pa1983

Well lots and lots..... I used 384L of the 11/9 ratio of LOX and fuel so the craft would need 400L more Jet fuel or Less LOX. Thing is its a LOT more efficient using Jets. There Practical ISP is like 20000 yes 4 zeros due to the fact that they get there oxidizer from the atmo and not carrying it with it and also the added air moved by jets, about 3/4 of air is cooling air and not used for burning fuel gives jets there efficiency. Turbofans are even more efficient sens they have a fan moving air. So yea I would suggest more fuel less lox. And if you dont need the two LV-30 there is your budget for more jet fuel I can give you more advice one improving efficiency but some people take offense if you do that with out asking them first. But lets just say flying it reminded me of my Old Falcon 1 to Falcon 4 crafts tough my crafts where very inefficient sens I didn't use intake staking so they rarely went faster then 1000m/s on jets and rockets had to be started at 24km altitude. So my old crafts of similar style used a LOT of rocket propellant Btw I added a real wheel and a rear center control surface so I and ASAS could get along Any way here are my pictures and to make it clear to others this is my flight with KissSh0t's SSTO spaceplane.

Well im in orbit. Gona circularize next. Used NV-1 only EDIT: Gonna upload some pics here now.

Well I would not say I dont know how to fly it. But I have not built an ssto like this since my Falcon IV Transport. Im use to aircraft like ascent profiles rather then vertical once with gravity turn since it requires half the number off engines. I shall give it one more try then I need a smoke

Okay I will try that. Just figuring out a ascent profile for it.

Dou you fly vericaly or horizontaly after take 0ff. I could not keep the nose up past 13km and lost altitude. I tryed 45 degree nose up after runway like I normaly do the first 15-16km of climbing. Edit: I both throttle and shut them down. Usually I have 2/3 of them on one action group and the rest on two groups. Gives good balance off control.

Just took off. Tail wheel added. No rockets needed to get off. Btw how do you control the jets? I had to add an action group for them. Edit: found the actiongroup for jets

I have rear wheels mounted higher up to avoid over rotating. Despite limiting rotation it actually improves take off speeds because once you can rotate you have so much lift that you can lift the main wheels and use the tail wheel to stop the rear from hitting the runway. Real jet liners and other aircrafts also have rear wheels or a skid plate to avoid damage from over rotating.

Yea I actually turn around and went down hill first. You can see that. I noticed that when I edited the video I left some of the first attempt where I turned around 180 by activating two of the right jet engines. But for different reasons I hit F9 because I was not happy with the fuel use. Then I got the Crazy I idea to fly over Can that Big SSTO of yours go to other planets to considering it has quite a lot of rocket fuel? Have you tried to coast it up on LV-N only? I think it would be doable for that craft. I level off and cruse at 32-33Km sens the 3:e layer starts at 32km so there you can go the fastest because of the balance between drag and intake air. Once I hit 1900-2050m/s depending on craft I start climbing hard to gain vertical speed asap so I can keep all jets burning for as long as possible before I have to throttle down. Makes a big difference in altitude and speed I can get to before I go LV-N. Last time I hit over 44km altitude on jets due to one of my best ascent profiles so fare. When I started out with my latest craft I was happy to hit 37km with less payload. And that cost me probably 3 times the LOX use and corresponding fuel. I might give your craft a try later and post my results if thats okay? I still find that with more practice I can push my crafts further and further despite me flying them for months.

Yea reentry is cool Seems I posted the wrong video before so a bit boring. But my latest is a mission to Laythe and back with lots of reentry effects. I have fixed the link above so now its the right video.

