Ozzallos

Moderator: [I]"Of the issues facing us today, candidate Jeb, none seems more pressing than the violence in the Middle East. What is your solution to keep the world from tearing itself apart?"[/I] Candidate Jebediah Kerman: [i]"More struts."[/i]

The Starscream VSSTO... Because space planes hate me. In any case, a vertical launch single stage to orbit vehicle featuring 8 Rapiers, 8 Whiplash and a single cone for more economic orbital maneuvers. She's 81t @ launch with a 2.4 TWR and 1880kN stationary output. Once the ramjets are properly fed, the Starscream continues to accelerate up to 23km, topping out at 5g and cranking out 1,300ms before stalling and forcing the Rapiers to turn over to rocket mode. Once circularized, she has enough dV for modest orbital operations. The original intention was a fully reusable vertical launch system that would refuel in orbit and proceed to its destination. Once refueled, it would easily be Mun capable, or could be docked and ferried to its destination. For atmospheric reentry, the Starscream could pop chutes, land and be fully capable of a direct vertical ascent, repeating the process. At least, that was the theory. Now that I've gotten her into orbit, I need to work a safe reentry profile because those Whiplash nozzles are kinda fragile. Through the shock zone. Heat? Feh. More throttle. 8x8x1 Reentry. Didn't need those Whiplash nozzles anyway. Forgot to mention that the command module is capable of emergency separation in case of shenanigans like the last pic.

You're probably right about the steeper ascent. Will have to try it out. The excess engines, on the other hand, seem necessary. 8 Rapiers by themselves will stall out at only 3km (or at least they did in 1.0.4) in a vertical launch. I'm guessing since they behave more like real ramjets, they don't have the initial velocity to self-sustain. I had to burn them as rockets to get enough seed velocity for the ramjets to function-- Literally launch as a rocket to about 200m/s then back to air breathing. It was hideously fuel expensive down at sea level. The whiplashes seem to solve this; both clusters giving enough kick to the other to self sustain through the initial launch with 4-5g of acceleration. The application *was* a fully reusable vertical launch single stage lander without the drama of a spaceplane. Launch vertically, refuel in space, go to a planet, touch down, parachute back into kerbin atmo, repack and take off again. It worked marvelously before atmospheric friction was enabled [for my use later] https://www.dropbox.com/s/7tx0mjo41dpja6c/screenshot6.png?raw=1 --Engine cluster https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ueoba7e1klfm2f/screenshot7.png?raw=1 --Shock zone https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ucnsjmuzamihjb/screenshot11.png?raw=1 --Death of the Whiplash

Now that I'm home, I can make the calculations Rapiers (stationary) 105kN*8 = 840kN Whiplash (stationary) 130kN*8 = 1040kN Total at launch: 1880kN Weight at launch: 81t (180 parts) 1880kN / 81t * 9.81 = TWR of 2.4 Not horrible. She'll crank out 1,300m/s through a 35 degree ascent before finally losing acceleration at about 22-23km. Switch the Rapiers over, light the Cone and let the Whiplash array stall out naturally. Only takes about 10 seconds of burn after that to give you enough juice to coast up to 85km with about 200units to spare after circularizing. Kill the Rapiers and maneuver on the cone. Granted, that's not a lot for anything but orbital maneuvers, but the idea was to refuel her in space and send it on it's way. Unfortunately, I'm running into a problem when it comes to the re-usability aspect. Those whiplashes don't handle re-entry too well and I lost every nozzle on the way down to heat in the last test. Still has bugs to iron out, but she makes orbit and that's a win in itself

This. She especially hates the jazzy detective music in the space hanger.

It's been a while since I've seen this thread, so I figure why the hell not. It was a lot of fun last time around. Your job is to simply fill in the blank-- You might be a Kerbal if... Dropping gears in your car reminds you of dropping stages in KSP.

Was harder for me at first, but the new atmo modeling just means you need to tweak your build a bit more. None of my previous single stage direct launch vehicles survived the atmospheric revision, so I asked the boys and girls over at Twerkstar to throw it all away and start from scratch. They came up with a 17 engine vertical launch beast. 8 Whiplashes & 8 rapiers for the ascent and a spike for economic orbital maneuvers. Still need to even out the liquid fuel/ox ratio, but overall, we're good to go. Jeb likes.

Thanks to this thread, I've determined that this build is still quite viable with some changes to the launch profile. Actually, the fact that they now behave as actual ramjets was the biggest piece of the puzzle. It does require some engine toggle jockeying, but I'm finding it's imminently doable. Switch all engines to F/O mode. Vertical launch, immediately roll to orbital insertion heading. Burn to 250m/s, switch to Ram Air mode. Climb to flame out altitude. 20km was easily obtainable now. Switch back to F/O mode, insert orbit. The problem was less that I was climbing vertically and more that- or at least I suspect -the engine was suffering compressor stall. Launching in F/O mode front loads enough velocity and thereby intake pressure to get the rapiers up and running. Vertical launch definitely aggravated the problem. A solid booster can be used for the initial velocity front loading as well, but defeats the stand alone purpose of this design. Super useful help here resulting in a breakthrough. Thanks *Addendum It isn't just a certain speed, but a pressure threshold. I'm running a 12 engine build that can switch over at about 250m/s and burn all day but the 8 engine wallows at the same speed. I'll pay attention to how many g's I'm pulling next time, but I'm pretty certain that acceleration is a huge factor on whether the engines have enough pressure to produce. ...2g's seems to be the minimum, with an airspeed as low as 150, but not lower than 100. That alone saves a ton of fuel.

