capi3101

Claw, thanks to your most excellent advice, I was able to pilot the Auk VIII to orbit last night with most of the orange tank liquid fuel intact. 45 degrees saved fuel in the long run, and then by cutting out four turbojets and cutting in the rockets I was able to maintain full throttle the whole way up (and because I'd also added a proper number of ram intakes, I didn't have to cut in the rockets until I was up around 2100 m/s). Thank you once again. I've got a docking target up and I'll see how she handles that when I can, and then I get to see if my RCS ballast idea is going to work the way I hope it does. Big problem now is machine lag; the 11 minute flight took about an hour real-time. But I don't know if there's much y'all can do about that...

That's because the turbojet is still a superior engine to the rapier in terms of efficiency. Rapier's one of those parts that helps pretty much just with the part count. 55 tonnes? You oughta be able to lift that with 5-6 turbojets easily. The general rules for spaceplanes as I understand them: One turbojet per 9-12 tonnes payload. This includes what you're wanting to lift plus whatever rockets you plan on bringing along. One set of wings per 6 tonnes of craft. (By which I mean swept wings or delta wings) One Mk2 Fuselage per turbojet (ideally; in practice this can be one Mk1 Fuselage) One ram intake per tonne of aircraft (I've also heard eight intakes per engine; it works out about the same).

Tweaked the Auk VIII again - flew it twice yesterday. First time I ran out of gas and the engines started flaming out too early. Second time, with more intakes added and a change to my ascent profile, I made it. Launched a target vehicle and I'll see how she handles docking tonight.

Well, the stability problems are fixed, so thanks, y'all. Anybody care to take a guess what its next issue is? Going to be adding moar intakes in the near future. Actually, she ran out of gas just after 25000. Admittedly, I knew already that the design was already about one tank short of having what it needed solely from liquid fuel tanks, but I'm beginning to suspect that I may be doing the ascent wrong as well. I usually go 60 degrees to 10,000 (Auk VIII has about ten degrees AOA in the early flight), then back off to 45 degrees up to 20,000, reducing that by five degree increments to keep the ascent rate less than 100 m/s. Above 20,000, I'm usually at 5 degrees picking up speed, still keeping the ascent rate around 10 m/s. When I've got the last set of intakes open, I start throttling back once I get to around 0.07 intake air per engine; I generally avoid flame outs. Rockets get lit when I'm down to one third thrust; I keep the jets running and I still throttle back as needed to prevent flameouts. When I stop accelerating, I kill the jets, open up the throttle, and keep burning until the apoapsis is where I want it. Anything fundamentally wrong with that profile?

I built a spaceplane that delivered three Kerbals to a space station in orbit of the Mun and returned safely. Currently am working on one that will haul a full orange tank into orbit and come back (it's the come back part what's giving me headaches at the moment). Lemme pull up that imgur album real quick. Jouni's got a good idea - it generally will save you some headaches if you separate your landers from the transfer craft. You could build the ships smaller that way. As for the Duna refueling station, there's no real reason why you couldn't use the same design as what you have at Kerbin. You'd just need to build a transfer stage for it. We can hammer that out pretty easily - what's the mass on one of those station pieces? That is two of them docked together, right? I do wonder where your solar panels are on that station, but that's another matter altogether.

Sorry, you ninja'd me; I was responding to ComradeGoat when I posted that. Fix the wing flex by changing the strutting outboard and moving the control surfaces to inboard. Making sure, I need to add a set of struts towards the outboard edge of the wings connecting the ends to one another. It also looks like I need to keep the dorsal and ventral wing control surfaces outboard of the nukes, but move the central surfaces to positions aft of the wing connectors. And then possibly couple that with adjusting the stabilizer / rudder positions. Alright y'all, I'll give it a shot and report what happens.

Thanks. Okay...so I need to go ahead and move the Standard Canards I'm using for vertical stabilizers / rudders further back is what y'all are telling me. I'll give that a shot when I can get a chance and see what happens. Any suggestions on where to put them? Maybe out on the rear outboard dorsal wings? Do y'all think I need moar rudders, or should two do it? Thrust is pretty even coming out of the jets. I didn't think about having lousy yaw authority; makes sense now that y'all mention it, though.