For some reason I dont have the video and other icons for adding video. Seems that when I edited an old youtube video link with the new video it still linked to the old one. So I have fixed that now and seems to work. Its A NEW video where I go to Laythe not Duna Dont know what they have done to the forums but nothing works so I have to write all the code my self if I want to pass and image etc. Not that I dont know how to do some of that just not yutube clips

The Falcon XIIIC Galaxy STOL delivers a Modular base to Laythe and returns to Kerbin and KSC. 23 min video with lots of reentrys and action EDIT: sorry seems I linked the wrong video. Corrected now I hope. http://youtu.be/ZlEzl5s7ndw

The Falcon XIIIC Galaxy STOL going on its first mission to Laythe to deliver a new Modular Base. Basically its the B version with two jets for STOL instead. Payload was 22.76 tons total. Was one of the hardest missions so fare. Game bugged out a few times and running on fumes had a howl new meaning Landed safe and sound back at KSC after a few attempts. Was hard but perfectly doable. I even made an S turn when aerobraking Video as prof. EDIT: sorry seems I linked the wrong video. Corrected now I hope. http://youtu.be/ZlEzl5s7ndw

The Falcon XIIIC Galaxy STOL going on its first mission to Laythe to deliver a new Modular Base. And Jebediah Kerman is crazy as usual EDIT: sorry seems I linked the wrong video. Corrected now I hope. http://youtu.be/ZlEzl5s7ndw

Why care? Let him play the way he wants.

Its the water pipe on the ground.

Reentry is always the hard part and if it cant make it past the first 3 layers of atmosphere it will be almost impossible to land since it gets more and more unstable the lower you get until speeds drop below 300-400m/s. Also Center of lift is not center of drag like som suggests so intakes should be fare back and closed if placed asymmetrically during reentry. Also having CoM fare back even if CoL is as fare back is not a good thing either. Tends to flip and fly backwards. Try to have CoM close to the center of the fuselage. Thats why I usually never use rear mounted engines any more because its unstable. You can end up with a torque effect where drag and lift on the long nose easily spins the craft up, down or sideways around the heavy rear mounted engines. I usually aim for C.M to be 3/5-1/3 to the rear of the fuselage length.

You can download my series of stable SSTO spaceplanes to get an Idea of how I do it and see if thats somthing you like to try for your crafts. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27196441/SSTOs.zip Latest is the Falcon XIIIB Galaxy STOL and it uses my latest low profile high lift wing. The key to a structurally sound craft is mass distribution. Real aircraft have its engines and fuel in or on the wings. That waths needed in KSP to make it work. I have over 40 ton of just fuel in etch engine naccell and another 11+ ton of engines and other stuff. So its easy 55-60 tons on etch wing still it hardly flexes. Second trick is to mount the wing High or Low so it can be ONE part protruding the fuselage. Mounting the wing dead center tends to stress the fuselage a lot and thats unwanted. Especially if you have any openings in the fuselage. The fact that CoL is lower or higher then CoM is not a real problem. Engines can be mounted to Trust trough Center of Mass any way. This is 204+ tons taking off. That craft can do Loops and sharp 180 turns even. During its development the only thing falling of from high G-turns was the stabilizer but the new one have worked well. But where still talking about flying it acrobatic style fully loaded and one wont realy do that. It has 1 jumbo tank in etch nacelle, 7x 150L jet fuel tanks plus 1x in etch wing, two SAS units and some intakes and RCS tanks. It has a Undercarriage that offers added strength between the wings but also raises the hight of the craft allowing for a proper rotation but it also has rear wheels to reduce the risk of damaging the craft. The belly of the craft extends to the engine nacelles that way wheels can support both fuselage and its payload but also the heavy engine nacelles removing the wing flex on the Runway. Once airborne the wings are loaded by the engine nacelles mass pretty much in etch wings dead center offering minimal flex and since the Fuselage contains few parts other then wings and I-beams and a payload its lighter then the two wings combined minimizing the flex between fuselage and wings. This is what I call the "Mass Distribution Method" because thats what it is. This wings are actually weaker then my older spaceplanes thick flying body's BUT the fact that so little torque is applied to them they can use there strength for maneuvering instead of fighting a heavy fuselage. You have to think of the wing as a dinner plate. If you want to balance it on your finger where do you put your finger? Usually in the Center. Fuel and engines are best placed at the center of lift of the wings. Its an imaginary point in KSP since you can only see total Center of Lift. Since wings tend to be bigger closest to the Fuselage I settle for 1/3 from the fuselage. Thats where my fuel and engines are in there nacelles. Landing gears must also be placed where the crafts is the most heavy so in my case under the engine nacelles and fuselage. As you can see this wings wont need any external struts to keep it together like my older SSTO spaceplanes in that save file like my Falcon X Jumbo did. The Jumbo do incorporate mass distribution but not to that extent since the jumbo tanks still are the heavier once located in the fuselage. Still the Jumbo has the strongest wing but still the one that flexes the most of the two crafts and the one that breaks easiest if you abuse it. I have a construction video in my youtube channel. Link is in my signature. Its a Guide line video not a how to make the perfect craft but rather show some concepts and laying a foundation one can build on. It mixes a few of my concepts. Most of my crafts are posted in the K-prize thread if your interested in future progress. You can also find a video of the Falcon XIII Galaxy STOL (not the new B version) in my youtub channel if you want to see how it flies. Its not nearly as refined as the B version but I find it easier to make a craft with potential then perfect it as one gets familiar with it. Video of the B version is planed.

