Hodo

I agree that "Air Hogging" is a bit of a cop out or exploit of sorts, but hey if someone wants to play that way not my place to say anything to them about it. I myself do not build craft that go past the 3:1 intake to air breathing engine ratio. If I can not mount it in a way that looks like it would work or is correct I won't. But also using the FAR mod, keeps me from building non-working aircraft also. So stacking a bunch of intakes on the front of my craft just creates SO MUCH MORE DRAG, that I might as well walk to space.

LOL actually it's not that bad, only 5 intakes for 4 air breathing engines. I have seen FAR worse. And the one directly under the nose was so the nose gear was slightly lower, or give it a bit more of a positive AoA while sitting on the runway.

Here is how a SSTO/Space plane design should look roughly. This is my SP-103 Jackal. Notice how the center of lift is just behind the center of balance. Also notice how the center of thrust is inline with the center of balance. These are things that help greatly with a space plane design.

I use SSTOs, but mainly as cargo haulers. As I have yet made a rocket that can haul as much as my Spaceplane SSTOs into orbit. But if I want to go to another world, it is easier for me to launch all the things I don't want to pack in the space plane due to issues with the game mechanics. (Landing legs lowering while in the cargo bay when I raise the gear on the space plane.) So for my landers I usually launch them up on the end of a rocket, and dock them with my station, and then send up the space plane, and dock it at the station and refuel it while I am there, then head to where ever I want to go. My space planes are my every use craft, unless its just launching light weight parts to orbit I use my SSTO space planes.

Before I wiped the game and reinstalled to fix some minor issues. I had 2 unmanned rovers, mini rovers of sorts, that I had named 270-90 I parked one on the east end and one on the west end. About 100-200m from the end of the runway. I didn't have any issues, other than some low landings or take off I would blow them over, or knock parts off.

I currently have a refueling station "KerSta-1" that orbits at 90km above Kerbin. I use this to refuel all my manned missions to other worlds. I also use it as a transfer station for heavy loads, like extra fuel tanks, or uneven cargo loads for my space planes.

For me it is. -KSPX -Kerbal Engineering -Docking Port Alignment indactor by NavyFish -FAR, I have to have realistic aerodynamics or else I find it a waste of time -Acturas Thrust Corrector, having to recalculate your engine loads due to altitude, speed or any other factor is a must. -Crew Manifest, It doesn't make sense that I have to go EVA just to go between pods that are connected. -B9, so many great looking parts. -ISA Map sat, giving your probe missions a reason. -Deadly Re-Entry, nothing says fun like burning up in the atmosphere. -TAC Fuel balancer, I like being able to move my fuel around without having to find each and every tank and doing it manually. They have the same option on a Cesna so why not on a space craft. -Subassembly Manager, Oh so nice to be able to make a lander once, save it and move it from launcher vehicle to launch vehicle.

Good looking craft. If I may make some suggestions to help with your part counts and weight savings. You can reduce the numbers of RCS thrusters on the sides of the nose to one per side. And for that matter everywhere where you have more than one in a location you can reduce that to one. It will slow down your reactions a bit but unless you are making a space fighter you don't need to move that fast in space. I try and mount them on the flatter parts of it so they are inline with the aircraft. This reduces drift when use in space. You can also get rid of the solar panels if you have the retractable panels, and the smaller cased ones would work just fine. I personally like to stick a pair of nuke reactors in the cargobay, on one of the walls to generate power so I don't have to worry about being on the dark side of anything. Not sure if you have your wings strutted if they are needed.

Xmas gift if we are lucky.

While I voted for the USSR, as they did get into space first. With both a man made orbiter, and a manned orbiter, oh and not to forget a dog. While the US lagged behind in getting a satellite, man and even a chimp into space. The USA did ultimately catch up through massive amounts of spending, something the USA is good at, and good old fashioned hard work, something the USA used to be good at. But now, with both space programs on the brink, it saddens me to think that the shuttle is dead, the USA is back to using rockets and no further government funding to make something better, and the turn to the private sector in the hopes that they would pick up the mantle where the government has left off.

