RuBisCO

Well being a little bit competitive I have to demand I be moved up the board for I have successfully gotten my Xylol A to lift 41.7 tons of cargo out of a total (stock engineer's report) weight of 161.6 tons, that is 25.80%. I had made a mistake adding up the cargo mass, when I remove the cargo the craft weight is 119.9 tons, so it is 41.7 tons, not 41.825. To lift 42.7 tons: start with one pair of jet fuel tanks empty, close bays on the runway for good luck or what ever, take off at 30° to 10 km, then at 0° until air speed exceeds 600 m/s then 20° to apogee and then circularize. I think I might be able to put in an extra ton but pretty sure I won't have enough fuel for return then. Also I have made a Xylol D with extended cargo bay which has lifted 36 tons. Originally the game lacked space plane parts, they have slowly been added from modders and because of community demand.

Very well: Also here is an enlarged cargo bay version with 25% longer cargo bay. Xylol D: Extended cargo bay and added 4th wheel. While taking off retract 4th wheel after 100 m/s via custom07. Can still lift 36 tons if all tanks are full. Take off like a C. http://www./download/haf7a76127ya0ca/Xylol+D.zip

My Xylol has half the weight and 4/5 the cargo capacity. I eventually choose a combination of both Turbo-Rams and Rapiers, the turbo-rams are to provide extra power at lower altitudes and the rapiers to provide higher performance at high altitudes and replace the weight of a dedicated rocket engine. An all Rapier design simply does not perform as well and always requires diving from 12 km down to 9 km to get beyond 600 m/s to get the speed needed for the rapiers to perform, ultimately more fuel is needed to make it to orbit. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/123442-Xylol-SSTO-All-stock-space-plane-that-can-lift-36-tons-cargo-to-orbit

I made this primarily to make a "pretty" cargo carrying fully reusable all stock ssto. It is proven to lift 59 tons of cargo to orbit. Latest version for 1.0.3/4 is the Xylol 5: http://www./download/xn6a39krn9n265h/Xylol+5.zip Xylol 5A: Comes with RCS and inside bay medium docking port. For bringing cargo to a spacestation Xylol 5B: No RCS, no medium docking port. For bringing cargo to orbit. There are two version of each one with MechJeb, one without. --- Latest version for 1.0.2 is the Xylol 4: http://www./download/pwwqzdctjb9obeb/Xylol+4+%26+RB.zip Weight balance has been improved by shifting the center of the fuselage back making it easier to control manually even when fully loaded. Fewer and better placed struts, many of which hidden inside the wings. Xylol 4A: Comes with RCS and inside bay medium docking port. For bringing cargo to a spacestation Xylol 4B: No RCS, no medium docking port. For bringing cargo to orbit. Xylol RB: based on Xylol 3 and thoroughbred simply to achieve 32.14% cargo mass to orbit, not good for anything really. --- The Xylol 3: http://www./download/8g6o128l5lxa736/Xylol+3.zip Xylol 3RB: proven to lift 48.9 t or 29.02% cargo mass fraction. Design simply for the Stock Payload Fraction Challenge: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/116729-Stock-Payload-Fraction-Challenge-1-0-2-Edition?p=1994955&viewfull=1#post1994955 Xylol 3: Proven to lift 36 tons with plenty of fuel to spare. Comes with external docking port, RCS, air brakes and 4th wheel. Flight regime is in the descriptions.

Thank you, I do have some questions though: 1. Do the pre-coolers do anything? I just have them on their because I *think* they do something, could they be replaced by any other kind of intake? I went with ram air intakes over the cones because they of aesthetics and lighter weight, the cones can be shut off and that means less drag, but when I shut off the pre-cooler intakes early in the flight profile I notice no benefit. So I don't know if the drag is appreciable. 2. Every strut is sacred? I strutted the wings to reduce deformation and without them... your going to have a bad day, but how do stuts work exactly? I figure they need to attach parts to parts that are not directly attached together. That rear chime is the linch pin though, but it does not need to be strut-ed to the inner engines, here in Xylol SSTO A I prettied the struts even more and have it connected the wing parts, it performs the same. 3. Why do RCS cause a lot of drag? It seems to be depended on part count and not just RCS type, here in Xylol SSTO B I minimized RCS thusters to what is absolutely needed for travel along every dimension, even so I see an appreciable performance loss and do not recommend lifting more then 27 tons with it. 4. How do cargo bay work? The code seems a bit wishy-washy. Xylol SSTO B I have to launch with cargo bays open, then close them before take off to make sure the RCS tanks and docking ports are counted as inside the cargo bay and thus drag is negated, if not it won't even make orbit with 27 tons. http://www./download/8umhcpp8wg4n457/Xylol_SSTO_A&B.zip

