Hodo

What are these RAPIERs?

Does it work with FAR?

I love that, I will have to mess around with that concept and see if I can build something like it. Oh and how to post imgur pics in these forums type [] (imgur in those brackets) the letters and then [/] (imgur after the/) So it will come out like this.

890m/s is almost mach 3 at less than 15km is nearly suicide in DRE.

I have all three of those mods, and I rarely use airbrakes to slow my craft down on re-entry. The thing is you are coming in at to steep of a re-entry angle. My typical re-entry target is 5km above the ground over KSC, for my space planes, and my crew capsules usually 5-10km above the ground almost a third the way east of KSC. This way I spend as much time as possible above 30km slowing down before I hit the thicker atmosphere at 27km. If I can get the speed below mach 5 I know it will survive re-entry. If I come in faster than that, there is a fair chance it will burn up or burn through its heat shield. If you want a real challenge try landing anything on Eve with DRE.

FAR typical launch using a rocket is around 3200-3500m/s. FAR Asparagus nightmare launch, around 5000-9000m/s. FAR Space plane SSTO, around 2200-2500m/s FAR makes somethings easier, if you have any idea what a plane looks like. But will make other things considerably harder, like those massive asparagus launchers.

That's great, I would love to see pics of it. I haven't messed with the B9 settings for the VTOL engines but they are the same settings for the Firespitter propeller mod. Its hard to explain what they do, I rarely use much more than the hover mode in that.

And the crew returns to Kerbin on board the SVO-25 Orca II. 8 of the 10 crew were returned to KSC by SSTO space plane. Two remained on the ship for refueling operations.

Yes and I love it.

Great, take your time. BTW I am done with the third mission, my report is in and in a nut shell this is what I did. I replaced the current craft, mostly due to bugs and part count. Not completely satisfied with the replacement but meh, honestly I would rather use a SSTO space plane but I haven't spent that much time in my design lab to come up with anything new or inspiring. Even though I do have ones that would do most of the basic parts of these missions without a problem, it is the unusually large cargo units you have been tasking in the last mission that turned me off from replacing my XI-2 with SP-406VA or SVO-25 Orca II. I refuse to design a ugly open air cargo carrying SSTO is just not my style. I only took one SA unit to Moho, couldn't attach more if I wanted to, and I had one lander, that landed a team at the opposite part of the planet. Didn't see a need to send a second team down at the first sight with the SA unit and leave them there without a shelter while I landed another team on the other side of Moho. It wasn't logical, realistic or even practical. Granted I did take 10 Kerbals there but only landed 2 of them on the surface, I needed to maintain a minimum number of crew on the ship for communications reasons.

Some of them are quite balanced others not so much. It depends on what I was going for in the design. I know one of them is pretty much perfect, I for the life of me can't remember which one but I think it is the SVO-25. SVO-23 if you look at the 4th picture in you can see a nuke engines stuck in there. The funny thing is it isn't clipping its on its own fuel tank right there in the middle. You can fly most of the designs with the SAS turned off but they are far easier with it on, less management on your part. As for Aerospikes or B9 VS-1 Rocket VTOL engines, I like the B9 engines more. They weigh .5 tons and have a 100kn thrust. Their ISP isn't great but it isn't to bad. I mainly use them for landing and taking off, other than that they are off most of the time. On a side note, I just downloaded infernal robotics plugin for the moving parts. Been messing around a bit with that, may see some interesting new designs in the next few weeks. Already found a use for the hydrolic piston, it is being used as a telescoping docking port for vessels that cant reach a docking port, or to pull a cargo module out of the cargo bay when it is docked to the other object. And I love the RCS balancer mod, it is useful in so many ways, and I think that is a MUST HAVE for the stock KSP.