Tex love the explanation best post from a intro to alignments I have seen in all most 10 years.

Here is one of my fastest climbing SSTOs. And here is my workhorse SSTOs. There are some design differences but not much with mine due to I found what works for me and stuck with it. And the DSI intake is good but is really not much better than the standard SABRE S intake. I like it for when I want cleaner lines or a sleaker look.

The question is what is your slip angle when climbing, are you flying slightly sideways. If so that will affect the air intake of the engines, and cause uneven thrust between them. The easiest way to fix this is to mount your larger SABREs on the main body and this will help some, it will also help clean up the lines of the aircraft. So you won't need as many struts that far out to hold the weight of the SABRE Ms. Also I would ditch those intakes on the ends of the LV-Ns, they are only good at subsonic speeds, use the variable geometry intakes they have less drag and are far more useful at higher speeds.

That thing is great, the problem with real life fighter/bombers on Earth vs Kerbin is Kerbin has a lot less atmosphere than Earth. But the idea is sound. The F-15 Streak Eagle, built to set the speed climb record could just about kick itself into the lower parts of space or the highest parts of the atmosphere. Same for the MIG-25 and MIG-35 Foxbat. The problem is, air hogging that we do in KSP doesn't work in real life like that and the insanely high speeds of the hypersonic flight leads to serious heating problems for the engines. But a few planes come close, SR-71 and the U2 are two that come to mind. And I think that is my primary reason for avoiding the "Airhog" designs myself, granted a few of my designs are pretty close. But when I downloaded one mod and it made my jet engines peak out at Mach 3 before they lost power. It changed the whole way of me getting planes to space. No more airhogging at that point, had to design an aircraft that worked like a plane.

Nice, Darren. 65m/s on water, or 145mph on water. Thats way faster than my slow 22mph.

I sent this to the Mun, with my spaceplane SSTO. This was its transport vehicle.

And done... Billy-Bobfried next to the the Amphib-1 KSC Challenger Truck. (or just A1KCT)

CorruptDB, If you want realistic atmospheric dynamics in KSP, I suggest downloading the FAR plugin. It adds actual drag and flight physics to the game and makes it actually quite a bit more fun for aircraft design. You actually need to have a craft that would work, not these winged blimps.

Update on my attempt.. Billy-Bobfried Kerman drove through the night and was greated by the sun shortly before he blew 3 tires. But he repaired the tires and continued on to his next waypoint. Oh did I mention, it floats. And does 11m/s in the water, I can push it to 20m/s but risk losing wheels. End of 6:40min of driving...

hehe, I meant, 42m/s. And Tokay Gris, 42m/s is 151km/h

Here is my entry.... 30min of travel and I am 42Km from KSC. Top speed, 42m/s. It can go faster but it does some wonky things at 45+. ((Fixed my typo should have been m/s not km/s)) Did I mention it gets dark quick on Kerbin.

Tonight I did this one... which I call the Wyrm, only because of its flight characteristics. But it managed to get a 60 ton part into orbit and connected to my space station project and land back at KSC, thats when I took the picture. To this, which is the smallest cargo hauler I have ever made. I don't know how much it can fit in that tiny cargo bay but I cant imagine much more than 8 tons maybe 10.

jfull, looks good. Once you start, you will always want bigger.

The Center of Lift is to far forward. On a plane that small I would keep it JUST behind the Center of Mass. Aerospikes a cool, but I would run a LV-909 on a craft that small. It only weighs .5 tons, has great fuel burn use, and has thrust vectoring.

SH-401 "Bison" 200tons full of fuel. Over 270 when loaded with cargo. Max tested cargo capacity is around 70 tons, limited by space, and 12 Kerbalnaughts. And here is the "Trident" my current mid tier workhorse. 130 tons on take off, 32 ton cargo capacity, limited by space. No passengers.