Exothermos

It depends. When I use the big "orange tank" tug, It's because I want to drop it off in orbit for reuse. It's also just a nice cushion to have. When I don't feel like going through all that, I use a smaller one and do the intercept course thing, ditching the tug, making pretty orange reentry flames. I have a much harder time controlling the landing site that way though, and that isn't good, as you know! A more adept player with more interplanetary experience than me would surely be able to save a ton of fuel with more careful techniques. I tend to play by brute force

It's finally done! Get ready to create some debris on Duna! Click my sig for details.

My big Duna Lifter SSTO added to the OP! Here is the removed Aurora Post: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Aurora SSTO For a long time I've been trying to create an SSTO that has some of the design cues from the XB-70 Valkyrie. It is a stupefyingly beautiful design in real life, and is one that I felt would lend it's self well to an SSTO conversion in this game. I've finally managed something I'm happy with. It isn't a nuts and bolts recreation of the Valkyrie in SSTO form, as that would essentially be impossible with stock parts (ooh la la, those curves!), but it is one that I hope maintains the "flavor" of the original. It's a fully capable SSTO with Docking ability, and has enough guts in the upper atmosphere to make the burn up to orbital apoapsis nice and short. You will have plenty of fuel for maneuvers. Other than that it is really just a Vanity project as it doesn't exactly do much. Just gets 3 kerbals up to orbit. But, man, it looks good doing it DOWNLOAD Aurora SSTO

This looks killer! I'll definitely be messing with this an tearing it apart. I'm trying to do something sorta similar right now.

The most impressive aspect of any Working Falcon model is ballancing that huge cockpit arm. What a chore. As far as I have been able to tell, the only way to do that is by adding dead weight to the other side, and dead weight is just WRONG!

These are really... meticulous! The VW van is fantastic!

AAR Time! My test mission to Duna in the big Un-named SSTO ended up it spectacular failure. But It was very informative. I'm glad I didn't put any kerbals aboard! This is the design of the tug. I attached this thinking that it was way more fuel than I needed for the mission. It would have been more than I needed if I didn't have an absolutely horrendous time with Ike. On previous missions to Duna I tended to get encounters that result in very high inclination orbits. I tried to rectify this on this mission by getting an encounter that was closer to the ecliptic, but Ike had other plans. I encountered it a total of 4 times trying to get to an aerobraking orbit. This wasted over a third of the fuel correcting the hideous changes in course that resulted. Now I know. v0v Ditching the now empty tug, I went ahead with the landing. uh... this landing site is less than optimum. That's not what it looked like from orbit. Defiitely not in the pipe, five by five. The good news is the paragliding was working well at this point. but not at this point. ...oh god. So scrub one SSTO lifter. It looks like my CoM has migrated farther back in my latest itteration, some how. Oh well, I have lots more work with the landing profile I believe. The good news is that my more conventional Manned Duna mission is a success! Too bad they don't have a big rover to play with now. More testing on the horizon! This really makes me respect your achievements pa1983, and I bet your SSTO will be ready before mine, KissSh0t!

That NERVA sidepod is a nice looking little sub-assembly. Have to remember that one. My Mk3 tanks are attached to a Structural Beam. In fact beacause of the stresses involved, the whole craft sits on an "A" frame beam structure. This ensured that the landing gear and leg forces are distributed to very strong parts, as well as the parachute forces. Here are some under the skin shots. Feels like looking under her skirt before she's even been able to make an entrance, but that's OK. I like talking construction. Probably more than actually playing the game sometimes. That's probably pretty telling. @pa1983: Yeah, I have 8 little 24-77 rockets on the underside right now for vertical authority. It seems to do the trick as far as softening the landing, but now you have me reconsidering. I might need put a couple aerospikes under there instead. Now that I have comited to the Transfer Tug plan, "dead" weight concerns are eased significantly. We'll see. This weekend I will complete the first Duna test flight, and I'll post the pics of the debris field... uh... i mean landing when I have them.

