Exothermos

Check out my new "Replicraft Pack" on the first page. Here is the Older "Do You Even Lift?" Post: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "BRO, DO YOU EVEN LIFT?" 5/3/2014 Here are 3 SSTO space planes for lifting your junk to space! 2 of them are really pretty, the third is, well... unconventional. First up is the Aurochs. It is a heavy-lift SSTO capable of orbiting one big jumbo-64 tank (and maybe a little more, but not much.) It will take a long slog to get to orbit with an orange can, I've not given it a silly amount of engines, so the part count is relatively low for a large craft. However, that does result in a shallow climb up to the speed run plateau at 30k. To load your cargo grab the top Beam at the arrow. The lid will pop-off for easier placement. Reattach with no symmetry, and surface-attach mode (the circle). This design was mostly an exercise in aesthetics, but it resulted in a useful spaceplane. DOWNLOAD Next is the Ankaa. It was designed around lifting the FL-T800, but can lift anything unclipped that will fit in the bay.. Here it is during a dead-weight test. I've also lifted other things with it. I won't attest to the feasibility of my payloads, but the plane works great! X) DOWNLOAD Finally, here is the Avant. So yeah, it looks like that... The cargo is before the cockpit. I just wanted to try something weird. But it works really well! and will lift a small amount. Here is another dead weight payload test. DOWNLOAD Thanks for looking. Let me know if you have any questions on how to fly them and Enjoy!

It's like a crystal structure space station...

BOOSH my favorite mod becoming stock. Congrats on getting official recognition for your great work! Edit: Only because you generally asked, here are my opinions on the new parts: All the noses and Tailpieces are fantastic! That hypersonic Nose brings a tear to my eye, and the more rounded one is a great option for more realistic re-entry vehicles. I like the flat "ducktail" and I think it will be useful. If I wanted to make a pointed part I can slap some fins on there like the 'tail Fin' or 'AV-T1' fins to get that nice Horton flying wing shape. Having a wedge shape stock kinda closes-out options. I would be happy with the radial cockpit as is, but there is something a little irksome aesthetically about the triangle windows. I think my advice would be that you have lots of curves going on with the canopy frames so it makes the little pointy windows seem tacked on. Maybe try them with curves to mimic the rear canopy mating surface? Also, shave off that sloping-down curve at the rear a bit if possible and slap a hatch there! Outside contender: So excited...

These are monstrous! Glad you are sharing them.

This is one of my current obsessions. Trying to get a chemical rocket SSTO that lifts 2 jumbo 64s to orbit... and fit it in a Venture Star package. I'm close. I'm about 300 DV down at the moment (accounting for weight of wing elements to come.) It's a surprisingly easy rocket profile ascent. It's going to take a lot of careful tinkering with wing parts to keep that ascent so compliant. Any Tips?

No pics; no clicks! Upload some screenshots and you will get a better response.

That's gonna be quite the challenge. I love the nosecone made of nosecones X). Its surprisingly well-smoothed.

How did I miss that? That is just stellar, Rune! There are some truly incredible builds in this thread. Edit: "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Rune again." Heh! You've been on a roll.

I'm really having fun replicating fighters.

Cool! Looks like a plausible and well-sorted spacecraft for your 'more realistic' version of KSP. Holeymoley that's a ton of mod's you've got there. I really like the docking camera MFD.

Whipped this up last night. Getting the intakes and tail planes right on the F-15 is really hard with stock parts. I'm getting happier and happier as I tinker with it, though.

I've been ignoring KSP of late, but I had fun in the SPH today. Space Plane Plus is really satisfying to play with. This is a robotic SSTO with a lander stuffed in the payload bay. Just because. I could have done a moon landing too if I used the plane to take everything to a higher orbit. It has a ridiculous amount of LOX available. Maybe next time. I'm also continuing work on a promising line of VTOL SSTOs. Again, just for kicks.

Venture Star! Well done!

YESSSSSSSSSS. Oh man, these are all awesome, but that hypersonic nose is the bestest.

Eorin's YF-12A is the best looking blackbird family replica I've seen: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/67745-YF-12A-replica-NEW-VERSION

I've been playing with this a little, but I don't seem to get any thrust from the RAPIERs on the runway. She doesn't want to fly at 80km/s! A collision mesh problem on the Rapier / Turbojet combo engine?

I swear, my reputation button should just sat "Rune" on it. Glad to see you have released this beast! I like the loading rack idea, I've considered something similar for my larger builds but never got the kinks sorted out. Definitely going to be playing around with this!

I like it! Especially your intake placement.

