Elmetian

The White Dart is a very good looking SSTO I spotted it a few weeks ago when you posted pics on the SSTO showcase thread. It's certainly very different to mine, but I wouldn't really call the Sanzuwu a 'crazy solution'. I chose not to airhog (much) so it became necessary to have more turbojets in order to approach orbital velocity. While the White Dart appears to have 5 intakes per engine (from what I can see), mine only has 2 intakes per engine so it loses power much lower in the atmosphere. I did try just 1 intake for each but I couldn't get past about 1600m/s which meant the atomic rocket didn't have enough thrust to overcome gravity.

A few picks from my little personal library: Read all of Ian M Bank's Sci Fi novels, they're all very good. Some are better than others of course, and I'd say Consider Phlebas was his best. I also really liked Use of Weapons. Most people will say The Player of Games is his best but I wasn't as impressed. Of Ian Bank's other novels, The Wasp Factory is incredible. It's about as dark as a novel can get. I'd call it dark humour, but sometimes it's hard to know if he's trying to make you laugh. You laugh anyway and then wonder if you're a bit sick yourself for doing so. Next up on my list would be Alastair Reynolds. Revalation Space and Chasm City were both excellent. The rest of his Sci Fi Novels are also pretty good, but these two deserve a special mention. Dan Simmons's Hyperion Omnibus is another must-read. For its shear depth, and for his brilliant world building. Just try not to get hung up on his repetition of the word 'azure' as I did. Otherwise a very good modern space opera. Peter F. Hamilton's Void Trilogy and Commonwealth Saga were pretty good. Again, more galaxy spanning space opera but without the boredom I associate with older space operas like Asimov's Foundation series. Read all of Richard Morgan's Sci Fi. If you like old school cyberpunk, you'll love his Takeshi Kovacs books. Lot's of sex and violence. Very gritty. Verner Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky Are both excellent. Other notable novels that you definitely should read if you like Sci Fi are: Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix, Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination (called Tiger Tiger here in the UK), Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, Isaac Asmiov's robot stories (which you'll be glad to know bear no resemblance to that terrible film with Will Smith), Stanislaw Lem's Pirx the Pilot books as well as The Cyberiad are pretty funny, Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Friday and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are compulsory for anyone who claims to be a fan of Sci Fi, as are William Gibson's Neuromancer, Joe Halderman's Forever War, Frederick Pohl's Gateway and Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity. Other than that I mostly read pop science physics books, physics text books (well, not so much read as endure), and short stories such as those in Interzone magazine.

Well, it did originally have a high wing. This is the prototype hypersonic test vehicle that eventually became the Sanzuwu:

Thanks That little one is the extended version of my Caged Canary. I had to undock it to make room for the Viper. Think I need to add more docking ports on my next orbital refuelling station!

Not to mention that the girders have a much higher mass! 1 small girder is 0.1875 tons compared to 0.005 tons for the equivalent length of cubic struts. It might be 16 extra parts, but it's 1.46 tons lighter. Does the lander's engine draw fuel from those toroidal tanks on the 'feet'? Also, does the lander can decouple from the base and have a separate ascent stage to return to orbit?

Not at all. I've come to understand how the aerodynamics (or at least KSP's rudimentary simulation of them) affect the plane, and it was a challenge to try and overcome them. I could make it more stable by lowering the centre of mass by adding some ballast in the form of liquid fuel or monoprop tanks, but this would lead to unwanted torque as the direction of thrust no longer passes through the CoM. For a stable aircraft in KSP you either need a high wing, a mid wing that the engines either clip through or sit behind, or a biplane. None of these options appealed to me as they're not very realistic looking. Most real spaceplanes have a low wing to avoid unwanted localised surface heating on re-entry, and they probably avoid instability by concentrating mass at the bottom of the fuselage like an airliner. I tried a dihedral wing but it ended up clipping through the engines or being very wide, and vanilla KSP can't do pitch and roll properly with canted control surfaces Flying a low wing aircraft upside down for the ascent to orbit is genius though! Might have to try building a craft specifically for that flight profile. As for the number of engines, what can I say, I like the extra power. Most KSP SSTOs fly for several minutes and hundreds of kilometres before reaching a high altitude and speed. The Sanzuwu has just taken off in the picture above. That's a little over 40km from the space centre

I have, and they're a lot less efficient. The first iterations of the Sanzuwu had an LV-T45. It got me into orbit, but there wasn't much delta-v remaining. I then shoved an ion engine and a single Gigantor solar array on it for orbital manoeuvres but the acceleration was too low to make it worthwhile, not to mention the extra mass made it harder to reach orbit in the first place. I guess if I spammed intakes to conserve fuel it would make a T45 more practical, but I think the atomic rocket is still a better bet. I really don't like abusing intakes either. The Sanzuwu has 2 per engine, and that's the bare minimum for making it work as an SSTO. Without airhogging you'd need a much more powerful rocket and lots more fuel.