Mission 3 report Moho.... After having to completely rebuild and replace the XI-2 which was at best a moderate success, but was limited (parts count). I decided it was due for replacement after the bug ridden Eve mission. So the DX-2 which is a more tried and true design, but still new to this program was commissioned as a replacement. The ship was launched in the standard fashion, strap it to a giant rocket and blow it to space. But was anything but standard, offering room for up to a crew of 10 and having two large docking ports, one front and one aft, and powered by 3 large nuclear boosters and supplemented buy 3 ion engines and over 10k d/v the ship was prepared for almost anything. Equipped with state of the art communications gear, remote command and control functions, the DX-2 was setup far better than the XI-2. After the ship was refueled in orbit the first challenge for the crew was receiving the first part of the mission package, the seismic assembly. Weighing in at just over 30 tons it was not heavy, but it made up for this in shear bulk which made transporting it to orbit a challenge in itself. But seeing as this program specializes in space plane SSTOs it was not a challenge I was afraid of. So we transported the part up in our Space Plane model number 406 type V sub group A, or SP-406VA for short. Yes really, it is that big. Before the mission was launched the DX-2 recieved its landing module which was also launched by a space plane SSTO. But this time a large cargo hauler was not needed for the just under 40 ton lander, so the old tried but true SP-313 Orca was called up to transport the load. (no pictures were taken for this, only because I just didn't think to take any for a 20min operation that was pretty routine for me.) The mission was set underway as soon as the launch window opened for Moho. The trip wasn't a long won and everything went mostly to plan, the ship burned a bit more fuel than expected slowing down into orbit of Moho, which would only make the job of the LKM lander module crew that much harder. Luckily though the the DX-2 arrived almost in perfect orbit to set the seismic assembly down on the target site and the science team in the LKM lander module on the other side with in two orbits. That and both zones were in partial sunlight which made it that much better. The seismic assembly was remotely piloted down and landed without a hitch and was left until the science team was in place and the DX-2 was back in comms range of the SA. After the seismic charge was fired off the science team finished up their first mission and started on the second mission, refueling the DX-2. It only took them 10 trips to refuel the DX-2 to 80% fuel load for the return trip back to Kerbin. After a 18 day trip back to Kerbin the DX-2 burned most of its remaining fuel to circularize its orbit and prepare for unloading of science information and crews. (that will be done at a later time, by another SSTO spaceplane) Here is the album of the mission.

What kind of specifications are you looking for? Is it a shuttle in the truest sense of the word? Attached to a rocket and launched into space. Or is it a SSTO space plane that can take off fly to orbit and return? How high does it need to go? Does it need to carry cargo, if so how much? Does it need to carry extra passengers, again how many?

Could it be you are running out of RAM?

That really is good. Great work on that one.

Your FAR is out of date, there is an update to it, it improves a couple of things.

Is it even possible? I mean it can be done with KOS, Mechjeb or some other flight computer but just letting it coast down and land on its own. That maybe impossible.

Well landed on Moho... And have a crew on the other side of the planet. I will post a mission report when I complete Kethane mining and refueling operations of the DX-2 and the mission. Burned more fuel than I planned on the intercept with Moho. Called for just over 5k d/v I ended up burning close to 7k becuase of the horrid intercept system in KSP. If I used mechjeb this would all be so much easier.

I love that pic.

Well I landed it on Moho... And the new texture replacer is working fine.

Actually I didn't mention modded nuke engines, it was the SABRE engines.

The most simple SSTO I have ever made was based on a rocket. It wasn't good but it worked. I think it was all of 30 parts.

Found the problem, and fixed it. Unfortunately it required a complete redesign of the main ship, but it fixed the problem. As long as I don't stack docking, one into another into another, I can dock to either side of the core ship. It is ugly as sin but it works.

It still does this even with no command module on the docking part.

Those radial boosters are a bit much for Moho. The gravity there is half of Kerbin, you could get away with LV-909s and save weight. Additionally seeing as it is landing and isn't needed to get back into orbit you could go with less fuel. You should only need about 700d/v to land it maybe 1000.