capi3101

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tech_tree - I figured that might be helpful. Just look for the matching symbol and it'll tell you what the prerequisites are.

After taking a large hammer to the Auk VII, I finally got the damn thing up in the air. She was only going 1700 when the first flame out occurred and the NERVAs I had on it didn't have enough oomph to put it into orbit. I'm thinking it needs another Turbojet and maybe a swapping out for Aerospikes but I need to do the math first.

What I do is set up a maneuver node at apoapsis right when I get to 70,000 (this with the Ap around 100,000 as a rule). I go ahead and pull prograde and then set a little bit of radial as the two apses get close to one another, then continue slow prograde pulls until they're relatively close to one another (that's probably not efficient at all, but it does work). I then split the burn - however long of a burn is indicated, I figure up half of it and begin my burn that many seconds ahead of the node. For short burns, I might multiply the time by three before splitting it, and then pull the burn at 1/3 thrust. I usually wind up with the apses within 500-800 meters of one another, probably more precise than what's absolutely necessary for most cases.

Rockets - I start by defining what I want it to do. I then look at the delta-V map and figure out how much delta-V will be required for each section of the mission. I carefully calculate the mass of the mission payload and equipment, and then run the Rocket Equation backwards to determine how much fuel I need. If it turns out I don't have enough thrust for the resultant weight, I redesign until I'm golden. Spaceplane, same deal. The rules are somewhat different of course - I go with a turbojet per twelve tonnes of plane, a pair of swept wings and a pair of small control surfaces per six tonnes of plane, a Ram intake for every tonne if possible, and a Mk2 Fuselage per turbojet. Interplanetary I like to do in segments. Send up a transfer stage, a supply stage if necessary, and a payload stage then dock them all in orbit. Once again I make sure I've got enough fuel for the job before I head out. That's not HOW you have to do it, but it is helpful for larger payloads. Space Station - easy. You really have to ask yourself why you want a space station. Once you know why, it's like building an interplanetary ship. Depending on where you put it, you might not need so much delta-V. Bases I haven't really delved into yet. They're kinda ill-defined, though; a base is pretty much as you make it. My Mün base has a habitat lander and a bunch of rovers laying around.

I haven't gotten around to it yet. Gimme some time. Sheesh....

The Historical Missions tutorials on the wiki are a bit dated now, but still valid teaching tools. Rocket and Probe Design is slightly less useful, but the Cheat Sheet, Basic Rocket Design and Intermediate Rocket Design tutorials are useful (if, once again, somewhat dated). And if you still have problems, there's always The Drawing Board, which is probably somewhat more up to date and covers a broader range of topics. Note that my suggestions assume you're playing Sandbox. I'm not sure which mode is more useful for learning the game, Career or Sandbox. I'd guess Career, as it forces you to learn how to do things with less useful equipment. On the other hand, most tutorials I've come across assume Sandbox (seeing as how Career has only been around for all of two versions now).

Well, you could do like I'm doing - satellites in orbit of everything in the system, then rovers, then space stations. Then design a spaceplane that can go to any of the stations and get back. There really aren't any limitations as to what you could do - just to what you'd like to do. Girders - One of the most versatile parts in the entire game, IMHO. They allow fuel flow so in the early career game they can sub for Tail Connectors or BZ-52s if you need to attach extra engines to them. They can widen the base of a lander fairly easily (= harder to tip over when you land). They have high impact tolerance, so building a rover chassis with them makes a lot of sense (especially if you combine them with structural panels). Then there's I-beams - attach lander legs to I-beams at the right angle and you can fit any engine underneath a lander (and by any, I mean NERVAs).

Here's a possible bonus setup - points for: 1) Rendezvousing with a target in orbit 2) Dropping off fuel (points for fuel dropped off) 3) Landing, bonus for runways. I suggest this because I and several others have been developing orange tank deliverers of late; my own designs have fallen short, due to the shift in the center of mass that the delivery of fuel causes. I don't necessarily suggest this as a replacement for the original rules, more of an augmentation.

Alright. So I built a docking target for the Auk VI - an empty orange tank, an empty large RCS tank, four empty Mk1 Fuselages probe core, eight OX-STATS, a big batt, two Sr docking ports, two regular docking ports, two jr docking ports - and began rendezvous and docking operations. I did ultimately have to cut into the payload fuel to finish the rendezvous but was able to deliver 48% of the capacity of the big tank and enough fuel for two of the Mk1 fuselages. Problem arose when I went into landing: I never bothered to check to see where the CoM would be when all those tanks had been emptied out. Anybody care to take a guess? Lost control at 10,000 and never was able to recover. I find I'm having the same difficulty with the Auk VII - same notion, full orange tank this time. Empty, the CoM and CoL are nearly on top of one another so I should have good flight characteristics. Full, the CoM is well ahead of the CoL and I've got a big lawn dart. Where's the happy medium there?