Thought I'd give your bird a whirl in return First attempt went very smoothly. The Viper airhogs nicely, and after following your instructions I can say they're even a little conservative. I pushed my apoapsis to 79km without much trouble (think I flamed out briefly at 48km altitude). She's a little twitchy at lower altitudes and takes a while to get up to speed, but that's to be expected for a small one-engined craft. Otherwise, she's pretty solid from 10km upwards. RCS seems nicely ballanced as well. I took her to meet some of my other craft at my Orpheus refuelling station:

Thanks for the feedback. She's a bit heavy on take off and will flip easily if you pull back too hard. After returning from orbit you'll find that you can pull tighter turns without it flipping, but I think the low monowing profile will never be as stable as the biplanes that make up the majority of SSTOs on the forums. Call it an aesthetic choice, but I wanted it to look a bit more realistic. Maybe I'll add a caveat into the description

A good question With a decent ascent to orbit and without refuelling it has enough delta v for a Mun capture and partial circularisation of its orbit. I just tested this and got a periapsis of 35km and an apoapsis of 185km around the Mun. However, without refuelling it can only achieve a circular orbit around Kerbin of about 2300km, which is significantly higher than your average LKO, but also much lower than a geosynchronous orbit (and so not HKO). EDIT: without refuelling, the highest circular orbit around Kerbin with enough fuel to return is about 1700km

Horizon Heavy Industries presents the Sanzuwu single-seat SSTO. Its namesake is the three-legged sun crow that appears in many myths and legends of East Asia Kerbasia, a name I thought apt considering its tricycle landing gear and the ease at which it cloaks itself in fiery plasma. This airframe is the product of several design phases, and a lineage traceable to the 0.18 release of KSP when I created a hypersonic test vehicle. Since then it has undergone countless tweaks and flown to orbit dozens of times. During the process of converting the hypersonic test vehicle into an SSTO, some major design constraints became apparent. For example, the Sanzuwu was conceived from the outset to have a low wing to shield the delicate engine structures from re-entry heating, but this led to instability at high alpha. Only after rearranging the fuselage and adjusting the wing shape was this problem minimised. The engine pods themselves also required a great deal of attention in order to ensure the fuel flow worked correctly, and having them so far forward led to more stability issues. After doggedly refusing to give up, I can now say with great confidence that the Sanzuwu is one of the most flyable SSTOs out there. It may not be big, it may not have a large crew, and it may not be interplanetary, but it is near perfect at what it was designed to do: take one Kerbal to MKO. For shear ease of use, for its reliability at reaching orbit, and for its cross range capabilities I feel that the Sanzuwu is unsurpassed. Action Groups: 1 starts the turbojets and turns off the extra intakes (only use this when taking off) 2 toggles the extra intakes 3 toggles the turbojets and all intakes 4 toggles the LV-N atomic rocket 5 toggles the spotlight and the in-line docking port 6 toggles the boarding ladder Flight Notes: Take off: 1. Turn on ASAS, open the resources tab, and set the throttle to max 2. Press 1 to start the engines and pull up gently at 90m/s, pitching up to 45°. Bring the gear up 3. At 10km altitude pitch down to 15° Ascent: 4. At 15km altitude pitch down to 5° 5. At 20km press 2 to open extra intakes 6. Proceed to 30km by gradually reducing thrust. Start doing so when the intake air drops below 0.18. Try to increase your surface velocity to over 1900m/s and your apoapsis to 35km. If you experience a flameout, immediately throttle down a few notches and reorient the craft Orbital Insertion 7. When you're 20 seconds from apoapsis, press 3 to shut down the turbojets, press 4 to start the atomic rocket, and pitch up to at least 45° 8. Watch the map. As your apoapsis approaches 70km, pitch down so that you are pointing towards your prograde marker and throttle down. 'Tickle' the plane into space by using only a small amount of thrust to overcome drag loses 9. Begin burning again 20 seconds from apoapsis to circularise your orbit

Well, it's always been my dream to become a concept artist for a games company. Maybe I'll finally buy a graphics tablet this year and see if I can produce something worthwhile, though I'm happy to just be a hobbyist. Just like producing craft for the KSP forums, it's mostly escapism for me.