No, no FAR testing yet. I'll test it tonight. It has a few clipped control surfaces that will have to be exposed to airflow, but that would be a relatively easy fix. Hopefully it is a "looks right, flies right" situation, but it will need modifications. We'll see! Edit:FAR testing report! See all that stuff i wrote above? Yeah... NO. FAR hates a lot about how this bird is built. Specifically the Bay doors being made of wing parts, and wing parts being used as structural members and formers. I could rebuild this with those parts being made of structural Panels, but it would be ugly as sin and heavy. The basic aerodynamic shape is sound and the plane lifts off and accelerates better than stock and flies OK, but the rest is a boondoggle, so chalk this one up as a FAR fail. I'll build some FAR and DR (maybe) rated designs soon. It seems like a challenge.

K-30 Athena Cargo SSTO. Typically I only work with stock parts, but i've been growing tired of them so I've picked up some mods to play with. This ship is the culmination of what I've been trying to achieve for a while, but simply couldn't stock. A heavy lift, low orbit SSTO that has a plausible appearance based on approximations of near-future tech. The Plane is capable of lifting anything that fits in the cargo bay. This includes Jumbo Orange tanks... ...and outsized space station parts. (Earlier version depicted) Climb is good. (lightly loaded here. ) And reentry is uneventful. It is easy to load. Pop-off the floor of the bay and attach things to the docking ports with the aircraft oriented thusly. (the root part is that long tapered KAX part). Reattach the floor in snap mode and check the forward struts to make sure they reattached. It is built with excess space for fuel both forward and aft. This is to ballance plane regardless of load-out. Make sure to tweak your fuel tanks before takoff to keep your CoM infront of your CoL, but not TOO far infront. It is a cheaty-style airhogger so your acceleration plateau starts at 28k and extends past 35k. How fast you get to that plateau, and at what angle depends on your loadouts. Light loads will allow very steep climbs, heavy loads will require long, shallow climbs. Pump fuel forward for reentry. To play with it you will need these 4 mods: B9 Aerospace Spaceplane Plus Kerbal Aircraft Expansion Infernal Robotics Download!

Building another big LKO lifter. This time I am messing with more mods. This one is just slapped together. It needs a ton of careful panel aligning as well as reinforcing and stuff, but I wanted to share as I was exited how quickly everything flew together. I started the build not knowing where I was going and was in space in 4 hours! I'm trying to stick to just wing and fuselage parts as well as utility parts from multiple sources. I want to stay with stock engines. Infernal Robotics is used for the bay doors.

I remember seeing someone who landed an asteroid on the roof of the VAB like 2 hours after ARM was released. "Aint nothin' new under the Sun"

Looks like a Grumman Goose or Widgeon. That's a good thing!

Like others have stated, I really like how "new" this feels. Great Job!

Oh boy, now you've done it. You didn't tell me to take a hike, so prepare yourself for "Idea Vomit"! Actually, you are totally right, that would be great. I've given this a ton of thought (as building space planes is almost the only thing i do) and when I heard about the 3.75 parts coming out, this is how I imagined a space plane pack could take advantage of that and look cool: These have circular cross sections. In this way, you can build one 1.25 meter nosecone for all applications, A 2.5 meter cockpit that can be used on 2.5 meter parts or married with a nice special adapter to 3.75 meter parts. The adapter can carry fuel, potentially, and can be reversed to taper down at the back of the craft. with that circular cross section any stock part can be swapped in for your special parts to give maximum flexibility when building all sorts of craft. If you notice from the pic, there is a slight downward taper to the parts I've drawn. This is purely for aesthetics, and does induce a small problem with CoM as the attachment nodes are pushed down towards the front of the parts. In my experience this is just not a big problem on larger craft, however. The change in the crafts CoM will be negligable. This also looks a lot like many of the beautiful concepts for the x-30 competition from the 90s. Another thing I've been thinking about is some sort of analog of a Scramjet and Intake: This one might be too ambitious, but it would be highly satisfying to fly at extremely high speeds and altitudes with a system that is a little more beliveable than the Turbojet /ram-air intake system. See X-30, X-43, X-51 etc. The parts would have a CoM and Attachment in the standard configuration for 1.25m parts, allowing them to be attached at the back of a spaceplane. Intakes would attach similarly, with a nesting and protruding leading edge allowing some minor level of stacking. Ballancing the performance of the parts would be the hard part. I think to keep things simple an exagerated version of the turbojet / ram-air intake profile would fit the bill well. The intakes gather more air at higer speed and the engine performs better at higher altitudes. While not really accurate, I know that speed-altitude based performance isn't really possible in the game. I've already tried to do a non-functional mock-up of how this would appear ingame with a few of my builds. I could go on and on with this stuff, but I think i'll stop there Take from it what you will!