Tweaked the Auk VIII - put in a ballasting system involving big RCS tanks so she'd stay stable after delivering her payload when it came time to land. Thought myself brilliant. Still had to make moar tweaks so she'd take off. Now she doesn't want to fly straight...

Alrighty guys...I'm up to the Auk VIII now: And here's the craft file. Cargo delivery system, obviously - designed to haul up one orange tank worth of fuel plus one large RCS tank worth of fuel (in the cylinder tanks). Jets on 1, Nukes on 2, Intakes on 3-5, Panels on 9. The forward RCS tank has been deliberately left empty - the plan is to use the back RCS fuel for docking purposes. After delivering her payload she's tail heavy, so the fuel in the back RCS tank gets transferred into the front RCS tank and proper balance for flight is restored when she comes into land. I've checked the fuel balancing with the tweakables in all flight modes and she should remain stable the entire way. So on to my problem - I can get her into the air about one out of every three takeoff attempts - the other times, she suddenly pulls to one side and usually lithobrakes. When she does fly, she doesn't want to fly straight. I had originally suspected too much weight on the landing gear / wheel-barrowing going on, but as I'm seeing the behavior in flight too, that leads me to believe there's a more fundamental flaw with the design that I've repeatedly overlooked. Since this is starting to aggravate me, I figured I'd toss it over to y'all for some general assistance. Maybe the tri-adapters?

Yeah, I myself try not to go too much over if I can at all help it. Those percentages are just what I put down to be conservative for the sake of beginners.

The delta-V map denotes optimal values only, and optimally, you'd use aerobraking to account for some of your delta-V. Let's take the case of LKO to LJO and let's use the newer delta-V map since it's got inclination change values on it: . Red arrows indicate delta-V that can effectively be ignored for incoming aerobraking: so to read it, it's like this: 620 LKO to KSO 180 KSO to Mun Transfer 70 Mun to Minmus Transfer 20 Minmus Transfer to Kerbin Escape 130 Kerbin Escape to Duna Transfer 480 Duna Transfer to Dres Transfer 370 Dres Transfer to Jool Transfer 270 Inclination Change and the rest is free: Total LKO to LJO: 2140 optimal For the reverse: 1880 LJO to Laythe 310 Lathe to Vall 220 Vall to Tylo 180 Tylo to Bop 60 Bop to Pol 160 Pol to Jool Escape 160 Jool Escape to Kerbin Transfer 270 Inclination Burn and the rest is free: Total LJO to LKO: 3,240 optimal Thing about delta-V maps, they aren't accurate all the time. They just show the optimal case, which is fine and dandy for mission planning purposes most of the time. I'd recommend using anywhere from 120-150% of the total required delta-V indicated by a map simply because I have a tendency to screw things up on occasion and it's nice to have a little margin for error. Bigger margin for less experience.

If you're in Career, it won't be unlocked until Fuel Systems on Tier 4. Folks have already said where it is in the sandbox; propulsion tab either way.

Can you show us some screenshots of the designs you're using? We might be able to give you some more definite pointers that way. I've had issues with rovers on steep grade. Downforce does help - if you don't want to use RCS for the task, might I suggest Ion Thrusters? I've not used these myself for downforce purposes but I have seen someone do this (circa 0.20, IIRC) and they reported great success with it. Other than that - build them low, build them wide, add a reaction wheel, drive in docking mode. SAS on except when you're turning. Enclose the critical bits in girders and structural panels (so that when you flip over you're left with the problem of uprighting yourself instead of the problem of having to send a new rover because it 'sploded).

Built another cargo spaceplane (the Auk VIII, naturally). Encountered a new problem - when I go to pitch up (sometimes I don't have to pitch up), it suddenly yaws and then lithobrakes. I suspect too much weight on the back landing gear; what blows is that I have six of the damn things back there. I should take some screenies and ask for help.

