Rune

As the title says, right now these parts are cosmetic, since drag seems to apply to parts within, with a vengeance. Sometimes it feels like the souposphere of old KSP1 is in full effect, in fact. Just a quick report of the thing I'm most sure I know what's going on with. Plenty of other bugs, but also plenty of fun, and plenty of wishing I had a beefier PC. In other words, so far KSP 2 reminds me a lot about KSP 1 in the not-so-early days of development. Rune. I think that's a good thing! Also, hello everyone again.

Hey! I crawled under the rock I was hiding to say, first of all, thanks for your contributions to this forum. I was heavily inspired by your catalogue and presentation skills, and must say that you have influenced me at the very least as much as I may have influenced you. With that out the way, I just have to add that I totally understand where you are coming from, and hope that you keep on enjoying this game in whatever moments you can steal from that pesky, always demanding, real life. I myself kind of did the same thing quite a while ago, for mostly the same reasons, but never bothered to inform the rest of the forum, so you have shown (again) that you are indeed a more considerate/stylish person than I am. Rune. Keep on keeping on!

So... It's up! I should do a proper photo op for it, but I've teased it enough. Besides, long time no post nothing. So without further ado, the Altair, the latest and bestest light vertical takeoff/vertical landing SSTO in the fleet. This is its KerbalX page. Rune. I don't even have a 'proof of orbit' pic. But you guys believe me, right?

Unsurprisingly enough, that is exactly what I had in mind: Rune. The inflatable airlock is the bestest part of the DLC.

Another, even simpler option: I may post pics later, but basically a small cargo bay with an inflatable airlock works, and it's dirt simple: open bay, extend airlock clipping through everything in front of it, and there you go. And it's as sleek as whatever you have in front of it. Rune. Not much more 'cheaty' than Foxter's option, and no offset required.

Hummm. I have an idea. You could use the new inflatable airlock, and keep it tucked away inside the craft until needed so it isn't the first part in the airstream. It would go something like this: build a standard nose ending in a 0.625m node, and put the airlock on it.Then sink the airlock where it can't be seen, unextended. Drag-wise, that is the foremost part, bad but 0.625m bad so not that bad. You can build a second nose with a couple of 0.625m nosecones to make it pointier (darg-wise, an independent thing), and surface place it on the 0.625m circle so it looks cool. Then, heat-wise, the foremost part is the nosecone, with high temp-rating and creating a pointy thermal shock cone. Tough I do like how the shielded docking port creates a blunter, cooler, draggier, bow shock that hides the part behind it better. The bow shock thing shadow depending on part geometry? You can be forgiven for not knowing about that, I do because I remember the devnote about how that worked. Rune. Call it an undocumented feature.

Oh, the landing gear bug. Yes, quite horrible. Quicksaving before undocking anthing is a must, these days. As to the aerospikes, their high Isp, especially sea-level Isp, allowed me to get by with a pretty crappy tankage fraction (the only efficient tanks I use are behind a fairing). So in spite of their low TWR, which is a big downside, I end up needing slightly less juice to refill the tanks in orbit. There is also the flip side that the lowest temp. rating of any exposed part is 2,300° (with the weird exception of the engines). And the fun engineering problem of providing six axises of RCS control, since I used no reaction wheels. But yeah, aesthetics was 90% of the real reason. Rune. The rest are engineering excuses to justify the choice.

Oh, and while we are at it, let's post something more recent than 'a couple game versions ago'. The latest SSTO in the arsenal, the Altair, a very proper rocketship: 5mT to orbit in a spacious cargo bay. Good enough to set up a Base Pack and serve as shuttle on Tylo, reusably, without having an incredibly high fuel resupply issue (~90mT wet weight). Plus, it can also do daring aerobrakes on, say, Laythe. Oh, and did I mention it can land-dock to my surface bases without use of the Klaw? Cause yeah, it does. Rune. Coming 'whenever I get around to posting it™'.

I feel almost obliged to say, though, SSTA are notoriously simpler to design if you forget about efficient airbreathers. I mean, I managed to do it using Mk3 fuel tanks and their lower mass fractions (I wanted the aerobraking option with high heat tolerance). Heck, I even put on wings, mostly for looks but also useful for precise landings. And of course, if you can single-stage Kerbin, you automatically can single-stage Tylo with TWR to spare. Rune. The flight profile is also quite simpler.

That bit seriously cracked me up. Also, cool SSTO! Ever since the souposphere went away, SSTOs have much simpler 'flight profiles'. The one I use, which is a good compromise between efficiency and expediency, is quite simple indeed: draw a straight line to orbit. Basically, put yourself on the shallowest attack angle that doesn't make you go down right from takeoff... and then do nothing. As you build speed and go supersonic, waking up the RAPIERs, you build TWR and lift, and you start ascending, quicker and quicker, until you get to ~1300m/s @20,000m with a more than respectable vertical component (Kerbin has curved under you as you kept the initial heading). You could milk a bit more by pitching down, but I usually just don't bother. Also, this profile is very dependant on TWR, I get my best payload fractions (up to 50%) at around 0.4 TWR, with an all-RAPIER powerplant. That last number is probably the second most important thing in designing a SSTO... the first is to minimize drag (no open nodes anywhere!). Rune. Asking for advice politely is rarely out of place, anywhere.

I know you like your BigS wings, but here's a radical tought: liquid fuel fuselages+normal wing sections can offer the same dry-wet mass ratio, with much more freedom in design, and a better final look. BigS wings weren't made to look good when stacked, after all, and though they seem to be free fuel tanks at first glance, they have a mass ratio significantly worse than other tanks, meaning if yoy can get by with less wings, they can be an actual downside. Rune. Also, you can balance the engines at the back by having the lighter cockpit on the front much farther from the CoM.

I have tons of those. In fact, my next thing to release, when I have the time to whip up a cool graphic for the family (somewhat blatantly copied from one of yours, or something similar), is the STELLAR family. In fact, some versions of some of them are already on my KerbalX page, look for star names. And of course, the family name is an bacronym: Sstos That are Expected to Land Like A Rocket. Couldn't help myself. Rune. Can't wait to see what Raptor does with such a tight Mass Ratio budget, if he goes the chemical route. Should be awesome.

Mmm... not really a fan of drop tanks. And not only because I am a fan of recovering everything! Basically, drop tanks are hard to make aerodinamically cheap (they would need the same lenght/diameter ratio as the main plane body to be similarly 'streamlined', and still it would add cross section to your plane). Besides, drop tanks are uneccessary. As in, you don't need drops tanks to make a plane capable of circumnavigating Kerbin. So why bother? Just make the plane slightly longer and it'll have a higher top speed than with drop tanks, since top speed is drag-limited, not mass-limited. Then again, different people come to different conclusions. Rune. If you like building them, you will figure out a way to justify them.

Panther is perfectly fine. 'As much fuel as you can carry' is a good recommendation, but the afterburning is not. Without it, and decent TWR, you can sustain Mach ~2 flight (~600m/s) surprisingly economically, if you are sufficiently streamlined. And remember, in KSP, 'streamlined' means there are no open attachment nodes, as few surface-attached things as possible outside of cargo bays, and everything ends in pointy things, both front and back. To share the obligatory example, this thing fits your bill, but only for the single pilot. Copy Mass/fuel/lift/TWR ratios, and you will get the exact same performance. Rune. Engineering is all about ratios.