capi3101

About where is your takeoff speed, and about how high up are you/what's your speed when your RAPIERs switch over to closed cycle mode? I have my own set of design standards that I used to use for pre-1.0 FAR (and pre-1.0 stock for that matter); I don't know if the old FAR standards apply yet to 1.0 or not but given that the drag model is now similar, I imagine they could be applicable. You've got an eighteen tonne payload in your screenie - from that I gather the unloaded weight of the plane is around eighty tonnes, right? In old FAR, I'd have planned for a payload fraction of 15% (about the same you'd see from the SR-71 or Concorde), so for eighteen tonne payload, I'd have planned to build a 18/0.15 = 120 tonne plane. Then with RAPIERs for engines, I'd have planned for 9.5 tonnes per RAPIER and round up - 13 RAPIERs. Lastly I'd have planned for 40 units of Oxidizer and an equal amount of Liquid Fuel per tonne - 120 tonnes * 40 = 4800 units. I'd have then built a main fuselage designed to handle the payload, distributed the fuel in a "fuel fuselage" along the sides, and then used a bunch of equations to try and guess a "best fit" wing geometry that would give me low wing loading and a moderate aspect ratio - the details of that aren't terribly important. For the orange tank - double all those numbers... With this design, since your plane is eighty tonnes in the SPH, I'd expect it to lift not much more than twelve tonnes (80 * 0.15 = 12) of payload. I'm guessing you've got an excess of thrust leading to excess drag at altitude, and not enough fuel to lift the kinds of payloads you want to lift with the plane. Caveat: In all my FAR testing, I never got a plane into orbit with a payload of more than six tonnes, though I was in the initial stages of planning to lift an orange tank to orbit immediately prior to the 1.0 release. So take my advice with a grain of salt. I did, however, get an orange tank to orbit intact with the old stock aero...

Argh. Well, it was a good two weeks...guess I get to go back to the drudgery of ATM......

Spent the day hunting for mod updates. Had to go to bed early, so no KSP for me today. Still trying to figure out how/if I'm going to pull my career program out of hock after that hiring spree I went on yesterday...

Sounds like a pitch authority issue. Can we see an screenie of one of the planes with which you are having issues please? Side profile in the SPH with the CoM and CoL markers turned on would be most helpful. I'm wagering that your pitching surfaces are either too small, too close to the CoM to be effective and/or in-line with the main wing (which reduces their effectiveness).

Quick question, largely because I haven't played 1.0 long enough to figure it out for myself yet - how do you set up Elevons to behave as flaps/spoilers in 1.0? I know you could do that sort of thing in FAR with action groups, but you had to tell the part you wanted it to behave as a flap or spoiler first; there doesn't seem to be that sort of thing yet. Should probably mention I haven't upgraded my SPH past Level 1 just yet. I have built a couple of bush-planes for parts testing low in the tech tree, and I too find I'm coming over the runway way too fast.

Perikeet? Norwegian Blue parrot pining for the fjords?

You can generally get going that fast by getting into orbit; it's tricky with the early tech but doable. Definitely helps if you watch your ascent profile. I'd go into details but I need to get somewhere right now; if I have time I'll edit this post later with something quite a bit more useful to you. EDIT: Why not go about editing something at 2:30 in the morning, right? Alright - so the structure of the tech tree changed in 1.0 and the folks that maintain the wiki haven't gotten around to updating that data yet, I'm going off of memory here and as I mentioned it's 2:30 AM where I'm at and haven't had much sleep, so take this advice with a grain of salt. You can build an orbit-capable craft pretty early on. I don't know if the old "exploding SRB staging" trick still works or not; even if it does, with the new stock aero you want to chute for a stage TWR of about 1.2-1.3 to keep drag from building up. I personally built up some tech before reaching orbit, gaining access to stack decouplers, FL-T200 fuel tanks and the LV-T45 "Swivel" engine. Most folks have observed that LKO takes about 3500-4000 m/s of delta-v now, depending on how much you muck it up on the ascent. Couldn't say how many SRBs that equates to; I know that with just a small chute, command pod and decoupler you need about 11 FL-T200 tanks to make orbit with a single LV-T45. The launch profile now goes something like this: 1) Right after launch, turn to 80 degrees elevation on course 090. 2) At about 5,000 meters, begin a slow pitching maneuver downwards, maintaining course 090. Keep your heading within 10 degrees of prograde; ideally you're at 45 degrees somewhere around 15k. 3) At that point, look at your time to apoapsis. When you get to 40 seconds to Ap, you can reduce your elevation to 20 degrees. At 50 seconds to Ap, reduce to 10 degrees; for a minute or more, fly along the horizon. 4) Since you're going for a speed record, you just have to keep on burning; you don't actually have to go into orbit. Were you headed to orbit, you'd stop your burn once your Ap was where you wanted it (the lower the better in this case since you won't have a lot of extra delta-V to blow), setup a maneuver node at Ap to raise the Pe and make the burn when the time comes. Once you're out of atmo, the game is the same ol' KSP. Well, hopefully that's helpful to you. Best of luck.