Here's another delta-V map; this one's got inclination change values, so I'd recommend using it over the older chart Tank Buddy has posted above. . So to read it... 4500 to Low orbit 680 out to stationary orbit 180 out to Mun orbit 70 to minmus orbit 20 to escape Kerbin 130 to Duna transfer 480 to the Dres transfer 1010 for the inclination change 1140 to get captured by Dres 150 to get to Dres low orbit 430 to land 430 to launch 150 to escape Dres 1140 to transfer back to Kerbin 1010 for the inclination change and the rest is free Total Delta-V for the entire mission: 11,250 m/s That's assuming optimal conditions - you could tack on more for a higher margin of error if you so choose. Since 7020 of that figure is for the flying there and back bit, I'd plan for that part to have anywhere from 8775 to as much as 10,530 m/s of delta-V, especially if you haven't got a lot of experience doing interplanetary transfers.

Good idea. Some possible tweaks - 1) Some points for fastest time. 2) Various events: 4-man bobsled, 2-man bobsled, toboggan, luge.....something about the notion of running down a winding hill at ninety miles per hour with nothing put a sled strapped to your backside sounds very Kerbal....

That's a very small ship. At least I didn't make any cracks about compensating for something...:sticktongue:

Had a beautiful docking maneuver between the Auk VII and its target vehicle, transferred fuel and attempted to land. Damn thing went into a flat spin at 27,000 and never recovered - in my balance testing, I never bothered to drain one of the forward RCS tanks. <facepalm /> With all the spaceplanes landed or crashed, I still needed to get a good number of Kerbals home from various missions. First was a simple landing of the Three Musketeers from Kerbin orbit - in a TARDIS. No problem. Landed just off the runway. Then I had to rescue three whiteshirts from Mun I'd sent there on a Kerbal X expedition. The rescue ship, a refinement of my early Flying Dutchman 7 design, had over 10,000 m/s of delta-V when it made orbit. One nuke so the thrust sucked and there was more than time I about bought it when I finally got to Mun. Finally landed less than 150 meters from the Kerbal X, transferred the crew and went home. So overall a good day. I do wish the Auk VII had worked. Maybe with just a little moar planning - I need to add more intakes to it anyways.

Around 0.21, the drag coefficient of nose cones was reduced, so they should reduce drag. They don't reduce drag enough to account for their mass, IMHO, so as a rule I don't bother with them. The reduced drag is not something you should notice with the vanilla game's drag model - its based on mass instead of cross-section as in RL, which is why a flat surface with a lower mass will produce less drag than one that includes a nosecone in the vanilla game. So if you want the nosecones to count for something, install Ferram Aerospace Research. Me, I don't play with FAR. Yet.

Alright - an entry: the mighty Auk VII!! Taking my score from the final screenie...((2013+2628)/(4220+3960))*100 = (4641/8180)*100=.56736*100 = 56.736. Not a great entry but not bad either. Except I forgot to provide a screenie of the plane on the runway. D'OH!!! Well, I can do that later. Formal entry pending. EDIT: Here we go:

Implemented my plan to get the Auk VII into orbit (replaced the nukes with Aerospikes and saved enough mass to add another Turbojet) and got it into orbit. Little low-res glamor shot there. She arrived with about 2/3 of her fuel payload intact. She has the same mission as the Auk VI - to deliver fuel to orbiting craft - but this time around I checked the CoM/CoL balance for all fuel modes (i.e. with empty tanks), and she should remain balanced (unlike the Auk VI); she also is capable of delivery of moar fuel, I think. I have a docking target in orbit of Kerbin and I'll be testing that aspect out today, hopefully landing as well. Auk VII needs moar intakes - that I know. Now that I know she'll make orbit, I'll have to see about adding them.

Best guess for a rocket - wait until the target craft is about 450,000 to 500,000 meters uprange of KSC before launching. That'll get you within a hundred klicks in my experience, close enough to adjust and make rendezvous within an orbit. Spaceplane - haven't really tried to estimate a "best" range yet. It is a matter of trial and error, and not a little bit affected by how exactly you fly.

Actually, that feature's been around for a few versions - in flight. It's only been with the most recent version that you could lock the tanks in the VAB/SPH. Saved my bacon on the Storax Anacostia mission, and that was around 0.21 IIRC.

Couple of things it could be. Probably lack of strut related. MOAR DETAILS!!

None in the vanilla game other than the aforementioned time warping. You might consider using the TAC Fuel Balancer mod; it can transfer fuel (and other resources) at various rates - as fast as you want or as slow as you want - without the need to time warp.