Guess that explains it. Now how do I mark answered... Thanks for the replies, all.

Doesn't explain how I can launch, accelerate, then stall out at only 2k using the 'more correct' model, but sure, I'll press the i believe button. And Hnn. Just found a model that works... Using the Mk3 cockpit. Sorry, but I'm calling shenanigans

So last time I played Kerbal in .90 I had a fairly awesome little number that used 8 rapier (those damn raptors) engines in a vertical launch system to directly insert a ship into orbit. She could climb through more or less constant acceleration and hang on to atmospheric breathing to about 23k before switching over to the rockets. There wasn't much fuel left by the time I got her into orbit, but the ship could refuel once she was there, de-orbit on chutes afterwards with minimal retro burn in final decent, then relaunch again back to orbit. It was a pretty sweet system until, well, now. Now the very same ship and other similar models built from the ground up in 1.0.4 can barely make it to 3k and 200m/s before their speed starts to bleed away to the point where the ship can no longer maintain its ascent. The ship lifts off without issue and I've got more than enough air intake, which makes my the stall so much more mysterious. I'd consider it a drag issue, but again, I lift off just fine. Below is a pic of the ship in its former glory, quite obviously space worthy. The Star Scream Orbital Return Vehicle, build 10 Single Stage direct to orbit system. Any thoughts? What happened?

...And went for a direct insertion hybrid The StarScream Orbital Return Vehicle solves a few problems I've been having-- First, getting a single stage lander into orbit. I think the last time I was able to make that work was in .21 or earlier. Version tweaks have made it so that brute forcing your way through the atmosphere is hideously consumptive for F/O engines, forcing multiple stages or SSTOs as the most efficient path to orbit. This also presents a problem landing on other planets with atmosphere, some being more punishing than others in that regard. SSTOs are supposed to be the solution to both problems, except, well... They hate me. I can barely build them and can't land to save my life unless I load them up with parachutes. Sure, I can put them atop their own booster, but that kinda defeats the point, right? So I said screw it and decided to put those jet engines to better use. The ultimate goal was to get a 3-man capsule into Kerbit orbit using a fully reusable, single stage vehicle. I knew from experience I could get a SSTO to around 21km before stalling the Turbojets out, and the Liquid Fuel consumption to that height is stupid efficient compared to anything else in the game. After some experimenting, RAPIERs became the engine of choice for this new project for the same reason they're good for space planes-- While they're not immensely powerful or fantastically efficient, you're not hauling dead weight up by switching between Turbojets and F/O engines. The efficiency to altitude would pay for itself. The StarScream started life as a ten engine vehicle with roughly 3k of fuel (or rather 6k F/O total). Fueling balance quickly became an issue between atmospheric and space modes, and I would find myself with up to a 300-500 unit fuel disparity once all burns had been completed. Ultimately I would end up hauling around an excess of oxidizer as dead weight once the liquid fuel was gone. Capsule placement was also problematic. I'm never a huge fan of tower top configurations and the number of engines occupying the base made ladder access tricky. I might try a bottom load configuration for the capsule later, but for now we're keeping it simple. Engine switchover usually occurred around 19-20km in versions one through nine; not spectacular, but within expected perimeters. Block 10 is where things really began to come together. Two RAPIERS were stripped away and liquid fuel added through eight Nacelles just to see if I could still achieve orbit on the reduced thrust, let alone take off with just over 3k of fuel. It turns out the answer was yes, amazingly enough. Liftoff and climb performance was hardly spectacular. In fact, it takes eight seconds at full throttle to even lift off while the engines spin up, and the climb through 10km is pretty lethargic compared to the ten engine array. At 15km is where the engines start to get some back and the Nacelles pay for themselves via air intake. When paired with another eight Radial intakes and the already present shock cones, the RAPIERs hung on to atmospheric mode for a full 23km! My last attempt stuck it out until 25km! By the time they switch over to F/O mode, the StarScream's velocity is pushing about 475m/s... Not supercharged by any means, but considering it only cost you about 700 units of fuel it's a goddamn bargain while F/O mode quickly makes up any velocity deficit. By the time you hit orbit, fuel and oxidizer are nearly balanced-- No dead weight. Most of my insertions into orbit have about 500 units of F/O remaining, more than enough for maneuvering to a higher orbit and rendezvous for refueling. This was part of the intended purpose, after all-- Launch the ship as a stand alone vessel, refuel in orbit and potentially link up with a cruise stage so that it can parachute drop onto other planets and return to orbit, refuel and do it again. Block 10 also rearranged the engine placement so that it could be launched easily from atop a booster stage if one wanted to skip the refueling step. The only real drawback is that this particular all-in-one lander is only rated to Kerbin gravity atmospheric planets or less. Speaking of landings, they are accomplished by an eight parachute array. Even with them, a full fuel load will bring you in hotter than the struts will take, so be prepared for a last minute braking burn and remember those engines take time to spool in atmospheric mode. In the event of an inflight emergency, the command module can be jettisoned to land alone safely. Even so, you have to really try to screw up with this lander. It's very forgiving at the controls and doesn't get squirrelly like some SSTO designs. I'm working on larger ORV's, but so far the results have been less than optimal due to the sheer number of engines involved. If you like this one, however, let me know and I'll post the file somewhere.

