carazvan

I think it's because the inline reaction wheel and reaction wheel module have torque capability also while the larger one is control only (which now that all probes have SAS capability isn't very useful anymore)

Here's an album of Ant SSTO adventures: Ant SSTO Mission List SSTO Ant (Lander) Tourister - Jeb takes the Ant out to see where he can reach Chapter 1 - To the Mun and back Chapter 2 - To Minmus and back Contribution/Suggestions Rune - thanks for the input; deleting the extra fuel lines from the KSPv0.20 version did fix the problem of uneven fuel burn

Presentation Re-introducing the Ant SSTO for version 0.21 with multiple versions for your needs: (Basic) - Simple flying version to allow for you to tweak it as you wish (Payload) - This version has forward canards moved up to allow for a 2x1t payload to be attached (VTOL) - This version allows for VTOL but be advised it eats up fuel like crazy (Lander) - This version adds landing legs for vertical (rocket type) landings of the SSTO in vacuum Also presenting the: Fuel&Taxi Rover - This craft can move around your Ant SSTOs on/off the runway and can fully refuel them 3 times Action Groups All SSTO Ant Versions 1- toggle turbojet engines 2- toggle nuclear engine 3- toggle air intakes (all) 5- toggle horizontal landing gear 6- toggle ladders (all) 7- toggle docking port SSTO Ant VTOL 4- toggle VTOL engines SSTO Ant (Lander) 4- toggle vertical landing legs SSTO Ant (Payload) 4- stage payload 8- toggle solar panels and comm array (the sample payload provided is 2 long range Ion satellites (~11000deltaV on their own)) Ascent profile suggestion The simplest/most effective way I've found to get these spaceplanes to orbit is to stay around/just above 30k altitude in as level of a profile as possible while gaining speed to 2000+m/s. At that point nose up to 20* and just carefully lower throttle to prevent flame-outs. When jet engines are at less than 30% thrust shut them off, close air intakes and switch to NERVA engine and full power. Download SSTO Ant (Basic) SSTO Ant (Payload) SSTO Ant (VTOL) SSTO Ant (Lander) <- I tend to use this one the most Fuel&Taxi Rover SSTO Ant Pack <- zip file containing all 4 versions & refueling rover

It's also pretty disrespectful to not read what people said for 700 posts and come in here and say that of others ... We were complaining of a bug ... which wasn't working as intended. Proof: Hotfix is out... which btw is the whole point of having alpha/beta testers ... It's NOT to always say oh it's pretty give me some more ... but to say what's broken with a new build, narrow down the problem and then if possible suggest how to fix it.

As one of the people who reported problems would also like to mention that it does indeed now seem to be fixed with 0.21.1 as for the problems I reported here these seem to be the fixes: 1) Ships now hold a heading! (havent tested it yet in space with larger TWR on more unsymetrical craft but that's next test) 2) Control input on 1 axis no longer affects others 3) After inputing control the value still goes to 0 and adjusts from there but the speed at which it adjusts seems much faster now (result was a 20*climb becoming a 15* climb but I can live with that) Would just like to thank C7, Harvester and the rest of Squad for working with us quickly and getting a hotfix patch in under 36 hours

Can we please have both sides of the argument start giving some more constructive feedback; neither: "OMG it's broken" or "it's perfect" are really adding to what we need to find here For everyone who is having issues like me try to narrow them down (for ex: when I have my heading at 45* coming from 30* the rocket moves back to 30* <- this gives something that can actually be tested For those saying everything is ok try to simulate the issues others are facing (same situation) and find reasonable explanations instead of going oh it just works perfectly. (I've seen so many add more reaction wheels posts to people who were pointing out that only 1/5 to 1/4th of the available torque was actually being used by the ASAS) From my tests so far it seems also like ASAS works better for spaceplanes in level flight and Rockets in Vertical so try to get away from those headings when doing examples.

Also here .. having trouble with SAS and it's the steam version

Wait .. so you're telling us everything is fine without having tried it yourself? .... I was getting angry but instead ... lets just say ... NO COMMENT

For me on stock steam install now KSP/Parts/ folder contains 2 things: JetEngine and turboFanEngine each with 3 files in their folders ... is this normal for everyone?

