Jarin

Requires unrestricted offset? Or is there a trick to that engine positioning that I'm missing? Regardless, looks good.

Well, with KER, you can give yourself all the tools you need for a smooth landing. Follow your retrograde marker on approach, and then just adjust your throttle with an eye on your vertical velocity. Also useful is KER's TWR readout, so you can just keep bumping it above and below TWR 1 as needed to adjust final decent. Alternately, you're already using mods, what do you think of using landing assist like Throttle Controlled Avionics? There might be a simpler mod out there too, since TCA is a pretty beefy control package. What parts of landing specifically do you have trouble with? (also quicksave is your friend)

Probes out of contact can always use SAS hold, whether a Kerbal is onboard or not. You can't steer, and you can only point in directions that the probe is capable of aligning to, so more advanced probes are more maneuverable due to better programming (and only the most advanced capable of holding maneuver nodes). You can also only operate at max throttle or no throttle. So no fine control in anything.

Haven't managed a munar Mk2 return myself. Not a direct one, anyway. The cockpit always goes. Besides, airbraking back down to LKO means I can properly aim my descent for KSC. They got nerfed, but I wouldn't call them useless at high speeds. They just have to be used a bit differently. They still add a fair bit of drag even if obscured from the re-entry plasma by the body of your craft, i.e. dorsal airbrakes on a spaceplane pitched up at least a few degrees. You may need to pulse them a bit, but they don't explode instantly like some parts. You have plenty of warning to let off the brakes before the temp gauges top out. With proper balance (CoP/CoL near CoM) so I can keep a moderate pitch on re-entry, I regularly have the brakes out all the way down, and they make a reasonable difference, getting out of the "burn zone" earlier.

You're aiming for the Flats, right? Landing on Minmus is one of the easiest maneuvers in the game.

I can anecdotally confirm that the "antenna spike" design for Mk2 cockpits still work to reduce heating, if not drag. It can even be used sacrificially, giving you a fair bit more potential acceleration.

The numbers back this up, but in practice, I've had no more trouble with Mk1 spaceplane re-entry than Mk2. It's never the hull parts that are in danger, just control. Tons of body heat tolerance doesn't help much if everything else burns off. I do a fairly sharp deorbit starting at the edge of the western continent and ending right on KSC, and it drops me just east of the mountains for an easy flight home. Maybe because I always radiate my heat, so I'm not carrying any ascent heat on my return?

I was going to put this in suggestions, but realized I really didn't have a strong enough grasp of the situation to suggest intelligently, so I'll start a discussion instead. But basically my issue is something I've seen brought up a number of times, but never directly addressed (I'm sure it has been discussed somewhere before, but my search only found pre-1.0 discussions). In the context of supersonic aircraft, it seems like Mk1 parts are superior to Mk2 in almost every respect. Whta do you get for using Mk2? -No extra fuel -Some extra impact durability, but no joint strengthening (same chance of midair unplanned disassembly) -Extra mass -Extra lift that is notably more draggy than just a bit of extra wing with incidence -A cargo bay -Spiffy appearance Those last two points are literally the only reason I have continued to design anything with Mk2 parts. I know I have to be missing something here, but I don't know what. Is this just a weird imbalance? Am making some incorrect assumptions? I really want to like these parts, but it's just so difficult.

Now that I'm getting a better feel for drag mechanics, I really should go back and try to fine-tune my old Mk2 designs. I basically just had a horribly-inefficient satellite lifter, and that was only because I was tired of working without a cargo bay. The thing could barely reach equatorial orbit. It had to punt polar satellites out suborbital. Everything else was cobbled together mk1.

Yeah, since I hate fast-forwarding more than a couple days at a time, I tend to stall out pretty hard, late-game. Interesting design with the nukes. How'd you manage the attachments there?

I'm still flying with the shielded docking port, but I don't know how badly that's costing me now. My old cargo SSTO designs still work though.

I've gotten this weirdness before when I've accidentally managed to mix mirror and radial symmetry in the same craft (it toggles with R I believe). I've never fixed it other than rebuilding nearly every part involved.

This is why I tend to do more of my acceleration low, even with drag losses. I've always had trouble with other ascent profiles. Either I bounce like you were, or I manage to level out and accelerate at 10km but have trouble getting the nose up again without losing a lot of hard-won velocity. I will definitely have to try the small nosecone thing for rapiers, and see what kind of performance boosts I can wring out of it.

Oh god, I found one of my old screenshots and... wow. Talk about strut abuse... I should remake the design with autostruts and see how it handles.

