Hodo

Here are some quick fixes I came up with on your design. This will most likely fly, and make a VERY low 70-75km orbit. The problems I am seeing is this, You have .94:1 Thrust to weight ratio on the rocket engines, I am assuming you are using the LV-T45s, which have a 200.0kn thrust rating. You have plenty of power with the turbine engines totaling in at 2.11:1 ratio. But you only have a max of 1793d/V total on the craft for fuel. The jet engines you have chosen are heavy and die out around Mach 3.5. I would suggest using the turbojet engines, which don't lose power till around mach 4.5. I also rearranged your engine layout so there is no issues with the CoT vs CoM, no matter the engine in use. Here is the quick build I did off your pics you posted and 15minutes of work. There are some changes I did not do in this build that I would do differently. Move the RCS tanks on the top to the sides of the craft, in line with the CoM. This would help bring the handling more in line and remove the nose pitch issue. I have not tested it myself but it is very close to one of my most successful SSTO spaceplanes, the SP-311 Trident. My last piece of advice is design the craft to do one thing or the other, if you want it to haul crew, make it a crew shuttle it will be easiest at first. Or if you want it to haul cargo, make it a cargo plane. Trust me it is REAL easy to over complicate a craft with to many ideas at once. There is an old adage "Jack of all trades, master of none." Good luck, and have fun.

Now that looks good, and should work just fine. You have mechjeb and it is great for the information it provides. I personally use Kerbal Engineering Redux but not much difference in the information they provide. So you shouldn't have any issues.

The best approach to getting a SSTO into orbit is climb at best possible speed to 15km, then reduce your climb so that you are accelerating laterally faster than you are climbing. So by the time you hit 25km you should be going mach 4+. Ideally you should be on jet engines till 30km and around Mach 5+. Then switch over to rockets and climb as best you can, usually around 100m/s or better.

The MiG-23 was always my favorite. But isn't really possible in the Stock KSP because of the swing wing design.

Canards tend to stall out before the wings, this is a good and bad thing. So adding a simple non-control lifting surface at the front of the craft, to bring your CoL a little closer to the rear of your CoM will help maintaining its control at super sonic and faster speeds. Like this monster I use for heavy lift jobs. It is a SSTO, and can haul 72 tons into orbit. It took a few days of work to get it right but it works great now. Notice how the CoL is JUSt behind the CoM.

But that makes for a perfect time to learn.. lol

Ok you are hitting "Mach tuck". Switch out the stock canards with a pair of smaller winglets from B9, like the 4x2.2m ones, maybe a bit larger. Turn off their control in FAR, by clicking on P,Y,R in the FAR control menu in the VAB/SPH.

What speed were you going when this happened? And do you have FAR?

Here is a tip I received from this very thread. Don't place the connections at extreme angles. Personally I try to reduce the angles as much as possible. Sometimes this means using a ground pylon between structures. As seen here.... This is an older picture, I have since added another couple of structures down there.

That's one way of putting it. And I can't agree more. Why, when I started, I downloaded FAR and DRE the first day. My first pod recovery was a success. It was the third, forth and fifth that failed. Honestly I find DRE and FAR make the game easier if you have any idea how the real world works. Granted they are simplified versions of the KIDS mod, which makes life REAL hard in KSP and with the Planet rescaler it becomes a nightmare.

I like the KiG-25. Great job there.

Ok here is a tip, I use this process for building VTOL SSTO space planes. After I have everything on the craft where I want it, I then place a light or some other small lightweight object over the CoM marker to mark where it is. Then I remove the rear firing engines and point the VTOL engines down, if they already are not facing down. This way I now know where the CoT is in relation to the correct CoM. I move the VTOL engines or ballast as needed to get the CoT in line with the object that I placed as a marker for my CoM. Once i have them lined up, I put it back together and do a test flight. 90% of the time it works as I intend it to... 5% of time, it needs some fine tuning, the other 5% it is a spectacular failure. EDIT- I notice there is a small movement of your CoM up as you remove the engines. Try moving the bottom engine pair to the top of the wing. It may line everything up.

OK you have a couple of options here. You can add a couple more ASAS modules to the craft, you have room before the rocket engines and before the turbine engines. And/Or you could add a couple of RCS thrusters just in front of your canards, one on each side, and one at the bottom and at the top center. So you have 4 of them right behind the cockpit. The other less attractive fix is, move your center of mass up a hair with more ballast on the top of the craft. You may need about a ton of ballast on the top to bring your CoM up enough for your rockets, but this will throw your CoT off from your jets. Last option is to move your jet engines to the side of the hull, this will bring them inline with the rockets, and fix your CoT vs CoM issue. But will make the rear of the hull very cluttered.