Added a new set of pictures at a lower altitude ... some problems might be amplified at higher altitudes (here it actually looks like the opposite with the 45* climb being worse at lower altitude) ... but I will grant you the level to 20* seems to be a bit better .. maybe only 15* or so instead of 10*

Ok after much testing for me at least I think I have identified the 3 key issues that current 0.21 ASAS has: Problems 1) After setting a course ASAS doesn't always hold it if it's not level flight -it seems like the ASAS is just a little too slow to react 2) Manually inputing direction to ASAS turn both other control directions to 0* - this is likely a bug since it was stated that new ASAS shouldn't interfere with the other axes you were not touching 3) After manual input to a direction in ASAS control moves it to 0 then slowly tries to move it back to a direction to counter - this is especially bad for trying to do gravity turns or pitch adjustments to precise locations Solutions 1) After looking at the inputs I think a 2x adjustment to the input it provides should be enough to stop this from showing up and it shouldn't make for a huge change to fuel use 2) Do what was said where only the axis you touch get changed others keep under ASAS control 3) The 0.20 system isn't great here either to where the needle moves like crazy around the direction once you let go (wobble cause most likely) but maybe instead of starting with 0* as the default search for the ASAS start with the last position of the control input. And an album to show off how problems can arise ... didn't mean for it to be night/day between 0.21 and 0.20 but it does work nicely ... look at the bottom left control surfaces input and at the bottom center for the navball:

Ok so after some more playing around I think the SAS is trying to do the right thing it's just not applying the torque/control it has available quickly enough ... which in space is relatively ok (for holding burn directions as some people mentioned it might not be) but in the air trying to climb in a SSTO is a problem. So I've been thinking of what a solution could be and maybe what we could have is the SAS have 3 separate control levels that are toggled with the following scheme: mild - applies control/torque same as it does now ... this uses less RCS fuel and control surfaces moderate - applies same process but 5-10x control torque vs what it does now ... this would use more fuel but I think it might provide better response especially for high atmo or high pitch flight full - applies full control for imbalances (similar to old SAS) ... this would use full RCS fuel and control surfaces similar to 0.20 system

My last 0.20 mission ... SSTO spaceplane to Duna

I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with ASAS for a while now to get my SSTOs back to flying but the general feel I get with SAS now is like I am flying the plane without it, having to constantly do adjustments. Now the problem that I've been able to see is that yes the ASAS does see the imbalances and tries to overcome them but it does so very very slowly (guessing they did it this way to use less RCS fuel) which is great if you're trying to lessen woble ... but bad if you're trying to hold a direction in atmo. In level flight this seems to be less noticeable but under large angles (aka 45*climb) any touch of the controls makes the plane drop ~20*. If you look in the bottom left you can see that ASAS is 'trying' to hold the direction but only applying the smallest amount possible which doesn't balance out the normal forces up until it gets higher (0.5-1s later) (therefore it takes about 20* for the SAS to actually do it's job of holding the direction) ... As far as the random direction rolls and yawns I'm guessing these were normal turbulence before in 0.20 but the SAS was correctly stopping it early ... now because it's trying to save force/fuel it's not stopping it in time hence the drifts also in space. Now for all people who are saying the new SAS is great ... it does improve on many things, fuel use, ability to use in flight, less wobble etc. but if it can't hold a heading for a SSTO in atmo that's an entire class of vehicles that just became 'manual only' flight.

Here's a run to Duna and back ... it's the 3rd album in Ant SSTO Presentation

Cleaned up and shortened my 1-2-3-4 staged rocket and heres my best attempt with it: 2766 m/s P.S. If you use this staging and just go vertically (hit T and space to stage when needed) ... you get a nice max of 30G on reentry ... ouch

Think your answer really depends on the number of air intakes per engine and TWR your SSTO has. You want to circularize your orbit as high up as possible. The lower you are the lower the terminal speed you can achieve. With 8 air intakes/jet engine I generally go up and hold just above 30k until I gain 2000+ speed then I let the spaceplane slowly pitch up (just 5-10*) and slowly decrease throttle until the thrust of the jets is lower than the thrust of my rocket engine. At that point I close off air intakes and switch over. My record so far is only needing 50deltaV to circularize

Here's my entry for Speed SRB challenge: 2658m/s Used 1-2-3-4 SRB staging P.S. Sorry i moved info screen it up ... it would've been nice to see the 25Gs Jeb, Bill and Bob suffered through; Oh well next try ...