The Xylol SSTO was designed primarily to be pretty, a "clean" all stock Fully Reusable SSTO. Despite this it can lift 36 tons of cargo to an ~80 km equatorial orbit. Weighing on the pad at 155.9 according to stock engineer's report (155.06 according to MJ) that gives it a cargo to orbit capacity or 23.09% (23.22% according the MJ). To reach orbit with 36 tons of cargo: Launch with one pair of jet fuel tanks empty. Take off at 25° to 5 km (Do not exceed 25° during take off), then 15° to 10 km (should be exceeding 500 m/s at 10 km), then 20° to apogee, coast at 10° and circularize at apogee. Turn off jet engines when they flame out (custom01), close pre-cooler intakes (custom06) when Rapier engines switch to rocket mode. For landing I used MJ to see a predicted landing spot. Retro burn at antipolar to the spaceport achieving a periapsis of 41.6 ± 0.1 km with the predicted landing spot at the space port. Re-enter at at a 30° angle until the spot moves 100-30 km before the space port then level off to 10° until the spot returns to the spaceport, repeat until reaching 1500 m/s at which point you can't do an angle of attack that steep. Continue at 10° until reaching 500 m/s, then dive at -45° until below 10 km, then turn around if overshot spaceport or simply level off at 3 km. Turn on Turbo Ramjet engines to ~66% until close to spaceport, then to 33% while landing such that landing speed is between 100-150 m/s. My contender is provided below as is with two locked X200-32 tanks as dummy cargo mass. The rules don't say the cargo needs to be one mass, but it can launch with one Jumbo-64 instead. http://www./download/xrf7naptx143p27/Xylol_SSTO.zip

Replacing half of the jets with Rapiers improves performance a little. The Rapiers are never used in Rocket mode though.

117.26 ton wet mass but no cargo, 64.767 tons dry mass. At least 13.2% cargo mass to orbit. The craft file should give you all you need.

Not much of a pilot. Prefer to use the rockets, but after some success with a small passenger shuttle and passenger SSTO for cycling kerbals and leveling them up, I tried to make a cargo carrying SSTO. It worked on the second try with an 8 Jet engines instead of 6. It can lift 18 tons (2 locked X200-16 tanks) to 80 km, with plenty of fuel to spare. To Orbit: Take off at 20° to 10 km, then 15° until velocity no longer increases, start rocket engine, go back to 20°, turn off jet engines once they give out (custom 2), turn off air intakes (custom 1), continue until apogee of 81 km is reached, coast at 10° until above 70 km, circularize. To Land: Retroburn at ~90° past spaceport. I used Mechjeb to see predicted landing spot, have it at 550~575 km before spaceport, put all fuel in furthest forward tank, balance oxidizer or dump almost all of it via fuel transfer mod (keep some for fuel cells). Maintain 10° angle during re-entry until 600 m/s, dive as low as -45° angle to 5 km, turn on engines to 1/3 thrust, level off at 3 km, cut engines before landing to glide in at 50~100 m/s. Any improvements recommended? http://www./download/4szgm0co5wv97kq/Large_Cargo_SSTO_1.craft.zip

It would be nice if the flaps settings (yaw, pitch, role) could be activated or deactivate with customs keys so that flaps could be "turned off/on" to provide nominal flight controls at different altitudes and airspeed. Right now in order to keep some of my planes stable I need to deactivate and active flaps manually with the mouse, which is a headache is there are multiple flaps and if the plane is losing stability and wagging around.

I'm having a problem with 2.5.1: sometimes it refuses to do burns, it just sits there and does not auto-warp or burn, it does aim at the maneuver node.

Well it works off fuel cells. The ISRU converts many times more ore to fuel then is consumed to power it all, not very realistic but it does make for interesting game play dynamics: now in order to get any thing done in deep space (lab research) will require mining to power it.

Question: can fuel cells power a miner, extracting and converting ore too fuel faster then it burns it? I'll test that and find out.

Well I don't think that is very realistic but that not really the big problem: The game lacks any viable power source out their other then RTGs and RTGs can't really cut it for the power demands of mining and and research labs.