SVO-14A Adder VTOL Interceptor Crew - 2 Range-200kmx200km orbit *disclaimer owner is responsible for arming it Mods-B9,FAR,KSPX, Engineering Redux, Procedural Wings https://www.dropbox.com/s/7sxwtvazp75jq0g/SVO-14A.craft

SVO-15 Crew Shuttle VTOL space plane. Crew- 1 Passengers -4 Range-125km x 125km orbit Mods- B9, FAR, Firespitter, KSPX, Engineering Redux, Procedural Wings https://www.dropbox.com/s/ki19ayx380nxwpz/SVO-15.craft

I will start by saying the mods used in all of my craft will be in my sig to save time. For the most part the mods that are needed for most of my craft are as follows. -Procedural Wings -B9 -FAR -KAS -KSPX -Kerbal Engineering Redux -Kethane (on a few of the vessels. I will note if they do or don't in description) The first vessel I will present is the SP-400A Freight Hauler. Crew-3 Max Altitude with max cargo-105km x 105km orbit Max Cargo capacity- 2 orange tanks or 72 tons Mods-B9,FAR,KSPX, Engineering Redux https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqdgkyle4lk22kv/SP-400A.craft

The issue I am seeing is simple. Altitude, for speeds higher than mach 4 you will need to be above 20km. You can do it lower but it requires a lot more power. Think of it like running in air vs running in water. Lower attitude the thicker the atmosphere, the higher the thinner and thus the less friction and drag. So you can go faster with less. To get higher, right now you have 2 intakes total on the aircraft, for 4 engines. I would add at least 2 more intakes to give you a 1:1 ratio on intake to engine. I personally never go above 3:1 unless I am proving a point. The C-11 has 10 intakes for 4 engines, or a 2.5:1 ratio. To many intakes in FAR and you create to much drag, to little and your plane can't reach altitudes needed for hypersonic flight. And can I suggest Imageshack or imgur to post pics it would be so much easier to see them. I will post a pic of the Kairbus in the VAB so you can see the design.

You know I was thinking that exact thing after my SVO-17, which I haven't taken pics of yet. I just completed its trials and tests, it could use some improvements. But it was able to haul a 15 ton rover into orbit with little effort. The hardest part was overcoming the issues of clipping issues with docking with KAS winches. It takes about 10 minutes on the ground to strap the cargo into the bay when on the ground but it is very doable. Later I will post pics of it. And I may start a imagur account because Imageshack just is clunky for what I am posting.

580 parts is insane! My most complex ship is 200 parts. My average is around 100. The SSTO VTOL I sent to Duna and Ike is only 121 parts. I have a rig better than yours and I still wont think about building a 580 part ship.

Should be able to walk up or float up to the winch and select the grappling hook on your back and select attach.

In TAC, sort of, if you have both vessels set to balance all on the fuel settings when they dock they will auto balance all the tanks between them. Trust me it can get a bit annoying if you aren't planning on it. And it can get cumbersome but do what I did, and cut down on parts. My station now is only 75 parts, and takes up 5 spots on the TAC balancer. Honestly the KAS mod has helped me cut down on a lot of parts I would have used otherwise to get things into orbit.

So I made two more SSTOs, One cargo hauler the first of the SVO line to have cargo capabilities and a crew transport ship. SVO-16 is the cargo hauler. And SVO-15. Both handle better than any of my previous SVO SSTO planes, and use less fuel on take off and landing. Far improved over the original SVO-3.

For a VTOL, they are surprisingly easy. The hardest part is getting the thrust for the VTOL setup correctly. I use FAR, and B9 amoungst other plugins so I have access to more parts, but I have built stock VTOLs. Here is a simple trick. Build the craft complete, turn on CoM and CoT. put a light weight object over the CoM marker on the vessel. Best thing is a light, they weigh next to nothing and change none of the distribution. Then remove your rear mounted engines. Notice how your CoT is now pointing straight down. Line this line up with the CoM place holder, you know that light you placed, so your CoT should go straight through your CoM. After that you remove that light, place your rear engines back on the craft. You now have a VTOL engine setup for your craft. I suggest figuring out how much your craft weighs so you can get your correct thrust to weight for take off. VTOLs you will want greater than 1:1 ratio. Ideally you want a 1.5:1 ratio. Make sure you have everything on your craft before you start setting your VTOL engines, otherwise you will be going back to the assembly building and moving stuff again and again. If you find out that it is a little off balance you can always add ballast tanks, small RCS tanks, are perfect. One add-on I can not suggest enough is the Kerbal Engineering Redux plugin. For nothing more than the building information it provides. You will know exactly how much dV you will have, and how much thrust to weight ratio you will have for each stage.

I use DRE and FAR, and have for a long time. I can say one of the first things I learned was the need for slower re-entry speed. I think now most of my pods come in at less than mach 6. And actually have hit the lower atmosphere at much lower speeds. My best was a mach 5.2 re-entry, and I had a 10 second burn and the rest was gliding through the atmosphere till I could deploy the chutes.

Most modern fighter planes are pretty poor gliders. I think the F-16s glide characteristic was something like for every 1000ft you might go a half mile.