After reducing drag, the next step towards making this a proper cargo craft is increasing carried fuel overall. The tyranny of the Rocket Equation will come into effect if you scale up too much, but enough LF to comfortably reach 1400m/s before the air-breathers cut out will help a lot. That'll be the point you want to tweak for. 1400 on air, then just enough LFO to get where you need to go and back. Extra LF for landing maneuvers as you prefer (I tend high here, since I always want to be able to hit the runway, even if I over or undershoot). Feel free to slip in a third pair of Big-S wings somewhere.

Borrow away. The Archon was the result of shameless theft from @mk1980 and @bewing, so it's tradition. Edit: Also, the above ascent profile is what I use for basically every SSTO I build. All that changes is how long I accelerate at sea level. Less draggy craft go faster, lower, before pitching up.

Here's what I've got on mine:

Edited to give the ascent profile just before you posted. Mostly I'd remove all the non-tank wing parts amidships. If you need pitch authority, move those Big-S tailfins further back and up.

Okay, I loaded up the craft file in my sandbox save and blind-launched from the runway without entering the SPH. Got it into orbit with 300m/s to spare, but dear god did it fight me for every inch. The simplest change I'd make to your design is less wing, and then give the wings you DO have some angle of incidence. Gvies you extra lift without having to angle the entire body so you have less drag. Once you have Big-S parts, you really want to minimize the use of old-style wings as much as possible. Unless you just really want that visual design, in which case you just over-engineer in the name of style. Still angle those wings a degree or two regardless, though. You'll note in the picture above that I was actually short of LF rather than Ox, which is the reverse of what you want. Reducing drag should reduce the LF needed to get to orbit, which should help there, but you might still consider a Mk3 LF tank behind the cockpit. Other minor tweaks: -Move the tailfins out of the way of the engines. -Get a radiator on that thing somewhere. Just one of the small deployable ones is all you need, but trust me, even if no heat bars are showing, that plane is still cooking there in that picture. If you only went one orbit and tried to land at KSC with it, you'd still have most of that internal heat and it would burn hard on the way down. Non-tweak commentary: I love the landing gear design. Even if it bounces awkwardly on the runway, it's got style. Edit: Crud, I almost forgot to actually tell you the flight profile that got to orbit. Just run flat and level after take-off until you're in the 500-600m/s range, so your rapiers are at full thrust, before starting to climb. Then just keep yourself at about a 10-15 degree climb. You should continue accelerating all the way up, hitting 1300~ish before the engines start winding down. Adjust your climb rate accordingly. Watch that spedometer, and the instant the m/s stops climbing due to altitude, flip the engines. Then just set SAS to follow prograde until AP is in space.

Your design looks vaguely similar to my old Archon series that made up the backbone of my 1.1.3 space program. I just got a similar craft flying in my 1.2 plane-only career, so I know the design is still solid. It's running on 8 rapiers like yours, so I'll give this a shot to see if it's flight profile or drag that's causing the trouble.

My preferred method is to determine the bare minimum required lift for a base to build itself. Minimum life support, possibly even mostly-unmanned. Just the components required to go from drilling to manufacturing. I've actually gone with just landing manufacturing, and then bulk-lifting construction materials to build with, and building out my drilling infrastructure from that. Depends on what your fleet looks like and how easy it is to lift supplies to Minmus vs. pre-constructed base parts. I went with the latter since it was easy to get heavy 2.5m part containers to orbit via cargo SSTO.

Current career status: Got a contract to test the Rapier on escape velocity from Minmus. Yeeah, I think I'll just accept that and put it on the back-burner for a bit. Contractor: "Are you sure you're testing that engine for us?" Jeb: "Yep! This LKO cargo carrier is totally headed for Minmus. I'm sure it'll get there this time!"

I might still. I've got enough screenshots to post mine, even if it's not done yet. I'm not sure if it's something that fits the normal challenge format, though. What's the finish condition? Completed tech tree? Bonuses for worlds reached? Mission scores for 100% reusability?

Now that would be strange. I'm almost positive in actual use that Junos are basically useless past 8km, while Wheesleys keep running much higher. That could be an issue of intakes, though. With a 1/1 ratio of mk0 intakes, the Junos actually flame out below 10km. I wonder if they'd live up to their "better than Wheesley" potential if given more air... ... oh god, not the return of airhogging, I thought we'd left that behind. <.< I assume KER is using the engine's "optimal" numbers, which take a bit of speed to work up to.

Yeah, same issue. Not enough air to feed the engines when stationary so you're not even getting a third of their full thrust. A kicker engine or just taking off horizontally, first (anything to get the intake air flowing), and you'd get up to that TWR.