Built my docking target for the Auk VI, launched it, performed docking ops. Successfully delivered the fuel load to the target, but I guess I should've checked what off-loading would do to its center of mass while I was still in the hangar. Lost control over it during re-entry and was never able to recover. Decided to try again with the Auk VII. Same problem cropped up - going to try to figure out what I can do about it at this point.

Did nothing yesterday; plan was to build a docking target for the first successful test flight of the Auk VI. Weather's looking bad here, though, so I might get to play a bit more in the next few days.

Wow. Y'all sure are showing me up here. I will say I'm more impressed with m4rt14n's stock craft. Thanks to y'all's help, I successfully redesigned the Auk VI and flew her to orbit last night. Today I'm working on building a docking target for practicing that aspect of her mission. Best I can tell she made it into orbit with a 35% fuel reserve, though it looks like she may have drank some out of the spaceplane fuel resupply tanks. I'll have a full mission report if anybody's interested probably in a day or two.

How bad of a pitch up are you experiencing? My own experience, by the time you have to light the rockets you're at least close to orbital velocity (1900-2000 m/s or so; I start noticing it around 1500). If that's where you're at, there's nothing wrong with your design - what's happening is that Kerbin is rotating underneath you and you're traveling fast enough that your pitch relative to the planet is changing. Nothing you can do about it, unfortunately. Now, if it's happening earlier than that, or you're talking about a serious pitch up (20 degrees instantaneously, for instance), then there may be a problem. To help diagnose it, we'd need to see a picture of your plane.

With much help from the folks here on the forums (most notably numerbois, Claw and Captain Sierra), I managed to get the Auk VI spaceplane redesigned to the point where I was able to fly it into orbit. I set up a primitive runway ILS in the save game in which I built the ship and then proceeded to land an Auk IV I'd launched earlier. She made the runway but tailstruck; lost the nukes. Rest of the plane arrived intact. I blame myself for the damage - had the flare angle too high.

No mods were used for construction; they're all stock parts. I'm running KER, KAC, TAC, Crew Manifest, Protractor, Docking Alignment, and one of the Texture Reduction packs. And the TARDIS mod. Mostly piloting mods - I don't know why it would be messing up. Tips are welcome; I'm golden with rockets but at best I'm an amateur with spaceplanes. Intakes on different action groups...well, it occurred to me that an intake adds drag when it's opened, and if you go open thirty of 'em all up at the same time that's a lot of drag all at once suddenly placed on your craft. I don't know what kind of effect that has on flight characteristics; my understanding up to this point has been that it would cause me to lose velocity and therefore lift. Plus you don't need all that air all at once from my observation - you're generally okay with 0.05 to 0.07 units of IntakeAir per engine at full throttle. It lets me be more gradual about it. I dunno - could be a holdover from rocketry (rockets = stages, spaceplanes = intake events, that sort of thinking).

D'OH!! Missed that. So is there a benefit to using an angled fantail? Hmmm...I was going of off numerobis's formulas for generating how much lift I needed (3 tonnes lifted per Swept Wing/Delta Wing, 1 tonne per Wing Connector/Small Control Surface) with the design. How much more would you suggest? What guidelines do you use? Would there be a benefit to doubling up on the wings (i.e. extend all of the Swept Wings out further with another set of Swept Wings)? How much rudder would you suggest? I also use TAC balancer these days, so I can keep the fuel levels in the jet tanks balanced pretty well during the ascent. Not sure how it'll behave once the supplies (side tanks) are delivered. I've had luck with reducing throttle as the engines approach the point of flameout. There's actually been some discussion on that very subject in another thread this morning.

You can put your intakes on the sides like that? Whoa...I thought they had to face forwards. I also thought angled twin faintails were supposed to be bad. AOA is generally about 15 degrees for my designs - that was true with the Auk IV, though, and that was the one I flew to the Mün and back. Tail authority? Could be it - I'm still more apt to think it's CoL too far back.

^^^ This. Keptin's picture link is particularly helpful.

