Hodo

Exactly what KCS123 said, at launch you want your TWR close to 1.2-1.4 at most.

When I used to launch rockets in KSP and not use SSTO space planes to haul my cargo into space. I would use struts, a fair number of them. Or I would use the auto strut feature with the procedural fairings. Start your gravity turn at 100m/s or 1km which ever happens first, and ease into the turn, so by the time you are at 20km you should be about 10-15deg above the horizon in flight. Never push past the actual prograde flight marker just ease into it.

Ideally you would like a low C/D value the lower the better. I think my worst C/D craft in service right now has a value of .034 and it is MASSIVE, 630tons at take off without its 150 ton cargo. It flies like a small moon and handles like an oil tanker. But it flies and reaches space... granted the frame rate lag is so bad, that it takes 30min to get to a 100km orbit in what it says is 15min. The sad thing is I am not even sure if I will ever use it.

Steering planes is simple. Q/E control the roll left and right W/S control pitch up and down. A/D control yaw left and right. Past that, you need to have control surfaces on the aircraft to have any control over it at all, or a lot of SAS modules.

Try to do this with an Airbus, and you will be on the 6 o'clock news.

No I didn't get a chance to load it with cargo, so that sucked. But as for the drag issue, you could remove a lot of redundant things that would help cut drag. The wings are something that is going to generate a fair amount of drag and there isn't much you can do about that. But the added wingtip gear are drag you don't need. Just go through and see about cutting useless parts, like some of those intercoolers, they are added drag and mass. They don't add any fuel and do nothing other than add drag. It will change the way your CoM sits, but they wont move it that far as they are pretty light when empty. Like look at these three pictures of three completely different SSTOs I have built and all three of them are at the same point in their flights. Look at the C/D line on the FAR display. That is the drag display. F/A-106A Thundergod, 0.024 C/D at .45Mach SP-225, .023 C/D at .34 Mach SP-501, .023 C/D at .57 Mach. See a trend?

Ok I think i see the problem he is talking about in his review. I looked at your craft myself. There are some hard and fast rules to supersonic aircraft in the real world. Number one of which is Bi-Planes don't work at supersonic speeds, this is why there are no supersonic biplanes anywhere. While it does increase the wing area it also doubles the amount of drag on the craft without actually providing that much more lift at those speeds. In comparison the F/A-106A vs your Manticore V2 in the pictures. At mach 4 and 10deg nose up, the 106 has a L/D of 5.23 while your V2 has a L/D of 1.55. The wing surface area of the 106 is only 99.9m2 while your V2 is over 172. There is a reason why the F/A-106A handles the way it does and it isn't even the best of my current SSTO Fighter craft. I suggest you check out some of the SSTOs in my thread linked in my sig, you will see how less is more in the way of SSTOs. And when I get around to uploading my current heavy lifter in testing you will see again how it isn't about the massive wing, but about the amount of drag. 630tons and it can achieve orbit quite easily. I expect it to haul over 150tons to orbit, but I am still streamlining the design.

With Duna treat it as if it has no atmosphere. The atmosphere is so thin that it is really just there for affect. It wont create enough drag to slow down most aircraft, but it will be enough to create some lift at near Kerbin supersonic speeds. Last time I sent a SSTO space plane there was way back in .21 and the landing speed was close to 300m/s which is WAY to fast. I ended up just landing VTOL without to much of an issue.

I will take a look at it and give you an assessment on what I think is wrong and see if I can fix it and send you a updated version in a few. So I flew it, and I seen NO problems with that craft. At least no major problems. It is actually a dream to fly, really nice design. Without using my TAC Fuel Balancer to maintain fuel balance it actually flew pretty well, even though I expected the nose to get heavy at hypersonic speeds, but it didn't. The craft had pretty serious yaw issue at subsonic speeds but it wasn't uncontrollable. The craft is a bit twitchy at low speeds, but that is because the CoL is SO close to the CoM. The only problems I had with it was it had a great deal of drag, more than most of my design, by about a multiple of 5, most of my SSTOs only have a .02-.03 drag rating in FAR. But that comes with experience and time. The flight profile I used was my standard flight profile. Climb at best speed to 12km. In this case, it was 30deg nose up. Bring nose down to 10deg and accelerate to Mach 5, at 25km. Once at 25km, switch over when air flow is below 120% required. After the switch over to closed cycle nose up to 24deg slowly, and climb till AP is desired altitude, in this case 75km for your craft. Once desired AP is achieved cut engines and coast to AP, then perform circulization burn. Your craft did all this with about 800m/s Delta/V left in the tanks. For some odd reason I was unable to look at the craft in the SPH, it just doesn't appear in there to me but I can fly it just fine. So I am unable to make any tweaks to it. My only suggestions would be cut some of the dead weight, like the landing gear on the wing tips. You don't need them. Otherwise it is a great craft. Good job, now you just need to learn how to fly it.

