Dogface

Thank you. I turn it off and havent had a crash yet. My crashes were happening after an ascent, so it makes sense that temp may have been playing a role. I also managed to get my SSTO back to Kerbin without exploding any parts. I mostly just dropped the Pe to 50km and aimed prograde, I opened my airbrakes (10) and burned RCS thrusters backwards (not sure that did much, but it gave me something to do). So it is a proven SSTO. I seem to have experienced less heat on the reentry than I did on the ascent. Thank you all very much for your advice. If you are having SSTO problems and looking for design hints, I used a heavily modified version of this ship...

Thanks guys. I finally got an SSTO into a circularized orbit. The game crashed, so I will see later if it can reenter. I get a lot more crashes with v1. One thing I did was uninstall and reinstall. I think that helped a bit. Also installed four more engines.

Thanks guys. I find SSTOs very frustrating. I have gone to all the planets, moons, put up two space stations, brought Kerbals back from Duna, flown two SSTOs in previous versions. But I cant seem to get a version1.0 SSTO into a circularized orbit. And making it worse is that I cannot tell if it is my flight plan or my design, or probably both.

Thanks, I will try that. That is sort of what I am doing, but obviously not getting it just right. SSTOs are far more complicated than a rocket launch. And more aggravating.

In order to escape gravity I am trying to get up speed, about 1000-1400m/s. But somewhere in that speed range my SSTO nose starts to heat up and eventually something explodes. I can keep the speed down, but then I dont get near an Ap of 70km. My nose is made up of air intakes, for obvious reasons. Do I need a heat shield for an SSTO noce?

Thanks a lot, that helped. I was having trouble getting past 20km. With your guide I got to 50km the first time. Now I just have to do some heat management and it looks like I may make orbit. Thank you.

That is interesting. I am glad of that upgrade, the old SSTOs crammed with intakes was really silly.

I have built two successful SSTOs. One with the original parts, then another with the lifting body parts came out. Now I am building an SSTO with the v1.0 parts. In my previous SSTOs I could get to 20-22km before I ran out of intake air, and had to switch to rockets. Now I am having a hard time getting past 17km. So, I am curious what the limit is in v1.0 for air-breathing engines. What is the Maximum Altitude you have attained in an SSTO* before you had to switch from Air-Breathing engines to rockets? * This question only applies to successful SSTOs (circularized an orbit and returned to Kerbin).

FleshJeb is right, Smart A.S.S. is great for SSTO ascent. You can set and change pitch and heading. I do a manual takeoff then set HDG=90 PIT=10 (SURF > SURF) I think Spaceplane Guidance is best for landings.

when did the KSP forums get so nasty?

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I was not comparing KSP to ST. I was comparing small minded people.

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