Hodo

Your biggest problem is your craft is going to generate to much drag by itself, without having to contend with the added weight of the cargo. This is one of my old heavy lifters, it could haul 108 tons into orbit pretty easily. The design was a continuation of this design.... This old design could take 72 tons into orbit.

Most of the time I try to place an inline docking port as close as I can to the CoM of the craft so I don't have to deal with to much added movement from transition movements with RCS. But sometimes that isn't possible. Here is one of my larger albums and I think my last one with a picture of a SSTO docked to a station. Granted it was my second largest SSTO in service and my most used.

I do love the design, great work on it. But I am sure it will work in FAR, just have to watch that dynamic pressure. I built a swing wing design a while ago losely based on the Mig-23 design.

Exactly. The trick is now you can't just jet power your way into orbit. 1500m/s is FAST! I usually shoot for this speed around 20-25km then once I hit mach 5 I switch over to rockets and shutdown the jets and increase my climb rate from 10deg AoA to 20-25deg AoA. I can usually get most of my SSTOs into orbit with over 1200m/s DeltaV remaining. The other thing is, the REAL life Skylon project shoots for mach 5 before it does its SABRE engine switch to closed cycle for the ascent into space.

Sounds like you are having a problem with the rocket losing stability after it turns off of the prograde. Well there is a simple fix for that, add winglets to the tail of the craft, this will help keep it stabile through the air at speed, there is a reason why lawn darts have them. The issue you are running into is your rocket is reaching nearly supersonic speeds quite low, this is causing the pressure on the nose of the rocket to be higher then that at the rear of the rocket, making it want to flip around if there is any change in vector. So you need something to force the center of pressure back a bit, this is what those winglets are for at the bottom of many rocket designs. Once you start getting bigger rockets you will not have to worry about this as much as they will not accelerate as fast and run into the same problems, instead you will have whole new problems. But that is half the fun of KSP. Generally with FAR I start my gravity turns at 100m/s or 1000m altitude, which ever is first. I dont turn more than 2-5 degrees at most, I gradually roll it into the direction I want it to go. So when I get to 10-15km altitude I am nearly 60deg. I will also throttle back to keep from over speeding, or going faster than mach 1 untill I hit 20km altitude, at that point I will throttle back up to full and let it burn itself out of fuel till I reach orbit or second stage.

Glad I could help.

Or you could set the spoiler max deflection in the negative, and the other to max positive.

Notable Mods used: FAR, B9, Space Shuttle Main Engines, KSO, Tweakscale. (these mods have parts on the craft or are required because of it's construction, file available upon request) Your problem is actually pretty simple. Your TWR is to high on launch. You are overspeeding the craft. According to your mj readout you have a TWR of 1.8:1 on take off which is to high. Ideally you want a 1.2-1.3:1 on launch. Dial back you power on the SRB rockets.

I normally dont say this. But please just get imgur or something like it. It will save you so much headache and trouble. Linking imgur albums is simple... [ imgur ] iLKXN [ / imgur ] This is what that looks like without the spaces. Hope that helps.

True those are all combat craft, except the Cessna design, that one actually is quite stable even though the CoL is almost right on top of the CoM. You actually do not have to have your CoL on the same plain as the CoM, you have to be careful about placing it higher or lower. The thread linked earlier pretty much explains the pros and cons of this. The biggest thing is think about what you want the craft to do, design it to do those things, then learn to fly it. - - - Updated - - - How do you know he needs to update his FAR, he hasn't posted a picture with anything?

I remember way back before .21 I made an amphib rover for the Dakkar Rally challenge and drove from KSC to the old KSC or KSC inland as it is known. It took me 6 hours, with stock wheels and a single jet engine for pushing the amphib across the water at 10m/s. I may do it again one day with a new rover design... it was one of the most fun challenges I have ever done.

Part of the problem is you are going WAY to fast on re-entry. But on the good news is you figured that out. What I usually do with FAR+DRE is I have airbrakes on the craft to slow it down that I deploy from 40km down to 20km, to try and slow the craft down from over 2000m/s speed to less than 1400m/s. Once I am below mach 5, I can get it to slow down to subsonic by the time I am over the KSC. I start my deorbit burn almost 180deg out from KSC. I set my PE for 2km above KSC. This is usually this perfect for most of my craft to come in and have to fire up their jet engines just as I hit the mountain range west of KSC.

Here is a few pictures of how most of my aircraft are set up from my Real Solar System install. Notice how the CoM and the CoL are near each other, and how the landing gear are just behind the CoM, almost directly under the CoL. This is the point of rotation for the aircraft on take off. If you have them to far forward the craft will just fall on its tail, if they are to far back they will not alow the craft to rotate for take off.

