pa1983

Now differens realy. Asas seems better, few new parts, same crappy preformance, landing spot on duna seems hard to find now. Would have liked to still have the dry lakes flat.

He convinced me to get 0.18 or well I had more or less convinced my self but his preview was the first I saw before official release. But most of the other members in the media group had just as good previews so. So no cant say that he helped me build something.

It only goes to 36km altitude with a max payload so not it would not, its quite limited by engine power if anything. And it has a 10:1 intake to engine ratio. The nacelles could easily accommodated twice the number of intakes due to the need for a high lift capable wing, still the craft is some what lift (to few wigs) and engine power limited then anything else.

New ASAS will do wounder for well ASAS. But still manual flying will most likely be the same for as long as we cant assigns control surfaces. That means that some of my crafts will be unflyable or unstable at best unless I keep doing this. It will take you 1 minute to move the control surfaces and its not like it would change the overall design but it would make it work as you intended. And yes manual flight will be more important then ever. How are you now gonna try if your craft is stable if ASAS hides it to the point where it suddenly flips over? Well thats manual flying. I always shut ASAS off at different points in flight with a new craft to make sure its balanced enough. The risk with the new ASAS is that people are gonna make even less stable craft and not even know it because they will be lacy and not test properly. This is the reason why some people want to be able to assign control surfaces manually. It will be a must in the end of the game development to make the most stable crafts possible.

Here is my collection of SSTO's if you want to rake them apart for ideas. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27196441/SSTOs.zip There constantly evolving. I try not to try out more then one or two new things at once. It do not work very well trying to build the perfect one with all the best ideas the first time around, or you spend months just trying to find the problems.

I saw some pics on the forum. Show you awsome pictur thread I think it was. Or you could just dl my craft file, theres a link in the description of part 2. Usually I mount all the fuel tanks last and all in parallel with out stacking at the center of CG. That way cg is the same at all time.

0.18.2 was the best one. Few bugs in sph and vab worked at its best, have had new bugs both with sph and vab and when restarting crafts etc ever sens 0.18.4 or if it was 0.18.3 when they switched over to unity 4 and I didn't get any performance boost so the fact that I got more bugs instead like graphical glitches toug I do use wine so I can live with that sens its not uncommon. But still 0.18.2 was rock solid for me. I have also had problems with hitting drifting hitboxes when ever I go to another planet and then returns to the runway sens they remade that one. So overall I have more and most of my failures are due to bugs introduced after 0.18.2.

Yea I had the same feeling that tis might be the day. lets hope where right.

Thanks! You craft is clean and I like it. I think the problem your having is how asas works atm. All surfaces can work as yaw,pitch and roll depending on placement. With a perfect fly by wire system thats not a problem but asas in ksp sucks atm. What usually happans when people try there crafts out ist that ailerons acts as elevators. Now thats fine flying manually but when asas takes over it will use all those ailerons to roll the craft and make it wobble and theres no authority left for pith. The only way to get rid of this problem is by mounting control surfaces with out mirroring dead center of the craft. Just like a real stabilizer. This way it can only be used by asas as pitch control not as ailerons for roll. Same problem can happen with rudders but during manual flight. They tend to turn the same way as the ailerons becuse the game uses them for roll to. Problem with that is tat the tail turns left an the craft rolls left. Imagine that in your head and the end result. To limit rudders to work as rudders only mount them in the horizontal center line instead. On you craft I would remove the inner ailerons and in stead place them in the center line of the craft in the rear, one higher and one low so they work as elevators only. Then I would use two as rudders in the horizontal center line seen from the rear and remove the once placed on the vertical stabelizers you have. If you check all my later crafts after the "Falcon X Jumbo Transport" they no longer have control surfaces on the big rudders for example. Thats because its less stable. This way most crafts get a lot more stable and asas works a lot more predictable. You can check out some of my crafts here. The later sstos should have this configuration in the rear or in the nose or both. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27196441/SSTOs.zip

If I recall, scram jets are pretty inefficient and requires high speed just to fire up. Those small once tested now are fired from a rocket stage so they fail as a ssto there already. Simple reason why the saber engine for the skylon is a jet engine/rocket engine hybrid is because it has its own compressor and in effect is self sustaining once spooled up like any other jet engine, and its efficient despite its precooler.