The soon-to-be-released 0.21 rebuild of my Sanzuwu SSTO which I posted back on page 18:

My Distant Horizons Munar lander. It carries 6 satellites for scientific research and to provide complete comms coverage for the lander, and a large solar powered rover for surface navigation [click the pic to go to the thread]:

Those RCS thrusters are hidden along the seam between the two command pods

Unfortunately no, though I bet I'd have liked being a graphic designer. I'm a maths tutor, or physics teacher, depending on who's employing me

I'm really happy you guys like this. As always, if anyone has suggestions for improvements after using my craft please feel free to post them. I don't get as much time to play KSP and test craft as I'd like, so it'd help me a lot.

I've posted quite a few in the past, but most were lost to the forum meltdown. Hopefully I'll get time to post more over the coming weeks, and I should have a some ready in a few days. Just click on my signature banner to see what I've done since 0.21.

Introducing the extended Canary:

Horizon Heavy Industries presents the O.O.P.S. [On Orbit Personnel Shuttle]. Launched atop a new booster made of ARM parts, the O.O.P.S. can comfortably reach a 1000km circular orbit before expending any of the fuel set aside for orbital manoeuvring. The vehicle itself is built around a Mark 1-2 Command Pod merged with a Cuppola Module to allow for an aerodynamic launch, an enlarged crew capacity, and also the increased visibility for docking that is provided by the cuppola. Three independent thruster pods contain a total of 169.2 units of liquid fuel. The 6 Rockomax 48-7S engines are mounted in two opposing groups, each toggleable by its own action group, so that Kerbals will never again have to wait anxiously as their craft rotates to align itself retrograde to the motion of the target. At 53 parts in orbit, the O.O.P.S. is also small enough to dock with large targets without greatly increasing lag, and because it weighs in at only 83 parts on the pad it should be accessible to most players. I'm also quite proud of my clipping-fu as I managed to hide the cuppola windows entirely inside the large decoupler for launch. It makes for a dramatic stage separation if you IVA using the cuppola (see pics). Action groups: 1 toggles the rear engines (if piloting from the cuppola) 2 toggles the forward engines 3 toggles the docking port Flight Notes: The booster uses traditional staging to reach orbit rather than action groups and I've limited the throttle on the 1st stage engine for improved efficiency. Follow these instructions for best results. • Launch at max throttle and reduce by 2 notches at 7km altitude. • Begin a slow gravity turn at about 10km and continue throttling down, aiming to reach 45° pitch and under 2/3 thrust by 23km. • Continue to gradually reduce the thrust and the pitch to follow the orbital velocity marker on the navball. You should aim to leave your apoapsis is above the atmosphere and maximise your orbital velocity. • Use the automated 2nd stage to circularise your orbit, and remember to leave enough fuel in the 2nd stage so that you can de-orbit it after separating from the O.O.P.S. The rear docking port and cuppola are aligned with the reaction control system, but the Mark 1-2 Pod isn't, so remember to 'control from here' using the docking port when docking with another craft! Change Log: Replaced Kumo booster with the large parts from the ARM update Reduced monopropellant from 190 units to 40 Increased liquid fuel by 34.2 units Part count on the pad reduced from 148 to 83

I created these a few months ago. The TEL was quite hard to build, and I ended up creating the missile and the silo in the VAB, then using subassembly to put it on the back of a truck in the SPH. The two are connected by a docking port that decouples at the same time as the sepatrons fire. I have updated these vehicles since, and improved the ICBM's range so that it can easily reach orbit. The craft are currently undergoing final testing and I hope to release them next week.

My lagtastic monstrosity from 0.19 that I'm considering rebuilding soon with senior clamp-o-trons rather than tricouplers:

Thanks Oddbin. I don't mind saying that I'm quite enjoying knowing that I've produced something useful. I'm going to release a reduced part count version soon that might be better suited to taking on interplanetary trips, or those who struggle to run part-heavy ships without laaagggg...g. No worries Glad my little tug has found some fans

It's actually a scaled down replica of this B9 tug I built in 0.19. Figured I'd make a small stock version so that more people could make use of it. Regarding the payloads, I've tested it with a 36 ton orange fuel tank and it was able to take it into a 20km circular orbit around the Mun without using any of the cargo's fuel. I've also tested it with a cargo of around 120 tons, but it drew about half an orange tank's worth. If you used the two expandable slots, you'd probably need another 1440 units of fuel (2 x Rockomax X200-16 Fuel Tank) to drag 100 tons to Munar orbit from LKO.

Yep outriggers just don't look as cool imo, even if you lose some efficiency mounting them at an angle like I have. True. I tried to balance aesthetics with increased part count. You could easily reduce it by a dozen or so by removing solar panels and shoving an RTG on this. It did originally have a lot more lights but I felt they weren't worth the extra mass, though I can understand wanting better illumination when docking.