Here..http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures This tutorial is pretty much all you need to know about aircraft design in FAR. As for your wings coming off, you were going WAY to fast and tried pulling to hard of a turn which cause the force of the air over the wings to become so great it sheared the wings off... this is what that "HIGH DYNAMIC PRESSURE" warning is on the FAR window. If you are going near the speed of sound at a low altitude, below 10km you will be basically pushing a wall of air over your craft. Changing direction suddenly will cause so much force on your craft it will tear it apart. Much like real life.

Alshain is right on most parts. You can keep B9, the biggest thing is read the half dozen or more guides on how to build an aircraft in FAR on these forums. If you are still fuzzy on the concept, GOOGLE a few aircraft and look at pictures of them see how they are setup, you can pretty easily figure out what you are doing wrong from the millions of pictures of modern planes out there. The most common mistake most people make coming from stock to FAR, is the landing gear. They set landing gear at the front and back of the plane. When in real life have you EVER seen a modern jet aircraft with its landing gear at the very back? The next problem is most people put WAY to much fuel on their craft, most aircraft are not flying gas cans. Lastly, CoL vs CoM, if the CoM is to far ahead of the CoL then the craft will not want to fly do to the nose of the craft being to heavy. If you have it the other way around then the tail of the craft will want to fly in the front. You also have the issue of speed. Most people dont think about how fast they are actually going at a set altitude. They see 400m/s and think "oh that isnt that fast" then when you stop and do the conversion you realise that they are going nearly 2/3rds the speed of sound.

I have an alternate RSS install and I use AJE in that install. I can say that the dozen or so air breathing jet engines none of which really help in creating a functional SSTO that uses jets on a real scale Earth. I have achieved SSTO spaceplane status and got above the Karmin line of 100km. But it wasn't able to achieve orbit in "space" of 185km. It was 175m/s short...... I however made a nearly functional SSTO spaceplane using the Linear Aerospike rocket engines. I modeled it on a real life concept. It weighed in at over 375 tons sitting on the runway and it had to cut engines as it lost weight. But that one was 100m/s shy of orbital velocity at 185km altitude. I love AJE and it does make massive improvements to the jet engines, in a realistic fashion. The only thing is I wont use it for my stock sized kerbin install. The main reason is Kerbin is just over 1/3rd the size of Earth, and even at that scale you can still achieve orbit with realistic jet engines. Fuel consumption is the biggest difference in the two. A real jet engine will blow through some fuel when using afterburner.

I love your eye for realism. One of your craft actually looks like the Tiawanese F-CK-1 Ching-Kuo fighter. Impressive work!

For RCS Build Aid you just set which engines you want to display the thrust for.

Why did you have all those SAS modules as the body? I just used two 1.25 structure tanks, and that worked just as well and it had less flex and a whole lot less part count.

I liked the additional challenge of them... but there was something about them causing a lot of additional lag. May have been the 2 dozen SAS modules.

What I did for a long time was use a near weightless object like a light or an antenna to mark the CoM of the craft. Then I would remove the engines that were on the back of the craft, and adjust my CoT point around that marker I placed. It wasn't the best system but it worked like a charm. Now I don't even really need to have a marker, I can eyeball it most of the time now.

I usually boot up my RSS install and mess around with my attempts at making a real functional SSTO space plane in that. Or design and improve my current SSTO fleet. I have run into designers block a few times, but worked through it after spending time in the real world with loved ones, my best moment of inspiration hit me one day I was sitting out by the flight line on base, and watching the cargo planes perform touch and goes. I decided to work on my landings for a solid week doing nothing but touch and goes. That lead to me designing an aircraft that could haul 100+ tons into a 100km orbit and land vertically.

You need to have the picture on some kind of image sharing website, Imgur, imageshack, photobucket, or something like it.

Yep, I can confirm removing the tank and the APC actually fixed my frame rate issues.

I did it.... it was kind of cheap but I did it, then the game glitched.... and I couldn't exit the game without closing it. The A-105 plane managed to kill 1 SAM launcher and 1 AA gun and damage another before it was hit by AA fire. The lag made aiming impossible. So I changed tactics. I went to my roots, and built a tank. After three dry runs I found the best approach from the West. I destroyed the APC first then the SAM launchers in the center, I also hit the Laser on the roof of the SPH. I came around the north side of the kerbonaught complex and killed the AA Gun, only after tearing the rear half of my tank off. I then pulled around the south side of the VAB and killed the other SAM launchers and AA gun. The tank was the biggest challenge, I drove up behind it and hit it with my last shot. It was flipped on its side but still there. Minimal damage to the complex... they will need a new flag pole. I will try again after I move, with one aircraft... but this was the best I could do in 3 hours of play. I may mess around with the guns a bit on my own and see if I can reduce that part count. Those SAS modules in the tank are pointless. There are over 100 parts in that thing alone! You can build a tank with less than 50 if you know what you are doing.