Easiest way to maintain CoM is avoiding stacking and only have fuel tanks in parallel. That way if CoM is in the center of the fuel tank CoM will never move. Second option is on tank in the nose and one in the rear. Preferably same typ of tanks. Then drain them equaly. A small tank in ghe center can be used for automatic fuel balancing. You can combine both concepts for a perfectly balanced craft at all times. 3:e option is to drain fhe fuel in such a way that when your high up in the ascent profile CoM have moved over to CoL and in line with CoT. That way on can have jet fuel further forward an have CoM higher the CoT but one must balance the rigth amount of fuel for fhe intended fligth profile. One can also add a 5-10 degree angle on engines to compensate. I did that on the NV-1 to compensate for the fact that the ssto was basicly a Concord.

The game crashed a few times to say the least. Ever since 0.21 it crashes randomly when I exit the in fligth menu. No other version do that. So yea 0.21 and I don't get along that well. So yea that in combination with the development time I almost gave up during the second test fligth when the craft decided to star desinigrating randomly after a time warp to kerbin.

I run stock. I only had mechjeb installed a few times when it happened. So it happens any way. Tough not a problem in 0.21 for me so fare. 99.9% I run stock. Clean install and save didnt make a difference in 0.20. Use the windows version under wine in linux. There have been other users reporting it in the K-prize thread to. Its definitely a bug. The ods that people get the same problem from bad hardware, corrupted download etc is small in comparison to the ods of it being a simple bug. Back in 0.20 I could repeat this bug reliably.

Interplanetary Travel and Return. Because thats what I do. I mainly go to Duna because its close enogh for testing of spaceplanes due to its atmosphere. After that I go to Laythe and back with my spaceplanes when I feel they are ready for such a test. I have built bases, space stations, rovers, spent two continuous week just docking and got good at it. Probably would have to practice docking a bit now If I need to do it. I do it from time to time tough so not like you forget how to but one still gets less proficient. I dont know how good I am. I dont know any one playing KSP IRL. Actually dont know any one playing computer games IRL this days. All my friends are in to cars and such so I tend to play with my own style as a result and not realy compare or be influenced to much by other people so I cant realy say how good or bad I am

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

Physics Delta set to 0.01 in settings.cfg. run my i7 3930k @ 4Ghz. Been plying around with it a 4.4Ghz but no real difference. A stock i7 3770k was just as fast, can turbo to 3.9ghz. I would recomend an i5, 3570k or the new 4670k as the ultimate ksp cpu. No need for many cores or hyper threading so an i5 is optimal. But still I get less then smooth frame rates. Have not messured but probebly 20-25fps @ 0.275x real time. Playable but its slow.

Yea part count is hard too keep down but the k-prize challenge required stock engines and wing. Plus its just fun to see how fare one can go. I don't expect people to actually use the craft. Lag can get quite annoying at Duna during some periods. don't know what my fps is but its slow but steady. 20-25 I would estimate but that's just a guess. Its a bit slower then I'd like but its still perfectly flyable. Speed up to 3x they make great youtub videos.

The nose you mean Opening the nose allowed for rear engines and stabilizer to be fitted. With out that it would never been possible to get the performance. Needed.