Its not a bug in the game. Its a dumb implementation. Limit them to altitude and temperature instead. If you want to go faster add a precooler. The games aerodynamics is so unrealistic it wont take in to account on part blocking the other. Even those how dont like stacking still abuse the game by that definition even if they dont think they do.

I usually stack them with the 1kg cube in between so they have there own space to take up. I dont like part clipping where two parts use the same volume of space say one fuel tank clipping another. I usually mount intakes in front of the engines so in the end I end up with something approximately the size of a jet engine. jet engines are not 1m long if there 1m diameter there more like 4-5 meters at least. Also I wrote a post some days ago about intake abuse and my view on it. So lets quote my self.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27196441/SSTOs.zip

I call here the Falcon XII Skymaster Transport (didn't come up with anything better, names are not my thing) You can read more about here here. She is all stock btw. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/11214-The-K-Prize-100-reusable-spaceplane-to-orbit-and-back?p=533392&viewfull=1#post533392 Here is two videos, part 1 covers construction and part 2 is the test flight. http://youtu.be/4epfP6F7AF8 http://youtu.be/NEKtKB76udA

I call here the Falcon XII Skymaster Transport (didn't come up with anything better, names are not my thing) You can read more about here here. She is all stock btw. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/11214-The-K-Prize-100-reusable-spaceplane-to-orbit-and-back?p=533392&viewfull=1#post533392 Here is two videos, part 1 covers construction and part 2 is the test flight. http://youtu.be/4epfP6F7AF8 http://youtu.be/NEKtKB76udA

This is my latest craft. People have been asking me for a video of how I build my crafts so I decided to make one sens I wanted to try some stuff out for future crafts. Its not my best craft so its more experimental. I went with a low profile slim wing with closely mounted engine nacelles. This allows the wing to support it self with out the help of the fuselage or external struts and that was a must to accommodated the cargo hold or it would just collapse on it self from previous experience. The closely mounted engine nacelles allows fuel to be stored in them with out adding stress on the wings and the low profile wing in combination with the closely mounted engine nacelles allows for landing wheels to be placed optimally to take stress of the fuselage and wings. The Cockpit is mounted with a 10 degree down tilt to allow for IVA take of and landings and overall easier IVA flight. A probe core is mounted at the default angle to allow for a proper vector when doing burns in space. It also has stock cargo bay doors that can open and close. Not my idea so I wont take credit for that. But they do help stiffening the fuselage when close. The cargo bay is relatively long and can hold more jumbo tanks then the craft can carry but the intended cargo tends to be a lot longer VS weight then a few jumbo tanks so I wanted a long cargo bay, as long as posible. Benchmark payload was 63 tons and thats its max with out any further optimization to the craft. The craft is 99 ton dry weight so its not a light one due to a lot of I beams, many are cosmetic but most are structural. Further optimization with less esthetics's could reduce tonnage and increase payload capacity with 16 tons at least. But I think its sufficient to lift my Explorer version 2 or a equally capable version of it sens it was about 58 tons. But a real mission has not been undertaken yet. I call here the Falcon XII Skymaster Transport (didn't come up with anything better, names are not my thing) Here is two videos, part 1 covers construction and part 2 is the test flight. http://youtu.be/4epfP6F7AF8 http://youtu.be/NEKtKB76udA

