Hodo

Some of these stock craft are truly amazing! Absolutely awesome work!

The biggest question is, will it be FAR compatible?

I just did a quick search on the SABRE engine for the Skylon. It is a VERY powerful engine, with a 14:1 TWR which is MASSIVE seeing as most jet engines have a 5:1 at best. The listed ISP that I have found is between 400-500 in closed cycle/rocket mode and 3300-3800 in air breathing mode. The problems I have been finding is the exact mass of the engine. But the power of the engine is pretty consistent most of the sources I have found say it is around 1900kn at sea level and over 2900 in a vacuum. I would love an accurate model of the SABRE myself, I think it would be awesome. The only thing I really want to change is the RAPIER to perhaps the other engine projects, the RB545 or ATREX.

We are not talking about the F/A-18E or even a F4 Phantom, hell we are talking about the Atlas rocket, or the Apollo rocket. Mechjeb is about the technological level of the autopilot of the 1960s. God help you if you try to get it to land on anything while flying an aircraft. But who am I kidding, 90% of you can't land an aircraft in KSP without parachutes anyway.

Not a masochist, I enjoy a challenge. Stock KSP is not challenging enough for me and obviously many others judging by the amount of users who use those exact mods you listed. MJ I find does not make it easier, it just is a tool, no more or less than KOS, KER or even the precise node tool.

Tac fuel balancer actually works better for SSTOs.

I really like KSPI, but only the pre-cooler parts for the intake system for air breathing jet engines. I wish they could be implemented to the SABRE precooler structure part. I currently have only one problem, not enough time. I am currently trouble shooting some plugin issues on my current install then fixing them and reinstalling them. Hopefully I will have it fixed tonight....hopefully. If I can get everything, working I look foward to trying your mod again.

It doesn't, until you think about it. When I played football and was in peak shape in school I ran my 40yd dash in 4.65s. So I was covering 10m every 1.2s roughly. ((thats if my conversion from yards to meters is right, and it probably isn't.))

I look foward to what you two come up with here in the future. I really like this mod, even though I am not currently use it, and I agree 120% KSP jets are WAY to powerful.

Nope you were right, it is definately a Pak-FA Sukhoi T-50. What through me off was the tail. But I am seeing that this becoming a Sukhoi trademark.

You really don't need the agressive setup on that ATM mod. You can get away with the basic mode, but the trick is to remove anything you never use from the game. Like myself, I dont ever use most of the structural parts from B9, or most of the extra wing parts. So I removed most of the cfgs for them. I also killed the cfgs of most of the fuel tanks. Which saved me a fair amount of RAM right there. Really once you get the stretchy tanks and procedural wings and fairings you dont need most of the extra parts in most parts packs.

The frontal picture is most likely a prototype drawing. The picture below it is of the Flanker. Don't believe me look it up.

Its actually a Su-27/31 Flanker. The give away is the intake possition being tucked under the cockpit riser and the tail pylon that sticks out the rear of the aircraft. It houses a chute on some models or ECM/ECCM equipment on others.

Actually you are wrong on the spam pictures. The first picture, looks to be of a P51 Mustang, which those weren't intakes, they were inlets for the radiators, which it had 3, 1 under the engine for the oil cooler, and 2 under the wings which were for the actual cooling system for the aircrafts inline engine. The AV-8B, they are inline with the engine, and they actually are one intake system, there is only one impeller blade system in there and two intake cowls. This is mainly for use when the aircraft is traveling to slow for air flow to be forced into the intakes. The third picture of a Boeing 727/L-1011 tail engine flow, is about the only accurate arguement you have had. The fourth picture of the Su-27 intake and engine flow is pretty accurate, but if you take note this also acts as an inline baffle system to prevent high airflow shock values from getting to the impeller turbine.

Yeah the switch over should be around mach 5 to mach 5.5. Much faster than that and your losing speed and momentum because your engines are losing power. The promotional video I seen on Youtube for the Skylon project said that it would switch from air breathing to closed cycle around mach 5. So that is how I did the flight test. You maybe able to get a bit more altitude on your air breathing mode before you switch over. Which may help cut the dV requirements to get to space. But for the life of me I am not sure how that craft is to get into a stable orbit. It just uses WAY to much fuel in closed cycle.

Thank you Razorcane and Aazard.

Yep can confirm link does not work.

When I download it and install it in a folder NOT KSP, and try and run it according to the directions on the main page it does nothing, I actually don't even get an error just nothing. It pops open a window that instantly closes. No faults or errors, just open then close. I can barely make out what it is, looks like a DoS prompt window.

You need to have some kind of control surface with those fins to help it turn or better gimbles on the rockets. With FAR I usually start my gravity turn as soon as it hits 100m/s, and then I throttle back to keep it from going supersonic till I get over 10km altitude. If you are using MechJeb, I suggest setting your accent guidence to 30-35% and start the gravity turn at 1km altitude.

I play with both of those and many more (see sig), and I can tell you I often forget those things. DRE is not as bad as it appears.

And it works in FAR, outstanding!

The first SSTO I made that works in RSS, has a single SABRE engine. The SABRE-M to be exact. I followed the profile for the Skylon for flight. I would climb to about 20-25km, and bring the nose down to 20deg but maintain a possitive climb of no less than 10m/s, but try and keep it below 50m/s. At that point I would be pushing for max speed under open cycle, the Skylon wasn't slated to switch over to closed cycle till above mach 5. Usually when I hit mach 5 I am pushing past 35km altitude, as soon as I go closed cycle I would nose up to 40deg and climb as fast as I can without losing speed. My second SSTO space plane uses two SABRE-Ms which used the same flight profile as the first. But lately I have been having issues with one of the two engines flaming out or suddenly losing power. Like now both SABRE-Ms when switched to closed cycle drop to 21kn of thrust per engine. Which is maybe 1/100th of what they should be. If I throttle back from 100% to say 50% they kick up to about 800kn per engine but if I go above 51% one of them drops back to 21kn of thrust and the other hits just shy of 900kn. Which ends up being bad. I had this problem before and I can not remember how I fixed it or what caused it.

I used to think this, but then I downloaded it and gave it a try this version. And I find it useful for somethings but ultimately not used for most of what I do. It is great for launching satellites into a stable orbit at a set distance apart so you can have a working communications satellite grid in Remote Tech2, but other than a few minor things, it isn't that useful to the experienced player. Honestly if all you use MJ for is the information read out, then KER is far better at that, and its memory footprint is smaller.

Oh so true, but again a very vocal part of the community would scream like little school Kerbals as soon as you took away their automagicalwouldneverworkinamillionyears aircraft that they have made and flown around to different planets in. They would say you are impossing on their ability to play. If you really want to see the level of divide in the KSP community look at the spacecraft exchange forums or the challenges forums. And see the number of people who scream bloody murder if you post an aircraft or a SSTO that uses FAR, DRE, B9, KW, or AIES parts on it. Some people will go as far as to report you to the moderators and say that you are destroying their thread or some other BS. And god help you if you use Mechjeb on something even for the information it provides. I would LOVE if SQUAD added the FAR and DRE plugin to the stock KSP to fix some of the cartoon physics they currently have going on.

Thanks I will definately read over that post and see if I have my stuff installed right and fix it if not.