There seems to be a distinct lack of space here.

You know you're a noob when you forget to check the staging order before launch. You especially know you're a noob because you didn't check it after adding those launch towers. Happens. Every. Goddamn. Time.

Keeping my kerbals alive through disasters. I build serious redundancies into my descent vehicles and aircraft. I very rarely lose a crew to inflight disaster. Stranding them somewhere, on the other hand...

Docking. I suck at it for some reason. SSTOs plague my engineering teams. .25 was my first successful SSTO aircraft to make orbit with a shread of fuel left, so there's that. I even launched a few sats successfully from it. Landing, on the other hand is... Well, let's just say these aircraft all have escape pods for a reason.

Testing the Emergency Descent Vehicle Mk4 ...Working as intended

Spaceplanes... I've never got one into orbit. I use parachutes to land them. Space planes hate me.

I was willing to make performace sacrifices for aesthetics

I got a little overly ambitious... TwerkStar III will drain a 12k battery inside a minute, and that's with panels deployed backed by 8 blutonium rods. Good news is recharge is relatively fast (3 minutes), and 1/3 is the break even point on the throttle. Maybe I'll use some of the tricks I see here for TwerkStar IV to reduce mass, since acceleration is still breathtakingly lethargic.

One of the hazards of drop-pod type landers I encountered early on.

Love all these ideas. Probably should have just posted this here to begin with. Looks very streamlined atop the boost stage of your choice. The key to getting those cockpits in is to flip a large quad coupler (forget the actual name; am at work) upside-down so it anchors to the bottom of a fuel tank. There's actually another fuel tank built in there too, neccesitating fuel lines to the nozzle. Realisitcally, you can throw anything on the quadcouple once it's anchored in. Struts are absolutely required because it will not stay together for parachute deployment otherwise. As it is, however, you can punt it into orbit and reenter on the same vehical without any issue.

Brand new for .23, using state of the art Clipping Technologyâ„¢! You too can have a lander that looks vaguely aerodynamic and may even survive reentry!* This is the baseline Astra series lander. This one piece lander comfortably seats five- one in the nose cockpit and four on the saddles. Thrust is provided by a single poodle engine. It features optional landing lights and 4 parachutes for reentry. Likewise, on-board power is via 2 blutonium rods. She should survive any touchdown below 13m/s and if you're dropping faster than that, you still have fuel. Use some of it to slow your decent, Jeb. DOWNLOAD .craft HERE A variant of the baseline model, the Astra WIDE has more fuel and more crew capacity. Did I say more crew? Sure, we've got some blutonium and lights, but the Astra WIDE is a moon sedan with seating for eight. Like the original, it's designed as a one piece lander. She's heavier and drops faster, so keep an eye on the decent with the same philosophy as above. And just to prove we actually landed it... The pilot should remain seated until the ride has come to a complete stop... Preferably back on Kerbin. DOWNLOAD .craft HERE Landers not enough? Need something silly? Something loaded with radioactivity and ions? The TwerkStar** series of probes is just what the doctor ordered. 001 & 002 (not shown due to patent rights issues) were designed as local orbital satellites. TwerkStar 003 was designed with cosmic touring in mind... And a passing stab at performance. TwerkStar 003 features a satellite core, 8 blutonium rods, 4 large solar panels and 4 small ones. We threw in some communications antennas to give it street cred, some fuel and lots of battery capacity to feed the gluttonous 16 ion drives. These bad boys can drain a 12k unit battery array in sixty second under full burn, taking about three minutes to fully recharge. The break even point on the throttle is just below 1/3. It's the Ferrari of probes! That is to say if a Ferrari did zero to sixty in half an hour. Accelerating will leave you yawning breathlessly, so keep the time dilation handy TwerkStar in it's original launch configuration. Fully deployed. Look at her go! ...For the next one minute, nine seconds. DOWNLOAD .craft HERE Hope you have fun!*** *Batteries not included, some assembly required. Warranty void if reentry takes place. **Because 'twerk' just seems like such a kerbal word. ***Fun not included. Warranty void if fun occurs. Not responsible for side-affects of 'Fun'.

No space for you.

Nearly everything I build has an escape system of some sort built into it, even if it's not a tower per se. I just like the idea of being able to recover the crew Once I know they survived the, um, event, and have a safe landing profile, that's when I revert.