I think y'all might've figured this one out already - to be sure, can somebody post a screenie of the unmodified rocket in the VAB with the CoM highlight turned on? Could simply be a case of the CoM going too far aft during flight (the old "throw a dart backwards" problem).

3500-4000 m/s is generally what folks have been getting; your observations fall in the same range. That's also consistent with pre-1.0 FAR's delta-V requirement for LKO; the new aero is fairly similar.

I did a switchover to FAR a couple of months ago; the new aero is a lot like FAR, as you've already observed. You might be able to learn out of my own shenanigans. For rockets - aim for a 1.2 stage TWR, and plan for about 3500 m/s of delta-V. In my experience, this usually translates to "build a rocket like you did before, but add nosecones and fins". The extra mass of the aero stuff will bring a 4500 delta-V rocket down to 3500 pretty efficiently. For planes - not all of the mods I use have been updated yet...

Spent the day doing parts testing and tourist missions - one of my tourists got to be part of history as Jeb made orbit around Kerbin. Made a boatload of cash and promptly blew it all by not realizing it costs money to hire Kerbals now. I was going to use that dough to upgrade the VAB, dammit... Val blew a wing off of a bush plane as well, but she survived. Anybody else having problems getting their planes slowed down enough to come to a stop in the early stages of the tech tree?

Took a heat shield down a couple of notches last night - by which I mean I had 198 out of 200 left at the end. That was for a sub-orbital flight that didn't make orbit. Not sure what would've happened without the shield; don't know if I actually needed to haul it around or not.

Haven't got FAR for 1.0 yet (because to my knowledge it doesn't exist for 1.0 yet); mainly just bumping the thread so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. I did try out the new version yesterday with no mods installed except for KER (and I'm not convinced it's working properly; I'd get lower TWR readings on the pad than I did in the VAB). Got up to the 45 point tier before the end of the night and unlocked the general aviation parts, enough to do mid-air parts testing and maybe a few tourist contracts. Based on y'all's observations so far, how close is the new aero model to NEAR/FAR? Did build a general aviation plane last night to do a radial decoupler mid-air test. Let's just say I've gotten a bit used to having airbrakes, and I haven't unlocked the dedicated airbrake parts yet. Flight was successful - I just wound up coming to a stop well past the end of the gravel strip that passes itself off for a runway...

I started a new career game in 1.0, after installing and ensuring that the vast majority of my mods were not yet ready for it. Flew with KER alone. Mainly was flying derpsticks for early science - got out of atmo but didn't quite make orbit. Advanced up to the 45 point tier and unlocked the rudimentary general aviation parts, enough to do a few mid-air parts tests. Jeb flew up in a simple little plane that utilized three FL-T200 tanks drained of oxidizer for fuel, with Wing Connector Bs for wings, some elevon 1s for ailerons and Delta Deluxe winglets for a tail and fin, all to do a radial decoupler test. Plane flew remarkably well for something I couldn't balance with RCS Build Aid, couldn't check air distribution with Intake Build Aid, and couldn't analyze with FAR. Coming in for landing on the Level 1 runway was hairy; by all rights I should've come around and tried again, but it was getting late. Jeb didn't get enough speed down - he touched down and landed okay on those little bush-plane wheels but it was on the grass to the north side of the runway, and he traveled quite some distance past the far end of the runway before the plane came to a stop. I'm hoping to get those new airbrake parts accessed soon. I've also heard rumors of there being flaps and spoilers in the new stock aero; haven't figured out how to utilize those just yet. I gotta say of the new features in 1.0, the one I like best is the little engineer feature that reminds you to drain the monoprop out of the pods if you're not going to be using it. I have noted that the game slows down when terrain is in view; that's a feature I had hoped would've gone away with the release version. Oh well.