Hey, cool! I'm glad the design resonates with you. Your design so far even looks a little cleaner. I've been pretty quiet this week in this sub forum because i've been testing and improving the same ship. These big, complicated designs take a bunch of careful tweaking. Especially considering this one has so many flight regimes that it must perform in. Jet /rocket flight LKO, Planetary Transfer, Duna gliding and powered parachute STOL landing (see below), Payload sequence, Rocket SSTO to LDO, Transfer again, Kerban Reentry and powered landing while much, much lighter. That's a lot of stuff to get right. One place I don't think I really succeeded in this case is that I'm sure now that, with the heavy rover, I don't have enough internal DV to get to Duna. I will have to have an assist tug. That's OK though because I will use the tug in orbit around Duna as a mobile Gas Station wich will help future missions tremedously. So it is kind of a "two missions in one" package (Or atleast that's how I'm rationalizing it)! In any case I designed craft with contingencies like that in mind with the CoM and CoT lined up on that Shielded Docking Port. I streamlined the skinning a bit up at the front because I moved the intakes to the back of the craft to fix the common "drag-flipping" problem that forward-mounted intakes induce upon reentry. This let me smooth out the lines up front, and I like the way it looks and handles much better. I've been testing various landing techniques, and I think I found one that is reliable and safe. Essentially it is powered paragliding! Deploying drogue chutes right at the CoM slows the aircraft and power from the rockets propels it forward generating lift from the wing surfaces. At the last second I fire some retrorockets to further slow it down. On Kerban I've gotten landing speeds as low as 25 m/s horizontal and 1m/s vertical fully loaded. Even if the parachute performance is twice as bad on Duna (which is not really the case) this should be pretty darn safe. Here is an early test. Also, the parachutes make the top view look like a maniacally happy four-eyed snaggletooth monster. So thats... good? This is my standard medium duty tug refueling the SSTO after achieving LKO. The Transfer vehicle / Duna fuel tug will probably be similarly sized, but far simpler. I also have sent my first Test Mission to a 10,000k orbit to await a transfer window to Duna. I have a couple other Duna Missions fow which I would like to use the same window. Since I hate sitting through accelerated time waiting for the window, Might as well do them all at once! But it is a lot of plates to juggle, so it is taking a while. So now the building is mostly over, and the real tweaking and bug hunting begins!

I doodle KSP designs at work when I should be doing things. I've had to pass them off as "rough schematics" on a couple of ocassions. Thankfully I think visually so my coworkers are used to seeing actual work generated this way.

"Yea I cant understand why people dont use that trick. First thing I do in a new game is test all the settings. But I guess Im old school back when you hade to do it in MS DOS" I remember those days! I've never touched that setting because frankly I didn't understand what it really did, as I always tested it on smaller designs, and I didn't see any changes. But man, It's noticeable with these 400+ part monstrosities (at least on my computer). Yeah, I was going for the whole combo approach as well. Tons of wing, and drogue chutes. I hadn't really considered doing a STOL design, but in retrospect it definitely has some advantages. Some sort of STOL feature would be easy to integrate in this case. Ill look into it. The gear are intentionally tall, and the rear of the plane even taller because I expect some hairy moments. I had absolutely no idea about massless gear considering the CoM change in the SPH. That's fascinating, and I will gear spam the HECK out of this thing if it keeps me from balling it up! That makes total sense now that I think about it because my silly little SSTOs perform way too well considering they SHOULD have 1.5 tons of gear hanging off of them. Thanks for the tips!

Making Progress on my Duna Truck SSTO. Tonight it made orbit fully loaded, so it is officially an SSTO, on kerban at least. (thanks for the physics / computer performance tips, they helped a ton!) I still have a huge amount of building to do here: optimizing the gear leg arrangement to spread the load evenly, moving most of the intakes behind the CoM to fix a minor tendency to want to fly backwards on re-entry, and some part reduction / strengthening (I tend to overbuild then par-down with testing). This craft's mission profile is intended as follows: 1)Take off KSC, Achieve LKO 2)Refuel in orbit, omitting any extra Liquid fuel 3)Duna Transfer 4)Aero Braking 5)Land, Deliver Payload 6)Achieve Low Duna Orbit 7)Refuel??? (I have a mobile refueling station in orbit) 8)Kerban Transfer 9)Aero Brake and Land. I'm not sure if I will need to refuel for the return trip or not, It's going to be close. I hope to avoid that if possible just because I would like to save some fuel in my Duna Gas Station. I tend to do my calculations by putting my finger in the air to test for wind, and then doing what seems ballpark, so it could all go terribly wrong.

I love the simple wedge shape of both of these designs, but the problems you are having are because you are trying to ballance your craft WITH the fuel tanks. Which works great when they are full, but is a problem when you are out of gas. For the most part you should put the fuel where your craft's natural CG is. That way when they burn off, your CG remains unchanged. Try this: Strip your craft down to bare fuselage and engines. Place the fuel along a horizontal line in parallel with your CG. Now when they burn off your CG won't change (at least not much, see below) Attach your wings to get that cool wedge shape. But see the problem? Your center of lift is WAY ahead of your CG, and as your fuel in the fuselage gets used up, it makes the difference even worse. What you need to do is bring your center of lift farther back. Preferably behind the CG a little bit. That way as your fuel burns, your CG will shift back a little bit to meet your Center of Lift. The best way to do this (and keep this particular shape) is to plaster really "lifty" wings behind the CG to pull the Center of lift farther back. In this case I have done it by cramming Swept wings in there. You can further control your Center of Gravity by controlling how your fuel flows. In this case I would run fuel lines directly to the engines from the rocket fuel tanks. That way the engines will use up the liquid fuel in your perfectly positioned Rocket Fuel tanks first, before taking from the long fuselage part. Run Fuel lines from your fuselage to the rocket tanks too. (Fuselage -> Rocket Tanks -> Engines ~~~)

Your best work yet, pa1983. I'm glad it's done. Wow!

Great video, awesome bike! I think your lander/ crew return vehicle was even more impressive than the bike.