TAC Fuel Balancer is one of those mods that I find to be a must now. Only because real aircraft have a way to shift fuel quickly and easily from tank to tank without needing to run a million giant yellow fuel hoses. Like the F-15C Eagle for example, it automatically shifts its fuel load to maintain the optimum balance for the aircraft during flight. TAC Fuel Balancer is just one of those things that if you use FAR you should use something like it to maintain the realistic balance of the aircraft. And Real Chutes is just awesome. It is like TACFB, if you run FAR, you will want a realistic parachute system that doesn't rip apart a craft when you deploy them.

HoneyFox, I am not saying you are wrong but this craft right here can pull 13Gs sustained in FAR+DRE, and is still VERY flyable. Perhaps the F-16 you are using isn't balanced right, or something is off slightly?

I use the Poodle for a lot of my bigger landers, it is just useful mainly because of its low profile. It isn't meant to be a first stage engine.

Not much, if any at all. I am running it plus a few dozen other mods and I am getting a bit of a frame rate slow down when I launch MASSIVE things over over 200parts but it isn't bad.

All I make are SSTO Spaceplanes, and I am good at it. What the OP made is a SSTO, it IS a Single Stage To Orbit. The check list for SSTO is simple. Does it get to space and achieve orbit without staging or dropping parts? -CHECK! That is it. Note I did not say Single Stage to Space, which is a SSTS, or a Single Stage To Orbit and Return. SSTOR/SSTOL. A lot of people make the common mistake to assume that SSTO means Space Planes that take off, go to space, return and land without dropping parts. SSTOs can be anything that achieves orbit without dropping parts, it does not have to come back.

I noticed one thing in your review, its minor. You didn't have the craft drain fuel from the MK2 Fuselage first. But I think that is my fault for not putting that in the description. This is why I use TAC fuel balancer. Set the procedural tanks to balance, and the Mk2 Fuselage to Out. Then the craft flies fine in space. EDIT- and I see you landed without using the drag chute. I use it and often don't use the brakes on that craft because its landing speed is so low.

Nope your right, I was thinking of another thread.

Realized I forgot to add the download to the F/A-106.

That is an odd climbout profile for FAR. If you have a craft that can maintain a 45deg climb to 10km is great. But after that your air intakes will start to lose airflow, and it is generally best to bring your climb to 10-15deg at 12-15km all the way to 25km. You should accelerate to over mach 5 by the time you hit 25km.

DYJ, I am wondering are you going to complet the work on the MK3 wing that you came up with. I really love the look of it, but it seems incomplete like it is missing something.

You may want to use a docking ring to attach the to parts, so you don't fire your load off into space. (phrasing).... Or you should use a seperator instead of a decoupler. I have built a few space stations in orbit, my last one was for a challenge a few months ago. And I am in the process of building another. You can flip through this album and see pretty much how I did it. Mind you I use space planes almost exclusively.

You are aware that 300m/s is pretty damned close to mach 1 right? And 20km 300m/s isn't really that slow. It isn't anywhere near orbital velocity but it isn't standing still either.

The best bit of advice with cargo haulers is to make sure your CoM is centered in your cargo bay. This way if your cargo is balanced correctly you wont have an issue with the CoM moving. I often use light weight parts to center my cargo in large bays. This monster is a great example of how I would design the cargo around the CoM of the craft that is going to haul it, or adjust the length of the cargo to move the cargos CoM forward or backward in relation to the cargo hauler. So ultimately the CoM will not move more than .5m front or back on the craft with or without cargo.

The CoM will move back because the engines are at the rear of the craft, and they account for a large chunk of dead weight. Check your CoM by right clicking and empting each one of your fuel tanks and see where your CoM is in relation to the CoL.