I never try to get a perfect interception from one planet to the other. Sure close but due to floating point precision being inaccurate not even the computer will be a 100% accurate for you so its just a wast of time and effort. I make sure to get an interception first then I burn. After that I leave kerbins orbit and once I am 1/3 to 2/3 on the way to Duna I adjust my vector so I get close enough to Duna but also make sure I intercept at the equator. This usually dont cost more then 13-70m/s of delta V. Then when I intercept Duna I make final adjustment and it will cost very little to. Thats the way I do it with my Falcon X Jumbo or any other craft. Witha good intercept of Duna 11.5Km altitude works well most of the time for arobreaking. Also Time warping slower especially when ever your about to intercept a planet will reduce the floating point errors and your Pe will end up closer to the predicted vector. The thing that annoys me with the current engine and intake setup in KSP is that its even more unrealistic then intake abuse to some extent. First off a jet engine is not 1m long its at least 5-6 times as long. Second is the fact that you dont use ram air intakes for a jet engine. You use a nosecone or similar for high speed craft or a intact duct that will reduce the incoming air to subsonic speeds for it to work with the Jet engine. So raimair makes 0 sense because a jet has its own compressor and it requires subsonic speeds. Even sens they added intakes they used no known logic behind it at all. Also the fact that engines are limited to intake air with some bucket system rather then Temperature and altitude makes even less sens. Real jets at Mach 3 have problems with temperature first of all but also the fact that they need intakes that reduces the airspeed to a working subsonic speed so ramair makes no sens. So what we actually need is proper intakes that are altitude limited first of all that would make intake abuse well not working at all. Sure if you had on intake for two engines you could get a less well preforming craft but once your at say 2x intakes per engine there is no more gain to be had. Could also differ from intakes to intakes. Would be smaller once where two equals one big etc. Then we would need a precooler to even make efficient SSTO spaceplanes realistic. Thats whats needed IRL and thats whats being tested for the Skylon. Part exist in KSP as fare as I am concerned but it has 0 use atm. I would like to see that jet engines overheat and either explodes or shuts down when exceeding mach 3 for longer periods. Going past this would require t his precooler part that would be 1m long at least and 1-2 tons sens its the heaviest part of a precooled jet engine. When I use intake abuse I use it because KSP stock wont allow for efficient SSTO spaceplanes the way they the once under development IRL would work. Intakes atm are unrealistic and counter productive. At least when I stack 10 of them in a row with cubes and have a jet behind it I get a total size at least closer to a real jet engine and I have to make room for that. So intake abuse might be more efficient but if you just dont stack intakes on the same intake giving the same volume as one it still requires some added engineering and the howl power plant requires more space. I was also much against intake abuse before I gave it a closer examination but the fact that the way intakes works now is at least as unrealistic as intake abuse if not even more and I dont realy see why one should not use it if one can get more work done with less engines etc. Only real problem with intake abuse is the big part count that comes with it and the fact that engines dont overheat at high speeds due to the 1000C intake air on would have at mach 5.5. But I have no problems with people not wanting to use intake abuse. I didn't either and I still dont like it but I dont like the stock idea of intakes either. Its like they say, its crap either way because both are just as unrealistic. We can just hope for more realistic intakes and precoolers in the final stage of the game. If not Im probably going mods by then to solve that problem.

Its a bug. I know at least one more user that have reported it in this thread but he never wrote in the bug report I made, to bad because the more that reports the bug the better. It only seems to happen for missions leaving LKO. Happend to me 3 out of 4 times when going to Duna. I use the small airport on the island out side of KSC instead it seems to work. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25975-Hiting-Water-Pipe-on-the-runway-of-KSC-when-returning-from-Duna-or-Laythe

On that design you could get away with the two NERVA alone and no airospikes but it would require intake abuse. But it would make the craft lighter overall. You could also reduce the number of jets, probable to 3 at least sens they will give you more power at high altitude like 32km with lots off intakes due to the low drag. But all this assumes you comfortable with having at least 7 intakes per engine that should give you at least 30-34km altitude on jets. The trick here is to get above 32km in to the 3:e layer atmosphere there is where the jet realy kicks in. This is just a friendly suggestion based on my experience.

Yea that should realy complete my line of spaceplanes like the Jumbo or the Hercules

Very clever and interesting. Will give it a go later for payload bay doors for my spaceplanes.

One learns something everyday. Know there was a good reason to ask.

Thats Impressive!

To few intakes or to low speed i would guess.

But drag is also proportional to weight from what I remember and T-30 has a reasonable more trust and lower weight reducing the need for many engines and less weight. Airospikes should be 1ton if I had my way to make them less nurfed but still not overpowered. I just find it inefficient to hull around more and heavier engines with marginally higher ISP. The NV-1 pays off with there extremely high ISP so there weight is not a real problem. But from my experience even with SSTO's fiering up rocket engines at 24Km altitude the airospikes vs T30 or T45 more ore less evens out at best. Only advantige I see is there size. I have used them for VTOL SSTO spaceplanes but even that can be designed around and use T30, T45 by mounting the engines inside the craft and have openings in the bottom. Sure migth be more drag but jets are so efficient so when you get high enough it was no problem even for a 120ton SSTO to the moon and back with VTOL capability. But to me they would make sens if they where 1ton instead. Especially sens there popular on smaller SSTO's.