Thanks for the idea Rune I'll have to check that out if it fixes it. The names for my SSTOs are all insect based so far ... hence the Ant here because this was the first payload craft You can also find the smaller Flea, Fly and Mosquito here

SSTO Ant Series Full description & download links in the Ant SSTO presentation

*removing albums to clean up imgur account. v0.20 Ant SSTO download links will remain

*** These are v0.20 craft files. Link to updated Ant SSTO series v0.21 available below *** Ant SSTO v0.21 Presentation Introducing the Ant SSTO with multiple versions for your particular needs: (Basic) - Simple flying version to allow for you to tweak it as you wish (Payload) - This version has forward canards moved up to allow for a 2x1t payload to be attached (VTOL) - This version should allow for vacuum VTOL horizontal landings but still requires some tweaking for VTOL engine placement (Landing) - This version adds landing legs for vertical (rocket type) landings of the SSTO in vacuum (Docking/Landing) - This version adds RCS and a forward docking port to the lander version IMPORTANT - Known problem -before activating nuclear engine must turn off fuel crossfeed for central Mk2 fuselage (for whatever reason engine decides to burn fuel unevenly otherwise leading to tilt) If anyone has any ideas as to why this is happening /can fix it help would be appreciated Action Groups All SSTO Ant Versions 1- toggle turbojet engines 2- toggle nuclear engine 3- toggle air intakes (all) SSTO Ant VTOL 4 - toggle VTOL engines SSTO Ant (Landing) & SSTO Ant (Dock&Landing) 4 - toggle vertical landing legs and ladders 5 - toggle horizontal landing gear and ladders SSTO Ant (Dock&Landing) 6 - toggle docking port Download SSTO Ant (Basic) SSTO Ant (Payload) SSTO Ant (VTOL) SSTO Ant (Landing) SSTO Ant (Dock&Landing) SSTO Ant Pack <- zip file containing all 5 versions

I'm voting for Francesco's Iron Cross DSP ... It was a close race between that and Giggleplex's design but think the RTG doesn't provide enough electricity alone to make much of a difference. P.S. You're missing my entry in the first page list of Probes

Think the problem here is that with the decouplers it was 'using' the fuel in the center for the side engines but without it's only using the fuel in the side tanks. Try adding a fuel line from the center tank to the side tanks to see if that fixes it.

Presentation 3 stock SSTOs for your enjoyment all weighing in about 7t (weight on runway) with 3 different propulsions to complement the turbojet: Flea (Ion), Fly (RCS), Mosquito (fuel) values presented refer to space deltaV left once in orbit after circularization and to surface TWR values (orbiting values are much higher) Plane flight profile All planes fly roughly the same with the only difference being the circularization burn/switchover moment: - at 50-70 kph pull up and climb at 45* up to 10k - at 10k lower the ascent angle to 30* up to 15k - at 15k drop ascent angle to 10-15* and climb up to just over 30k - hold at 30-33k while gaining speed. - when you're at 2k+ surface speed pitch up slightly and bring up Ap as high as possible while lowering thrust to prevent flameout - at 40-45k shut off jet engine and close air intakes - at 50k/(or AP) switch over to circularization/travel propulsion Depending on how well ascent is done fuel cost is between 70-100 of the 160 available and circularization can cost as little as 50deltaV Example of a non-perfect ascent in my Flea SSTO presentation Action Groups Flea (Ion), Fly(RCS), Mosquito(Fuel) 1-toggle jet engine 3-toggle air intakes (all) 5-toggle ladders Flea (Ion) 2-toggle ion engines 4-toggle solar panels (all) Mosquito (Fuel) 2-toggle rocket engines Download SSTO Flea (Ion) <- with patience allot can be achieved with 3500deltaV budget SSTO Fly (RCS) <- this is really a good plane to perfect jet SSTOs ascent (at least for my type of SSTOs) SSTO Mosquito(Fuel) <- this is a fairly forgiving SSTO