I was wondering about that too. But I think in this case you just want to go strait up and get out of the soup as fast as possible where your rockets are more efficient, rather than linger (this is a Job for Calculus!). If there were some equivalent efficient Jet engine that would work in Eve's atmosphere that would be a different story.

I think that Valkyrie is awesome, and is much truer to the original shape than a space plane can be, thanks to center of mass / center of thrust considerations. I really Like the slow curve in this part: How u do dat? @ KissSh0t: I've been building a lot of stuff with those 4x and 3x adapters too. I have yet to make anything worthwhile, but I'm sure something will come to fruition eventually.

This is a great video! The music really set the mood. Of course the craft is crazy and awesome too.

In the space plane hangar, when you are building your plane, there is a little blue-green button at the top with a silhouette of a kerbal. Click on that sucker and load up your crew! It's such a great option, and a million times better than the bad old days of spawning multiple flights and walking kerbals around.

I made something wierd: Trying to duplicate the x-43 scramjet design, roughly. It works great, performance wise (100km orbit with more than half rocket fuel) , but it is a handful to fly. It still needs lots of optimization.

Haha, woooops! Got anymore pics of this one? How'd you go about doing that long gooseneck of the fueselage? Edit: KissSh0t, thank you for the very constructive advice! I made some changes for the better. It really was just an example of my penchant for over engineering. I removed the small alieron controls and buttoned down that stray wing panel (I didn't see what you meant until I accelerated time, then WOAH). Also, when trouble shooting I found a completely superfluous fuselage part that I had placed early in the build process when I was going to arrange my intakes in a different way. Well, it wasn't completely superfluous... it made those cool hood scoops. But a non functional hood scoop is just posing! The result is a muuuch more docile plane. You can also turn off the reaction wheels by hitting action group 8. I find that unnecessary, but it's an option v0v. Craft file is updated to reflect changes. Or you can do the extremely simple mods in the SPH if you are like me and are just really really lazy about moving those .craft files from Downloads over to the KSP folder. UGH.

Yeah, the roll axis is a little twitchy due to the short wingspan. You just have to be delicate on that axis. You shouldn't be flaming out that low though... Are you shutting down engines as you climb? Weird. I'll test the uploaded file when I get home to make sure I didn't upload something broken. I certainly could have as I have a habit of uploading things early in the morning in an insomniac stupor.

Totally weird and surprising design. Love it. Ok, we can do this... whooooaaahh, easy Uhhh... LIKE A GLOVE!

His name is "Bothersome" so I would think that it was a Novelty troll account if not for the fact that he regularly contributes with designs of his own.

One is an assembly exploit, the other is breaking the physicis engine of the game with a mod. Infinite fuel circumvents an important part of the game engine entirely. The Intake Spam Police may tacitly imply that I, and other reprehensible intake spammers (and partclippers) are somehow 'cheating'. You go so far as to compare it directly to a "cheat" (all infinite fuel users, please continue to do so if you have fun doing it). This subject crops up again and again in these forums ever since the spaceplane parts were released in 0.15 and someone figured out that "hey, if I put more intakes on I can go higher and faster". Almost as if that were intended... I'll try to explain my thinking on this in this post, and it will be the last I respond to this line of criticism in this thread, so prepare yourself for a rant. I advise all who couldn't care less to simply ignore it. Every part on a stock vehicle, weather it is clipped or not, (including all those intakes), is still calculated with regards to weight, lift, and drag. So as far as the game engine is concerned it isn't "free" performance. I'm sure those values could be tweaked for a more approximate representation of real life, and I have supported doing so. I look at the intake spamming (and other part clipping) as a stand-in for actual engineering. Until we get some approximation of real supersonic and hypersonic inlets and engines in this game (not likely), I'll design things that function is some comparable way. I'm not denying that using jet engines at the edge of space is dubious. So is reentering the atmosphere in some rickety rocket held together with struts, or sending a kerbal to another planet in a cockpit with no discernible life support, or aerobraking a multi-ton interplanetary ship at 8000 miles per hour without any shielding, or bunching up 50 fuel tanks into a 300 ton asparagus lifter. It goes on and on. If we were to strictly stick with only things that are possible, then we would have a game about going to the moon, building a LEO spacetation, and setting up satellites / probes. And nothing else. We all exploit the deficiencies in realism of KSP to achieve whatever goals we set for our missions and designs and have fun in doing so. Your designs are no different, and if you think that because when you slap a jet nozzle on the back of a rocket fuel tank, it is somehow more realistic because you only put one glowing blue air intake on the front, you are deluding yourself. It is a personal and arbitrary limit. I'm not interested in any video game glory (or honor, lol) to be gained by adhering your particular arbitrary highhorse. Heck, everything about my Tiny SSTOs (which is what seems to have insulted you so) was about breaking the limits of believably. THAT WAS THE POINT. I wanted people to shake their head when they saw them, but hopefully with a smile, not a puritanical scowl. I am an unrepentant intake spammer, and proud of it. That's all I have to say about that.