, i turned off the areospike and started to get into orbit but only just, if it wasn't for that drink i may have never got it into orbit and would have probably considered it a failure

yeah the smallest possible is 3 parts a rocket a fuel tank and a capsule, which is unbeatable unless you have some gigantic solid rocket mod

To be honest i don't think you can get much smaller than my SSTO without the piloting skills of a saint, my one is hard enough and around has around 20 parts and weighs around 20 tonnes as well (but last time i said i don't think they can get much smaller i halved my best ones size )

OK tavert, what i do is do a very shallow gravity turn, like almost to pointing up apposed 45 degrees, i turn of my areospike at around 600 fuel (this wont get you to escape velocity to do this you need to turn it off earlier,say 630-670 fuel) but continue on roughly the same trajectory, only slightly turning the ship, once your apo is above 130-140k you can need to tilt fully, it's not efficient at all but, this thing is just that slow. as you may understand every morsel of fuel counts on this thing, 10 liters can be the difference between life and death, so keep experimenting at very shallow gravity turns and around a 600 fuel turn-off and you'll get into orbit, i recommendtrying with 600 fuel first and then stopping the areospike earlier and earlier until you get into fuel with a decent amount of fuel(i think around 320 is needed for escape)