I notice that I was not getting the solar power I got in previous version out in Jool space. So I checked with a solar escape probe, turns out solar power now follows the inverse square law. So for example the KSP wiki still states that out at Jool you receive 50% the power you receive at kerbin, but now it is 3-4% This changes game play radically! Solar power is virtually useless out beyond Duna. How is laythe warm enough to be wet?

Another problem I have found while roving is that sometimes the MJ speedometer goes haywire and reports erroneous speeds and the only fix is to top, save and reload.

I have a weird problem that I suspect is mechjeb related. Brakes stop working on my rovers after while, even if I turn rover autopilot off (turn of stability control of course) the brakes simply fail to respond, anyone experience this?

I like my ships clean with as few parts as possible because my computer can't handle to many parts (or maybe it is a linux thing) http://www./download/9fabbn91qq3xveb/Passanger+Shuttle.zip

So I wanted to make a passenger shuttle, all rocket. Of course the wings and all cause Space Shuttle making to be tricky, needing well vectored thrust and precisely weight balanced parts... this gets the job done without much of that, I'm surprised how well it works actually. Inner solids are at 45% thrust outer is at 90%. 80 km orbit can be achieved with booster giving out before reaching apoptosis and with 400-650 m/s of fuel left (latter if using mechjeb at 50% shape, 0.5 km turn start altitude, 70 km turn stop altitude). Price to launch is 65314 and price recovered is 31000-31500. Of course slapping a bunch of solids on a plane may sound stupid and dangerous to us but it works gloriously in the Kerbal world. An even crazier 12 booster version, 3 layers of booster with 4 stages can do polar orbits at 125 km with 700-900 m/s of fuel left (same mechjeb settings but to 125 km instead of 80, and 90° instead of 0°). The inner booster are at 34% thrust, second layer is at 67% and outer layer is at 100%. Fuel needs to be balanced between front and back tank before landing (just put all fuel in the front tank and all oxidizer in the back), ignore the little base plate fuel tank. No balancing is required for launch though. If anyone wants the craft files I'll post them, but it is pretty simple to make.

Oh I have been able to us it on Pol too (back in like 0.22 with kethane), also on the Mun with a research truck and a larger port, but yes, lining up the docking ports perfectly is tricky and flat terrian makes it elementry, but I have 8 tiny tanks attach to each other to make the pilli: there is a degree of flexiability in that.

I use a "fuel truck" with wheels to dock to the mining station then drive off a few km to a lander. I used the smallest docking port and put it on a pilli off to the side to make way for a drill for harvesting experiments. Make sure the two docking ports are are the right height in testing. Actually I have not needed to use it for fuel transfering yet, Minmus gravity is so low that I can dock Jumbo size fuel shuttles right to the top of the minning station. Anyways my minning station was peforming horrible, took 1 year just to fill 3 jumbos, many suggested heat sinks of some kind, requiring redesign, but others suggested engineers, so I added hab module and put in engineers and that increased performance greatly.

I did skiping with FAR and 10X Kerbin, just set the Pod CoM off center 0.1 to 0.15, then let aerodynamic forces stabilize it. Using the 1.0 Stock phyics the pods don't even seem controllable unless SAS is on, aerodynamically unstable.

With the addition of 3 engineers, 1 having a star and the other two newbes, performance increases dramatically. With just one drill I am able to get ~75/s at 1000X on Minmus, and able to get 1/4-1/2 the conversion rates I got Kerbin.

So on Kerbin, on the pad, it manages to extract ore at 0.0397971/s or 75.96/s at 1000X, it can extract and convert at 68.37/s for liquid fuel and 83.57/s for oxidizer at 1000X: in short it works 100 times better on kerbin than on mimus. Ore level is 3.8% Yes it requires you remain focused, it does not work when I go away from it.

Ok so here is my mining station on minmus. Ore concentration is 7.46%. To not get it to overheat I can only run one drill at a time, I have to warp right way to X10k and get at best ~23 units of ore per second, drill is at ~83% overheated. I can run the ISRU as well but only if Ore tanks are empty and the ISRU is sucking off the drills directly, if there is excess ore the ISRU goes to fast and overheats to 100%. Often if a drill or ISRU reaches 100% it become bricked and I have to go into the quicksave and change the extremely tiny numbers for "HeatThrottle" and "avgHeatThrottle" to "1" to unbrick them. I've tried attaching things to "increase heat sink mass" like a mobile harvester/fuel truck, habitat section, and even fuel shuttle atop: no effect. It takes a year to fill 3 Jumbs, which I guess is kind of realistic.