Exothermos

Fellow SSTO addicts, I have released all my "mostly-useless-but-cool-looking" designs in one pack. The Pretty, Pointy, and Pretty Pointless Party Pack is available. Fellow314, your payload fractions are amazing on those Box Kite designs. Bravo!

Check out my new Pretty, Pointy, and Pretty Pointless Party Pack! Here is the Old Assegai Post: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Assegai Cargo SSTO 12/26/2013 We are reaching the final days of this thread's 'Thread of the Month' status, and in celebration I would like to present the Assegai Cargo SSTO. My main goal in constructing this ship was to haul a decent sized cargo to Low Kerbin Orbit in the quickest, friendliest, and most authoritative way possible with an SSTO spaceplane. This meant using lots of engines! The new RAPIER engine was the coup de gras that made this ship easy to use. In pursuit of this goal, efficiency was thrown out the window. Instead, a rather overbuilt and oversized SSTO with lots of 'oomph' is the result. It is, however, simple as pie to get to orbit, and has lots of Dv left when orbit is achieved. With the payload provided, 1000km+ orbits are easy to attain. The Assegai screams to orbit like a much smaller SSTO, even when loaded with any payload that fits in the bay. A generic small space station node is included in the download. Reentry is stable and predictable. From a payload fraction point of view, there are much more efficient designs on these forums, but this ship is about efficiency as much as a v8 muscle-car is. Much like that muscle-car, this ship is about raw power, having fun, and looking good. If that jiggles your gibbets then try it out! Tips: 1)Keep ASAS on at all times (it's stable, but has a long moment arm for controls. It's best to not let things get too out-of-line) 2)Flight Dynamics: Rotate at 95km/sec. Initial climb: 50+ degrees to 15km. Begin slow leveling procedure to 29k. Acceleration plateau from 29km to 36km. Shut down engines as needed. When RAPIERs switch modes, close intakes and rotate to 75 degrees until 80km apogee is attained. Burn for orbital insertion at apoapsis. 3)Depending on the mass of your payload, the ship may experience a nose-down tendency in the hypersonic flight zone around 29km. ASAS can handle it, but if it is causing trouble turning off the first bank of engines (group 1) compensates for this tendency, and this is right around the time that engine shutdowns become necessary anyway. 4) This ship is nearly 500 parts with a complicated payload. Turn down your physics if need be. DOWNLOAD

Wow, that's huge! Awesome resolution on the screenshot too. Nice.

What do you mean? NASA did it, Just copy that. If you mean "no logical way' regarding the Monstrous Rovers being posted here, I can at least see where you are coming from. These are HUGE!

I'm a lazy artist, but mostly I've just been looking at airplanes, and drawing airplanes since I was a little kid. KSP is like a 3D airplane drawing program! Here is another: It still needs lots of work, mostly concerning build finesse. Its a little wobbly and loosey-goosey, as well as other little niggling things that annoy me, but SOON. I'll polish all these planes that are 95% done and release them in a pack by the end of this weekend for those who want to mess around with them. I can imagine how much more difficult it might be to do this, but I've never played with RSS. What's the hardest part of getting a space plane working in that mod?

Regex, cool shuttle! It's really a crime that we don't have a stock mk3 cargo bay. NKL, I'll upload that monstrosity just for you when I get home tonight. Edit: Here it is. Note that I take no responsibility for playability, flyability, or reliability. That said the litterally 20 minutes of testing I did seemed good!

A productive day-off (at least concerning KSP) has resulted in a few new SSTOs. This first one was built around rapier engines. I really haven't investigated them much since their release, so I figured I'd play around. I just wanted to mess with some build Ideas that were knocking around in my head. It's really nothing special, but I think it is pretty. I also managed to make a Light Cargo SSTO in record time. Sometimes they just fall together, and sometimes you fight them endlessly. I still haven't decided which cockpit arrangement to go with... Any opinions on that? And then THIS thing happened. I was just trying to make an "engine pod" sub-assembly for a larger craft when I thought "hey... slap a cockpit and some wings on that sucker and go!" It is successful as an SSTO, but is much more adept at causing serious eye pain.