Here's the Auk VI craft file. Wasn't shooting for an orange tank with it, just half of one. Jets on #1, Rockets on #2, Intakes on #3-6, Solar Panels on #9, the back gear on #0. Should mention that - I've got a set of gear aligned with the center of mass and another set further back to avoid tail strikes. So far the takeoff profile is 1) hit the brake, throttle up and fire up the jets, 2) close the intakes, 3) let off the brakes, 4) fold up the back gear at 80 m/s, 5) attempt to take off after 100 m/s. She will take off before hitting the end of the runway but the design is susceptible to tailstrike (as previously mentioned). Issue: poor pitch authority. Rolls great, yaw is good, pitch sucks. This tends to come up a fair bit with some of my designs; some pointers would be appreciated. And I don't want to hear anything about the intakes - I know it doesn't have enough.

Once I've opened up my intakes and my air starts getting down into the questionable zone (around 0.05-0.07 per engine), I start monitoring thrust levels from the engines. When I start noticing uneven thrust, I throttle back a little bit, and I keep this up until I'm down to about 1/3 thrust or I note that I've stopped accelerating. Only then do I light the rockets. I still keep the jets going at that point and continue to throttle back - at that point, the important thing is that you continue accelerating. Throttling back avoids flame out.

My own attempt did not go well. No screenies, pretty much the design I proposed earlier. She flew, but the pitch authority on the thing was practically non-existent; never did get it to go above 20 degrees and if I let off the S-key she'd immediately head for the horizon. Lawn dart behavior, right? The CoL is too far back? Like I said, I have no screenies of it; I'll see if I can get the .craft file up at least later this morning.

Landed an Auk I from orbit and designed a resupply spaceplane - the Auk VI. Poor pitch authority - she flew but never made it out of the trope.

Nicely done. Took me four permutations of spaceplanes before they finally started doing something remotely useful...

I shoot for 100 meters altitude per kilometer from the end of the runway. Keeping yourself slow gives you time to adjust, generally 100-120 m/s or so is good; fast enough to prevent stalling, slow enough that you have time to make adjustments. Rule of thumb - don't start in on the 100 meters per kilometer until after you're clear of the mountains. Those are maybe 40-50 kilometers or so west of KSC, of course, and you definitely don't want to be at 4000-5000 meters elevation at that point. It does take practice, and it's like landing on the Mün successfully for the first time - one of those awesome milestone achievements.

Nicely done. For future reference: Pecan is right - pitching down to 10 degrees below 20k is going to waste fuel. Here's how I typically handle design: I put my intakes in various action groups, setting them to toggle on and off. I usually set them up so that one intake per engine always stays open and the rest are roughly divided into 3-4 action groups along the #3-6 keys. Jets on #1, Rockets on #2. I usually incorporate an escape system which activates on Backspace and a seperate key for toggling chutes on #0. Solar Panels on #9. On the runway, I throttle up, set the brake and activate the jets. I then close the intakes and let off the brake. Once airborne, I go 60 degrees to 10k (that part's like a rocket flight - fastest way out of the troposphere is as straight up as you can manage), then hit 45 when I reach 10k, down to about 20-25 at 15k. I'll watch my intake air after 10k and open up a set of intakes once the intake air gets to about 0.06 units per engine. I also watch my vertical speed indicator the whole time - I want it between 10-100 m/s; more than that and I lower my pitch, less than that and I raise it. By 25k, I'm usually at the 10-15 degree mark picking up serious horizontal velocity. You don't want your vertical velocity particularly high after 25k - your priority needs to be horizontal. Keep opening intake groups as necessary. When the last group is open, begin monitoring the thrust levels out of your engines, especially if you've got more than one Turbojet. Throttle back to 2/3 when the difference gets particularly high; this will save you from flaming out. Continue to monitor it, though, and be ready to reduce again when another differential shows up. Once you're down to about 1/3 thrust and/or no longer accelerating, kick in the rockets but keep the jets lit - you want to keep them running for as long as you can manage. If you get to the point where you have to kill the jets completely, do so and treat it as a rocket launch from there. Hopefully before that happens you'll have an orbital apopasis and a speed above 2000 m/s. Note that later in the flight (after 1500 m/s or so), you'll need to be adjusting pitch to maintain your desired elevation; this is natural, a function of the planet turning underneath you - don't worry about it. (Typed up that post, got ninja'd and the forums logged me out for some reason; figured I'd post it anyway) Design-wise: I'd recommend Swept Wings over Deltas. They have a better lift to mass ratio. By the same token, a pair of small control surfaces is much preferable to a single large control surface as a rule. Same reason. Still a solid SSTO spaceplane design. Well done.