From the early reviews, it sounds like learning how to work with FAR was a good decision...bad news is I had a rocket fail to make orbit yesterday. My own fault, though - it had a short, fat stock-origin asparagus booster that I just didn't feel like re-designing aside from adding an oversized fairing, clipping on some fins and adding some (undersized) nose cones. Furthest I made it was about 14k up; damn thing flipped over on itself each time. By which I mean I'd have it at 45 degrees on course 090 and it'd suddenly tilt up (back towards vertical, then spinning end-over-end out of control). CoM too close to the engines - lawn dart behavior. It's what I get for being lazy. Sounds like I could've stood to learn DRE too...

Alright - did some design tweaks last night, gunning for relatively low wing-loading (0.3 t/m^2) and moderate wing aspect ratio (~3.5:1). I was also wanting to see what 25% of the wing area for the tail looked like with a relatively short aspect ratio (wound up going 3:1) and 10% of the wing area for the fin. Came up with this, the Phoenix 7c: Flew pretty well - takeoff speed was low, around 95 m/s, and yes it did have issues at 30k with getting above Mach 4. FAR greenlit everything except Nß at 30/4 and that was unstable, but the plane flew straight and true the whole time. Didn't even oscillate much until I got up above 20k and began leveling out to gain speed. Had about 18% rocket fuel reserve after orbital insertion. Same 6.1 tonne probe the 7b took to orbit. I'd have SPH screenies for y'all, but the game crashed on me prior to the actual flight and LoadOnDemand didn't want to work right away after I fired the game back up, so all my parts were purple and grey until about midway through the flight... I'm thinking I probably could stand to up the wing loading a hair - the Concorde, Tu-144 and SR-71 had loadings up around 0.45-0.5 or thereabouts. 25% also seems a bit much for the tail still but it's hard to judge. I might try this design again as a tail-less delta with canards just to see what that's like. 10% definitely seems to be too much for the fin (and yet I've got a yaw instability, which in general you're supposed to correct with more fin, right?). I'm guessing the fin root chord needs to be longer than I've got it so I don't need so much span-wise, but then I run into the issue of insufficient mounting surface for where I've got it; I've already got issues with the design there as is. I've also noted that the fins on the SR-71, Concorde and Concordski are maybe 1.5 times the height of the fuselage and the fin tip chord is maybe half to two-thirds the length of the fin root. Shorter aspect ratio there too. I need to figure out a good way to build a cranked delta wing too; just cuz. One of y'all mentioned I should be looking at fourth-generation fighters and that particular planform is used in a lot of the ones I've looked at. Pretty sure B9 Procedural Wings won't do them (at least not as a single wing piece). No idea if any mod in KSP handles ogival deltas either...

Decided I will stay back from the massive rush of all y'all downloading 1.0 tomorrow and the associated server crash, and modified a FAR plane I've been working on again. Made orbit - haven't tried de-orbit and landing yet, though...

The short answer is internal gyroscopes and the principle of precession; reaction wheels are very much real things. EDIT: Damn - double ninja'd.

Went back through my notes today - I don't know where that 40% tail-plane figure came from...hell, even the damn glider figures said 25%. There's a few more things I'd like to do with the Phoenix (like maybe give it the ability to turn on RCS thrust - right now all it can do is translate because I used the little single squirt ports instead of blocks, and its inherent turning capacity is crappy because at the heart of the thing is an OKTO2), so I'll shorten the span of the tail plane like y'all have been telling me to do and see what that does. I'll try the 25% figure first, see what FAR has to say about it and let y'all look at it. Probably still going to be an all-moving tail (for now anyways). I'm also thinking about moving those Mk1 Fuel Tanks from the front of the fuel fuselage to the back (i.e. just ahead of the engine, changing it from Intake - Mk1 - T400 - T400 - Engine to Intake - T400 - T 400 - Mk1 - Engine); this one's from the other day. Would there be an advantage to doing that y'all think, or am I getting drag on those parts simply because of how things look up there (i.e. if I move that part, will I just start seeing drag on the FL-T400s?)