How in the world...? Thank you. Fixed.

This is a spit-polished version of my very first successful spaceplane, "Speedy Box". It does not use any intake stacking or aggressive part clipping (some very mild aesthetic clipping is present). No 'advanced' building techniques either: no cubic struts. What you see is what you get! As such it does not fly on jets at extreme high altitudes, but the inclusion of RAPIER engines has greatly improved the performance of the original craft. The plane is capable of relatively high orbits (the above pic was taken just shy of a 300k orbit), and is stable and responsive in all regimes. RCS and a small docking port are included. Here is the flight profile: Climb on all 4 engines to 20k and 800kph. Accelerate while climbing slowly to 25k. Make sure to slowly throttle back to keep all four engines burning. Turn off Turbojets at 25k. Continue 100% throttle slow climb on RAPIERs. At approx 30k and 1800kph, RAPIERs will change modes; close intakes and climb at 50 degrees to desired Apoapsis. Deploy Solar panels when above 60k. Reenter at 10 degrees nose up relative to prograde pip. It is possible to get even higher performance out of the craft if one wanted to juggle the engine types at the 30km threshold, but it is more work than it seems to be worth. Download Craft File

Given the high TWR, It could easily be a tail-sitter style VTOL with some more reaction wheels. For the moment it is a standard runway lander because simple is good!

I've been doing compact "hitchhiker can" designs. The first is a shuttle design that has an uncluttered, clean appearance. 4 jets, 2 nukes, lots of intakes. The big tank is tweaked down to about 1/2 full and there is still crazy amounts of DV in space. The other is a SSTO Base and return vehicle for a pending Laythe Mothership mission. Vertical landing on Laythe with parachutes (to save fuel), A livable Base for the extended stay on Laythe, and return to the mothership in one package. I'm allowing myself a couple mods on this one to keep parts counts down on the massive mothership. Being very compact is also a must for my design. (pWing, robotics, and some lighting for fun)

Slap that inboard gear on the top of that beam and rotate it 180 so you get more even gear: I have given up on emulating pa1983-style ships. 1400 parts is just too much for my computer. Good luck to your cpu!

That's going to be one HEAVY SOB, Kissh0t! Are you going to tweak some of that oxidizer out of those orange tanks?

guys... GUYS! I've stumbled across an important aerodynamic advancement! Why worry about changing CoM during flight... put it ALL over the CoM! Yeah, thats a 74 x 76km orbit. Who cares if I didnt even build it with symetry on most of the time, and I had to shut off engines manually when 10G spins happened. After 45 minutes of wrestling, we have an SSTO. Maybe i should take a break. Things are getting... weird. This is also done. It's a little SSTO Shuttle Orbiter. It will be released in an SSTO pack with similar projects.

HA! I see I can stop building my own shuttle, as nearly the same design has already been mastered. I had no idea you released this, it is beautifully done! I'll mess around with it for sure. Here is my proof of concept vehicle: Besides your (awesome) cargo bay, the similarities are amazing, however yours is much more accurate to reality. Necessity really is the mother of invention...

Yeah, I use kick-out maneuvers frequently as well, and you are right, it is very design-specific. Designs with great thrust to weight ratios seem to be the easiest to manage up there, and respond the best to attitude changes, but they are the ones that benefit the least from the maneuver. Basically they have enough performance to just do a vanilla ascent. The main advantage just seems to be getting to your air-breathing max speed, and thus really milking the efficiency of the jets.

jeez, Rune, you are really rolling out the big complicated stuff lately. This looks fantastic, and I really like your little SSTO shuttle!

This is a great build! I learned some neat tricks, and your modeling is really clean. Besides the impressive nose, i really like the rear 1/3 of the ship. I had plenty of fuel left in the orbital insertion stage, and could easily reach a 120km orbit. It passes the imperative "Looking Cool on Reentry" test. It definitely glides like one would expect a "wingless" design to glide. It is a little nose heavy, but it is controllable all the way down, and I had no problems landing on the second stripes on the first decent. Kudos!

There's some good stuff being posted lately! Weird designs and unconventional builds. I like it. Just to show that I haven't completely fallen of the face of the Earth (relevant to those few of you who might have been wondering), there has been some progress on this SSTO group. One is a VTOL / STOVL (depending on payload) craft for LKO payloads: I still feel that VTOL on a payload craft is a silly gimmick, but it is a FUN gimmick. The other is a conventional profile drone craft with vertical rocket landing for Munar Base payloads: The Jet VTOL is essentially finished, however the stripped-down and lightened Munar Drone is really proving to be a challenge. That's a lot of DV that's needed. I feel like I am close to cracking that nut, but this has been a very difficult build for a variety of reasons.

This is beautiful and clean. Wow. Nearly the exact opposite is the Jool / Laythe mission ship I am working on. Really it is just a reason to play with Infernal Robotics and Procedural wing. The bays are currently holding 2 "tiny Tot" SSTOs (forward) as well as a Laythe "Base" SSTO (starbord), and a Kerbin return vehicle (port). The forward bay will be full of little probes and landers for all the moons of Jool.

Cute! Looks just like my Tiny Tot, but we clearly solved some things differently. Just a case of convergent design. More info here. I agree that something like this format must be the smallest fully functional SSTO. p.s. The term "Convergent Design" must give Biologists the willies.

Cupcake, your videos are just so great! They must be a ton of work, but they are totally worth it.

My Assegai Cargo SSTO is ready on my build page! It's a miracle what the new RAPIERS can do! Inigma, that Proton is really looking like a shuttlecraft. Sweet!

NEW Assegai Cargo SSTO Added to the Front Page OP! Here is the 4-SSTO Megadump Post for safe keeping: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It's another SSTO mega dump! 12/8/2013 To celebrate the current Thread of the Month status, here is about a third of the SSTOs I have in the works (yes, really). These are fully vetted and tested and ready to cra... uh FLY. All these ships have the ability to land in "rough field" conditions. In other words, you don't have to aim at the KSC if you are coming home, and you can easily land on Laythe's small islands. The first two accomplish this mission with lots of lift. These are mostly meant for Laythe, where fuel saving is important, but they work very well in service around Kerbin too. The Alouette is a single-man straigt forward SSTO. Performance is completely over the top, but who is going to complain about that? Rotation speeds are very low for such a high performer (around 35 m/s fully loaded, and even lower when light on fuel) which will allow some soft, well controlled landings on rough terrain. DOWNLOAD The Avocet is a 1+1 mini-shuttle capable of slow conventional landings, as well as vertical landings if that's your flavor of 'adventure' (terror). It's not quite the hotrod that the Alouette is, but performance is still a few steps beyond "adequate". DOWNLOAD The next two SSTOs were designed with the same aesthetic and design considerations as the crafts in my Tiny SSTO Pack. However, unlike those ships, they are capable of vertical takeoffs and Landings on Kerbin and Laythe. This allows them to land out "in the bush" without too much hassle. The Plucky Puck is a cute little Egg-shaped SSTO with lots of rocket fuel for it's size. It seats one Kerbal who can take it to high orbiting space stations with ease. DOWNLOAD The Tiny Taxi is a 5-Kerbal VTOL space shuttle. It needs full power for vertical takeoff, so don't try anything brave when fully loaded, Maverick. DOWNLOAD And that's it for now! On the way are a couple of larger designs based solely around "looking cool", a few one-trick-ponies with very specific missions, some purely functional stuff, some heavy revisions of older designs to simplify and increase performance, as well as a couple of new heavy lifters of the 10-engined, 400 part variety! Stay tuned! Because They're pretty; Gratuitous re-entry shots taken during testing.

Woah, I love the look of that. Sweet!