To be honest, I'm trying to remember where I saw that 40% figure...reddit, maybe. I don't think I actually calculated that anywhere when I was looking at the proportions of RL supersonic planes. It'd be worth another go-through. Nobody's said anything about it being a bad figure... Meantime, tonight I can report success. After taking the time to re-design and re-balance the probe in the VAB, adjust the wing position so that the LV-T45s wouldn't generate torque relative to the DCoM, add RCS ports, push the magic button and re-set up all the action groups, I took the Phoenix 7b to orbit and delivered its payload. Flight was reasonably smooth - plane did pitch down when I switched to the rockets but after a bit it smoothed out. Still had about a 30% rocket fuel reserve when it made orbit - so the design oughta be able to handle heavier payloads than the 6.1 tonne probe I launched this evening. Admittedly, landing took a few attempts, the big thing being that I needed to be way gentler on the controls coming in from orbit. After I figured that out, the jets had more than enough juice to fly the craft the rest of the way to KSC. Keeping my airspeed up while on final was a challenge - and once again I could've stood to be more gentle on the controls as well (had one attempt where I pulled up too hard trying to line up on the runway and jerked myself right into a stall because I lost too much airspeed, and couldn't recover afterwards).

I'm in total agreement with you guys - it's an ugly-ass...I'll say "contraption" instead of "plane". That said, it did its job and it did it well - Mun and back, with a tonne of science, with all parts retrieved and total mission cost only about √1500, the cost of the fuel expended. Still haven't built a replacement for it in FAR; not sure how I'd do it, since the lander won't fit in a cargo bay (not even a Mk3 Cargo Bay - it's that wide across). Looks like you've got yourself a pretty good plane there, OP.

SpaceTiger has a link to a compiled version a few pages back: You just need to put the dll in your GameData directory and you're off to the races.

In my experience it's the steep learning curve (steeper than stock for damn sure) coupled with a lack of real quality tutorials. I've been trying to figure FAR out my own self for the past two months, and I would say I was pretty good at planes in stock before I made the switch. Take this as a modest example: This will fly just fine in stock, but it'll give NEAR and FAR a screaming hemmorage... Anyways, enough thread hijacking - what were we talking about again? If the present stock aero wasn't going away in a few days, I'd recommend DocMoriarty's KSP Spaceplane Construction and Operation Guide as a good place to get ideas. It's largely where I got the numbers I rattled off earlier in this thread Man, that's probably going to be the last time I get to recommend that guide to somebody...

In stock there aren't enough lift generating parts... That is an advantage of NEAR and FAR - your planes will work with fewer parts overall and will look like planes; stock aero lets you be more creative in the design IMHO. But I'll stop there; no need to digress into a discussion of the virtues of each aerodynamic model, especially not with the current stock aero going away in a few days.

It does - I've seen it jump up a fair bit after adding the tail surfaces. Curiously enough, I almost never wind up with the wing area where I've calculated it - case in point. I shoot for 0.3 tonnes/square meter of wing loading; I've got a 42 tonne plane there, so I want 140 square meters of wing area, right? Then it's a 17 and change meter long fuselage; root chord 50% of that (8.5 meters) and tip chord 10% of that (0.85 meters, since I'm using B9 procedural wings I can only adjust in measures of one-eighth of a meter so I set it to 0.825 meters). [root + tip] / 2 * span = area, so 9.325/2 * span = 140, thus span = 30.0268, and each wing needs to be half of that... Dammit, I screwed up the math again. Well, considering last night's pattern, I'm at least being consistent. I think part of my problems at this point is the cruciform tail - I try to build the tailplane so it has x amount of total area (40% of the main wing), but I'm limited on the length of the tail's root chord by the width of the fin at the point where I mount it, and to compensate I've been increasing the span. I might have better luck if I'd just mount the damn things to the fuselage and leave the fin be. That has gotten me into trouble with engines in the past, though. I did take a look at my drag-generating parts last night; I was amazed how much drag I was getting on those Mk1 tanks...that just doesn't seem.......fair. Hopefully that's something that'll be fixed come Monday. I do have an issue with CoM/CoL, admittedly; the plane lacks counterweight up by the nose, so there's a big CoM shift aft once it goes into rocket mode. I have the CoL set as far back as I do so that the plane stay stable as the fuel drains. It probably wouldn't be as pronounced of an issue if I had more up front.